Dawit took the pistol and, unsure what to do with it, shoved it quickly under his bed. He noticed, for the first time, how yellow the whites of his eyes were, how small and darting his pupils.
“How could this happen?” Dawit asked.
“I’m telling you what happened. You think I’m lying? Look under my nails, look!” Mickey shoved his hands into Dawit’s face. Underneath his fingernails were dark threads of dried blood. “Don’t you smell their shit on me? The bag was over my face, it was hard to breathe.”
Sweat stains trailed down Mickey’s back and under his arms. Dawit smelled the bite of urine and saw a wet patch on the floor.
“Get up, wash here before going home.” He patted his back, a limp gesture. Mickey had become enemy and victim all in one night.
“I know what you’re thinking. They were so scared. They begged so much, they were going to give us everything, all their money. I couldn’t hold my rifle long, it was burning my hands, the metal was so hot it kept jamming. He kept saying the Russians would have to give us new guns now. He kept saying you can’t have a revolution without uniforms and new guns and all the traitors and cowards must be killed. I’m a coward, I’m the one he’s talking about.”
“I’ll get the bath ready. Take off that uniform.” Dawit handed Mickey a robe to put on.
“I’m a coward,” Mickey said.
“You didn’t have a choice.” Dawit rubbed his shoulders. “Take off the uniform.” He held him tight and felt Mickey’s heart beating fast against his chest. “You couldn’t say no.”
“Promise me you won’t tell anyone.” Mickey stepped away from his embrace. “Promise me, as a brother.” His nearsighted eyes narrowed. He’d stopped blinking and his hands were still. “And we’ll never talk about this again.
“Say it!” Mickey shouted.
“Be quiet. Tizzie’s sick,” Dawit said. It was his turn to take a step away from Mickey, the two of them suddenly felt too close. “I promise we’ll never talk about this again.”
Mickey dropped his head. “What do I do with the messages for their children? What do I do with them? We know some of them. What do I tell them?”
Shaken, Dawit walked out of the room, into the bathroom to run the water for his friend.
21.
SARA LAY NEXT to Yonas, suffocating in the wordless space that had grown between them in the days since Tizita’s fall and her escalating fever. Their bed felt too small. Yonas’s breathing sounded too loud. The room was too hot. And in this oppressive dark, her anger stirred. They hadn’t spoken to each other since Emama Seble’s visit, hadn’t touched in over a week. She bit her lip to keep from calling his name. He wasn’t sleeping, she could feel his mind racing, could sense the tension in his body.
“You can move as far away as you want, but I’m still her father,” he said suddenly. “You can’t change that.”
“I’m not trying to,” she said.
“You are.” He was flat on his back, speaking to the air above him, refusing to look at her. “What you don’t like, you try to change. You don’t want to share this child but she’s mine, too, just like the others.”
Sara wanted to remind him it was her body that held two dying babies. Her stomach that felt like it was splitting into pieces. Her blood that flowed. Not his.
“I know that,” she said.
Yonas shut his eyes. He couldn’t argue with her when she stared at him. Her eyes reminded him of all the reasons he loved her. “What about my mother?”
“Emaye?” Sara asked.
“Didn’t she take care of you after your pregnancies? Didn’t she cook special foods and take you to visit your parents’ graves?” he asked.
His hand was tracing her back with a pressure that made her want to scream. She sat up. “I don’t understand why you’re asking.”
“You’ve been so focused on yourself, you don’t ask about her anymore. You haven’t gone to visit her. You’re selfish with our daughter.” He stressed the word “our.” “You think you’re the only one suffering, when there’s me and Abbaye and Dawit. You never ask how I am. Never.”
She counted the small cracks that branched from the peeling white paint on the ceiling, illuminated by a soft gray moon.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, listening for cries from Tizita.
“You don’t think I love my daughter? I don’t want to lose her.” Yonas was getting louder. He sat up to meet her gaze. “Half her blood is mine.”
“Don’t talk to me about losing someone,” Sara said, letting her anger breathe and grow. She moved farther away from him.
“Why?” Yonas pressed. “Tell me why I can’t talk to you about it.”
“What do you know about losing anyone? You’ve had such an easy life that when something happens, you collapse like a child and start praying.” She spat out the words.
“Tell me this, since you don’t lie,” she continued.
She leaned closer to his face. Her features were tight, sharpened like stone, her eyes flat and cold. Her light skin was flushed.
“Are you praying for your mother to live?” She gave him no room to escape her gaze. “I hear you. Only an ignorant person wishes for their mother’s death. If you knew about losing someone, you’d do everything to avoid it. You’d never pray for it. You’d rather die than feel it again. How could you do that?”
“I’ve never prayed for my mother to die.” He spoke in a calm voice. “I’ve prayed for what she needs.”
Though they were in this room, in their marriage bed, together under the same moon, Yonas suddenly felt as if he’d walked away, as if he’d already stood up and gone out the door, and left behind everything these four walls contained. He no longer knew this woman, and maybe that meant he no longer loved her.
“You pray for Emaye, your own mother, to die without pain,” Sara said. “I’ve heard you.” Then, so softly that Yonas almost didn’t hear, she said, “Is that what you’ve been praying for my daughter?”
Yonas swung his right hand. Sara’s mouth was still open when his palm connected with the side of her face. The blow was hard. Its momentum threw her against the wall with a thud.
Sara charged at him. Yonas stumbled backwards, dazed, startled as much by her ferocity as by what he’d just done. Never had he raised a hand to Sara.
“What is wrong with you?” She hit, hands swinging accurately, without mercy, kept on hitting, couldn’t seem to still her rage. She attacked with her fists. She aimed for his face, his head, his neck, wherever she could find tender flesh.
“What have you done?” Tears spilled down her face. Her lips trembled. “You don’t think I’ll fight back? You forget I’m my mother’s daughter?”
Yonas ducked, shielded his eyes from her blows, but did nothing else.
Finally out of breath, Sara stepped back, her body tightly coiled. “You don’t know me.”
Yonas stepped towards her. She raised her chin, a red welt already evident near her jaw. She didn’t flinch. He stood so close she could hear the wheeze at the end of each breath. She resisted the urge to rub his chest and kiss it. He took her in his arms and held her close; her own arms were pressed stiffly to her side. He rocked gently and Sara felt the soft brush of lips on her head. He was praying. Then he turned and left the room.
22.
THE TAXI DRIVER who picked up Sara in front of the French Legation was crying.
“To St. Gabriel’s Church,” Sara said as she got in the backseat. She avoided his open display of grief.
“I can’t believe it,” he said, shaking his head and wiping his eyes as he put the car into gear. “All of them.” He looked into the rearview mirror to talk to her. “Even General Amman,” he said. “That great man helped us win the war with Somalia. He wanted to avoid a war with Eritrea.”
“What happened?” Sara asked, shifting her legs to ease the pain in her knees, and looked out the window. They were on one of the many roads carved out of the side of a hill in Add
is Ababa. Below, a sprawling community of shanties with corrugated-tin roofs rose from what had once been a lush valley. The gray sky hung heavy and thick above them.
Sara glanced out the window as they drove by Arat Kilo and the university’s Faculty of Science. There was a row of tanks with soldiers hanging off the sides, their rifles pointed into traffic. Another group of tanks waited at an intersection ahead, more soldiers walked back and forth at another street corner. The few people passing by were moving with haste, their faces hidden by the shammas they’d draped over their heads and across their shoulders.
“Why so many soldiers?” she asked.
The driver tapped his radio. “You didn’t hear?” he asked, turning around, then back to the road again. “The Derg killed sixty officials last night. Just shot them like criminals.” He wiped his cheeks. “Even the prince and the prime ministers. Ex-prime ministers. No trials.” He ran a hand over his face but the stunned expression in his eyes remained. He couldn’t stop shaking his head. “They killed General Amman in his home. They killed them …” His voice trailed into silence.
“That’s why it’s so quiet,” she said.
It was morning and the sky felt empty without the melodic prayers that would normally be rising from the copper-domed Holy Trinity Cathedral at the break of dawn. Only the faint lingering wails of street beggars, especially plaintive that day, hovered over the startled city.
Sara touched the side of her face as she leaned her head on the window and stared at the ground. She flinched when her fingers pressed into the bruise left from Yonas’s blow. She fought her tears and watched the tires swallow, then spew small stones, leaving them behind for the next traveler.
“I cried when I heard, too,” the taxi driver said. “I can’t stop. How is this possible? They promised no bloodshed.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence. The taxi driver frowned at a group of soldiers in front of the Parliament building as he approached St. Gabriel’s Church. “They should be ashamed to come out today.” He glared at one, who dropped his head and walked to another corner of the street. “My neighbor’s son is a soldier,” he said, pulling over to let Sara out. “He wore civilian clothes to work and carried his uniform with him. They should all be that afraid of us.”
“Thank you,” she said, dropping extra coins in his palm. She avoided the stares of the soldiers and waved the taxi on.
A SLENDER EUCALYPTUS LEAF spiraled to the ground and twirled gracefully in perfect circles. Sara saw the leaf land on an old beggar crouched on one row of steps surrounding the eight-sided church, his blind gray eyes roving in their sockets like hungry rats.
“Are you back again, my daughter?” he asked, pushing his nose into the air.
“It’s my last time.” Sara fought the urge to turn away from the stench of rotting skin surrounding him.
At his side, a little girl shuffled on scarred knees that extended to a pair of shriveled legs trailing limply behind her.
“Raise your voice so the angels can hear you.” The man looked directly into the rising sun. “Keep whatever promise you make, there’s no other way. Otherwise …”
He nudged his chin in the direction of the small girl who was dragging herself to a smartly dressed group of women. One of the women kicked her away with an irritated huff.
“God blesses all who give. Give and you shall be blessed,” the girl cried out as she hobbled towards the elegant group of women again, careful this time to keep a safe distance.
“Abbaba, I’m very sorry for your troubles.” Sara dropped coins in the center of his wrinkled palms. The silver shimmered in the light, dulled by the man’s closing hands.
“May God bless you, my daughter. May you never see days like mine,” the old man wailed.
Sara blinked back the tears that threatened to fall and made her way to the small road that encircled the octagonal church.
DAYS AGO, Sara had paid one of the beggars to bring broken glass and scatter it along the path, and shards still sparkled against the sun. Her knees on that first crawl around the church had been merely bruised, spotted with tiny red cuts. She’d prayed quietly, in murmurs respectful of the other worshippers who prayed with their foreheads touching the walls of the church, their lips brushing stone.
The second day, her hands were cut and her back ached, she’d had to raise her voice to help relieve her pain. By the third, she was hunched low on her arms. She’d had to stop several times, lie flat in the dirt until she could pray in words worthy of her anger. On the fourth visit, she was so focused on the effort to move she ignored the crowds of people who stopped to stare at her, at once shocked and compelled by her determination. Her bleeding legs no longer shook, the pain had dulled into a thick ache across her body, only her voice was sharp, getting louder with each move.
By the fifth day, she was immobile, a shivering body in the dirt.
A group of elderly monks, wearing faded robes and long white beards, approached her. “We’ll pray with you,” the eldest of them said, his sad deep-set eyes almost hidden in folds of wrinkled skin. “One of ours has been jailed.” They sank to their knees on all sides of her and nudged her ahead.
It was on the sixth day that a woman knelt beside her and held out two woven pads of eucalyptus. The leaves were layered and carefully sewn together with a thick thread as red as blood.
“For you, sister,” the woman said. “When the leaves split, the juice will help your knees heal.” She was one of the beggars, a doe-eyed hunchback with no front teeth. Sara had noticed her intense stares each morning.
“Go away,” Sara said.
“There is enough of your blood on this road.” The woman nudged the leaves towards her, then finally set the pads down in front of her. “Didn’t Christ also bleed so we wouldn’t have to?”
Sara slid on top of them and instantly felt their coolness. “Thank you.” Her mouth was dry and tears had caked inside her throat and left her hoarse.
“I see you here every day,” the woman said. “So many people come to church before they visit their family in prison. Even our monk is in jail. Is it the same with you?” Sara didn’t respond, and the young woman sank to her knees and began to crawl next to her. She refused to leave her side even when her back hurt and rendered her mute.
A BREEZE FLICKED along the path, sent dust blooming over the group of well-dressed women. Their muttering drifted past Sara as they stepped gingerly over rocks, careful not to scar their leather shoes. Their voices mingled with the buzz of hovering flies, dipped again into delicate whispers.
The gravel cut into Sara’s feet. She let her eyes circle the span of the church, and her legs shook from dread. Her pads were nearly shredded, streaks of sap and blood had dried along their thin branching veins. She knelt, the pressure on her wounds making her break into a sweat at the same instant that she shivered. A bird’s thin screech sailed high above her head, and she thought of Tizita, lying in her bed. She began to crawl and pray.
You. You have cursed this womb and torn yours out. Mixed my blood with premature ash. You have heard my bitter cries and sat silent to my prayers. You have made me into nothing but the mother of one, the daughter of none, a woman carrying twin monuments of grief. Leave me alone. Let me be as I am. I ask for no more. Sara prayed. If this God demanded blood, if her father and mother and two babies weren’t enough, then she would give of herself until he was forced to concede, if not out of compassion and justice, then out of a damning guilt born of having watched his own son die on a cross while pleading to a father who had forsaken him.
A gentle hand touched her shoulder and pressed softly.
“My sister, I’ve come again.” It was the hunchbacked woman. “I have more leaves for you today.”
Sara hadn’t realized that she’d stopped crawling. Her skirt was ripped and the padded leaves were now shreds of green laced in frayed red thread.
The woman knelt beside her. “My mother did this when I was born, too. Sometimes your pain isn’t enough.
All the blood you spill, it might not be enough. This is a hungry God we beg for mercy.” She turned her soft eyes towards Sara.
“Leave me.” Sara continued her slow shuffle. The high-pitched shriek of a bird floated in circles above her head. She tensed her back to still the shivers.
“I’ll go with you the rest of the way,” the young woman said. Her eyes traced Sara’s face and she smiled a gentle smile. “Today, we’ll make our voices loud. Today, we’ll shout into the clouds. Today, for your daughter, and for my monk, we’ll do this, and may God have mercy on our pain. May God forgive and help us forget these days.”
Sara and the young woman crawled around the church. Deafened by each other’s prayers, they didn’t notice the monks had come again to make the journey with them. Their voices rose in waves—a rippling chorus beating against the sky. Drops of thickening blood marked their path around the road, a brilliant red border glistening in the sun.
23.
A RED RING of fire flared around the burning end of a dying cigarette. Solomon paced, his stride assured. He smoked in three quick inhalations, then a long exhale, the release drawing his energy taut. Dawit felt himself suffocating in this man’s power. Frightened and awed by his command of every step.
“What do you understand of what I’ve said?” Solomon asked.
Dawit stepped forward, then backed away from his cutting glance. They were in a small house near the university. City lights blazed and dimmed in the haze of a cool fog. Dogs wheezed and coughed outside the door.
“I’m going to collect pamphlets from the printing press and deliver them to the house,” Dawit said. He tried to make himself sound confident. “After you tell me where the house is.”
“What else?” Solomon asked, disappointed. “What is it that I haven’t told you? What do you understand without being told?”
Dawit’s heart raced. No answer came. Sweat collected in pools under his shirt and he knew Solomon noticed, so Dawit did what he did when he didn’t want his father to see him nervous: he trained his eyes forward, jutted his chin, pressed his arms to his side. He became a young tree that refused to be bent by the push of the wind.
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