A flash of light: so quick that it is easy to miss, just a flicker of the sun ducking behind clouds. A signal to wait. Kidane puts down his field glasses and crouches low. His fighters are farther up, pressed flat against the ground, barely breathing, fully alert. His heart lurches again. He has brought them this far safely, and now he will do as his father showed him: he will spend the moments before battle emptying himself of everything but that singular task of eliminating his enemy. Every worry must be pushed deep into your muscles to make yourself stronger. Every fear has to be chewed and swallowed to harden your stomach into stone. Use yourself as a weapon and charge without hesitation. Close your eyes at night, Kidane my son, and practice this again and again. Kidane looks up, makes the sign of the cross. He touches the center of his chest where he is building his armor, then waits for the signal to launch the assault.
Voices float up from the approaching battalions, shouts volleying back and forth in Amharic, Arabic, Somali, Tigrinya, Italian. The advance column is marching faster than the left and right flanks. It is drawing ahead of the others. The Italian center battalion is lagging behind. They are all having a hard time staying together; the line has stretched and large gaps are forming. There is, beyond the gorge, in the direction the Italians have come, the bray of camels and the slow, grinding noise of a supply column still making its way. That means there are rear guards and they haven’t caught up yet. That means the Italians have an advance guard and a rear guard that are dangerously disconnected from the center.
Kidane dares to lift his binoculars. He sweeps his gaze across the gorge and finds what he is looking for: the Italian commander. The officer stops his men to let the tail of the middle column catch up. Then the Italian raises his own binoculars and stares in Kidane’s direction. Kidane freezes. He turns to warn his men to draw back, and sees Aklilu has crawled almost next to him without a sound. Kidane holds his breath, sweat collecting on his forehead. He can feel the tightness in his chest. The officer strides to the edge of the gorge. He angles his binoculars up. Kidane tenses. The man knows something is amiss and it comes in the form of Aklilu’s murderous gaze burrowing through grass and foliage to drill into the officer’s chest like a bullet. It is impossible for the ferenj to see them, but a good soldier knows to look for those things he cannot see.
Bekafa’s whistle: two sturdy notes, clear and loud—birdcalls needling through wind. The Italian tilts his head. He turns in a slow circle, one hand slowly rising as the whistle comes again: the same two notes. The Italian drops his hand and his shout is a shrill clarion call to battle. Kidane motions Aklilu, and Aklilu signals Seifu, and Seifu whistles for Amha, and Amha motions and his fighters are sliding on their bellies toward the left flank, and as Kidane raises his hand and brings it down in the midst of soaring birdcalls, Eskinder and Yasin and all his other soldiers obey and raise themselves up, giants birthed from stone, and race swiftly down the mountain, surefooted and white-clad, as the Italian officer in the gorge spins, screaming orders and curses as he watches these men, silent as phantoms, rise out of the earth.
First: a ringing in his ears, then the piercing clarity of stunned silence. The loud roar of an angry wind, then a bird’s melodic call. There is his chest, heavy as a boulder, and his legs moving light as feathers. As Kidane rushes down the mountainside into the gorge, he feels it all crashing through him: the ecstasy and elation, the sway between catastrophe and calm. The world slides free from his grasp. A tunneled path opens in front of him and soon he is racing past the chaos toward a slender figure in the waning light. It is Dawit, hoisting the Wujigra that Kidane gave him, turning to look at him, both proud and disoriented, before pivoting to face the enemy again. Dawit shouts Hailu’s name like a war cry and Kidane watches, mesmerized as Dawit aims with perfect precision and pulls the trigger.
Kidane braces for the thunderclap of a discharging bullet. There is nothing else but this, he thinks, there is no one else but this one. It is an old warrior’s song, an ancient refrain sung before a battle, a father’s lullaby to an adoring son. Then he locks eyes with Dawit, and hears clearly the horrified whisper: But it doesn’t work? And then Dawit is grasping for him desperately, flailing in empty air while calling Kidane’s name. His leg explodes into splintered flesh, bone rips out of place, and Dawit falls, splattered in his own blood.
There is nothing else but this: Kidane lifting his knife at Dawit’s attacker, his own gun forgotten on his shoulder as he lunges forward before the ascaro has time to aim once more. There is no one else but this one, this ascaro straightening tall in the face of certain death, refusing to yield to the knife thrust with such ferocious strength into the center of his uniformed chest. And the two of them spiral in the momentary quiet: ethereal and warm.
Dejazmach. Dejazmach!
They are calling for him, his men who have followed him to this wretched place. They are asking for his help while he stands over this felled body and those eyes staring at him and reaching out in a gesture of love. What is there to do but drop to his knees and bring Dawit close and let him slump like a small boy against his chest? What is a father to do, but this?
Help me, Dawit says. Where’s Hailu? Where’s my brother?
Dejazmach!
He lets go of Dawit and staggers to his feet, his trousers stained in blood. He sees Aklilu stepping over a writhing body, two rifles slung over his shoulder. Shame chews through him but Kidane, whole and strong, fierce and unflagging, ignores the noise in his head and the ache in his jaw and screams his father’s name until ahead of him, beside him, behind him, he sees Checole the great son of Lemma, the eldest son of the first and greatest Kidane. They are so close their flesh melds together and then his father steps into his bones and settles behind his eyes and Kidane, fortified and enraged, jumps into a tangle of fighting men while his father watches, proud.
And then comes the tirumba.
The horn blows and only those who know its language understand: Kidane feels his heart expand. His men pick up speed. His legs grow more nimble. His hands grip his new rifle, and as he flings himself on top of a stumbling Italian soldier, Kidane begins to laugh. He laughs and shouts his father’s name. He laughs and shouts his own name. He laughs and calls Aklilu and Seifu and Eskinder and Amha and Yasin and as he shoots at a charging ascaro, the earth grows wide and he is running once more toward light as hot as the sun and when the horn sounds again, he knows it signals for more men, invisible until now, to descend on the Italian columns and suffocate them.
It isn’t until later, staring at the field wet with blood, that the fear sets in, that he shivers in the sun, teeth chattering, and wants nothing but Aster’s embrace. Kidane staggers back up the mountain, hurrying before Aklilu and Seifu look for him, and lies flat on the ground, on his back, and stares at the unmarred sky. Below, he hears Hailu’s mournful voice breaking free of silence, weaving past wind to find his ear: Dawit! Kidane shuts his eyes. His father breathes into his ear, his mouth pressed close to his cheek: What did you think it took?
Interlude
Some cities hold blood, Haile Selassie thinks. They overflow with dead thoughts and the cries of terrified girls. Some places call out to trouble the dreams of grieving fathers. Emperor Haile Selassie shakes his head and pulls himself back to the present. He is outside in his garden, surrounded by bougainvillea bursting with color, facing a rosebush in shy bloom. His dog is chewing an old bone at his feet and ahead, little Mekonnen is chasing imaginary enemies while hurling invisible spears. If he turns his head even slightly, he will see her. Zenebwork. His late daughter. She is standing in her wedding dress, a girl decorated like a woman, trembling with her hands folded in front of her. If he looks, she will move. She will beckon him toward Mekelle and point at Gugsa and hiss the man’s name and say: I begged you to save me, Abbaba.
Haile Selassie looks down to avoid her. In his hand is an Italian newspaper with a front-page photograph of Gugsa seated next to de Bono at a table, the two of them peering intently at a large map. Th
e article below announces that Italian troops have entered Mekelle to applause and salutes, with Gugsa to greet them. Haile Selassie doesn’t want to think of three years ago—not now – but he must, this much he owes his daughter, Zenebwork. He knows she is standing at the edge of his vision, just steps away from the rosebush she loved. She is shivering in fear, clasping her hands as if it is still 1932 and three years have not passed. As if even now he can stop the wedding he arranged for her, and send Gugsa back to Mekelle alone.
Leave me, he says underneath his breath.
Mekelle has fallen. That cursed city that witnessed his daughter’s last moments has surrendered to Italy, and the man who had been her husband has embraced Ethiopia’s enemy.
Go, he says.
But she doesn’t want to go. He can tell by the breeze blowing across the rosebush. He can tell by the ringing stillness that follows. She is waiting for him to say more and she will not leave until he says it. In the year since her death in the home of Gugsa, she has learned patience. She has learned to sit through the night and come to him in sunshine. She has learned to hold her anger and smile. She has learned to be the fourteen-year-old girl she was before he wed her to a cruel man close to fifty.
It is almost eight hundred kilometers from Addis Ababa to Mekelle, imagine how long it takes by train. That was what he said as Menen pleaded with him to bring their daughter home. It was what he said as Zenebwork kept sending panicked messages to them. It is almost eight hundred kilometers. By the time we even get to the train station, she will be fine. She is just homesick, she is not used to being a wife. He should have flown to her. He should have boarded his plane and brought his army and stormed Gugsa’s palace. He should have swept into her room and gathered her in his arms and banished Gugsa to prison after breaking his bones one by one.
I’m sorry, he says, because it is the only thing he knows to say to make her leave him alone. I’m sorry, lijé. I’m so sorry.
She begins to retreat grudgingly. He can feel her anger wafting past him, warm as a breath.
She will be with him to the end of his days, he knows this. She will be the reason that even in the best of moments, he will move with the weight of his regrets, that he will mumble apologies to an invisible intruder and start awake at night calling for a plane to Mekelle.
He reads the telegram again: Mekelle has fallen. Bekafa’s ambush was a success with Kidane’s help.
When Zenebwork died a year ago from causes they claimed came from childbirth, only two years after her wedding to Gugsa, he flew her body home from Mekelle for burial. Not one more day in that wretched city, he had promised a weeping Menen. She will not see another sunset in that coward’s house. Gugsa had tried to insist on burying her in Mekelle. How close Haile Selassie had come to ordering the man killed. How close he had come to acting like the father of a dead daughter. His advisers had moved in to calm him down. Kill him and Zenebwork’s life will be wasted. Kill him and the families remain divided. Kill him and reveal your weakness. Girls die from many causes: childbirth, illness, disease, men. She is but one child, look how many you have left. Mourn for her like an emperor. Crush Gugsa beneath the weight of his own arrogance. Smile at him but shower others with titles; never make him Ras. Praise others while never speaking his name. Grind him down in increments. Haile Selassie had listened to the advice, but he had not anticipated Gugsa’s betrayal. The marriage should have permanently cemented the powerful families. His measured benevolence should have counted for something. He had thought Zenebwork’s death would have forced Gugsa into an obligatory allegiance fueled by guilt. But he had been wrong and now he has lost even Mekelle, that city of ghostly daughters.
There’s a message, Your Majesty, his aide says. The young man is at the door, leaning outside, unaware that a blade of sunlight cuts across the growing bloom of his curly hair.
Haile Selassie walks back inside, pretending patience and calm.
The aide ticks off a series of updates from the latest telegrams as they walk down the corridor to his office: they’re finished with the ceremony at Mekelle. Seyoum’s afraid Gugsa will cut communication lines, he’ll keep calling for as long as he can.
Inside his office, Haile Selassie sits in his chair and folds his hands on his desk and continues to listen.
The aide turns a proud face to the emperor. Your Majesty, he says, Bekafa cut through columns near Debark, Kidane helped.
You told us already, the emperor says. Then Haile Selassie allows himself to think through what is being said. He ordered no one to move against the enemy in the gorge. He did not tell Kidane to take his men to reinforce Bekafa. He has to slide his hands beneath the desk to hide their shaking. He is losing control of his country in pieces, one region at a time.
The aide shakes his head, visibly disturbed, and brings a telegram so close to his face it brushes against his nose. He rubs the back of his neck. They’re using poison? he asks. He lowers the paper to the desk carefully, as if it will explode. He is suddenly drawn, pale. Gas? he repeats. His voice shakes. There was a reconnaissance plane, or it says reconnaissance plane but it can’t be because it dropped poison. Mussoloni’s son was flying. They targeted civilians. Women and children. Rivers.
That’s not correct, Haile Selassie says, even as a part of him is tumbling into that cruel revelation. Verify this and come back, he adds. He makes no mention of the aide’s refusal to call the Italian by his proper name. Mussoloni: the deliberate mispronunciation has spread across the country, started by those who did not know better and continued by those who do. It is another sign of his people’s rebellion, another sign that they are trying to fight in every way that they can.
As his aide walks out the door, caught between bafflement and horror, Haile Selassie presses himself against his desk and leans into the sturdy wood until he can almost push aside the thoughts of what it means to pour poison gas on human beings. He digs himself deeper against the slat of wood and the buttons on his jacket burrow into the bony curve of his sternum. A splinter of pain shoots into his head and briefly, there is nothing else to think about but that discomfort.
Photo
A slender line of lorries threading through the hills. Helmets dusty and pale in the glare of afternoon sun. A narrow road dug out of rock and dirt, clinging to the edge of a breathtaking drop shrouded in fog. It is all there in front of the tired, sunburnt Italians: the road to victory, the winding path toward certain glory. Indro Montanelli, Herbert Matthews, Evelyn Waugh will look through binoculars at that fragile route creeping steadily from Asmara closer to Addis Ababa and speak of the sun and the flies, of heat and altitude, of decrepit huts and unwashed natives. They will complain and scoff at the feeble offerings of Abyssinia. They will point toward Asmara, then Massawa, then across the Red Sea toward Rome and declare: There is no hope for this place but Il Duce, no dreams greater than those of Benito Mussolini. But old Ato Wolde and his beloved Weizero Nunush, stepping out of their small hut to gather eggs to sell to these ferenj soldiers, blasting through their village in endless convoys, will look toward those same hills, gesture toward that same sea, and proclaim: There is nothing that can come from this but blood and more blood.
KIDANE OPENS THE NEWSPAPER IN HIS HANDS AND SHUTS HIS EYES. He has only imagined a signaling light in the dawning horizon but still, the dread wraps around him again. Though the ambush is over, his heart beats louder, and he holds himself rigid as Aklilu and Seifu peer over his shoulder. Any unexpected sound might force him to his feet, ready to charge. Aklilu points to two of the pictures on the front page. In one, beaming Italian officers and soldiers stand around an awkward-looking Gugsa. In the other, a dignified Haile Selassie stares out from behind a desk. The weak campfire flings a tepid glow across the page.
What does it say? Aklilu asks.
Kidane glosses over the articles quickly. The French newspaper emphasizes the military fanfare and Gugsa’s welcome, but a smaller article speaks of the bombing of nearby villages where women and children are repor
ted killed. One line talks of an Ethiopian rebellion thwarted by Italians near Mekelle. Another line is reserved for what the paper calls a small skirmish near Debark that saw Italians retreat.
The sharp scent of gunpowder mingles with the campfire, floating like a dry patch down Kidane’s throat. He coughs and for a second he sees him again: Dawit, glorious and fearless, charging at the enemy, that old Wujigra in his hands, his eyes ablaze with a hatred so pure that for a moment, the ascaro draws back before he lifts his weapon and aims. Kidane holds his breath until the memory passes: it grows clearer with each remembering.
There was a time when he would not have shied away from bearing witness to the pain he caused. Always look at the blood you spill, let this be training for later, hold her while she trembles so you can feel your own might. That had been his father’s instructions on his wedding night. He had done as he was told. He had moved through that large bedroom like a man unconquered and unconquerable, and Aster had given in, then learned to meet his needs with love.
We have to leave men behind, Kidane says quietly.
We can’t move Dawit, he won’t last long as it is, Dejazmach, Aklilu says. He is visibly shocked. Hailu insists on taking him with us down the hill, he continues. I promised him we would.
Shadows scallop deep lines around Aklilu’s mouth. The younger man has spent most of his day inside the caves, checking on injured men, sending some back with villagers and burying others. He still wears his bloodstained tunic with a streak across his chest that marks the failed path of a bayoneted rifle. He has circles beneath his eyes and his gauntness gives his handsome features the solemnity of a monk. The three days since the ambush have taken a greater toll on him than the battle itself. He seems to have aged years.
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