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Notes from the Hyena's Belly

Page 23

by Nega Mezlekia

ASEBE TEFERI snakes along the edge of the main highway that links the city of Harar with the capital city of the nation, Addis Ababa. Asebe Teferi is a melancholic small town whose drab conditions are accentuated by the black roads, laid with crushed basalt rocks, that lie at the foot of a dark mountain chain adorned with the same black, shiny stones.

  Most of the buildings in town were made of wood and mud, topped with old and rusted corrugated metal sheets. The houses, which had long since shed their paint, were ranked on the mountainside, where they desperately clung to dead cliffs. Generations of neglect were written into the faces of these derelict buildings. The walls had shed their meagre mud linings, and a few of the buildings tilted to one side or another, making it as dangerous a proposition to stand in their scant shade as to live inside them.

  The main business in town was the hotel and restaurant service industry, which catered to the equally wayward peasants and truck drivers. The peasant would bring his wife along to market, and at the end of the business day, would share the booze and festivities with her, celebrating the fruits of their labours. They would stagger through crowded streets, completely oblivious to their surroundings, doing the town until the city announced the closure of its doors. Then they would help each other mount their horses and head for home. They didn’t always succeed in getting home at night. Many of them would fall off their horses before crossing the mountain, spending the night in the bush while their horses calmly grazed nearby. Robbery was unknown in this region.

  In normal times, the neighbouring farmers used the town as a staging area to ship local agricultural produce to larger cities, and the market was continually busy. Hundreds of peasants came in with donkeys laden with various goods and returned home with textiles and other items that they could not grow on their own farms. At night the market was transformed. The abandoned market stalls became a violent theatre in which drunken peasants let fly machetes at each other’s throats. Peasants were known to bear their grudges for generations, so there was always someone a farmer wanted to bump off. It was simply a matter of finding him.

  When the opportune moment presented itself, the peasant would ambush his foe, hack him to pieces, then fall into despair and attempt to cover his trail. But relations of the victim would be quick to identify the assailant. One always announced one’s enemies to family members, warning them that in case of an “accident” the individuals on the list should be held accountable. Peasants didn’t go to police or the courts for justice. Blood called for blood.

  The perpetrator knew the rules. He packed a gun and headed for the forest. After some months had passed, the turmoil would die down. Then elders would be sent to the victim’s family, establishing compensation—blood money. The assailant would sell his cattle and a portion of his land to settle the debt. Then he would go on with his life, keeping a watchful eye on the son or brother of the man he had done to death. He might live to die of old age, but not all of his sons or brothers would. It was an endless cycle.

  * * *

  MAM’S MOTHER HAD owned three houses in the town before the junta took office. She lost two of them and a few others in another city during the revolution. Nevertheless, she did have a roof over her head, and was willing to share it with us. We were given the use of one of the two bedrooms and seven of us had to rough it together. And we felt lucky, for renting our own house was impossible: there were no vacancies in the whole country, and even if there had been we couldn’t have afforded it. It was the one area in which connections were of absolutely no use.

  The barest necessities of life were bought with constant struggle. We had to stand in line for hours to purchase a bottle of cooking oil so dirty that light would not pass through it; we had to travel to the farmer’s door in order to buy eggs, milk or vegetables, since the shops were empty of everything; and we had to wait outside the city limits in order to buy a load of firewood. It was a time when everything, except human life, was in short supply.

  * * *

  TO MAKE THINGS easier on Mam and everyone else, I left town within a few days to live with some relations in Kuni, a rural town less than half an hour’s drive from Asebe Teferi. One of my younger sisters went to live with our eldest sister Meselu, who held a teaching position in another rural town called Mechara, about two hundred kilometres from Asebe Teferi. Both Kuni and Mechara were located in the highlands. They shared a temperate climate, lush vegetation and dense forests, and were criss-crossed by streams and rivers.

  Kuni could not have been more different from Jijiga. In Kuni there was no electricity or running water, and the “outhouse,” which was no more than an open field, was in the backyard between the banana plants and coffee trees. When I was growing up, Mam would send me here on vacation, and one of my chief pleasures as a child had been the freedom this sort of life lends. I would tiptoe through the jungle, carefully watching where I planted my feet, looking out for wild animals that might have overslept in the bushes, until I found a convenient nest where I could carefully lower myself down—clutching a nearby coffee tree—and begin negotiating with nature. What could be more natural? The only hitch to this form of outhouse was that you had to remember to bring along toilet paper each and every time. I received a fiery lesson in botany when I happened to mix poison ivy with some familiar leaves.

  My relations in Kuni were very reserved people, soft-spoken, sparing, and more mild-mannered than any people I had ever come across. They not only abhorred profanity and swearing, but also frowned upon giggling, back-biting, name-calling, idleness and a whole array of lesser sins. It looked to me as though they led their lives within the narrow and suffocating confines of two timeless cultural icons: the Holy Bible and the Adbar.

  As time passed and I got to know them better, that peaceful facade was lifted. Once I was invited to witness the execution of a project intended to discourage monkeys from overrunning the cultivated farm. The plan was centred around the watering troughs at the narrow clearing between the farmers’ holdings and the adjacent forest, which was densely populated by centuries-old trees and was so dark inside that I found it too frightening to venture in. Among other animals living in the jungle, there were no fewer than three different types of monkeys, ranging in size from rabbits to mammoths that weighed in at several hundred pounds. The water troughs, I was told, were for the huge monkeys.

  After generations of living with and fighting against nature’s creatures, the peasants had catalogued the behaviours displayed by the beasts they had dealt with, behaviours which they mercilessly exploited to their own advantage. They had, for instance, noted that the big monkeys always washed their faces before drinking from a pond or river. And so, the peasants fouled the water in the troughs with chilli peppers and waited in the shade of the corn fields for the drama to unfold.

  The monkeys don’t often keep to a schedule, so the peasants took turns keeping a vigil around the spice-laden water. After having waited for only half a day, their prayers were answered. A small number of monkeys (I was told that they were all males) came out of the forest, walked up and down the narrow clearing and after convincing themselves that all was safe and sound, let out a series of sharp wails. As if by magic, countless others gushed out of the silhouettes of the trees, some carrying babies on their backs. They made their way to the watering troughs.

  Those who washed their faces became maniacal as the chilli pepper seared their eyes. Completely blinded, they pushed at each other, jumping and falling. During the confusion, they accidentally tipped the watering trough and spilled its contents onto the surrounding grass. Now even those who had not yet washed their faces became soaked by the perilous liquid as they scrambled, hand and foot, over the slippery grass. As they rubbed their eyes in disbelief, they too became blinded.

  The peasants waited a while longer, until the hysteria and maniacal cries of the monkeys became unbearable. Then those mild-mannered, reserved and sparing country folk pulled out their machetes, spears and wooden clubs, and started working on the pack, beheadi
ng them, amputating arms and legs, stabbing and clubbing them until the green fields turned red, and there wasn’t a live monkey left in sight.

  I was so disturbed by what I witnessed that I threw up on myself. When I got home that night, I refused to eat. Neither could I sleep. The next day, I was given a jar of holy water to drink and wash my face with. I was also given some bitter medicinal roots. When I felt a little better, I was teased about what was perceived to be unmanly behaviour. I was told that boys as young as five were encouraged, every growing season, to witness the extermination as a form of initiation.

  Indeed, the sons, like their fathers, had come to know the feeding habits of their prey, and the boys carried out their own bloody projects, targeting the tiniest monkeys. One project revolved around a wooden shack that they had built to trap their tiny visitors. It was a small hut made of wooden planks, with gaps left between the boards. There were no windows in the miniature building, only a door that slid up and down. A single rope, which held the door up, was fastened to an ear of corn that, in turn, was nailed to the ceiling plank.

  A generous amount of corn was spread in the shack, and the door was left open—an invitation for the visitors to entertain themselves. There were no men waiting in the shade, and no suspicious activity in the area, for fear it might scare off the shy little creatures.

  The pack of monkeys made its entrance into the dining room after careful observations of the area. Once inside, they fought each other, snatching at corn and carrying on until the feed was almost depleted. At this point, one of the industrious little creatures looked up and noticed the ear of corn nailed to the ceiling. It snatched at the corn, thereby freeing the rope, so that the door slid down its slots to the ground. The monkeys were now prisoners with no means of escape.

  The next day, the boys returned, armed with spears and pointed sticks and, like their fathers before them, started the carnage. They poked and stabbed at the helpless little creatures through the wall slats until the entire pack had met a bloody end—all in the name of a good harvest.

  I’d always liked those little mischievous creatures. As a child, I used to ask Mam to bring me a monkey or a young gorilla when she returned from a trip to the highlands, but she never did. During summer holidays here I preferred playing with animals to the neighbourhood kids. There was a domesticated monkey that I was particularly fond of. I would give the animal a looking glass, which it anxiously grasped in both hands. The monkey moved its head from side to side and up and down, watching as the “other” monkey imitated its every movement. Then, while still holding the mirror in both hands, the monkey would swiftly move to see the back of the stranger. Despite the disappointment, it never changed its pattern of behaviour.

  Sometimes, I set the mirror before the rooster. I would scatter some feed just in front of the looking glass and watch as it rushed towards the grain. But before the rooster could eat, it would catch sight of its twin, and fighting would ensue. The rooster was never willing to share the feed with anyone else. But every time it gave the prospective thief a blow or two with its beak, the intruder fought back. The rooster would jump high to leap over the trespasser, but the other would jump as high—making it the most frustrating encounter the rooster had ever had.

  The serene nights of the countryside were typically punctuated by the barks and howls of dogs. Every household kept one or two pooches, which they released within the compound during the evening. The folks understood what various intensities and frequencies of barking portended, and when the occasion warranted, the head of the family would step outside to ensure that everything was in its rightful place. By far the most ominous sign was when the dogs did not bark at all, for an eerie silence was unmistakable proof that big cats were in the neighbourhood.

  If the quiet persisted, doors would be heard opening, as neighbours alerted each other to the possible threat and tried to determine what sort of big cat was in the area. Each species had its own brand of deterrent. Once it was known that there were lions nearby, for example, the peasants would light torches and march towards the suspicious area, yelling and uttering brave words—more to keep up their own fighting spirit than to scare off the king of beasts. The lion would melt into darkness and disappear upon seeing the torches, lest a stray spark light upon its mane, setting it ablaze. In the very rare instance that cheetahs or leopards invaded the sleepy village, on the other hand, the solution was simple. As soon as their presence was perceived by the neighbourhood, the men would arm themselves with solid sticks. Cheetahs as well as leopards are very much like dogs—they bluff, but if you stand your ground, the legendary sprinter quickly gives way.

  During an invasion by wild cats, one or two cows, bulls or sheep would invariably be lost. The peasants minimized their losses by slaughtering any animal that they found maimed but alive for the shared consumption of the community. The dead were discarded. Eating the carcass of an animal that was not prayed over while still alive was considered unorthodox, a taboo, though wild game, shot from a distance, was exempt from this rule.

  * * *

  SHORTLY AFTER I settled in Kuni I was surprised to learn that I had passed the matriculation examination, with distinction, no less. I was to report to the university at once, for there were a limited number of openings in the faculty and immediate registration was necessary. It was October 1977, and the semester had already begun.

  When I told Mam that I had passed the examination she was overjoyed. Mother had always held education in high regard. When my sister Meselu decided to become a teacher instead of going to college, Mam did not disguise her disappointment. Now that the future seemed so bleak, it was more important to her than ever that I pursue my education. Her hopes lay not in her own life but in those of her children.

  If Meselu had lived nearby, I would not have thought twice about boarding the bus. Mam was confident that she could manage by herself and even joked that if I were to die that very moment the family would not join me in the grave, but would keep on living. But for the moment I wasn’t sure if I could leave the family in such a distraught condition. I had just about decided to pass up the opportunity to enter university when an event that was otherwise outside the affairs of my family persuaded me to do otherwise.

  In Asebe Teferi, the underground guerrilla units of the EPRP were more active than elsewhere in the province. There was a strong peasant base around the city that provided a great deal of support for the party. The forest cover in the areas nearby furnished a formidable hideout for those on the run. Furthermore, there were a number of armed insurrections in the region—the Oromo National Liberation Movement, for instance, was expanding rapidly and was actively recruiting new members. The culmination of all these factors was that the EPRP guerrilla units there maintained a vigilance more extreme than anything I had previously encountered.

  I used to look in on my family at least once a week. One day, as I visited Mam, one of the local members of the Meison party was grazed by a bullet, apparently fired by a member of a guerrilla unit. He was not seriously injured, but was visibly shaken. He came out of the hospital the same day and joined a manhunt for his assailant. No one, including himself, was sure of the identity of the attacker, but everyone was convinced that it had to do with the EPRP. The search was being conducted from door to door. Any place where a human being could conceivably hide was being searched.

  They found me at my grandmother’s house. The cadre, who had been born and raised in the city, recognized that I was from out of town. He gave me a chance to explain myself and spent about fifteen minutes listening to me and going through my documents. Normally a question or two would be enough for one to be labelled as reactionary or identified as a comrade, for it had long since been established that one could only be on one side of the fence. The fact that we were refugees must have appeased them. In those days, there was a good deal of sympathy in the region for victims of the war. I must admit that I have played that part up more than once to save myself from blind roundups. It wor
ked again; the cadre decided that I could live.

  I felt extremely fortunate for having survived this last brush with death, but knew it would be only a matter of time before a similar incident happened. Late in October 1977, knowing that my refugee status would only hold water for another month or two, I packed a bag and headed to the university in Addis Ababa, where I hoped to become lost in a faceless crowd.

  SEVEN MONTHS OF DARKNESS

  ADDIS ABABA is a city that has the emperor at its heart. It expands outwards from his palace, fanning west and east. There exist two distinct nuclei to the city, like the twin chambers of a heart, each pumping life into the vast sprawl with the rising of the sun. One is named Merkato, the other Piassa.

  Piassa is the legacy of Italians, who made a brief appearance in Ethiopia half a century ago. It has that unmistakably European touch—narrow winding asphalt roads lined with cafés and restaurants and Western-style buildings carved out of the surrounding hills. Piassa, however, is very small, a mere hyphen in the vast text of the surrounding countryside.

  Compared to the sophisticated brevity of Piassa, Merkato exists with the explosive insistence of an expletive. Cranky Fiat taxis fight for what little room there is with wild-eyed donkeys and men urinating in the middle of the boulevard; barefoot hawkers outshout each other for the attention of bewildered customers, abusing them when they get no response; angry peasants wield machetes at any Gurage merchant who attempts to defraud them; and fastidiously dressed pickpockets make the rounds, levying taxes from unsuspecting newcomers.

  Indeed, when I was in the city, theft was one of the three towering vices—prostitution and violence being the other two. The most helpful advice I was given before leaving home was to be on the lookout for these human vultures. In Addis Ababa, bags are clutched to bosom, jewellery is tucked out of sight, pocket knives are held at the ready. On a single trip from Merkato to the university campus, I witnessed six successful robberies and nine failed attempts.

 

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