Beneath the Lion's Gaze

by Maaza Mengiste

  Dawit pulled out of her hold and put on his belt.

  “You can’t blame him for a promotion,” she said.

  “You don’t get a promotion for doing nothing. It’s a reward. What do you want me to do? Congratulate him?” Dawit said. “I’m not doing it.”

  Lily grew quiet. “It’s getting more dangerous with these kebeles watching everything. People are scared. They’re turning in anyone just to avoid jail themselves. You need him.”

  “I don’t need a lecture. You don’t know what I know.” Dawit thought back to that early morning when Mickey had come to his door in a blood-splattered uniform, a rifle lost and a gun in his belt, confessing to acts that neither of them spoke of again. It was after that that their friendship had begun to unravel; quiet moments were no longer comfortable, and conversations stumbled into stilted, awkward silences. Then, when news of Mickey’s promotion traveled through the compound, Dawit had refused to talk to him at all.

  “So he’s your enemy?” she asked, walking to the door.

  “Do you understand how bad things are?”

  “I’m going to the same meetings you are. I’m passing out the same newsletters.” She paused. “I’m the one risking a medical school scholarship.”

  “And of course that means everything,” Dawit said.

  She stood at the door with a tight grip on the handle. “Don’t you think about a better future for yourself?” She was curious, then defiant.

  He sighed and moved to wrap his arms around her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Lily pushed him away and grabbed her shoes.

  Dawit opened the door and waited for her. “One day you’ll cut your foot walking outside without shoes.”

  A smile played across her face. It was a rhyme they’d made up together, a way to end any fights. “My feet are tough.” Her response was lyrical, a practiced song.

  “And what would happen if you stepped on a nail and started bleeding?” He put his arm around her as they walked to the car.

  “I would jump up in the air and scream like a monkey …” She rested her head on his shoulder and wrapped an arm around his waist.

  “And then what?” he asked.

  “You would catch me,” she said, giggling.

  “How do you know?” He held her closer to him.

  “Because you promised me you’d always be there,” she said, serious and quiet in his arms.

  Dawit kissed the top of her head, then let his mouth find hers. They kissed, the tension forgotten for a moment, then drove down the hill into the city. The sky burned a deep orange, empty of the sun and not yet ready for the moon.

  HAILU COULD HEAR the faintest moans of a washint in his head, the hollow reed instrument spinning what had been Selam’s favorite song, “Tizita,” a melancholy tune of memory and home. He was in the bathroom adjoining his bedroom, unwrapping a new bar of soap. There is a girl in the hospital, far from home, calling for her father, he thought, looking at his palms, and I have done nothing but cause her more pain. Hailu let cool water run over his wrists and trail between his fingers. He turned on the hot water and coolness slid into a pleasant warmth that ebbed into a searing heat. He kept his hands under the tap, watched suds bubble and cascade into the drain, then disappear. No matter how many times he washed his hands, he’d have to go back and inspect wounds no human being should have. Animals in this condition would be put out of their misery. He lathered the soap again. What gave the Derg the right to tell him when he should be home, what he could listen to on the radio, what he should read, and now, who he could treat in his own hospital, and how?

  “Abbaye, time to eat,” Tizita called.

  Hailu began to scrub his hands. “Get started without me,” he said. The water gurgled as it drained. What kind of man could do what was done to this girl? How was it that he had become another instrument in that process?

  “Abbaye says we always have to eat together,” Tizita said, her words muffled as if her mouth were pressed firmly against the wood door.

  “Go see if Dawit’s home, then I’ll be ready.” He dried his hands on an old, rough towel and inspected his nails. There was nothing on them, he told himself. You can go eat injera with clean hands, he reassured himself. A new thought nudged itself awake from a corner of his mind, bent him over the sink: his mother’s home was no more.

  29.

  THE NEWS CAMERA scanned past a group of soldiers from the hundred-thousand-man peasant army, the People’s Militia. Wearing North Korean uniforms and carrying Soviet machine guns, they marched into arid, dusty hills, their sweat visible even at a distance. Lining the roadside where they walked, women and girls clapped and raised their voices in encouragement as other soldiers, less tired, monitored the cheering with pointed rifles. The soldiers dragged themselves over the road, mechanical and obedient.

  “Turn the volume down, Tizzie,” Yonas said.

  The camera cut to Guddu, crisply dressed, his green fatigues perfectly tailored. He paced in front of another large group of hunched soldiers, his smoker’s lips enunciating words with sharp precision. His eyes, small and furious, darted back and forth with barely restrained agitation; the rest of his body was kept under strict control. He shouted at his men, pumped his fist into the air, then pointed to the flag hanging limply behind him. The screen flashed to a map of Ethiopia and a yellow line snaked a path north, into the Eritrean region, and ended in a big red X.

  Dawit got up from the sofa and sat on the floor next to Tizita, who was playing with her doll. “What’s Guddu thinking?”

  Yonas looked towards the door. “Has Abbaye come home yet?”

  Dawit shook his head. Hailu usually sat in his chair watching news with them.

  Yonas watched trucks loaded with soldiers rattle down a dirt road. “Guddu’s got Soviet support.”

  “But to fight Eritrea and Somalia at the same time? Then battle with other rebel groups within our the borders?” Dawit pointed to the soldiers walking listlessly in a single row.

  “I don’t know why you’re so shocked,” Yonas said. “This is the man who let Qaddafi attack the Sudanese from Ethiopia. He closed Kagnew station and ordered all U.S. military personnel out of the country in seventy-two hours. Guddu’s becoming famous for his arrogance.”

  The television cut to Guddu shaking hands with Soviet dignitaries, their smiles bright under camera lights.

  “I don’t trust him,” Dawit said.

  “It’s the Soviets I don’t trust,” Yonas said. “Not long ago, they were giving arms to Somalia to fight us.” He sighed. “Guddu thinks all he needs is their support to drive the Eritrean rebels back and fight the Somalis in Dire Dawa and Harar. But with the U.S. behind Siad Barre, it’s not going to be so simple.”

  “The Soviets aren’t the problem.” Dawit pointed to the screen and another map of the northern Eritrea region. Guddu needs to let Eritrea go.”

  “So you want to break up Ethiopia?” The laugh out of Yonas was mocking. “Now you’re sounding like one of your pamphlets.”

  Dawit jumped up and took Tizita by the arm. “Go upstairs.” He led her into the dining area and pointed her towards the stairwell. “Go to bed,” he said, insistent.

  “No,” she said, pulling against his grip. “It’s not my bedtime.”

  “I’ll be upstairs to pray with you soon,” Yonas said to his daughter. “Go on.”

  Tizita reluctantly went to her room.

  “Never mention pamphlets again, especially in front of her,” Dawit said. He pointed at the stairwell and glared at Yonas. “She could say something in school.”

  Yonas returned his glare, his mouth a firm line. “You keep leaving them in my trunk,” he said. “They’re searching cars randomly at the university. They took Professor Shimeles, and didn’t you hear about the high school students they beat in front of the class and then arrested? How careless can you be?”

  “I didn’t think,” Dawit said, looking away.

  “You never do,” Yonas said. “When have yo
u ever thought about anyone but yourself? When?”

  “It’s not about me.”

  Yonas smiled and shook his head. “Not about you? Then who? Every single cause you’ve taken up has been to benefit the middle or upper class, people just like you. What do you know about what the poor really need? Didn’t Lily’s experience teach you anything?” He drew closer to his brother. “You talk about a socialist future, but tell me how it’s different from this socialism the Derg is pushing down our throats. How can you fight them when you don’t even know which ideology you’re following?”

  Dawit cut him off with a flick of his hand. “The Derg is a dictatorship clothed in socialist propaganda. Whatever it takes to get the Russian money. You should know that, Professor,” he spit out.

  Yonas held Dawit’s wrist, his grip tight. “You make pamphlets that do nothing but criticize, and don’t consider what to do if this government stays in power for a long time.” He loosened his hold and seemed to consider his next words carefully. “And Mickey … he can protect you from yourself, and you refuse to talk to him. Do you know how many times he’s been here? You want to pretend you’re some hero from one of those American soldier movies you love so much. Next, you’ll be running through the streets with a gun like these other revolutionaries.”

  “I don’t kill people. I’m trying to save them,” Dawit said, his voice suddenly quiet. “And how can you talk to me? You still give history lectures to an empty classroom. What do you think is happening to all your students? Stop trying to convince yourself things are normal.” He stood up. “Always trying to hide behind something.”

  “You are putting my wife and daughter, all of us, in danger,” Yonas said, watching Dawit retreat to his bedroom. “Are our lives less important than those of people you’ve never met?”

  Dawit paused at his door. His head dropped. “I’ll check the car next time,” he said, then walked into his room.

  HAILU SAT IN THE hospital room, the soldiers posted outside the door, and watched the sleeping girl jerk herself out of a nightmare, then drift back into unconsciousness. He was sitting on his hands, his palms plastered flat to the chair, his body made heavy by the weight pressing into his chest. The sight of this girl frightened him more than anything he’d ever seen. The sound of her moans and quiet whimpers was as terrifying as any scream he’d ever heard. He was staring at evidence of the body’s wondrous and cursed gift for withstanding abuse. She was testimony to the stubborn endurance of nerves and tissue, proof of one man’s sustained cruelty. We have both caused her pain, what makes me better?

  Two weeks ago, he’d peeled the plastic wrap off her. Those hours had been agonizing and tedious, the work delicate and painstaking. He’d scraped and pulled the plastic off centimeter by centimeter, praying as he worked, realizing for the first time how indelicate his hands were, how clumsy and imprecise their hold on a scalpel. Each time he’d paused, he found his own body was burning, aching, and there was the sense that all the water in the world would never be able to coat his dry throat. Once, he’d leaned down to kiss her cheek, and couldn’t bring himself to utter an apology for work he’d been commanded to do, he couldn’t acknowledge, in that apology, his own complicity in her suffering. That day, two weeks ago, he’d done the job alone, had demanded that the soldiers leave the room, and he’d answered her sporadic calls for her father with simple whispers: “I am here, I am here.”

  RUMORS FILTERED THROUGH the compound about Shiferaw: that he’d spent two nights in jail and come back with that slender grin. This was how they forced him to talk, the women said. He gave names of those he’d never met, the coward, the men added. He’ll eat you, the children squealed. The old men and women nodded and pointed to his military fatigues. He betrayed his friends and received this position, they said. Our kebele is run by a traitor.

  Shiferaw dressed every day in faded military pants and an overstretched sweater. He conducted his mandatory meetings with relish, his sliced mouth upturned as he led unenthused men and women in revolutionary songs and doctrine. He had annexed another house down the road from the compound for these meetings, and daily he moved back and forth between the two places, carrying papers and posters of Guddu, Lenin, and Marx with the air of someone who knew he was being stared at, but tried to pretend he didn’t care.

  Neighbors were careful what they said when he was nearby; women let their gossiping drop to niceties, men lowered their political complaints into talk about the weather, children tiptoed around him and never looked at his face. Only Emama Seble refused to curb her abrasive tongue, pulling at his frayed sweater and poking into a moth-eaten hole with a frown anytime they crossed paths.

  “Your precious Russians can’t dress you better than this?” she chided.

  Shiferaw had learned to cower around her just like everybody else, and during meetings, he never forced her to join in song, allowing her instead to sulk with folded arms, sullen in her black attire.

  30.

  SARA AND EMAMA Seble watched Tizita and Berhane playing marbles from the veranda.

  “How can these people say they’re for the rights of all when they don’t let us vote?” Sara said, waving a slip of paper in front of Emama Seble. “Because Abbaye owned and rented homes, none of us in the household can have a say in what’s decided in our kebele for a whole year?” Her cheeks were flushed. “And Shiferaw said he’ll fine us double our taxes if we don’t show up for the rally for the Derg next week.”

  Tizita took her turn and pushed her nose close to the ground as she aimed. Her finger nudged a nearby marble. A bright smile lit up the earnest boy’s eyes.

  “What will a vote change?” Emama Seble asked. She took the slip of paper and squinted. “This Shiferaw is trying to make me go to literacy classes.”

  “Tizita, sit up straight!” Sara called out. She patted Emama Seble’s leg. “Bizu has to go, too. Melaku had Tizzie read a book aloud to him, then he carried it to the kebele meeting and showed Shiferaw he could read.” Sara sighed and focused on Tizita. “I keep trying to convince myself something good can come out of this. I was talking to Dawit yesterday and—”

  “What good thing?” Emama Seble handed her the slip of paper. “There’s nothing good that can come from the devil.” She shook her head. “When the Italians were here, at least you could tell who the enemy was.”

  The women fell silent and watched the children fight over their marbles game.

  “It scares me every time she bends like that,” she explained to Emama Seble.

  “Don’t punish her for your fear,” the old woman said. “She’s growing up. Sofia’s son, too.” She narrowed her eyes. “Any news about her husband?”

  The two children ran into the courtyard.

  Sara shook her head. “Nothing.”

  Sofia came from the courtyard carrying a bag of food and holding Berhane’s arm. “I told you not to do that anymore, it’s not good for your eyes,” she said, bending down to wipe his face. “Stop doing that.” She smiled wearily at the two women. “He keeps turning his eyelids inside out.”

  “I can see better that way,” Berhane said.

  “If a fly lands on it, you’ll get stuck like that,” Sofia said. She resisted a smile as the little boy touched his eyelids with a worried frown.

  “Come here,” Emama Seble said to Berhane, her eyes squinting in mock seriousness. She pretended to wipe her eyes with the edge of her black sweater. “Let me see something.”

  Berhane, curious, stepped forward. Emama Seble raised his chin and peered into his face. She grinned when she saw him move his lips over his teeth.

  “They’ll shrink to their right size soon, don’t worry,” she told him gently. “Now, let me see something, hold very, very still.” She turned his face from the left to the right. “Ah yes, I see it,” she said to herself.

  The little boy started squirming in excitement. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Hold still or she can’t finish.” Sofia laughed.

  “Do you see
my magic?” he asked.

  “I see …” Emama Seble held the boy away from her and sat back. “I can’t tell you, it’s too much.”

  “Please, please tell me! I know it’s my magic.” Berhane grasped her arm.

  “Go away,” Emama Seble said suddenly, wiping her brow and turning serious. “Leave me alone.”

  Sara was startled by her tone. “Emama?” she said.

  Emama Seble wrapped the boy in a long hug. She pushed him away just as quickly, then pulled him to her again, more gently this time. “I’ll tell you about your magic,” she told him, then whispered into his ear. The boy smiled.

  “He keeps talking about magic, I don’t know where he gets it from.” Sofia shook her head. “Maybe Tizita brings it from school.”

  “What will this magic do?” Sara asked, drawn to the earnestness in the boy’s face.

  “Bring my daddy back.” He moved out of Emama Seble’s arms and put his head down. “But I’m not supposed to let Emaye know, my brother told me.”

  Sofia’s face fell. She knelt and held Berhane tightly.

  “Sofia, go home,” Emama Seble said. “There’s no use in making the boy sad like this.” Emama Seble turned to Berhane. “Remember what I told you.”

  Sara and Emama Seble watched the young mother and her son walk out of the gate and down the road.

  “This country has grown too many teeth,” Emama Seble said.

  “HAILU!” IT WAS Melaku shouting from his kiosk, a wide grin on his face. He spit out a fig seed lodged in one of the many toothless spaces in his mouth and waved to Hailu in his car. “I have to ask you something,” he said, flagging the Volkswagen.

  His hands were broad, calloused and cracked, but his long fingers and tapered fingernails hinted at a man once comfortable in the world of royals and palace intrigue. He held out two bright oranges as he ran to the car. “Take some to work, they’re ripe.”