She grinned at the compliment.
“Your mother,” she said, “what food she cooks?”
“Injera,” I said. “Stews filled with spices. And eggs. Scrambled, like this.” Should I tell her I had never before had eggs for the morning meal? Should I tell her they were a rare and precious treat?
She nodded. “She makes this food well?”
“Yes, very good. Etheye is the best cook in all of Ethiopia.” The woman’s face fell slightly. I had not meant to cause offense. “Exactly as good as what you have made,” I added.
My words restored her real smile that showed a gap between two of her front teeth.
When I finished the last of the spiced, sweet tea, she said, “You go. Now. At the mill.”
Was I to work, then? Was I to earn the eggs this woman had cooked?
14
The mill was shrouded in a haze of dust even though the large doors were open. Fine powder covered everything — the floor, the walls, the windows high in the roof, and the air tasted of it. The cobwebs that swayed in the slight breeze were heavy with it. Even the workers were sifted with white or reddish brown, depending on what they were grinding.
There were four workstations lined up in a row, where men hefted sacks on their shoulders and poured grain into funnels. Pulled by a wide spinning belt with a twist in the middle, cement discs that looked as wide as I was tall revolved around each other to crush the kernels into flour. The sound from the motors that drove them was deafening, and the reek of diesel was enough to make me wish I had not eaten. I had never thought before of where flour came from, or how it was made.
A man stooped near each motor, watched it closely. One poured grain into the machine, another scooped the ground flour into sacks. The chaff, I noticed, spat out the side of the building. But through all of the noise and dust and putrid smells filtered the rhythmic rise and fall of men’s voices in song.
Outside the big front doors was a long line of people in the rough dress of farmers. Some had sacks of grain at their feet. There were oxen with wide horns and braying donkeys hitched to carts piled with grain. Men lounged on sacks or leaned against the front of the building, smoking and waiting to load or carry purchases. Voices raised and arms moved in a flurry as customers bartered and argued over prices.
What was I doing here? What was I supposed to do?
“They tell you where you go. Tomorrow,” the wife of Kofi’s cousin had told me.
I picked up a broom leaning in a corner and began the futile work of sweeping the mill floor, moving the broom to the rhythm of the men’s voices.
“No! No! No!” A man scrambled to me and snatched the broom from my hand. The white powder in his hair made him look prematurely old. “My work!” he said.
“I would like to help,” I said. “I have nothing to do.” He shook his head.
“No help!” He moved the bristles back and forth in swift motions that raised low clouds of dust, and he looked at me with fear.
Then I understood. He thought I would take away his job.
Outside, I discovered I was not in the country as I had expected, but still in the city. There was no wall or gate. Most of the buildings had low flat roofs with cylindrical metal tanks on top to collect rainwater, and like the house part of the mill, most were made of mud.
The goats I had seen the night before munched from a pile of husks of wheat and teff. Others rummaged near the base of scraggly trees in the yard. One nibbled the ear of another, while a goat with soft eyes and a slight, friendly-looking smile tilted its head to look at me.
I thought of Ishi. I stroked its ears when the goat pressed its head against my hand, then wiggled its lips to nibble the edge of my jean jacket.
The bald-headed children ran in the yard with a burlap sack, trying to fill it with air. I took a step toward them, but the cousin’s wife dropped her basket and ran to me.
“No here!” she said. She lifted her arms to cover my shoulders, swirled her dress around me, and pushed me toward the building. “No be see!”
“Nobesee?” I asked. She shook her head and glanced over both shoulders.
“Go! In!” She motioned with the back of her hands. I entered the building and when I looked back, she was again busy with her work.
Nobesee. Do not be seen.
I stayed, then, in the back room among the bulging sacks of grain and flour. The men who worked at the mill, I learned, were former soldiers released from their posts when the government changed. But they told me that here, at the home of Kofi’s cousin, I would be safe. They told me they kept their weapons, the useful AK-47s, that they were not just dumb workers who bowed before customers, ground their grain and carried the sacks to the waiting vehicles or carts.
“We protect you,” an elder worker told me, his voice quiet and solemn. He had a wide puckered scar that ran from his temple to his nose. “Never worry.”
“Do you have bullets?” I whispered, for I knew that while guns were plenty, bullets were scarce.
The ex-soldier nodded. Smoke from his cigarette drifted from his nose and from his mouth when he spoke.
“Do not worry,” he said.
I found the old soldier again the next day. The mill was closed. The machines quiet. No clouds of dust made it hard to breathe. The only sounds were of men talking in groups and, nearby, slapping down playing cards.
The scarred soldier sat on the floor, his back supported by a bag of grain. He watched the gray smoke from his cigarette drift to the ceiling as if it was incense. I sat beside him. His chest was nearly as thin as mine, but his shoulders and arms were thick and rounded by muscle.
“Why don’t you leave? Why not return home?” I asked.
“To go back to the village? That solves nothing,” he said.
“But to go back to farming. You could raise food for your family.”
“How to farm with no seed? When you plant, but must give the harvest to the landlord? That be a slave. To labor with no hope of change.”
“But here you have nothing. You sleep on sacks of grain.”
“Here, Uncle lets us stay. We work for him, yes. We make money with the strength of our bodies. But, we no be slaves. You see, him.” He nodded his chin toward the man who moved slowly and slept often. “He no work hard. It be a choice to move slow, to sleep, rather than to work. Uncle no make us work. It be a choice.”
“I don’t understand.” But I thought of the cousins who hid in our secret room so they wouldn’t be taken for the army. Without Gashe’s protection, what choice had they?
Had these men who worked now at the mill been forced to be soldiers?
“No one get to Uncle. No one get to you,” he said. He tapped the end of his cigarette to extinguish it and put the butt in his pocket. “Nothing to happen in this place. We protect it.”
15
The tomorrow of the cousin’s wife was not the literal tomorrow, but a day in the future. When it finally came, it brought with it Etheye, Kofi, a dark-green four-wheel-drive vehicle called a Nissan Pathfinder, and two strong men.
Etheye’s face was covered with nearly as many welts as mine, as if she, too, had fought an army of bedbugs. Her left forearm was encased in a plaster cast. But she glowed with joy as she ran to me like a child with her arms open wide, singing la-la-la-la-la-la loudly and calling my name. I felt the same happiness rising in me, like steam from a boiling pot. I rushed to meet her. She had come to take me home.
Etheye held me too long, pressing our bodies together, her cast heavy on my shoulder. Then she kissed me over and over, so many times that I wanted to swat her away and wipe them off.
“My son, my son, my son,” she repeated as if it had been years and not days since we had seen each other. She ran her hand all over my hair and my face, then left her palm to linger on my jaw.
I looked past her to see the sport-utility vehicle with the spare can
s of gas strapped to the back. Ishi would be so jealous when we drove into the garden. I would remember every detail of my stay at the mill and the journey. I would tell my brothers about it slowly, drawing out each piece of the story.
Etheye stroked my jaw with her thumb, then took both of my hands in hers.
“You have need to go. To go far away.” Her voice was so quiet, it took my attention. I looked at her closely, not understanding. She was here, wasn’t she, to take me home?
“You go to my father. In the country. Where it be safe.” She spoke the words clearly, but her eyes said something else. Her eyes were shot with blood that I had not noticed before, and they spoke still of fear. She lifted her broken arm to my face again and caressed my cheek with the back of her fingers.
“There are soldiers,” I whispered. “Here.”
“Here? They be here?” She backed away. Her eyebrows pressed together like two caterpillars.
“No. No,” I said, shaking my head. “Good soldiers. Ones who protect me.”
She dipped her head. She sighed deeply, as if gathering strength. When she looked up, she said, “Gashe be not returned.”
How selfish I was. I had thought only of my longing to return home. Not once had I thought of Gashe.
“Still gone?” I asked, although I knew what “still gone” meant. Gashe might never return.
“They tell me nothing,” she said. How quickly I had forgotten that night. How quickly I had forgotten her fear.
“I try,” she said. “To ask the proper questions at the prison.”
“Did they come for me?” I asked. She nodded but said nothing more.
The bruises and cuts on her face, her broken arm — these were my fault, from the night the police searched for me. Had they barged in the way the revolutionaries had years ago? But the Special Police were not seeking food and shelter. Had they beaten her with fists, with sticks, or with boots and batons?
“Etheye, what happened?”
She shook her head. “It be nothing.”
“Tell me.” I needed to know. She closed her eyes and shook her head. I laced my fingers with hers. “You say, ‘Tesfaye, you are my mountain.’ You must tell me this.”
She glanced at me, then shifted her gaze past my shoulder.
“They come,” she said. “They took apart the house. Top to bottom. They find the secret room beneath the roof. They find writings in your room.”
“Your arm,” I said. She lifted the cast in the air, as if to show me it didn’t hurt.
What did they do to her as they demanded answers? Is that when they broke her arm? Or hit her face?
“Ishi and Tezze come to fight them. They jump on the backs and punch.”
No! Ishi looked so much like me.
“They took Ishi?” My voice was small.
Etheye shook her head.
“The police, he points it the gun at my head. We stay so still. I tell him, ‘Tesfaye he go in the morning. With my husband.’
“‘Where?’ he ask.
“‘You think my husband tell me his business?’”
Etheye took a slow breath. I held mine tight.
“And then I say, ‘You know where they be! You took them!’
“‘Take another son!’ he yell. ‘Take both!’
“I scream, ‘Look at this house! You think my husband no have connections?’”
“And then?” I asked.
“And then they sneer with ugly faces. ‘We come back,’ one said. But they no come back.”
“And so? Everything is okay?” What a stupid question. My mother’s face was bruised. Her arm was in a cast. What else was she not telling me?
“They want only you,” she said. “They have a list. Even, it be on the TV.”
My mother’s broken body was not because of Gashe. It was because of me thinking I was important handing out papers. How stupid I had been. It was as if I had beaten her with my own hands.
Now she wanted me to go away.
But with Gashe gone, there was no one to give her status and no one to provide for our family. These were the responsibilities, now, of her sons. Tezze, Ishi and I were the oldest boys.
“I cannot leave you,” I said.
“It be a short time until they forget you. Until they hunt someone else,” she said.
Etheye turned from me suddenly, as if she had run out of time, and ordered the ex-soldiers to move packages from the trunk of Uncle’s car to the Pathfinder. I saw cardboard cartons filled with plastic bottles of water, cans of Coca-Cola, and a market basket with clothes.
“This be for him,” she told the driver. “Only him. You understand?”
Coca? For me? A whole box?
Drinking soda, driving in a SUV, tricking the police, running away from the bad guys. I was like an American movie star.
Etheye’s voice was firm as she commanded the men. She could look after herself, and if she couldn’t, she could rely on Tezze and Ishi, the servants and my uncles. She did not need me. Not really. She was cunning. She knew what to do.
And it was only for a short time that I would be gone.
I had never been to Ababa’s village, and while part of me feared for my stubborn mother, I could hardly wait to climb in the special vehicle and slam the door. Loading the supplies and saying goodbye took far too long. Why did we need to take so much? When he came to us, Ababa arrived with only what he could carry in one hand.
I stepped from the running board into the front seat with the driver. He had no neck, just a thick column of muscle that attached his head to his body. Another man of similar body type was seated directly behind me. An automatic rifle was on the seat beside him. Both men had revolvers at their belts.
The vehicle lurched into gear and the driver rammed his foot on the accelerator, shooting a spray of dirt from the tires that smudged the image of my mother standing beside Kofi and waving with her good arm. I would be back soon.
The driver was a lunatic who sped much too fast for the road. He leaned into the steering wheel, his biceps bulging as he swerved to the left and the right to avoid potholes and farmers with bony animals. I felt like a table-tennis ball, jostling to and fro in the front seat, sometimes with my whole body lifting into the air. I clung to the edge of the bucket seat, braced myself with one hand on the dash and stared out the front window. The driver pulled the SUV onto the wrong side of the road to navigate a sharp curve. A loaded truck hurtled toward us. Its horn blared. I latched onto the handgrip and prepared to die. Our driver yanked the wheel. He veered onto the proper side of the road at the last second, so close that I couldn’t believe we hadn’t collided.
My head followed the flash of the heavy truck. Out the back window, I glimpsed a jet rising in the sky. The airport was east, which meant we were headed west.
The driver floored the accelerator when the pavement ended, bouncing us on a warped and twisted path. Dust billowed in a cloud around us. The windshield wipers flapped frantically to clear the powdery dirt. The cargo in the back slid from side to side as the vehicle rocked so hard I thought it would flip. I learned quickly not to leave my tongue anywhere near my teeth, and not, for one second, to loosen my grip.
There was no arguing over the best route, or guards or bribes as there had been when my uncle drove me to safety the night of the edire. No one spoke. No one seemed to breathe.
We sped through an empty countryside, barren but for the umbrellas of the oda, clusters of scraggly bushes, and dry grass that shifted in the wind. We passed people walking on the road carrying bundles of sticks on their backs, shepherds with their dirty flocks, and cowherds with scrawny cows. It was only then that the driver slowed to keep from hitting anyone or burying them in the flying grit.
As the hours passed, the landscape transformed from vast moonscape to bush. My head drifted to my chest as the blackness of night fell,
and from time to time I startled from my restless sleep. I must stay awake. I must help watch the road. But my eyes were uncooperative, growing heavy and begging to close for just a minute.
A loud smash. I jerked awake, my eyes wide in the darkness cut only by the beam of our headlights. The windshield dented inward, cracks spreading in a concentric spider web.
“Shiftas!” shouted the driver. The man in the backseat grabbed the rifle and snapped off the safety. Outside, men yelled. A flurry of stones pounded the side panels and slid across the windshield. I ducked when one crashed against my window. The driver stooped to see through the damaged glass and hauled the Pathfinder off the road. The headlights caught the startled faces of men leaping from our reckless path. I was sure we would crush the men, or that their bodies would fly across the hood, but I was too scared to scream. I hung on and didn’t breathe. We jolted and twisted over the rocky ground, then fishtailed violently through a swampy area.
I might make it to Ababa’s village, but I would be dead when I got there.
“What did they want?” I asked when our speed leveled off and I could breathe again.
“Anything they can get,” he said. “Petrol. Food. Money. You.”
“Me?”
“For ransom,” he said. “It’s not every day they see a SUV.”
“They know we have some thing or someone important,” said the guard in the backseat. He kept the gun in his hand, still pointed at the side window. The other hand was on the armrest of the door, ready to drop the window.
“Hang on!” the driver said. He tore through the night, until I heard a loud thump.
The back left side of the Pathfinder dropped.
“Sagara!” yelled the driver. He slammed the steering wheel with the heel of his hand.
“Shiftas?” I asked. My timid question croaked in a most embarrassing way. The taste of metal coated the back of my tongue, and spit pooled in my mouth.
“Flat tire! Shit!” He scrambled from the seat, as did the backseat passenger. He took the automatic rifle with him. I blinked from the sudden rush of light when they lifted the hatch. Cool air breathed into the vehicle as they shunted the boxes and fished out tools. I got out, too, and offered to hold the flashlight while the driver jacked up the SUV. The guard turned his back to us, holding his weapon in position and scanning the darkness. I squinted into the night.
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