by Paul Theroux
Wubishet Dilnessahu had done seven years. He was now a businessman, living in California, and was only in Addis Ababa for a few days in furtherance of a lawsuit. A man of seventy-seven, of a good family, he had been one of Emperor Haile Selassie’s ministers, concerned with cultural matters. He saw the emperor every day. He did not have to kowtow, as I had been told, but had to show respect. ‘I bowed very low, of course.’
After the Derg takeover, Haile Selassie was strangled – Wubishet said that Mengistu had personally choked the emperor to death. This information had just been revealed. At the time (August 1975) it was reported in the newspaper that the cause of death was ‘circulatory failure.’ The body was put in a hole at Menilek Palace and a structure (perhaps a latrine) built over it. Early in the 1990s the body was disinterred and the emperor’s remains kept in a crypt in a church in Addis. In November 2000, in an elaborate ceremony, the emperor was at last given a solemn burial in Holy Trinity Cathedral.
‘The Russians said, “We killed our king. If you kill yours there will be less trouble,” ’ Wubishet said.
A few days after the emperor was arrested, Wubishet was clapped in irons, charged with ‘helping the former regime,’ and taken to the Fourth Division Military Camp, where he was locked in a barracks-like hut with 120 other men. He showed me the prison, which is still a prison, and was that week bursting with political prisoners – university students who had just recently been arrested during a demonstration against government policies. Hundreds were arrested, many injured and forty of the students had been killed by police truncheons and gunfire.
‘You see the tin roof? The long building on the right? That was my prison building,’ Wubishet said. There were eight other buildings just like it, looking like hen coops, and they had also been full of prisoners. None of the men was charged; there were no trials. Most of the prisoners had no idea why they were there. ‘Many of the young men in there could not read or write, so we started a school, we taught literacy. And we just waited.’
‘Did they allow visits from friends or family?’
Wubishet laughed in the dark contemptuous way of the Ethiopian conditioned to be cynical after a lifetime of national catastrophes.
‘In seven years I saw my family once, for fifteen minutes.’
The royal apartments where Wubishet had worked for the emperor still stood. We went there in a taxi, for the Palace Gannah Le’ul (Princely Heaven), the emperor’s residence, built at the turn of the century by Haile Selassie’s father, Ras Makonnen, had been occupied variously by Makonnen; by the Italian viceroys, including the Count of Aosta; by the Italian Army; by one brief usurper (a rule of three days in 1960); by Haile Selassie, and now by the administrators of the University of Addis Ababa. It had been Wubishet’s own idea to convey the palace building to the university, which was in need of space. At first he had been too timid to suggest the idea to the emperor, but finally blurted it out. The emperor said nothing. ‘But he summoned me in the night and said, “Okay.” I was so nervous and excited I could not sleep.’
Although this building still looked like a royal residence, if a seedy one, with high doors and ornate trim and two baroque statues in front, there was a Fascist relic in the forecourt. This bizarre monument was a staircase of mildewed cement – fifteen steps representing the years that had elapsed since Mussolini entered Rome in 1922. The sculpture still stood after sixty-five years of war, monarchy, dictatorship, socialism, anarchy, and political asininity, a Fascist staircase, leading nowhere.
As Wubishet had worked in the emperor’s office I asked him if he had been aware of Haile Selassie’s relationship with Rastafarians. The very word had been coined in homage of the emperor’s birth name, Ras Tafari.
‘I know about the devotion these people have for him, but the emperor didn’t think about them very much,’ Wubishet said. For example, the emperor never mentioned Rastas in conversation. Wubishet said he knew nothing about Shashemene, the Rasta town on the road south of Addis; he was not even aware of the established fact that the emperor had given land to the Rastas. ‘Of course, he was a proud man and enjoyed respect, but the way they treated him was embarrassing for him.’
‘But he went to Jamaica and saw them there,’ I said.
‘They made him very embarrassed. They were kneeling! They thought he was God.’
Wubishet flapped his hand, dismissing the whole movement in a gesture.
‘You see, Ethiopians are Christians,’ he said. ‘We don’t worship human beings. Even a simple Ethiopian wouldn’t do it. They would think it’s stupid.’
‘But you bowed very low to the emperor,’ I said.
I liked his answer to this. He said, ‘That shows respect. That’s not worship. Worship is the forehead striking the ground. The emperor was a very small man, so you needed to bow extra low.’
As the days passed, Addis Ababa did not become more beautiful but it began to fascinate me for being a city of people with vivid personal stories, like Wubishet’s prison tale and Nebiy’s Gone with the Wind saga. There were so many others – for example, the story of Ali’s revenge.
I met Ali by chance. He had also done time in prison but it was a long horrible story, he said. I said I had plenty of time and was eager to hear it. Ali thought he might be able to help me get a lift to the Kenyan border, to Moyale anyway, with some traders he knew. Ali was a broker and general factotum, dealing in cars, horses, souvenirs, even ivory. ‘If you hide the ivory right you can get it into the US.’ He had been to the US many times, and held a multiple-entry visa, but had no desire to live there. America was too expensive, he didn’t like the routines, and anyway his whole family was here.
Ali had gray eyes and chipmunk cheeks and an air of circumspection about him that sometimes seemed like weariness and sometimes wiliness. He chain-smoked, rebuking himself each time he lit up. He had that special entrepreneurial sense that is able to single out a person in serious need. He saw that urgency in me – I was in need of a ride south. Of course he could supply it – he could supply anything – and the only question was how much would I be willing to pay and how much could he make on the deal?
Ali had time to kill and so did I.
‘These Kenyans!’ With the businessman’s disgust for bureaucracy and profitless delay he said, ‘They could just stamp the passport and take your money. But they make you wait.’
He discovered my liking for Ethiopian food – ‘national food,’ as everyone called it. And so, over three or four meals at Ethiopian restaurants in Addis – the most pleasant a ramshackle wooden villa called Finfine – he told me his prison story, which was different from any other I had heard and not political at all.
It had started with an innocent question from me. I had mentioned that on this long trip I missed my family, my wife and children, and feeling sentimental I asked about his family.
Ali winced and his face darkened, a memory passing over it, and then he shook his head and said nothing – an awkward moment. Stammering self-consciously, I tried to change the subject. But he interrupted and said, ‘I am divorced.’
That didn’t seem so bad, there was no stigma about divorce in Islam, at least for a man. In the Muslim world a woman’s life was over when she got dumped; there was no second act. A man just moved on, usually acquiring another wife.
‘The person I trusted most in my life, the only one I cared about, lied to me,’ Ali said. ‘I ended up in jail, but God saved me or else I would still be in jail today, or maybe dead.’
We had finished eating, we were drinking fragrant Ethiopian coffee under the arbor outside, in the Finfine’s garden. Perhaps it was because this was the fourth or fifth meal I’d had with Ali, and that he had found some traders who were going south – that we were on the verge of striking a deal – that made him trusting enough to tell me the story. But, as he said, it was the worst thing that had happened to him in his life, and so he told it almost without prodding from me.
‘The first time I heard about it I was confuse
d,’ he went on. ‘There was a story that my wife had been seen with another man. I asked some questions. He was a colonel in the army. This was during the Derg, when the army was in power. They were very strong. A trader like me was nothing. Just hearing that her man was a soldier made me think, What? So I asked her directly.
‘She said, “There was nothing. I did nothing. Yes, I was with him – but he forced me. He was a soldier. What could I do?”
‘I have four children. I don’t want them to be upset and to know that their mother was in this position, so I said nothing. I wasn’t happy, though. I didn’t like the story. I lived for a while with my mind uneasy. Then, one day, I had to drive to Lalibela to buy some things for my business.’
A long way north by road, Lalibela was the remote location of the beautiful twelfth-century Coptic churches that had been carved in volcanic rock, the ones you saw all the time on the Visit Ethiopia posters. The town was in the Lasta Mountains, 300 miles or more from Addis. Just his saying Lalibela meant it was a serious trip of three or four days.
‘I set off,’ Ali said, ‘but when I called ahead I was told by my friend Kamal that the goods were not ready. Bad, eh? So I decided to turn around and go south instead, with Kamal, and pick up some things.
‘We were about forty-five kilometers from Addis, going through the town of Debre Zeyit when I slowed down for the goats and cars and heavy traffic and saw, off the road, my Peugeot car, a brown one, parked near a building. Why did I see it so clearly? I think God wanted it.
“ ‘That’s my car.”
‘ “That’s not your car,” Kamal said. “What would your car be doing here?”
‘The building was a hotel, not a very nice one, but with a fence around it and a caretaker man at the parking lot. I said to him, “Did you see a fat woman with this car?” ’
I made an effort not to smile at Ali’s description of his wife.
‘The caretaker man said, “No.” I gave him some money. He said, “Yes. They are in room nine.”
‘We go to the room, the three of us, me and Kamal and the caretaker. I knock on the door. I instruct the caretaker man what to say. He say, “Please open. It’s about your car.”
‘The door opens. I have my gun drawn – yes, I have a gun but I did not show it to the caretaker man before. We rush in, Kamal and me – they are naked. I punch my wife in the face, Kamal fights the soldier, and they are soon on the floor, the soldier is screaming and crying, “Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!” ’
Ali smiled for the first time, remembering a detail. He moved his upper lip, nervously twitching it in a rabbity way and said, ‘The soldier’s mustache is going like this.’ The soldier was trapped, begging for his life, his face jerking in fear. He was bollocky naked.
‘I say, “Stand up!” To my wife too. They have no clothes. Seeing my wife I feel a little sorry – her face bleeding from how I punched her and she try to cover her body. She is crying and pleading. I give her a dress to wrap around and then Kamal and I tie their hands like this.’
Ali stood up and demonstrated how he had tied his wife and her lover. He had faced them away from each other, and tied their wrists tightly, and then their arms. They were bound together, tightly, back to back. With her hands bound, Ali’s wife could not keep the dress wrapped around her, so she was as naked as the soldier now.
‘We pushed them out of the room to the car park and then down the street. It was hard for them to walk like that, so it was slow, and people saw them. They were laughing! I still had my gun pointed on them. Children were gathering around – many children, and a whole crowd of people.
‘Down the side of the road, a busy road – buses, taxis, cars, and many people – everyone looking at the naked ones. We keep pushing them until we come to a big stone, a flat one.
‘I say, “Sit there, don’t move. I am calling the police.” To the children and the people I say, “Don’t help them. They are bad. The police will come. If you help these two people you will have a problem.”
‘But they were laughing anyway, and I knew they wouldn’t help. I didn’t call the police. I went away, taking the man’s clothes with me. It was his uniform and his identification. Kamal drove the Peugeot. I went to the army base and asked to see the general. I gave the soldier’s clothes and everything to the general.
‘ “This is what your colonel did.”
‘He shook my hand! He thanked me. He said, “You did the right thing. The colonel deserved it.” ’
But I wanted to know what happened to his wife and her lover. He welcomed the question.
‘They stayed on the rock by the side of the road until six-thirty at night – maybe six hours or more. People laughing at them, a big crowd. The two nakeds – man and woman.
‘Then when it was getting dark, an army truck passed on the road and saw him. “Colonel!” and “What-what.” The truck stopped and they untied them and put him on the truck with my wife, gave them some clothes and took them away.
‘I left her. Left the house. I say, “This is my children’s house. They must go on living here. It belongs to them.” I got another place to stay. All I left with was two suitcases – my whole life in them. Nothing else. I went and started all over again. I said, “God saved me.” ’
Was he done? He was still gray-faced and reflective – and hadn’t he said something about prison?
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘three months later I was arrested for “attempting killing” because I had a gun and threatened the soldier. I went to court. There was a judge. I was sent to prison for two months.’
This was the only ex-prisoner I met in Ethiopia who had actually been charged and given a trial. It was also the shortest prison sentence I had heard about.
‘Then God saved me again,’ Ali said, a little more intensely. ‘I was walking in the street in Addis and I saw them in the street, my wife and the soldier, holding hands.
‘I decided to kill her. I went to my brother’s house, where I was keeping my gun, because I had nowhere to lock it where I was staying. My brother was not there. He had gone away and no one had the key.
‘For three days I tried to get the key. I wanted my gun – I was planning how I would kill her. Then my brother returned with the key. He opened the safe and gave me the gun.’
He was massaging his scalp, remembering, but saying nothing.
I said, ‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing. You see, time had passed. I said, “So what? Why kill her? Let her live – it will be worse for her. She has lost everything.” God saved me.’
After that, having unburdened himself with this story, having heard nothing from me of my life, he said that he felt he knew me well, and it was as though we had known each other for a long time. I could see that he meant it and was moved by this feeling.
I told him what I felt about time exposing the truth – that time did not heal wounds, but that the passing years gave us a vantage point to see the reality of things. I added that it was no fun to grow old but that the compensation for it was that time turned your mental shit-detector into a highly calibrated instrument.
Ali said, ‘Now I know that no one is virtuous. Women will sleep with anyone. Why do they throw everything away? Why they do these things?’
‘Because men do them.’
But he was baffled to think that a woman would behave so badly; that she would not do exactly as she was told. It was strange to him, this realization that someone so low and so despised had a mind of her own, an imagination, and the ability to devise elaborate stratagems for deceit and pleasure.
Through Ali, I met old Tadelle and young Wolde, man and boy, who were driving to the southern region to pick up spears and shields, beads and bracelets, milk jugs from the Borena people, ivory bangles from the Oromo, carvings from the Konso, and whatever baskets and knick-knacks they could find. They were traders.
‘If you go with someone else they might rob you,’ Ali said. ‘There are bad people on the road, bad people in the buses. Tadelle is a
good driver and has a strong vehicle. Wolde is a good boy. They know the places to stay. You will be safe.’
In Africa when someone said, as they often did, ‘There are bad people there’, I tended to listen. I was sure Ali got a cut of the money, for I paid him and he paid them, but the price was fair. Besides, this was a way of going the whole way to the Kenyan frontier. The day I got my Kenyan visa – four days after I applied – we set off in a southerly direction on the longest road in Africa.
The potholed roads in Addis prepared me for much worse ones out of town. Addis lies at 8500 feet – I gasped for breath after I had rushed across a road to dodge a speeding car – and so our progress took us through a series of rounded hills and crowded settlements, through dry valleys and the highlands again. Among the goats and donkeys, the farting motor scooters and beat-up cars, I saw a skinny athlete in bright red shorts and a yellow jersey and Reeboks, running fast, weaving through the traffic, a marathoner in training. He was one of many. Apart from the emperor, the best known Ethiopian is the 10,000 meter gold medalist, Haile Gabre Selassie (no relation), who was born near here. These south central highlands are the home of many long-distance runners, with great legs and powerful lungs. Their speed has freed them from the hard life they would have faced as farmers and herdsmen, for there is no work here, and for the past thirty years there has been nothing in Ethiopia but uncertain harvests and war and political terror.
Tadelle said that he had been down this road many times. In fact he had been into Kenya.
‘Tell me about it.’
Haltingly, for his English was poor, Tadelle said that he had sneaked into Kenya twice, and made his way to refugee camps. It was his dearest wish to leave Ethiopia for good and to emigrate. ‘Anywhere – I go to any country!’ He hated life in Ethiopia, he said it would never get better, and anywhere in the world would be better than life here. America would be just about perfect.
But the United Nations interviewers at the camps both in Nairobi and Mombasa said he was not a genuine refugee. ‘I say, “I no like Ethiopian government. I hate zat – all of zat.” ’ But they sent him back to Ethiopia.