The Shadow King

by Maaza Mengiste

  He has told each of his leaders to divide the recruits into groups of ten. They number nearly seventy. Not enough to fight an army, but large enough to ambush. Most carry old guns and spears, only a few have newer rifles, none of them have ammunition except what Aklilu has on his belt. They will do what he says because they have pledged their lives to him. He must guard them as possessively as he must guard this land until the time comes to risk everything.

  Tell your weaver I said no, Kidane says, nodding to Aklilu and Seifu to dismiss them. Tell him these are not the emperor’s orders. Go now. Be careful. He salutes the boy and turns to climb down the other side of the steep hill and check Adua’s hooves for packed mud.

  The ground is drying. There’s nothing to slow the Italians down. The rainy season is over. A flock of birds drifts past, soaring languidly in the calm sky. At the base of the hill, he stares toward Gondar and Gojjam, toward the border of Eritrea and the Gash River, tries to imagine all the valleys and farmland between where he stands and where the Italians camp. At his back is the low rumble of his men marching toward their tents. Somewhere beyond where he can see is the flat-topped silhouette of the watchtower at Fort Baldessari. There, an Italian soldier is pacing on patrol, a speck of dark bleeding into the same spot of moonlight that falls across his horse now. Kidane adjusts his shamma and swings his hand through the threads of dust rising before him. He lets it sink against the feeble light of the clouded moon. It is useless to declare that even the smallest kernel of sand belongs to Ethiopia. He pets Adua’s neck and lays his head against it.

  Photo

  The cook: a stout figure in a long abesha chemise bent over a large cooking pot. In her right hand is a stirring spoon. In her left she grasps the edge of the pot, tilts it slightly toward her bent legs. She crouches on the ground, the hem of her dress draping like a tent, the rough lines of her wide feet almost visible beneath the cotton. She squints against the harsh sun and her neck angles as if she means to get away from the photographer’s gaze. She is hunched as if trapped. She is frowning in the way that only she knows how to do, in the way that only those who know her can interpret: her mouth is a straight line, her eyes are lowered, her chin juts as if daring to be hit. She grips her spoon too low on the handle and it is this that hints to Hirut the true extent of her turmoil as the camera points her way.

  There are men sitting on their haunches behind her, their short hair just starting to spike with growing curls. They are like a mountain range rising over the cook’s shoulders. From the length of their hair, the war is no more than a few weeks old, they have yet to approach the worst of it. There is Yasin, without the scar he will get near his eye. There is Eskinder, still with supple, unburnt skin. Next to them is Seifu and his son, Tariku. Seifu is turned away slightly, still defiant without a hint of the sorrow that will come. He is the only one who is looking at the cook, who turns in her direction with a sympathetic gaze. He has dropped his menacing air long enough to glance at her with a father’s protectiveness. Just behind him is Aklilu, leaning forward while the others are straight-backed. He is unafraid to show his disdain, unashamed of his curiosity. The same light that dwarfs the cook draws the eye in his direction. He stares as if he wants to charge, as if he understands the camera’s weakness. As if he already knows the difference between what one sees and what is true. He is the only one whose mouth turns up on one side in both a smile and in mockery.

  On the back is a photographer’s stamp that has faded over the years. There were several photographers roaming their area, shooting pictures and trading them with one another. Ettore has written: Una schiava abissina, an Abyssinian slave, but this is not one of his. He has never been near the cook and Aklilu and Tariku and Seifu at the same time. He has never been allowed the privilege of standing in front of those great fighters in complete and unquestioned safety. He would not have taken that photo and walked away alive.

  HIRUT IS CLOSE ENOUGH TO SEE THE BOY RACING ACROSS THE SPINE of the mountain, his heels flying, that chest a swell of bony ribs and heavy air. In the ebbing night, he comes first as sound: the snap of a branch, a scrape of foot on stone, a hiss curving against the soft orange light. He is a fleeting mirage speeding over rough hills, swiveling to avoid steep drops, shallow gasps stalling in the thick breeze.

  Kidane’s not far, Aster says. That’s a messenger heading toward Kossoye, she adds.

  Now Aster will hurry toward the back of the line as she’s done for the last two days of their march. She will encourage the women carrying water and blankets to quicken their steps. She might even shoulder a heavy stack of firewood herself. She will coax them all to move at this rapid pace that is leaving them drenched in sweat, huddled together when they sleep, too tired to do more than murmur a prayer, then shut their eyes to the bright sun.

  They have walked at night to avoid the planes that have begun to ride the crests of mountains and dip into valleys. They have hidden in caves and tucked themselves at the base of tall boulders and dense trees. They have done their best to hide from those glinting large windows as frightening as the open eyes of Satan. Aster has told them not to fear. She has urged them to be brave. The land will protect us, she has said to them repeatedly, Every stone will come to our service, every river will flow in our direction. Keep walking, sisters, raise your head and straighten your backs, move as our mothers once did when they, too, went to war.

  They are close to fifty women, some of them the relatives and servants of those who have joined Kidane’s army. They are young and old, several speaking more than one of the languages in the area surrounding Gondar and Gojjam. They have been stripped down to their most essential ability: to carry what cannot move on its own, to shoulder weight and drag it forward. They have done it without complaint, heeding Aster’s instructions as if they cannot imagine doing anything else. It is the cook who has been unable to keep her thoughts to herself.

  These slaves don’t realize they don’t have to do this? she has asked in an angry voice that refused to whisper. We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to anymore. Let’s leave, she said again and again. But the faces that stared back at her were startled rather than furious, resigned rather than uplifted by her continual urgings to walk down the hill and never return.

  Berhe is the only grown man with them. He carries the cook’s crate of medicine and bandages, trying to hide his rattling breaths beneath periodic coughs. Close at their heels are the women with stretchers and blankets, wool scarves and food supplies. They are the ones who will carry the wounded, bury the dead, and feed Kidane’s army. Farther back, behind the children too young to join the army, there are those taking up the loads that drop along the way, carrying spears and shields and serving as their guards, those who stubbornly insist they will fight with Aster when she joins the men in battle.

  Aster motions toward the women in the back. We have to reach them before daylight, she says. She turns to Hirut. Go see what’s above.

  Hirut moves ahead, climbing as fast as she can, cautious of any noise. By the final curve around the mountain, there is the dense odor of a dying fire. Hirut stops. Footsteps behind her pause. Silence trickles in. She turns, surprised to find Aster pushing past her. She did not hear the woman during the entire climb up.

  Wait here, Aster whispers.

  Hirut is quiet enough to hear the noises that bloom only at night, still enough to feel the snap of a cool breeze against her skin: the dampness is dissipating, the dry winds are rising. It is the season after the heavy rains, after the muddy roads and saturated paths that kept the enemy at bay all these months. Hirut feels the chill scrape against the back of her neck and slide down her arm. She shivers. And it is that shiver that rumor will mistake for an answer when Kidane calls out: Who’s there?

  Kidane steps out from the shadowed dark and he holds out his hand with a look that could be relief, that could be confusion, that could be, as some will later claim, even love.

  Little One, he says. You’re their leader now?


  Hirut does not call him by his military title, Dejazmach, nor does she use the polite form of address, Gash, and she doesn’t let the even more formal Ato escape when she looks up at him. She is so glad to have found relief from the frightening march full of sharp cliffs and dangerous planes that she lets slip from her mouth what her mother has called him since she was a child.

  Kidu, she says, and when he smiles, she grabs his hand and takes that fateful step toward him. It is all so natural, so simply done, that neither of them notices Aster rushing back.

  You’re here. Aster’s voice catches at the end.

  Kidane pulls away from Hirut and looks at the approaching women, the numbers of them, the way they gather around the hill in absolute stillness. In the dark, their long white dresses pulse a soft, creamy paleness.

  I need to find a place for them, Kidane says. I was worried about you, he adds. He envelops Aster in a quick embrace. She lifts her face and he lowers his and Hirut turns her head in embarrassment.

  The cook walks to him. I’m leaving, she says. She takes a deep breath. I’ve had enough. Tell her. I kept my promise, she adds.

  Hirut smells the warm musk drifting from the other woman, carrying the scents of turmeric and garlic and a pungent sweetness that Hirut suspects might be Aster’s old perfume, a bottle that went missing weeks ago. Hirut looks at the cook quickly and as if reading her thoughts, the cook averts her face. Berhe moves next to Hirut, frowning.

  Aster cannot hide her surprise. What did she say? she asks. She turns to the other women. Go find your places for the night, the camp’s just ahead. Then she focuses again on the cook. What did she just say?

  Kidane puts an arm around the cook’s shoulder. I know how she is, he says. But this isn’t the right time.

  The cook pulls away from him. I’ve paid more than I should for her mistakes. She speaks to him with her back to Aster. You’ll see what she’ll do, you’ll see what she’ll do to this one next. The cook motions to Hirut.

  She wants to forget but I saved her, Aster says, talking past the cook’s shoulder. She keeps trying to forget.

  The cook says softly, I shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

  And what choice did I have?

  As if no one else has suffered worse. The cook folds her arms and stares at Kidane. I’m leaving.

  You’re staying, Aster says.

  Berhe takes the cook’s hand and raises it to his cheek. The gesture deflates the cook’s anger. She blinks rapidly to stop the tears. Her eyes are wet, filled with an anguish Hirut has never seen before.

  Over there. Berhe motions around the bend. Come on, and you can’t leave without me anyway.

  I’m leaving and you’re going too, the cook says, but she follows him.

  Hirut, Kidane says, go help the other women. He pulls Aster close and they begin speaking in quick, urgent tones.

  Hirut goes to find Berhe and the cook, and sees them sitting on a large stone, their backs to her. They are leaning toward each other, the cook’s hand still in his, talking quietly. She clears her throat and calls out to them, but they pretend not to hear. Hirut stands by herself, looking at their silhouettes. Then she goes to find the others in the camp.

  Chorus

  They dragged the cook by the hair down the dirt road. This is all she will let us say: that they dragged her by the hair while young Aster sobbed on her knees and begged her father to stop, please stop, it’s not her fault, it was my idea, please stop. We can add this: that the cook was dragged by her hair down the road in the night because she listened to a young girl’s desperation, she understood it, she knew what it meant to be taken from home and brought to a family and made to live there. She knew the slow death it was, and though young Aster was the daughter of the man who bought the cook and demanded certain things from her, she would help Aster escape the marriage she was destined from childhood to enter, she would take her somewhere far away and take herself from this place as well. They would both be free.

  But the cook did not understand that when two are in the wrong, it is sometimes only one who is punished, it is sometimes that one who will drop to the ground on that road lit only by a sad moon and bear witness to the fury of one man who represents many. The cook hears Aster pleading and she hears Aster promising but she knows that Aster’s punishment will come in another way: it will come in following the narrow road set for her. And she knows that after this night, this girl and she will never speak of this foolish hope they once shared, that they will be ashamed of it, because that hope is now lying in the middle of a lost road, battered beyond recognition. And she knows, too, that after this, they will be bound together by that shame, held in a pact so strong that no man will ever be able to break it. What they can do to a human body is wondrous, that is also what the cook is thinking as she is beaten until every thought drifts away: This body is wondrous even in its ugliness.

  This is the other truth about that night they tried to run away: Aster could hear the cook crying out beneath the blows. She could hear her own name shouted like a curse into the night. There was her father’s voice: Tell me where you two were going before I kill you. There were the cook’s demands for him to stop, I’ve had enough, I’m going home, Aster, stop your father, come tell him, stop hiding. There was the cook folding her body into soil. There was the long road buckling beneath Aster’s father’s rage. Even terrified as she was, Aster could have stood between them and stopped her father but she did not. Instead, she chose to wait and witness how a grown man’s fist drove into a woman’s soft stomach. She wanted to understand the breaking point of a strong woman’s will. She wanted to learn what it took to splinter a woman’s pride with one’s own hands. She wanted to calculate the price of rebellion. She would stand there and behold this woman who shouted then screamed then moaned then grew quiet and she would realize that never once did she hear this woman beg. Aster would discover that night the true measure of courage. She would vow to mimic it herself with a husband she did not yet know, and she would remind herself of her lineage and blood and her own inherent worth. Only after all of this would she grab her father’s arm and plead for his forgiveness.

  THE FERENJ STARES AT HIRUT FROM ACROSS THE FIRE PIT, HIS THIN face puckering at the mouth. He is chewing slowly on a leaf of khat while pushing his large sunglasses farther on top of his head. When they slip off, he tucks them into his shirt pocket and points to the tray of tea and bread Hirut carries. He shakes his head and pats his stomach. Hirut stares at him as Kidane motions for her to set down the tray. The two men face each other, a long black bag between them.

  Take the guns out over there, where it’s flat, Kidane says to the stranger, pointing several steps away. Then he speaks in the foreigner’s language.

  The ferenj says something, a long series of hisses leaving his stained lips.

  Hirut cannot hide her fascination with his pallid skin, his blue eyes, the livid cuts that dot the back of his hands. He has been peeled of all color, left raw by sun and wind. The whites of his eyes, rimmed in red, blend too easily with his pupils.

  Jacques doesn’t want his weapons on the ground, he has to sell them, Kidane says to her. Let him have your netela.

  Kidane has not been in camp since their arrival three days ago. While the women have organized supplies and cooked under Aster’s command, he has been with his troops in the mountains just beyond this plateau, the moonlit clouds of dust in the valley the only hint of the training they were doing in the shelter of night. Since his return at dawn, all he has been able to talk about as he moved from one group of women to the next are Ethiopia’s lack of guns and the Italian ships arriving in Massawa, loaded with ammunition and tanks. The war has begun, confrontations are escalating across the region, and all his men own are old Mausers and outdated Albins. What good is a rusted Beljig or Wujigra, he has cursed. What am I supposed to do with these useless spears and our lack of bullets? And now, here he is with a ferenj, looking even more exhausted than before, speaking with a hoarse voi
ce, almost swaying while seated.

  It’s not going to be enough, Jacques, Kidane says quietly, becoming still. None of this is enough.

  Hirut swallows her resentment as she slides the netela from around her shoulders and feels a brisk chill slap against her chest. Her ugly wound pulses in the cold, still red and painful-looking.

  Jacques grins, nudging his chin at her as she lays the netela in front of him. He unties the long black bag to reveal a set of rifles. He darts a look toward Hirut then lays the guns on her netela. There are five new weapons, shinier and sleeker than anything Hirut has ever seen.

  From somewhere, gunshots strike against the brightening morning sky. Hirut glances up but there is no sign of an army approaching, no rumble of planes or convoys. Jacques points at her and Kidane turns. She feels their eyes dip to her scar. She crosses her arms over her chest.

  Jacques turns to spit and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. It is a long, slow drag across his lips. He searches for something just past Hirut’s shoulder.

  The ferenj says something to Kidane, his teeth clamped down, his jaw tight.

  Kidane shakes his head, slowly at first, then quickly. He is angry.

  What’s he saying? Aster looks between the two men. You know I don’t know French.

  The sun highlights the hints of henna in Aster’s braided hair. It splashes a glow across her cheeks. Her eyes are liquid in the bright light. Her full mouth curves into a frown. Jacques keeps stealing glances at her even as he points to Hirut.

  Gunshots burst and echo against the horizon again. They all lean forward, startled, and stare in the direction of the sound.

  Near Amegiagi, Aster says softly.

  Closer to Bambelo, the foreigner says. He turns back to Kidane. Again, he points at Hirut.