‘He’s alive, Momma,’ Em said, hanging on to Momma now herself. ‘And it wasn’t a bird strike. It was just him being dumb.’
‘Never.’
We all sat down on the dust of the track at the edge of the red carpet. Momma cried into my back until my shirt was damp and I started to wish she’d let go of me, but I was too worried about her – and she was still too much of a stranger – for me to dare to try to wriggle away. So I just waited until she let go herself.
I may not have a father, but I have got the world’s most beautiful mother.
That’s our Momma – the White Raven. There is not a safer pilot in the whole world.
When the coronation was over, and we were allowed back on the airfield at the Addis Ababa race course, she flew us all to Tazma Meda and Beehive Hill Farm, two at a time. She didn’t seem nervous at all. I guess she just likes to be flying the plane herself. I went with Grandfather, and Em went with Grandma, and then Momma flew Grandma and Grandfather back to Addis Ababa together a week later to get the train back to Djibouti. They were badgering her right up to the moment they left about her going to live with Papà Menotti. As they were packing up to go (this is my earliest memory of Fiona Sinclair’s bedroom, which is where they stayed) they were still pestering her about him.
Momma stared out the window at Beehive Hill and answered patiently, ‘Orsino is still stationed in Italian Somaliland. It’s not possible for us to be together now that the children are here! They can’t live on an Italian air force base. He bought me the plane, of course, but I don’t owe him anything. We have an agreement.’
‘It’s called a marriage, Rhoda.’ Grandma sighed a little. ‘I wish we could stay longer. But I’m so glad we got here – thy real home. I feel better about leaving the children here in Tazma Meda. Addis Ababa wasn’t real. Not the city, not the coronation, not the cloud of men around you like ants at a picnic. I can see thee and the children will be all right here, Rhoda. Even without thy husband.’
If Momma can get along all right without a husband, I guess I can get along all right without a father. I have Momma and I have Emmy. They are enough to make a family.
Episode from THE SLEEPING QUEEN (December 1930)
Queen Morning Glory of Antemeridia was safely back on her throne but her kingdom was still in trouble. She was hungrier than normal people. She had been asleep for three years and she needed a thousand breakfasts to make up for it. She asked if someone would take a trip to the kingdom of Eclipsia, to bring back honey and coffee.
This was a dangerous job because of Eclipsia being so strange. Their honey came from beehives made of skulls. The skull hives hung in the coffee trees and the honey was harvested by the princes and princesses of Eclipsia. Every one of them knew how to throw a spear and they would kill you if you tried to steal anything. They would only sell honey and coffee to other people from Eclipsia.
‘I am good at throwing spears,’ White Raven said. ‘I can disguise myself as a princess of Eclipsia and sneak some things to Black Dove when he is invisible.’
‘That is not a good idea,’ said Queen Morning Glory. ‘I don’t want to pilfer anything from Eclipsia.’
Theme for Miss Shore
By Teodros Gedeyon Dupré
Subject: ‘The Ethiopian Christian Church’
Beehive Hill Cooperative Coffee Farm, Tazma Meda
Teqemt 26 (Nov. 5)
You would be amazed, but I have plenty to say about this subject because we spend a lot of time visiting Habte Sadek, the priest in charge of the monastery of St Kristos Samra on top of Beehive Hill.
We met him on our first day alone in Tazma Meda. In those days tons of people used to turn up to watch whenever Momma took off or landed at the airstrip at Beehive Hill Farm, partly because it was so exotic to see a plane there, and partly because she might be bringing in some tourist who would have a lot of Maria Theresa silver dollars to give away in exchange for a place to stay and meals cooked for him and a guide and maybe also a mule. Half the village and everyone on the farm had met Grandfather and Grandma, so there was a great big party of people who came to wave them goodbye when they left. Em and I stood there waving with Ezra the doctor and his wife Sinidu, Momma’s new best friend.
Grandma burst into tears when she kissed us goodbye, which made Emmy cry too. For a moment of panic we were both scared about being left alone in this strange new place with no one we knew – without even Momma all of a sudden.
‘Oh, Em,’ said Momma. ‘I will be back soon! You and Teo are good at taking care of each other, and Sinidu will help you.’
‘And I have heard that you are both brave adventurers, and there is someone I want you to meet,’ Sinidu tempted us warmly. ‘Also, you do not want me to join in crying with you.’
‘It is very hard to make Sinidu stop crying once she starts,’ Ezra joked.
Sinidu was supposed to stay in our house and keep an eye on us till Momma came back. She had learned pretty good English from Ezra, who’d gone to university in Britain, and also from the Sinclairs and Momma, so she could talk to us and translate.
Em and I stood with our elbows linked to watch and wave as Momma and Grandma and Grandfather left us alone in Tazma Meda for the first time. Linking elbows did not feel as babyish as holding hands. It was more like something a striker or a suffragette would do – facing a challenge together.
Sinidu didn’t give us time to worry too much about being alone in our new life. Two minutes after the plane took off – the second it was out of sight – she grabbed hold of our hands, one of us on each side of her, and said in English, ‘Coffee!’ She switched back and forth between Amharic and English. ‘Buna! Coffee! Say “buna”!’
‘Buna,’ Em said.
‘Beautiful! Konjo no, that’s beautiful! Say “konjo”.’
‘Konjo,’ Em said.
Ezra laughed at Em’s game cooperation. ‘Beautiful!’ he repeated appreciatively. ‘Now Sinidu is going to take beautiful coffee to her uncle Habte Sadek up on Beehive Hill. And if you go with her she will teach you how to speak Amharic even better than your ferenji mother – your foreigner mother.’
Sinidu pulled us briskly away from the landing field. Ezra, on his way back to work in the village, called after her fondly, ‘Slow down or they will not be able to keep up with you.’
‘You are worrying about me, not about the ferenji children,’ Sinidu scolded. ‘They will keep up with me. I will see you back at the clinic in the afternoon.’
Five minutes after Momma’s plane took off with Grandma and Grandfather in it, Em and I were trailing up Beehive Hill after Sinidu, on our own in Tazma Meda for the first time. Ezra had been right about his wife’s energy: Sinidu bounced up the stony slope ahead of us like a goat, barefoot. She carried a brazier and charcoal to boil the water and roast the beans for coffee, a black clay coffee pot and a set of cups to go with it. Popcorn to eat with the coffee. And a pound of green coffee beans. And a goatskin water bag on her head. She was so much faster than us that she had to keep stopping to wait whenever she came to the sun-spotted shade of an acacia tree. Then she’d shout back to us:
‘Say, “I’m going to walk as fast as Sinidu!”’
‘How do you say, “I’m going to walk five times as fast as Sinidu?”’ Em challenged, bounding up to meet her.
‘Say, “In my mother’s flying machine I can soar higher than a bearded vulture!”’
‘What’s the first thing Momma ever said to you in Amharic?’ I asked her.
‘“The sky over Beehive Hill is the most beautiful sky in the world!”’
Em and I both laughed. That is exactly what Momma would say.
Sinidu looked up, and we followed her gaze through the lattice of sparse leaves and branches into the blue. Two catbirds were calling unbelievably sweet songs to each other not too far off, and the high air was dry and cool. We were five thousand miles away from the sadness and strangeness and meanness of New Marlow, PA.
Sinidu repeated what she’d sai
d in Amharic, still looking up. Then she turned to us and said in English, ‘Your mother said it in the air, the first time she took me up in her flying machine. She is teaching me to fly in exchange for the Amharic lessons.’
‘Wow, teaching you to fly,’ Em echoed, impressed and envious.
‘She won’t teach us,’ I explained.
‘I will help you change her mind!’ Sinidu laughed.
Beehive Hill is not called that because of its shape. The shape is a coincidence, and a mistake if you think it looks like the kind of beehive you see in nursery rhyme books. It is called Beehive Hill because long before there were coffee farmers in Tazma Meda there were beekeepers. The holy men at the hermitage of St Kristos Samra keep the bees and use the honey to make tej, Ethiopian honey wine. (‘Say, “beekeepers!”’ Sinidu told us. ‘Say, “tej!” Say, “good business for Tazma Meda!”’) All the acacia trees on Beehive Hill are full of beehives. They are long baskets that look like logs, and every tree has got about a dozen beehives hanging in it.
It was like we’d been whisked into a landscape we’d made up.
‘They look like giant cocoons,’ Em whispered to me.
I was already planning our next story. Black Dove could be captured by giant bees and tied up in a cocoon. And White Raven could rescue him.
‘Take care,’ Sinidu warned us, balancing all the stuff she was carrying as she rounded the last narrow ledge at the top of the trail. Em followed her first, me behind, and Em gave a little squeak of shivery delight as we came around the corner.
Where Beehive Hill looks out over the Beshlo River gorge, there is a little open cave full of skulls. It isn’t covered up or anything – just dry bones sitting there in the wall of the cliff.
‘Be polite,’ Sinidu said, ‘and do not look them in the eye. They might be important people.’
It took us a minute to figure out that she didn’t mean the skulls. She meant the monks who were sitting in other shallow caves carved in the hillside, a honeycomb of rock bunk beds. There were two men in white robes reading who didn’t look up as we passed.
Suddenly Sinidu pulled up short and turned to us. ‘Say “Habte Sadek”!’
‘Habte Sadek,’ we repeated obediently.
‘Again! Take care!’
We said it again, taking care.
‘What is Habte Sadek?’ Em asked.
‘Habte Sadek is my great-uncle,’ Sinidu said. ‘He is the priest here. You should bow.’
He was sitting on a rug on the sunny slab of rock in front of the elaborate sculpted entrance to the cave that is the St Kristos Samra chapel. We all bowed. Em gaped for a moment, then looked away when she remembered to be polite. Habte Sadek is the only person I know who is flashier than Em.
He wore a silver priest’s crown like a miniature New York City apartment building. A boy a little older than us was holding a silk umbrella with gold tassels over the priest’s head to shade him from the sun. (The boy turned out to be Sinidu’s nephew, Yosef.) Habte Sadek’s hair and beard are completely white. Sinidu told him who we were, introducing us in Amharic. We heard our mother’s name and the words for flying machine.
Em was twitching, trying to steal glances at the old priest without being obvious. I’d already figured out from studying Mateos that the best way to steal a glance at someone is to look at the bottom of them, feet first instead of face first. So I knelt and bowed my head.
Habte Sadek’s feet were like Grandfather’s, lean and strong and steady, but his skin was wrinkled and brittle and dry as the antique reins hanging in Grandfather’s office. (Habte Sadek doesn’t know how old he is.)
He spoke to us in Amharic, and his voice was low and musical. It didn’t sound anywhere near as old as he looked.
‘My uncle says you are the most respectful ferenji tourist who has ever come up here, and asks me to thank you,’ Sinidu told me.
Emmy and I are still Habte Sadek’s favourite foreigners and it is all because I wanted to look at his feet when I was eleven years old!
But it never hurts to be polite to people.
‘So, I have told you that my uncle Habte Sadek is a priest in the Ethiopian church,’ Sinidu said. ‘That means he can enter the inner sanctuary and celebrate the sacraments. The others you see here are deacons, and they may only teach and preach.’
Habte Sadek stood up. He was taller than Grandfather, terrifying and glittering. Sinidu chatted with him matter-of-factly. Finally she put down her waterskin and the coffee things and turned to us. ‘Ethiopia is mostly Christian. We have had a bishop in Egypt since the time of the Aksumite Empire, since before Europeans became Christian.’
‘We went to an Ethiopian church service in Addis Ababa,’ I said.
‘What did you think? Tell me what you thought and I will repeat it for my uncle!’
‘It was long,’ Em said diplomatically, and Sinidu could not help laughing.
‘Long! Yes! I think so too, because all the prayers are in Ge’ez, a language as old as the church itself, which nobody understands except the priests. But beautiful!’
‘It’s all beautiful,’ I said. Because it really is. ‘Konjo no.’
Habte Sadek held up one strong, thin dark hand and spoke to Sinidu.
‘He wants to show you Beehive Hill’s beautiful chapel,’ she interpreted. ‘Ferenji tourists like to see the little chapel. Not the honeycomb though. Come on!’
‘What’s the honeycomb?’
‘Tourists can’t see the honeycomb,’ Sinidu repeated. So we understood we couldn’t watch the beekeepers at work. ‘But you can see the chapel.’
Yosef folded the sunshade umbrella. Sinidu told us, ‘Leave your shoes outside,’ so we took off our tennis shoes and left them on the wide stone step outside the cave. We never put them back on. We were home.
Yosef doesn’t talk much. Without speaking, he gave us each a long, skinny, mustard-coloured beeswax candle to carry. When Yosef had lit all our candles, Habte Sadek led us into the dark.
Stepping into the chapel, I suddenly figured out the point of all those boring Sunday meetings we sat through with Grandma and Grandfather for three years. God is in you, they kept telling us, waiting for you to feel him there. Stepping into the chapel at the St Kristos Samra hermitage, I suddenly knew what they had meant. This was where I could find God, if I really wanted to.
I know Habte Sadek would not agree with me. He thinks we’re all a bunch of ferenji heathens – we do not believe what he believes, because we do not know or understand his God or his religion, even if we all call ourselves Christian. Emmy doesn’t agree with me. Emmy thinks the Ethiopian church is all show – just costumes and glitter. She likes the ceremony, but only because it is so pretty. She goes along with it. It doesn’t mean anything to her.
But it means something to me. I’m not sure what. I don’t think their faith is my faith. But seeing the chapel at St Kristos Samra made me realise, for the first time, that I have faith.
When Habte Sadek led us in there on our first day alone in Tazma Meda, the dirt floor was cool and worn smooth under our bare feet and the air smelled of frankincense and dust. We held up our candles and the cave glowed gold and red, with little bright pockets of light around each of our candles. The walls are painted. Not just gold and red, but there is a lot of that so it is what makes an impression on you when you first step in there. On the back wall of St Kristos Samra’s cave chapel is an enormous story in pictures, frame by frame like a comic-strip. It tells the legend of Menelik, the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, stealing the Ark of the Covenant from his father and bringing it to Aksum in Ethiopia.
It is so different from the high white walls of the New Marlow Friends’ meeting house. Emmy thinks there is no connection between New Marlow Friends’ meeting and St Kristos Samra hermitage. But I think it is the same God.
Habte Sadek turned to us so that he was standing in front of the painting. He didn’t look like a priest or a teacher. He looked like a guard, ancient and fierce. Then he spok
e, so suddenly that I jumped.
‘“I was a soldier,”’ Sinidu translated.
I stared at Habte Sadek’s thin, dusty feet, fascinated, longing to look at his face. Emmy was squeezing my hand so hard I thought it would fall off when she let go.
‘Say it,’ Sinidu ordered. ‘“I was a soldier.”’
She translated what he told us, but she also made us repeat everything he said in Amharic so we’d learn it.
‘He was a little bit older than you,’ Sinidu told us. ‘A silent boy like Yosef. The British brought cannons against him.’
‘Against a boy?’ Em asked, wide-eyed.
‘Against the Emperor Teodros! But also against anyone who defended him! So yes, against my uncle, the young deacon, and his brothers and his friends dedicated to the church, fighting for the emperor and his ancient church treasures. My uncle was the oldest of the boys.’
‘Why was the emperor fighting the British?’ I asked. Even then I knew that the British had encouraged Haile Selassie to fix up the country when he was regent, along with the French and the Italians. These foreigners had helped build Addis Ababa and get modern things like a radio station and a railroad and membership in the League of Nations.
‘This was more than sixty years ago,’ Sinidu explained. ‘The Emperor Teodros was angry at the queen of England because she kept ignoring him – for years! So then he asked her to help his army, and when she still ignored him, he took her diplomats as hostages. It turned into the Battle of Magdala.’
Em and I glanced at each other, thrilled. I am named after the Emperor Teodros.
Habte Sadek and a dozen of his friends, all of them church deacons and none of them any older than he was, made stretchers and loaded them so it looked like they were carrying the bodies of dead priests. Some of the boys carried the stretchers and some of them carried spears which they’d disguised as tall prayer sticks. But the stretchers weren’t loaded with bodies. They were loaded with the only church artefacts at Magdala that didn’t get looted by the English soldiers and carried off to the British Museum.
Black Dove, White Raven Page 7