To Nicholas Pearson at Fourth Estate, for whose enthusiasm, generous patience and sensitive editing – and for buying the book in the first place – I will always be grateful. Also to the formidable Robert Lacey and the rest of the Fourth Estate team. Wise Terry Karten, Laura Brown, and everyone at Harper US. Anne Collins, Pamela Murray, and the team at Knopf Canada.
My agents Anne McDermid, Melanie Jackson and Peter Straus, a rock in person as well as in name.
Frances Murray, Ania, Maria, Nicola Annett, Caroline Abraham, Jessica Townsend. But mostly Fiona Cameron (of whose willingness to take on months of 5.30 a.m. starts, and never be a minute late, I am still in awe), Lisa Howard and Teddy.
Michael Hughes, Stephen Sandford, Leo Carey, Louisa Bolch, acute readers and steadfast friends.
Nothing would have been possible without the overwhelming help, love and trust of the Ethiopian side of my family, who, except for Alemitu (who had already passed away), endured years of random and often intrusive questions, and many of whom read the final result: Molla, Teklé, Tiruworq, Zenna, Maré and Tigist Tsega, Alemante Gebrè-Selassie, Wodajie Abebè and Abraham Wubé. Patrick, Endrias, Simon and Hiwoté Molla. Elsabet Mitiku. My heartfelt thanks to my siblings Naomi, who combed every line, Yohannes (whose piece on Buhé in Harper’s Magazine was a guiding light) and Yodit Edemariam, and to my mother, Frances Lester, who put together the glossary, and whose love of reading began it all. My father, Edemariam Tsega, sat for days and weeks with Nannyé and me, translating questions when my Amharic ran out of steam, and answers when my comprehension did. He helped me organise my trips (including a horse trek to Gonderoch Mariam), climbed with me to the holy springs at Debrè Libanos, even though he was in his late seventies, and led me around Addis, showing me where their various small homes had been. We both wrote books at the same time – he about his father and his father’s poetry (The Life History of Liqè Kahinat Aleqa Tsega Teshalè and His Qineis/Yeliqè Kahnat Aleqa Tsega Teshalè Yehiywot Tarikena Qinewochachew, published in a trilingual edition by Tsehai Publishers in the US), I about Nannyé; we shared facts and insights, in particular about his father’s early life and the poems of his death. His dignity, ambition and refusal ever to give up were a daunting example.
To David Dwan, who always raises my game, and who for a decade, and despite the pressures of three jobs, four cities and a book of his own, has given me unwavering emotional, practical and intellectual support, read the manuscript, helped with titles and pulled me out of the inevitable dips in faith – thank you, so so much.
Thank you to Rahel, our daughter, through whose entire life I have been writing this volume. For inspiration, for insightful interventions, and for the utter joy of her presence.
And thanks above all and for everything to Nannyé, whom I began recording, off and on, twenty years ago, whose voice and point of view I have had the temerity to try to inhabit and whose words often exist in direct translation in my lines, whose laughter and mischief, whose unconditional love we all miss every day. Through the actions detailed in this book, she infinitely expanded our options, and our futures. She also placed an extraordinary and humbling trust in me, and I hope I have at least begun to do justice to her experience.
Any mistakes and misjudgements, however, are mine alone.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Front cover: Photograph by an unknown Italian, reproduced by permission of Professor Edemariam Tsega and Dr Frances Lester.
1. Gondar in 1905, from Ethiopia Photographed: Historic Photos of the Country and its People Taken between 1867 and 1935, ed. Richard Pankhurst and Denis Gerard.
2. The landscape around Gonderoch Mariam. Photograph by the author.
3. Mural, Ba’ata church, Gondar. Photograph by the author. Aleqa Tsega is on the left.
4. Addis Ababa in 1955. Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images.
5. Yetemegnu Mekonnen in the mid-1970s. Photograph reproduced by permission of Professor Edemariam Tsega and Dr Frances Lester.
6. Family photograph reproduced by permission of Professor Edemariam Tsega and Dr Frances Lester.
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