Absorbed in a single-minded love of God and devotedly cultivating ecstatic experiences and states of emotional intoxication with the divine, Sufis travel a path to the dissolution of the individual self in the ultimate Reality of the universe. Unlike orthodox Muslims, many Sufis place little value on studying the Koran or performing the five daily prayers. From the Sufis’ point of view, no amount of scriptural study or scrupulous observance of rituals can ever bring one any nearer to the ultimate Ground of being. Final Truth is incommensurable with anything that can be represented by ideas or concepts; and therefore, only intuitively, with the heart, can one approach the indescribable Reality that lies at the core of all things.

Sufis hold that experience of the Divine arrives through the purification of one’s own heart and the elimination of all egotistical passions. Knowledge of God comes when ego and love of self give way to a love for the divine presence, not only in its transcendent aspect but also in its immanent presence in all the things of the world. And so, the Sufis’ approach to the Divine is not that of a scholar to an object of study, or of a fearful petitioner to a mighty monarch; the Sufi comes to God like a lover drawing nearer to his beloved—seeking acquaintance, friendship, love, and finally union.

The small village of Anajina constitutes an important Sufi center in Ethiopia, and twice every year it draws tens of thousands of devotees of the Sufi saint Sheikh Hussein. Many of the pilgrims are poor peasants for whom the pilgrimage constitutes a major expense. Sometimes those unable to travel to Anajina contribute money to make pilgrimage possible for others, expecting nothing in return but the pilgrims' blessings and prayers. Among those who set out, the group of unrelated people with whom they travel becomes like a family or a household for the duration of the pilgrimage, sharing food and sleeping quarters with one another. They sing, pray and chew chaat together.  Though most of the pilgrims to Anajina are Muslims, a spirit of tolerance reigns there, as it does at all Sufi shrines. Christians and Waaqeffatas, followers of traditional Oromo religion, are also welcome and arrive in small numbers. 

Born in 1972 in Vilnius, Lithuania, Leonid Plotkin grew up in America, studied law in Boston and Oxford, and then practiced law in New York City. He has worked as a freelance documentary photographer since 2007. Nostalgia for Eternity, his book about religious traditions in India, was published in 2018. Leonid’s photographic work constitutes a meditative contemplation of the human yearning for transcendence, and his photographs evoke the timeless intensity of man’s attempts to approach the eternal.