Life-and-death decisions were now being made in the local kebeles and peasant associations. The old judiciary system with its various codes and canons had been put on the shelf—it no longer applied even to common criminals like pickpockets and arsonists. It was the kebeles who decided what punishment fitted each crime, and how justice should be enforced. There was no written law to guide them in this difficult task, but that was a mere detail.
The Red Terror had been waged in many urban centres and some rural areas, but it had never played itself out in so stark and gruesome a way as it did in the capital city. Here it reached a horror surpassed only in the darkest days of Nazi Germany and, perhaps, Stalin’s purge of 1937. During the seven months that the “Red Terror” was in full bloom, all crimes serious enough to warrant a jail sentence were punished by the firing squad. An estimated 100,000 political opponents of the regime were dispatched across the bourn by the time the meat-mincer finally stopped whizzing.
Justice was swift. From the time of detention to execution a mere twelve hours elapsed. The mayhem was public. The regime did not deny it. After all, the proof was out on the streets for everyone, including the foreign diplomats, to see. But the world outside kept its silence, as no one’s economic interests had been compromised, and the most vocal opponents of the regime had been either done to death or made to rot away in various dungeons. And so the campaign was allowed to run its full course, coming to a halt only when it ran out of fuel.
For the first few days of the campaign I was tortured by what I was forced to see. I struggled hard, day and night, during classes and dreams. But, after a while, even this form of death became commonplace. It lost its potency. Throughout the carnage, I attended class.
One day, I saw a young mathematics teacher being followed by three Meison cadres in a Toyota Land Cruiser. Across the street from the campus gate, the young man got out of his taxi, paid the fare and was about to cross the road when he noticed the off-white truck that had been tailing his taxi. The Land Cruiser was one of countless identical vehicles bought by the regime for its various cronies. The young man realized what was transpiring, and knew that he was doomed.
The cadres jumped off the truck before their driver had a chance to put the brakes on. They shouted orders at the bewildered mathematician. They told him to raise his hands high above his head, and freeze in his tracks. The young man didn’t oblige. He started fiddling with a charm that was hanging from his necklace, while walking backwards. The cadres were quick to realize what the young teacher was up to. They refused to be cheated of their prize catch now that it was so teasingly close. They yelled more orders as they took some measured steps towards him, their AK-47 machine guns trained on his chest. The young man’s hands shook, threatening to fly from his wrists, but he managed to untie the small capsule in time. He bit into it, infuriating the cadres, who tossed him in mid-air with a torrent of machine-gun fire. I hoped the cyanide killed him first.
An old lady who was walking in the firing line was an unintended casualty. I, along with a few others, hit the black tarmac in time. We lay still, faces down, hearts pounding so hard I thought the asphalt would crumble beneath us, waiting for permission to test our legs. The cadres were talking among themselves, unaware of us at their feet. What seemed like hours passed and I was still on the ground. Cars sped by, and pedestrians changed their routes. A long black limousine ambled down the tarmac. I was surprised that the driver had the courage to slow down. When it was three metres away, the dark-tinted rear window rolled down, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the head of a white man with a well-tended goatee. He was from the U.S. Embassy, a block away. The cadres showed scant interest; world opinion had long since lost meaning for them.
The cadres boarded their Land Cruiser, leaving the dead and the terrified on the ground.
* * *
ONE TUESDAY, I left class early and dashed to my dormitory to drop off my things before going out to meet a friend. Alex was lying on his bed, fully clothed, his cowboy boots still on. There was nothing unusual about that. I said hello to him, but received no response. That was unusual. I tried again, but he kept mum, staring at the blank ceiling. It looked as though he was on some kind of sedative. I decided to leave him alone.
When I returned to my dorm after dinner, Alex was still in bed. He hadn’t moved an inch from his previous position, and was still staring at the blank ceiling. My two other roommates were already there, suspended in a rapt silence. Alex’s disease weighed down on all of us. I nudged the boy to cheer him up a bit, but got no response. I asked him if he’d had anything to eat and if there was anything I could do. Still no response. I felt very uncomfortable being in the same room, and decided to stay out until bedtime.
When I returned at eleven o’clock, I didn’t look up to see how Alex was faring. The cowboy boot dangling from the edge of the bed told me that he was still suspended in a comatose-like state.
The following day, after lunch, I made a conscious decision to return to the residence and find out about Alex’s mysterious disease. I couldn’t get him out of my mind that whole morning. It was an awkward thing.
We wanted to inform Alex’s parents of his mysterious condition, but no one knew where they lived. We knew that the school officials wouldn’t care to intervene. Thousands were actually dying a step away from the campus gate; why would they care about someone playing dead at the government’s expense?
When I returned, there were two exotically dressed and perfumed young women, an elderly lady and a distraught old man inside our room. They were Alex’s family, come to see how their dear boy was faring. They told us what had befallen him.
Two days ago, Alex had been ambling about his neighbourhood as usual, oblivious to the war that was raging around him and looking for a promising date. A kebele official who harboured ill feelings towards the haughty young man saw an opportunity to exact revenge: he made a quick detour, bringing his Land Cruiser around to accost Alex. He wanted to know what Alex was doing out on the street at nine o’clock at night; if he had clearance from the local cadres regarding his political background; and what his latest contribution to the revolution had been.
The kebele official already knew all the answers, of course, and Alex was escorted to the local kebele. However, there was a slight diversion. The angry young cadre decided to place Alex, unknown to other kebele officials and his family members, among the twenty-eight youths to be done to death that night.
At four o’clock in the morning, the usual dreadful army truck pulled up inside the kebele compound. The door of the crowded jail was thrown wide, and soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder on either side of the door directing the condemned youths to their seats on the truck. As they fired the engine, the gates of the compound were unchained.
Before the rear awning of the green canvas cover had been buttoned down, a kebele official glanced at the doomed young men and caught sight of a familiar face. He looked closer at the boy. “Aren’t you Asfaw?” he asked. The boy, who was too shocked to cry or talk, nodded. “What are you doing here?” the kebele official asked. It was a silly question, but a ray of hope for the terrified young man.
The kebele official, who had always been on agreeable terms with Alex’s family, went looking for the individual responsible for this error. Finding him, he vouched for Alex’s innocence. “I know this kid like one of my own. I practically raised him. He’s not into politics. In fact, he wouldn’t recognize a political thought if it slapped him right across the face.”
Alex was freed, and taken home by his guardian angel. His family was ecstatic that their dear boy had been given another lease on life. But, there was one problem: how were they going to keep him alive? The two-legged hyenas roamed the neighbourhood at will. They walked from door to door at very odd times of the day, searching every possible hideout, looking for their next victim. Alex had to be kept out of their sight, but where? That was when his mother thought of the university campus. It was still a safe haven for many.
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Alex would have weathered the storm, at least for another few months, had it not been for his suddenly unhinged head. The family decided to take him to see an out-of-town medicine man, far away from the killing fields. When we bade him goodbye, he no longer recognized us. I still don’t know what became of him.
* * *
WE DID NOT REMAIN immune to the outside turmoil for long. The fragile peace of my first semester on campus had been the result of our collective anonymity. Students came from all over the country seeking safety. Now, that anonymity had become a desperate commodity. The curtain fell for many when their hometown kebeles sent lists of “suspects” to the Meison headquarters in Addis Ababa.
Soon, Meison cadres in progressive suits (similar to the Chinese uniform) could be seen walking stiffly into our classrooms, dormitories and cafeterias, picking out “suspects” with an exaggerated, almost theatrical show of force. Days were spent in terror, and the nights were no easier. Late in the evening, or early in the morning, when the bars and nightclubs closed, the students’ dormitories became the last stop for cadres, who, having drunk themselves into a stupor, would break into the residences checking for signs of conspiracy. The washrooms were their first stop. In the unlikely event that there was not a single slur against the regime already written on the grey walls, the eager cadres would think nothing of scribbling a few incriminating imputations of their own.
The theatrics of life and death followed. We could hear their raucous name-calling from inside our rooms as doors were banged with the butt of a gun. Everyone on the floor was made to stand in the corridor, wearing nothing but underwear. We were then ordered to expose the reactionaries responsible for the graffiti in the washrooms. Our silence was proof of what they had always suspected: a conspiracy. Everybody knew that the university was a breeding ground for reactionaries.
Most of us escaped these incidents with slightly bruised pride, as we were made to clean the washroom walls with our toothbrushes or tongues. A few individuals went back to bed with bloodied noses.
Now and then, they took one for the road.
* * *
BY MID-1978, THE “Red Terror” reached its climax. In Addis Ababa, between one hundred and two hundred youths were done to death each night, their remains left under the blazing sun until dusk settled over the horizon. Families of the victims lined the roadsides in tormented silence, making sure that their loved ones were not abused in death as they had been in life.
When it was time to remove the remains from the deserted streets, they followed the garbage trucks carrying the remains to the city morgue. There they stood in line to settle their bill at the cash register. They had to pay twenty-five birr for the bullet that the junta had advanced them to dispatch their loved one. Only then would they get the remains.
The junta was not insensitive. The unclaimed remains were kept in the morgue for another day, in case some tardy relations showed up. Only after a forty-eight-hour period of grace did they toss the remains outside the city limits. Addis Ababa’s suburbs became a movable feast for countless hyenas and vultures.
A MOURNFUL GHOST
THE REVOLUTION was a very worry-prone mother; she kept close tabs on her children. She might not pack lunch for you, but she wanted to know how you spent every hour of your day. If you expressed a wish to go anywhere in town, she wanted you to carry a proper identification card with an up-to-date photograph issued from your local kebele. If you wished to go anywhere out of town, no matter how close, an additional travel document was necessary. This document explained why you were taking the trip and how long the trip would last. The expiry date could not exceed six months; otherwise the devoted mother-revolution would suffer a panic attack. And if, God forbid, you desired to travel to one of the restricted cities, like the ports of Assab and Massawa, then you’d better have a pair of strong wings—a simple kebele document would never do.
Roaming the countryside at will, as in the old days, was considered a bourgeois thing to do; communism had no place for such freewheeling. Where you went and what you did was everybody’s business. Did you say that you were planning to go to town this coming Saturday, to see your hairdresser? That might be all right, but first visit your kebele to fill out a triplicate form stating your intentions clearly; the original is for your file in the kebele, the yellow copy is for the local cadre, and the pink one is for your own records. If there is no ulterior motive involved, and your intended hairstyle is in complete conformity with the spirit of the revolution, you might be issued a day pass. And you had better see your hairdresser, because it will be noted in your record. By the way, an Afro is a no-no—it is evidence of the corrupting influence of American imperialism.
When the school year ended, students were issued internal passports that allowed them to return home for two months of vacation. With my internal passport and a recommendation letter from the university, I went to the bus terminal to purchase a one-way ticket to Asebe Teferi, where I would spend the summer with Mam and the kids. I got out of my taxi and carefully treaded to the ticket kiosk. The ticket agent, an elderly man, glanced with tired eyes at the documents I presented to him, telling me without looking up to return early the next day and stand in line. I rented a hotel room close to the bus terminal and set my alarm clock for 3 A.M. As an extra precaution, I requested the front desk attendant to wake me as well, greasing his palm with five birr for the favour. Then I went to bed early.
When I finally arrived at the bus station the next morning, my eyes sleep-red, I was surprised to see that the line was already a light-year long. Upon closer inspection I noted that it was not composed of the usual travellers, but of homeless beggars. Cardboard-box shelters were strewn in a ragged line that extended willy-nilly to the ticket kiosk. At around 5 A.M., the beggars were given a few birr and relieved of their waiting duties by the real passengers, who flashed mischievous smiles at the ragtag end of the line, where I, and other less ingenious passengers, stood. Fortunately for me, a second coach was ordered and I was able to get a seat.
We were to make a stop about one hundred kilometres past Addis Ababa, in the city of Nazareth, for breakfast. On the way, the driver stopped periodically to pick up passengers, until every seat in the bus carried twice the designed capacity, and the aisle was a sea of human faces. When the steamy insides of the bus were so full that not a single limb could be moved or eye blinked without disturbing a ring of neighbours, the driver made the extra passengers sit on the rack on top of the bus. We must have offered a strange sight to passersby. Dozens of sweaty faces pressed circles into the dirty windows while a tangle of bodies, hooked by one or more limbs to the precarious seats on top of the bus, jolted and swayed with the uneven road, like an angry nest of snakes. Shortly before we arrived in Nazareth, the driver divested the bus of all these extras, returning our bus to its natural freight so that he would not be fined by the traffic police who waited at the gates of the city. These extras wandered into the city in ones and twos looking no better for their ride than if they had journeyed the full hundred kilometres on foot. Later, the driver and his assistant would divide the extra fares between them.
The bus pulled into a large restaurant in Nazareth called the Gion Hotel. The driver announced that anyone thinking of visiting any of the other establishments nearby would risk missing the bus, and after the morning’s experience few passengers needed further persuasion. I joined the others and filed into the crowded restaurant. My mind was still thick with the heat of the bus when I thought I saw a familiar face.
I had almost passed him by when something about the man stopped me in my tracks. We stared at each other across the crowded restaurant for what felt like an eternity, as the realization of his identity slowly struck me. This was one of the rare moments when I saw Wondwossen’s father in civilian clothes and it took me a while to put a name to the face. The man had changed considerably. His hair was thinning and what was left of it was almost uniformly grey. Gone was the imposing figure he cut, and the purpos
eful gait that I admired. I suspected that he, like many other officers, had been relieved of his job in the army. Whenever a battle was lost on any of the countless war fronts, the chairman of the junta always found a sacrificial goat. The lucky ones were sent packing; the unlucky paid with their lives.
I was staring at the man, not knowing what to say, when he finally broke the silence. He spoke casually, remarking that I had grown up, his words passing over me like the warm desert wind. Then he asked me what I had been doing since we left Jijiga, and I told him that I had been studying at the university. He fell silent for a while, sighed deeply, and muttered, as though talking to himself, “Wondwossen would have been a college student, too.”
What might have seemed the most casual of remarks to anyone who overheard the conversation threw me headfirst into the past. I relived all those years spent with Wondwossen and wept. Wondwossen’s father put his hand on my shoulder and tried to calm me, but something had broken and the tears would not stop.
There was so much I wanted to know about Wondwossen’s family. I had always wondered how his mother had fared. After all, he was a prayer child and losing him, in his prime, must have left an indelible scar in her psyche. I wondered how his sisters had managed without him. Wondwossen was a jewel to his siblings. They loved and protected him. I remembered how, whenever he ran out of pocket money, all he had to do was ask one of his sisters, who would be eager to help. If he longed for a neighbourhood girl locked up behind the chain fence of her family residence, one of his sisters would always manage to reach her somehow and deliver his love letter.
I also dreaded encountering his family members. And so today, to be confronted with a ghost in this unexpected place and at this uncertain time, at a period in my life when I despaired of ever putting the past behind me, was too much to bear.
When we finally parted, in a painful silence, I saw Wondwossen’s father remove his glasses and wipe his eyes with a handkerchief. Indeed, every man has his breaking point.
Notes from the Hyena's Belly Page 25