“He’s come,” Almaz said, leading a pale and shaken Yonas with her into the room. “He didn’t even park the car, it’s sitting in front of the door. Dr. Hailu,” she said, dangling keys on one finger, “go park it properly. Hurry.” Her voice was clipped, competent. “You, sit,” she commanded Sara as she pushed Yonas gently towards his wife. “Doctor, let me talk to you outside.” Within seconds the nurse had managed to bring a sense of order.
Once they were alone, Sara pulled out of Yonas’s arms.
“Almaz told me she fell, but I don’t understand,” Yonas said, trying to reach for Sara.
“You left her alone.” Her mouth trembled as she stepped further away from him. “You left us.”
“She didn’t want to go.” Yonas’s face was stricken. He leaned on the bed rail. “She said she wanted to stay home.” He sat down on a chair near the bed, his head in his hands.
“How could you leave her?”
“They’re moving us to a private room,” Yonas said, glaring at the curious patient watching them intently. He turned back to Sara, his face stunned and sad. “I was only gone for a short while. Melaku didn’t have milk so I had to go somewhere else, and this traffic, with the tanks … How is she?”
“From now on, I’m going to be the one to watch her. Not you.”
He stood to kiss Tizita’s forehead. The effort seemed to drain all his energy. He slumped, his hands gripping the rail, and thought for a moment. He looked like he was about to speak, then stopped. “I’m going to call Lily and see if she knows where Dawit is.” He walked out.
In the corridor, a soldier came out of the intensive care unit with a coat and suitcase in his arms. He stared at Yonas as he went by.
CARS WERE MOVING SLOWLY and Dawit had to roll the window all the way down to let a breeze into the hot taxi. They had passed Meskel Square and turned onto Churchill Road, where people milled around the edges of traffic, constantly looking over their shoulders while whispering in tightly clustered packs. Gunfire popped in the distance, followed by a faint roar of shouts, then police sirens. Tension was high in a city still reeling from the arrest of the emperor and the sudden restriction on demonstrations and free speech imposed by the military regime.
A military march, sung by enthusiastic children, came on the radio.
“I hate this music,” the taxi driver muttered even as he turned up the volume. As the song played, the traffic stilled. Other cars turned on their radios. Radio Addis Ababa’s announcer came on and all cars shifted to neutral as he read from a list of names of captains and generals, commanders and nobles.
“Please report immediately to Menelik Palace. Repeat, report immediately to Menelik Palace.”
“The wine cellars at Menelik Palace are being used as a prison. Jubilee Palace is now being called the National Palace. What’s next?” the driver asked. He turned to look at Dawit in the backseat and pushed his sunglasses above his head. “Who’s left to rule if everyone’s in jail?” He was a young man with a lazy eye. He caught Dawit looking at his face and slipped his sunglasses back down. “When did all of this go bad?” he asked, turning back to the traffic, agitated. “And now there’s a midnight curfew.”
“Can you hurry?” Dawit asked. “I have to get to the hospital.”
“Nobody’s moving,” the driver said.
The announcer continued to read a list of names, now expanding to include more government officials, civil workers, and other members of the royal family. The names echoed in stereo, multiplying by the cars on the road. No one moved. Pedestrians stared in discomfort at each other. In the traffic lanes, hands hung out of cars, their angry gestures forgotten.
The driver looked out the window, agitated. “Why do they do this on the radio?”
The song began again, a signal that the announcement was over, but it wasn’t until a shepherd walked through the row of idle cars with his lazy flock, one drowsy sheep slung across his shoulders, that drivers began to honk and shout. The taxi tried to maneuver around an ambling mule.
“They need to run away,” the driver said, poking a finger into the steering wheel for emphasis. “Why are they turning themselves in so willingly?”
“There’ll be a fair trial,” Dawit said. “Students and union leaders have already made the demands.” He couldn’t help feeling proud of his role in making those demands.
“You think a country with a curfew and a ban on demonstrations cares about fair trials?” The driver laughed.
The Derg had arranged for special military courts to try the prisoners after a civilian inquiry. They were being held on suspicion of corruption, abuse of office, or participation in the famine cover-up. The legal process would be orderly and timely, the Derg promised. But Dawit hadn’t expected so many important military men and dignitaries to be arrested.
“Can you hurry?” Dawit said.
He checked his watch. He’d gone to a meeting that had run over and come home to find Bizu pacing, nervous from his father’s angry calls looking for him. He needed to get to the hospital quickly.
HAILU WALKED INTO the small room Almaz had prepared for Tizita, his steps slow and heavy. The walls were the same pale green as the waiting room and light blue curtains hung against large square windows. She’d made sure to get a room close to Selam’s and Hailu said a silent thanks for her constant attentiveness.
“I couldn’t find Dawit,” Yonas said. “He’s not at Lily’s.” He looked like he’d been awake for days.
Hailu checked Tizita’s temperature. “He’s on his way.” He saw that there was an empty chair next to Sara, but Yonas had made no move to sit.
“What have I done?” Sara whispered. “Leave me alone.” She looked from one man to the other. She touched her shoulder and realized she’d left her netela at home. She bent over her knees in the chair, wanting to do anything to feel warm again, safely covered.
“This is no one’s fault,” Hailu replied, exasperation creeping in.
Yonas steadied her, refused to let her go. “She won’t stop blaming herself.”
“You don’t know,” Sara answered. “Even you don’t know. I know. I feel it.” Sara began to beat a steady rhythm on her chest. Her words fell into the room with a deep thud. “Nothing twists by itself.”
Hailu pulled her arm down. “Stop it.” The sound reminded him of the days after Sara had lost her second baby, when she’d mourned with a fervor that had stunned the neighborhood and brought him and Yonas to their knees with grief.
“It’s the only way God will hear,” Sara said. She wanted to turn her whole body into a drum so every word could vibrate and pound into heaven like a thunderous wind. “Even this isn’t enough.”
“That’s not true,” Yonas said. “Praying is enough.” He stood in front of her but didn’t sit down.
“It isn’t,” Sara said. “Your God,” she added, “has shown me no mercy.”
Yonas shook his head. “Do you think he wants your pain?” He tried to reach for her hand.
Her look was contemptuous. “What do you know about pain?” She pulled away.
“Sara,” Hailu said. “Enough.” He turned to Yonas. “I’ll be in Selam’s room.”
“I haven’t done enough,” she said. “I didn’t do enough to keep my second baby after the first one died, and I didn’t do enough to show my gratitude when Tizita lived.” She grasped Hailu’s hand. “I want to go to St. Gabriel’s.” Her new secret, tucked safely near her breast: at St. Gabriel’s she would crawl around the church and let her blood fall on holy ground. She would make this sacrifice to a God who demanded from his children before he gave.
16.
THE HOSPITAL SMELLED like disinfectant. The floor felt sticky under his feet. Dawit looked at Tizita, still asleep with an IV snaking into her arm, and he hid his queasiness by turning towards Sara. They were alone; Hailu and Yonas had gone out to get food. He’d just told her the good news, that he’d been made head of the communications committee in the student union. He would be responsible
for all the newsletters and information circulated on behalf of university students.
“It’s enough. Even I think it’s enough,” Sara said, smoothing Tizita’s hair back from her face. “Abbaye worries about you too much as it is.”
“He tries to control me.”
“Did anyone in your family ever fall like this?” She rubbed Tizita’s arm.
Dawit looked at Sara’s beautiful face, a more mature and earthy beauty than Lily’s. Even when they first met, when he was ten and she eighteen, he’d felt they were the same in many ways. The years separating them, he liked to think to himself when he was younger, did not separate them at all. When he and Lily had first met in secondary school, he’d talked so much of Sara that Lily had been jealous.
“She’ll be okay,” Dawit said. “You have the best doctor in Addis in the family.”
Sara was pale. “Did you learn about this sickness in school?” she asked. “What do you think we should do?”
Dawit shook his head. Sara hadn’t gone beyond a high school education, and her ideas of what he learned in university were sometimes exaggerated. “The doctors will help her get well.”
She stared out the window above the bed. “He’s going to take her away from me.”
“Who?”
“I was born in Qulubi,” she said. “My mother made a silet to God that if she escaped from that Italian into safety, she’d baptize me at St. Gabriel’s Church. She told me I’d always be protected because she kept her promise. A mother’s blessings go down to her daughter, she said. But now, look”—she motioned towards Tizita. “Something happened. He wants to take her away.”
“Why do you think God has anything to do with it?” Dawit asked.
Yonas and Hailu walked in carrying a large plate of steaming stew covered with warm injera. Yonas looked tired, his eyes were red-rimmed. “Almaz said we can stay here overnight,” he said. “She’ll have cots and blankets brought in. Stay out of the hall, soldiers are still here.”
“I’m not going to sleep,” Sara said.
“They arrested more officials,” Dawit said. “They still haven’t named any charges, and there are no plans yet for a civilian government. Did you hear the announcements on the radio?” he asked his father.
Hailu didn’t respond. He handed a plate to Yonas instead.
“The Derg just asked the courts to consider the death penalty for those found guilty of the famine cover-up,” Yonas said. “Aren’t they quoting from the reports Mickey filed when he was in Wello?”
“I think so,” Dawit said. “I haven’t seen Mickey since he’s been at the jail.” He watched his father serve food in disapproving silence.
“Let’s pray, Abbaye,” Sara said. “I’m tired of all this talk.”
Hailu frowned at Dawit. “Where were you?”
“At Lily’s,” Dawit stammered, watching disgust settle in hs father’s eyes before he shook his head and turned away.
17.
NO LIGHT SEEPED through the window above his cot. The dank smell of mildew clung to the emperor’s lungs. Only the howls of the dog that scraped its bony ribs against the mud walls outside during feeding time let the emperor know that another day had passed. No one spoke to him and fewer dared to look towards him; none approached his cell. In the first days of his imprisonment, he’d had a regular visitor. A military official in a wrinkled uniform who would stride into his cell and demand to know the whereabouts of money that had never existed.
“You have it in a Swiss bank account,” the official insisted. “Where is the money? Where is it? You know. Give us the account number.”
He stared at him, confused. There was no money. Finally, he’d thought to ask, “How much money?”
The official scoffed, then replied, “Over a billion American dollars.” His tone was triumphant. “It could have fed all those people you let starve.”
It was the emperor’s turn to scoff, to rake his eyes over the soldier’s poorly ironed uniform. “Do you even know how much a billion dollars is?” The official left in a disgruntled huff, pulling his belt over his paunch. Eventually, he stopped coming and the silence grew.
The emperor spent hours sitting still, wheezing through a dry rattle in his chest that was growing deeper. He kept himself wrapped in a thin blanket that did nothing to shield him from the chill, and let his mind wander across decades to his victorious return from exile after the end of the Italian Occupation in 1941. He let himself dwell in those days, reliving half-forgotten conversations and once-insignificant details. He recalled the processional walk to his throne, the women who wept at the sight of him, and the unbearably proud and fierce gazes of his warriors as they welcomed him back to his country and his crown.
The emperor shuffled back and forth in his cramped cell and reenacted his own stately walk. He waved to onlookers on his way from his home in Jubilee Palace to meetings in Menelik Palace, and searched, out of habit, for small boys with joined eyebrows for his bodyguards to push out of his view. He marched every day, hourly, to his library and sat on rich padding and brushed velvet. Emperor Haile Selassie walked through his marble halls and to his royal throne, removed himself from the mustiness of mud walls and the undignified stench of his own body, and let memory seep into the present, then dissolve into a glorious dream.
HE COULDN’T REMEMBER when he’d been moved from the Fourth Division military base back to Menelik Palace. But he would never forget the drive through the streets of Addis Ababa and the way there had been no evidence of his absence. None of the hollow, directionless stares he’d come to imagine in the faces of his people; none of the longing for his return. There had been the sunlight, brighter than normal, almost blinding and painful to him. There had been the fast-paced symphony of trucks and taxis, of rubber and metal scraping over asphalt; wooden carts pitching over rocks, the shrill wails of street vendors. There had been the smells: eucalyptus and incense, oranges and exhaust fumes, sweat and pack animals. All of this would always be there. Ethiopia would remain, despite even his absence.
He’d been overcome for a moment by the sheer force of life and energy in this country he loved so much. He wanted to embrace it, open his arms and let children run to him, let men and women kiss his hands. If he could have, he would have paused long enough to let his people bow and lay prostrate before him, and he would bless each and every one and shed tears with them. But in front of him and pushing at his heels were soldiers who were leading him away from the small mud room he’d lived in for months, towards a small Volkswagen guarded by heavily armed soldiers who would not look at him.
In the car, he had tried to ask the guard beside him where he was being taken, but a sharply dressed officer had turned around from the front seat and shone a flashlight into his face to silence him, making his eyes water so much the collar of his dirty jacket was soaked. No one spoke for the rest of the ride. He looked out the window instead, his view shadowed by the guard’s rigid profile, and became the only one in this forsaken city who wanted the King of Kings to reign supreme once again.
He’d been taken to the great hall that had once belonged to the late Empress Zewditu. All of the furniture had been emptied out of the big room and only a small cot with thin sheets and a blanket sat in its center. Soldiers were posted outside his door, which was locked in triplicate and then chained. Their fear of him was heartbreaking, compounding his loneliness and the largeness of this empty space he was trapped inside. They walked backwards into the room whenever they escorted his old servant inside with his food, doubly armed and wearing sunglasses. They scurried out as quickly as they could, too afraid to glance his way. The mournful whimpers of his old lion, Tojo, lulled him to sleep, and he tried to make himself forget about the garden just outside his window which he was no longer allowed to walk in. Under the weight of this solitude, all of the emperor’s hours, minutes, and seconds blurred and ran together like a slow, dying river.
18.
HOW WOULD EMPEROR haile selassie later describe the moon
that night? Voluminous, as thick as milk, a thousand melted stars that sliced the sky with razor-sharp edges. Even in the dark, from his window, he could make out the outlines of trees shivering in the breeze. A truck with squealing brakes pulled up and a barking order, followed by the confused mutterings of soldiers, made the emperor move back to his cot. There was nothing here he would want to see. Lying on the bed, he raked his fingers over the spider-bite scabs that dotted his arms, picked at one, and took comfort in the tiny pinch of a peeling wound. This was evidence, he reminded himself, that he was still alive. They hadn’t killed him yet. He closed his eyes, let himself float in the darkness, and picked at another scab. He couldn’t help smiling.
Quick footsteps echoed beneath his window, then came an order: “Why aren’t they ready? Get them into the truck. Tie them up. With this.” The thud of a heavy object falling to the ground.
Silence. Then a voice. “But they’re officials and royals. Major Guddu, they’re—” the man said, his voice trembling.
“They’re traitors. Their greed created the famine. Put them in the truck, Mickey,” Major Guddu said.
Guddu. The emperor recognized the name of the short, dark man who’d been one of the five to take him out of his palace and place him under arrest.
“Major, what about the trials …”
“The Council agrees with me. Are you a traitor like them?”
“But—”
Footsteps, then a gentle click.
“I can start with you, if you’d like.” Guddu was calm.
The emperor drew his knees to his chest. He pushed himself as far from the approaching footsteps as possible and hunched into the corner. He mumbled a prayer, louder each time he heard the jingle of keys, then the creak of a door, then the grunts of prisoners herded past his window. He tried not to listen, but for a moment he stopped praying long enough to note the soothing rhythm of their footsteps. Their shuffling feet sounded like the rustle of fallen leaves in the wind.
THE CITY WAS QUIET that night. There was no sound but the crunch of gravel splitting under the weight of military trucks full of frightened prisoners. Nothing to break the thick black of night except a large wide moon. Mickey sat towards the front in one of the trucks, next to Daniel, holding his rifle and pressed against a glass window that revealed their path from Menelik Palace to Akaki Prison. The prisoners huddled in the center of the truck bed, shoved together by the prodding rifles and sharp kicks of other soldiers who dangled off the sides. A thin wind cut through Mickey’s shirt and flattened against his chest like a cold hand.
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