Documentary : Where Poverty Reigns, the Clock Is Dethroned and an Emperor is Forgotten : A traveler navigates Ethiopia’s beggar-filled streets, troubled history and timeless ways.

The most common taxi in Addis Ababa is a rattling 1970s Soviet-era Lada, and right now a lot of Ladas are without handle cranks to wind up the windows.

Since the clean, dry, windblown air is close to perfect in Ethiopia’s capital, the consequences of a permanently open window are not immediately apparent, unless you’re on the outside, on the desperate street corners of Addis, where an open taxi window offers hope for eating that night.

It’s not clear how the cranks began to disappear, but the immobilized windows gave members of one of the largest and most visible populations of the destitute in Africa an opportunity to introduce themselves face to face to those affluent enough to ride in a taxi.

These are young boys with snotty noses, and young girls in stained rags. They rub their bellies and motion with their hands as if to eat--a practiced and no doubt authentic expression of tragedy. They mutter softly but steadily, “Mister, mister, hungry, please mister.” Parents with babies, toothless old crones, men with disfigured limbs also nose into the window.

They ask for one birr , 16 U.S. cents.

In this city of 3 million or so, relief workers estimate there are as many as 200,000 beggar children, only a fraction of whom receive regular assistance from public or private relief agencies.

By almost any measure, Ethiopia is among the poorest nations on this impoverished continent. Only a quarter of the children go to school. Life expectancy is 45 years. Even in seasons of plenty, the country’s “pre-modern,” wood-plow farmers fall short of feeding Ethiopia by a million metric tons of grain a year.

The disappearance of window cranks thus represents a frail, populist expression of African economic justice.

Government officials, ambassadors, diplomats, relief workers and foreign business executives in their shiny sedans and four-wheel-drives have learned to reach instinctively for the window crank when applying the brakes at intersections.

Only the sagging taxis are apt to carry the kind of passenger not yet hardened to the growling sound of an empty belly through an open window.

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Haile Selassie was dethroned on Sept. 12, 1974, and died the following Aug. 27--smothered, it is said--while a captive of the military regime that ousted him. But even today, the pint-sized emperor remains one of world’s legendary figures.

Born Ras (Prince) Tafari (from which comes the name of the Rastafarian sect), he ruled Ethiopia, except for five years of Italian occupation, from 1930 until he was deposed. For many Americans and Europeans of baby-boomer age, he was the first African to penetrate their consciousness. He was the White House guest of five U.S. presidents.

Today, the emperor’s body rests in an Addis Ababa coat closet.

Quite simply, the nation lacks consensus on what to do with the remains of a man who is widely revered, sometimes despised, and who symbolizes both Ethiopia’s glory and feudalism.

Today’s government is a military creation--the result of a 1991 victory against the Marxist rulers who had deposed Haile Selassie. That puts its leaders in a quandary: They hold the emperor in higher regard than did those they replaced, but not with the great enthusiasm of former royalists, who generally oppose the political approach of today’s government.

Thus there is no agreement on a suitable end for the man Ethiopians knew as His Indefatigable Majesty, His Worthy Highness, The Omnipotent Ruler and paradigm of its ancient Christian church.

For now, one must travel to a hill overlooking Addis Ababa proper to a small square church, built in 1911. Beneath it is the mausoleum of Haile Salassie’s predecessor, Emperor Menelik II. There are no tours. One must find a priest to open the church.

Walking across threadbare rugs, past a dirty, barely distinguishable Michelangelo painting of the Virgin Mary, through a haze of burning incense, one encounters a cellar door. One has to squeeze through the opening to reach a stone stairwell into the crypt.

There, under bare bulbs, the bodies of Menelik and his wife are entombed in marble. On one wall are a collection of 500-year-old Bibles, and built into another is a coat closet.

The doors of the closet have been replaced with glass. On a stand inside, lying crosswise and covered in red velvet brocade, is a coffin barely larger than a child’s, with only a photograph to proclaim The King of Kings.

*

You have the watches; we have the time.

So goes the saying in the Third World.

Africans have incredible patience for most everything--except the rush, rush of Westerners.

So in Ethiopia, a cup of coffee is a ceremony. Hospitality an art. Shopping an event. Schedules notwithstanding.

Do not try to escape that street corner shoeshine boy by telling him, “Maybe later.” That is, unless you’re sure you’re never coming back. He will remember.

“OK, ready now?” says the lad outside the hotel. In December, he was waved away because you were busy. “Sure, later.” Now it’s May and you have returned. “And you said you’d bring me a pen too,” he adds as you offer a shoe.

A Canadian computer software consultant explains his introduction to Ethiopia:

“My first meeting was with this guy from the ministry. We had an appointment for coffee in the morning. He was an hour late, of course. Then, I think, OK, now we can get down to it. But first coffee. A woman brings us the damn beans, raw. Which we’re supposed to admire.

“Then she roasts Zthem, and crushes them up. She brews the coffee, which comes in a cup the size of a thimble and is half sugar. You drink one. Then you wait for another. And a third.

“So then the guy asks, ‘You ready for lunch?’ ”

*

Of all Addis Ababa’s wonders, none surpasses its central market, said to be the largest in Africa.

You arrive by navigating through herds of goats, clattering donkeys and streets full of men, women and children balancing on their heads various bales, buckets, baskets and boxes. Not to mention 15,000 other shoppers. Everyone seems to know where they are going, except you.

The procedure is this: A platoon of boys will compete to find you a parking spot. Then, from among them, it is proper to designate one--either by virtue of his size or perceived leadership--to watch the car.

Then you will find yourself employing a guide. Exactly how this happens is somewhat mysterious to the newcomer. Many men will offer to show you their goods. Out of politeness, you may accept the first few. Then you move on.

In the crush and confusion, in the swirl of exotic scents, surrounded by the dinning cacophony that only a crowd can emit, one face will become familiar. And you come to realize this stranger is not following you, but leading.

By now, you have moved only 50 yards. But you are on the verge of being lost forever. Recognizing this moment from the expression on your face, the guide formalizes your relationship, saying, “This way.”

So, let’s assume you would like a piece of amber.

“First you see the spice market,” says the guide. Then the garlic market, the saddle market, the saddle-blanket market, the saddle-stirrup market, the Bible-case leather-works market, the cloth and scarf market, the shoe and music and basket and luggage and canvas markets.

Suddenly, behind you a thud and a scream. A policeman is clubbing a grubby young man. The officer straightens his cap, smiles and explains: A pickpocket was advancing on you. Oh.

On to the incense market with its dizzying smells. The secondhand-clothing market. The sheet-metal market, the flower market, the woman’s makeup market. . . .

Camels? Goats? Chickens? No? Your feet hurt? OK, amber.

Down a sidewalk past dozens of men behind their sewing machines, you enter a squeaky, unmarked door. In the third connecting room back, the proprietor turns on a light. Shelves of amber, walls of amber beads, trays of amber, amber set in gold, amber set in silver, amber set with lion’s claws.

You look. “This bead, how much is it?” you ask.

“Sit, have some tea,” says the proprietor.

“Yes, have some tea,” says the guide.

“So, you like this bead?” says the proprietor.