Afterward, for as long as he lived, I visited Teferra every time I was in Addis Ababa. Following the Emperor’s deposition, he was active for some time. Fortunately for him, he had been kicked out of the Palace in the last months of Haile Selassie’s reign. But he knew all the people from the Emperor’s circle, and he was related to some of them by blood. As is characteristic of the Amharas, who are very conscious of their honor, he knew how to show gratitude. He always remembered that we had saved his neck. Soon after the Emperor was deposed, I met with Teferra in my room in the Hotel Ras. The town was swept up in the euphoria of the first months after the revolution. Noisy demonstrators flowed through the streets, some supporting the military government and others calling for its resignation; there were marches for agricultural reform, for bringing the old regime to justice, for distributing the Emperor’s property among the poor. The feverish crowd filled the streets from early morning; fights broke out, and in the melee rocks were thrown. There in the room I told Teferra that I would like to find the Emperor’s people. He was surprised, but he agreed to take it on himself. Our surreptitious expeditions began. We were a couple of collectors out to recover pictures doomed to destruction: we wanted to make an exhibition of the old art of governing.
At about that time the madness of the fetasha, which later grew to unprecedented proportions, broke out. We all fell victim to it—everyone, without regard to color, age, sex, or social status. Fetasha is the Amharic word for search. Suddenly, everyone started searching everyone else. From dawn to dusk, and around the clock, unceasingly, not stopping for breath. The revolution had divided people into camps, and the fighting began. There were no trenches or barricades, no clear lines of demarcation, and therefore anyone could be an enemy. The threatening atmosphere fed on the Amharas’ pathological suspicion. To them, no man could be trusted, not even another Amhara. No one’s word can be trusted, no one can be relied upon, because people’s intentions are wicked and perverse; people are conspirators. Because the Amharic philosophy is pessimistic and sad, their eyes are sad but at the same time watchful and searing, their faces solemn, their features tense, and they can rarely bring themselves to smile.
All of them have weapons; they are in love with them. The wealthy had whole arsenals in their courts, and maintained private armies. In officers’ apartments there were ar senals, too. Machine guns, pistols, boxes of grenades. A couple of years ago, you could buy guns in the stores like any other merchandise. It sufficed to pay for them; nobody asked any questions. The arms of the plebeians were inferior and often quite old: flintlocks, breechloaders, muskets, shotguns, a whole museum to carry on one’s back. Most of these antiques are useless because nobody produces ammunition for them any more. Thus, on the street market the bullet is often worth more than the gun. Bullets are the most valuable currency in that market, more in demand than dollars. After all, what is a dollar but paper? A bullet can save your life. Bullets make your weapons more significant, and that makes you more significant.
A man’s life—what is that worth? Another man exists only to the degree that he stands in your way. Life doesn’t mean much, but it’s better to take it from the enemy before he has time to deliver a blow. All right (and also during the day) there is the sound of shooting, and later the dead lying in the streets. “Negus,” I say to the driver, “they’re shooting too much. It’s not good.” He remains silent, not answering. I don’t know what he thinks. They have learned to draw their guns for any old reason and shoot.
To kill.
And perhaps it could be otherwise. Perhaps none of this is necessary. But they think differently. Their thoughts run not toward life but toward death. At first they talk quietly, then a quarrel breaks out, and the dispute ends in gunfire. Where do so much stubbornness, aggression, and hatred come from? All this without a moment’s thought, without brakes, rolling over the edge of a cliff.
To get things under control, to disarm the opposition, the authorities order a complete fetasha, covering everyone. We are searched incessantly. On the street, in the car, in front of the house, in the house, in the street, in front of the post office, in front of an office building, going into the editor’s office, the movie theater, the church, in front of the bank, in front of the restaurant, in the marketplace, in the park. Anyone can search us, because we don’t know who has the right and who hasn’t, and asking only makes things worse. It’s better to give in. Somebody’s always searching us. Guys in rags with sticks, who don’t say anything, but only stop us and hold out their arms, which is the signal for us to do the same: get ready to be searched. They take everything out of our briefcases and pockets, look at it, act surprised, screw up their faces, nod their heads, whisper advice to each other. They frisk us: back, stomach, legs, shoes. And then what? Nothing, we can go on, until the next spreading of arms, until the next fetasha. The next one might be only a few steps on, and the whole thing starts all over again. The searchers never give you an acquittal, a general clearance, absolution. Every few minutes, every few steps, we have to clear ourselves again.
The most tiring searchers are the ones we meet on the roads when traveling by bus. It happens scores of times. Everybody gets out, and the luggage is torn open and tossed around until it’s in pieces. Every screw gets taken out and everything is spread out on the ground, and then it all gets browsed through slowly and thoroughly. We’re searched, frisked, squeezed. Then the luggage, which has expanded like rising dough, all has to be stuffed back into the bus. At the next fetasha it all gets tossed out again, and clothes, tomatoes, and pots and pans get strewn and kicked around until the scene resembles an impromptu roadside bazaar. The searchers make the trip so miserable that halfway to anywhere you just want to stop the bus and get off, but what do you do then, in the middle of some field high up in mountains that are full of bandits?
Sometimes the searchers work over a whole quarter of the city. That’s trouble. Then it’s the army that does the fetasha looking for ammunition dumps, underground printing presses, and anarchists. During these operations you hear shots and see bodies. If anybody, no matter how innocent, gets in the way, he’ll live through some difficult hours. He’ll walk between the gun barrels with his hands over his head, waiting for his sentence. Usually, however, you have to deal with amateur searchers, and after a while you learn to put up with them. These lonesome searchers hold their own frisks, outside the general plan, lone wolves that they are. We’re walking down the street when a stranger stops us and stretches out his arms. No way out of it; we have to spread ours and get ready. He’ll give us a good feel, pluck around a little bit, give us a squeeze, and tell us we’re free to go on. For a while he must have suspected us; now we’re left in peace. We can forget him and go on. One of the guards in my hotel really enjoyed searching me. Sometimes when I was in a hurry and sprinted straight through the lobby and up the stairs to my room, he’d give chase. Before I could get through the door and lock him out, he’d get a foot in, wriggle in, and do a fetasha. I had fetasha dreams. A multitude of dark, dirty, eager, creeping, dancing, searching hands covered me, squeezing, plucking, tickling, threatening to throttle me, until I awoke in sweat. I couldn’t get back to sleep until morning.
Despite these difficulties, I continued to go into the houses that were opened to me by Teferra. I listened to stories of the Emperor, stories that already seemed to come from another world.
A. M.-M.:
As the keeper of the third door, I was the most important footman in the Audience Hall. The Hall had three sets of doors, and three footmen to open and close them, but I held the highest rank because the Emperor passed through my door. When His Most Exalted Majesty left the room, it was I who opened the door. It was an art to open the door at the right moment, the exact instant. To open the door too early would have been reprehensible, as if I were hurrying the Emperor out. If I opened it too late, on the other hand, His Sublime Highness would have to slow down, or perhaps even stop, which would detract from his lordly dignity, a dignity that me
ant getting around without collisions or obstacles.
G. S.-D.:
His Majesty spent the hour between nine and ten in the morning handing out assignments in the Audience Hall, and thus this time was called the Hour of Assignments. The Emperor would enter the Hall, where a row of waiting dignitaries, nominated for assignment, bowed humbly. His Majesty would take his place on the throne, and when he had seated himself I would slide a pillow under his feet. This had to be done like lightning so as not to leave Our Distinguished Monarch’s legs hanging in the air for even a moment. We all know that His Highness was of small stature. At the same time, the dignity of the Imperial Office required that he be elevated above his subjects, even in a strictly physical sense. Thus the Imperial thrones had long legs and high seats, especially those left by Emperor Menelik, an exceptionally tall man. Therefore a contradiction arose between the necessity of a high throne and the figure of His Venerable Majesty, a contradiction most sensitive and troublesome precisely in the region of the legs, since it is difficult to imagine that an appropriate dignity can be maintained by a person whose legs are dangling in the air like those of a small child. The pillow solved this delicate and all-important conundrum.
I was His Most Virtuous Highness’s pillow bearer for twenty-six years. I accompanied His Majesty on travels all around the world, and to tell the truth—I say it with pride—His Majesty could not go anywhere without me, since his dignity required that he always take his place on a throne, and he could not sit on a throne without a pillow, and I was the pillow bearer. I had mastered the special protocol of this specialty, and even possessed an extremely useful, expert knowledge: the height of various thrones. This allowed me quickly to choose a pillow of just the right size, so that a shocking ill fit, allowing a gap to appear between the pillow and the Emperor’s shoes, would not occur. In my storeroom I had fifty-two pillows of various sizes, thicknesses, materials, and colors. I personally monitored their storage, constantly, so that fleas—the plague of our country—would not breed there, since the consequences of any such oversight could lead to a very unpleasant scandal.
T. L.:
My dear brother, the Hour of Assignments set the whole Palace trembling! For some, it was the trembling of joy, and a deeply sensuous delight; for others, well, it was the trembling of fear and catastrophe, since in that hour His Distinguished Majesty not only handed out prizes and distributed nominations and plums, but also punished, removed from office, and demoted. No, I’ve got it wrong. Really there was no division into happy and frightened ones: joy and fear simultaneously filled the heart of everyone summoned to the Audience Hall, since no one knew what awaited him there.
This uncertainty and obscurity with regard to our mon arch’s intentions caused the Palace to gossip incessantly and lose itself in supposition. The Palace divided itself into factions and coteries that fought incessant wars, weakening and destroying each other. That is exactly what His Benevolent Majesty wanted. Such a balance assured his blessed peace. If one of the coteries gained the upper hand, His Highness would quickly bestow favors on its opponents, restoring the balance that paralyzed usurpers. His Majesty played the keys—a black one and then a white one—and brought from the piano a harmonious melody soothing to his ears. Everyone gave in to such manipulation because the only reason for their existence was the Emperor’s approbation, and if he withdrew it they would disappear from the Palace within the day, without a trace. No, they weren’t anything on their own. They were visible to others only as long as the glamorous light of the Imperial crown shone upon them.
Haile Selassie was a constitutional Chosen One of God, and he could not associate himself with any faction (although he used one or another more than others), but if any one of the favored coteries went too far in its eagerness, the Emperor would scold or even formally condemn it. This was especially so for the extreme factions that our Emperor used to establish order. The Emperor’s speeches were remarkably kindly, gentle, and comforting to the people, who had never heard his mouth form a harsh or angry word. And yet you cannot rule an Empire with kindness. Someone has to check opposing interests and protect the superior causes of Emperor, Palace, and State. That is what the extreme factions, the hard factions, were doing, but because they did not understand the Emperor’s subtle intentions, they slipped into error—specifically the error of overdoing it. Desirous of His Majesty’s approbation, they tried to introduce absolute order, whereas His Supreme Majesty wanted basic order with a margin of disorder on which his monarchical gentleness could exert itself. For this reason, the extremists’ coterie encountered the ruler’s scornful gaze when they tried to cross into that margin.
The three principal factions in the Palace were the aristocrats, the bureaucrats, and the so-called “personal people.” The aristocrats, made up of great landowners and conservative in the extreme, grouped themselves mostly in the Crown Council, and their leader was Prince Kassa, who has since been executed. The bureaucrats, most enlightened and most progressive since some of them had a higher education, filled the ministries and the Imperial offices. The faction of “personal people” was a peculiarity of our regime, created by the Emperor himself. His Supreme Majesty, a partisan of a strong state and centralized power, had to lead a cunning and skillful fight against the aristocratic faction, which wanted to rule in the provinces and have a weak, pliable Emperor. But he could not fight the aristocracy with his own hands, so he always promoted into his circle, as representatives of the people, bright young men from the lowest orders, chosen from the lowest ranks of the plebeians, picked often on little more than a hunch from the mobs that surrounded His Majesty whenever he went among the people. These “personal people” of the Emperor, dragged straight from our desperate and miserable provinces into the salons of the highest courtiers—where they met the undisguised hatred of the long-established aristocrats—served the Emperor with an almost indescribable eagerness, indeed a passion, for they had quickly tasted the splendors of the Palace and the evident charms of power, and they knew that they had arrived there, come within reach of the highest state dignities, only through the will of His Highness. It was to them that the Emperor would entrust the positions requiring greatest confidence: the Ministry of the Pen, the Emperor’s political police, and the superintendency of the Palace were manned by such people. They were the ones who would uncover intrigues and battle the mean, haughty opposition.
Listen here, Mr. Journalist, not only did the Emperor decide on all promotions, but he also communicated each one personally. He alone. He filled the posts at the summit of the hierarchy, and also its lower and middle levels. He appointed the postmasters, headmasters of schools, police constables, all the most ordinary office employees, estate managers, brewery directors, managers of hospitals and hotels—and, let me say it again, he chose them personally. They would be summoned to the Audience Hall for the Hour of Assignments and lined up there in an unending line, because it was a multitude, a multitude of people awaiting the Emperor’s arrival. Each one approached the throne in turn, emotionally stirred, bowing submissively, listening to the Emperor’s decision. Each would kiss the hand of his benefactor and retreat from the presence without turning his back, bowing all the time. The Emperor supervised even the lowliest assignment, because the source of power was not the state or any institution, but most personally His Benevolent Highness. How important a rule that was! A special human bond, constrained by the rules of hierarchy, but a bond nevertheless, was born from this moment spent with the Emperor, when he announced the assignment and gave his blessing, from which bond came the single principle by which His Majesty guided himself when raising people or casting them down: the principle of loyalty.
My friend, you could fill a library with the informants’ reports that flowed into the Emperor’s ears against the person closest to him, Walde Giyorgis, the Minister of the Pen. His was the most perverse, corrupt, repulsive personality ever to have been supported by the floors of our Palace. The very act of submitting a report
against that man threatened one with the grimmest consequences. You can imagine how bad things must have been if, in spite of that, reports kept coming in. But His Highness’s ear was always closed. Walde Giyorgis could do what he wanted, and his cruel self-indulgence knew no limits. And yet, blinded by his own arrogance and impunity, he once took part in the meeting of a conspiratorial faction about which the Palace security service informed His Sublime Majesty. His Majesty waited for Walde Giyorgis to inform him about this misdeed on his own, but Walde never so much as mentioned it—in other words, he violated the principle of loyalty. The next day His Majesty began the Hour of Assignments by dealing with his own Minister of the Pen, a man who almost shared power with His Exalted Majesty. From the second position in the state, Walde Giyorgis fell to the post of a minor functionary in a backward southern province. When he was informed of the assignment—just imagine the surprise and horror he must have been suppressing at that moment—he kissed the hand of his benefactor according to custom, withdrew backward, and left the Palace forever.
Or take a personality like Prince Imru. He was perhaps the most outstanding individual among the elite, a man deserving of the highest honors and positions. (But what of it, since, as I have already mentioned, His Majesty never made appointments on the basis of a person’s talent, but always and exclusively on the basis of loyalty.) Nobody knows why or under what circumstances, but suddenly Prince Imru began to smell of reform, and without asking the Emperor’s permission he gave some of his lands to the peasants. Thus, having kept something secret from the Emperor and acted by his own lights, in an irritating and even provocative way he violated the principle of loyalty. His Benevolent Highness, who had been preparing a supremely honorable office for the prince, had to exile him from the country for twenty years.
The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat Page 3