Beneath the Lion's Gaze (5 page)

6.

EMPEROR HAILE SELASSIE
leaned into his cupped hand and listened to the empty pocket of air that blew like dry wind against his ear. He adjusted the pillow behind his back on his hand-carved chair and sank into the soothing gentleness of silence. He was in his wide, marble- floored bedroom, the thick wooden doors of his closets revealing rows of identical tan uniforms and intricately embroidered velvet capes. There was no sound but this air, there was no one here but him, there was nothing to do but sit, and he sighed in relief.

Mercy. This, we have prayed for, the emperor thought. This has been all we have wanted. When those treacherous sons of Neway fought our bravest of men and tried to steal our rightful place on this throne, we begged not for justice but for mercy. Mercy on this throne and this humble one, your appointed. Didn’t your own most blessed King Dawit beg to you in his darkest days, did he not sing your praises when you answered? Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us, he said. We ask only for mercy, not even for the blessing of rain.

Rain. It had always been his country’s curse. Centuries of floods, then drought, thunderous rain, then sun-bleached farms. There had always been too much or too little, seeds floated out of soil or split in half from a burning heat in this land. It shouldn’t have been surprising, the emperor thought, that this new trouble had started, only a few months ago, with water.

Prime Minister Aklilu Habtewold, elegant and prim, his hair slicked back, had been the one to tell him.

“We have problems in Neghelle,” he said. Years of French diplomacy had helped him cultivate his naturally regal, controlled bearing, but the prime minister’s words that day had been crisp and sharp, even rushed. “The soldiers are rebelling. Their well has broken.”

The emperor had been irritated by this triviality. He had gone back to his papers, an inquiry from the minister of finance about ways to
handle
taxi drivers’ demands for lower petrol prices. It cannot be, the emperor wrote, oil prices are higher worldwide because of the OPEC oil embargo of 1973; they must share this burden.

“Your Majesty,” Prime Minister Aklilu said, “they have taken the officers hostage. They say their water well is unsafe and they’re not allowed to use the same well as the officers. They say they’re forced to eat rotten food while the officers dine well every night. I’m afraid this will escalate. We shouldn’t rely on any assistance from the United States, they have their own problems with President Nixon’s scandal.”

The emperor did not look up from his papers. “Send the planes, tell them to fly low. Don’t hurt them.”

The prime minister had been hesitant. “The bombers? But that will cause more anger. There’s—”

A simple twitch in his eyebrow was enough to silence the prime minister. “Then you will tell them change will come. Don’t punish them. Tell the other ministers that nothing must be known of this.” He had gone back to his papers, to his documents, to his piles of inquiries and respectful requests and forgotten about these soldiers and their dirty water.

Less than a month later, it had been the Debre Zeit Air Force that demanded more money, and Prime Minister Aklilu had granted that, then another increase. Two salary increases for these lowly soldiers in less than a month, from money that did not exist for those purposes. Then Asmara’s entire division had risen up and taken control of the radio stations. The voices speaking through the radio, their unschooled accents rough, had had the arrogance to make more demands of the throne, to air their complaints. The voice on the radio had asked for a higher minimum salary, free medical treatment, timely pay, a change in regime, and—a pause—the bodies of privates to be returned to their home village, just as was done for officers. The emperor had seen in this the awareness of his might. They understand we will crush them, he said. They had not forgotten the Neways, they had not forgotten, and still they dared to rise up.

“They’ve shut down the airport? Closed the roads? Taken over the city? You have allowed this to happen?” The emperor’s rage had been focused on the prime minister. “You have allowed this to happen in our country?”

“It is a mutiny,” Prime Minister Aklilu said. He’d kept his head low,
his
eyes lower, his small mouth was pursed in a thin line. His blue suit, tailored by an Armenian he’d had trained in Paris, sat perfectly on his broad shoulders; the fit was impeccable. In his hands was an envelope. “Your Majesty”—his voice was clear, only his soft eyes betrayed his emotions—“they want a change, they want a new cabinet, and things will only get worse until they see something. I respectfully and regretfully give you my resignation. I see no other way.” The lines had been rehearsed, the emperor could tell. “It is with a profound sadness that I submit this letter. You have been a father to me, my education could not have been if not for you. I have had the honor of serving this country at home and abroad, I have been blessed to stand before the United Nations and to assist in the reunification of our country.”

The emperor silenced him with a raised hand. “You are leaving? After so many years?” But in the distance, beyond his window, he heard the restless growls of his caged lions, and he understood what was happening was right.

THE EVENTUAL ARRESTS
of former Prime Minister Aklilu and his cabinet should have quelled the soldiers. His drive to Mercato to press money into the open hands of his poorest people should have stilled the rumblings. His appointment of Endalkachew Mekonnen, with his Oxford diplomacy and aristocratic assurance, to prime minister should have steadied his shaken country. But from a sky that lay bare and hot under the sun, leaflets fell from helicopters like torn feathers. They dropped from the emperor’s air force and army aviation helicopters, addressed to all of his people, crisp sheets of carefully typed demands. These soldiers wanted more and they wanted a committee to make sure those demands were met. To make sure those responsible for corruption and the famine were brought to justice. To make sure a new Ethiopia could rise up from under the heavy weight of an aging, decaying monarchy. The demands were never-ending, a thick white fog across his city.

The emperor had felt a small, sharp pain in the center of his chest as he watched the spiraling pages settle in his garden from his library window. He saw, in the grace of their descent, his last days laid flat before him. It will come, he told himself. It will come as softly and quietly as these papers, and we must prepare.

7.

THE RALLY BEGAN
in Meskel square, in a flatland of concrete and asphalt that sat in the center of the city. Five hundred students moved restlessly in anticipation of military trucks and howitzers. Down the wide roads that shrank into smaller streets, the distant pitch of trucks and sirens blazed in the morning sun, and everywhere whispers of courage and defiance drifted over stone. The marchers carried placards and flags, waved empty hands and fists into the air. Behind the fence of nearby St. Joseph’s prep school, thunderous voices lifted, light as feathers. Schoolboys ran to join the five hundred. And from Meskel Square rose full-bodied shouts that shook the city and seeped into the walls of Jubilee Palace where Emperor Haile Selassie pondered this latest noise from his subjects.

Traffic was at a standstill, a line of metal insects baking in the sun. Onlookers leaned out of windows, car doors opened, hearts sped in the growing cacophony. Passersby made way for the procession of armed soldiers jogging in perfect unison toward the square, their footfalls surprisingly nimble. The five hundred students, milling no more, stood frozen in place and let a collective gasp speak for their fear. Placards drifted down, soft clouds in a brisk wind. Rifles raised, caught the glint of the sun and sent light hurling back into the sky.

Dawit moved through the crowd of students, tall and fast. Empty-handed. His broad shoulders parted the way for each step as he searched for a familiar face. Lily had promised to meet him near the fence of the prep school. He stood on his toes looking for her ringlet curls and the red shirt she said she would be wearing. A solid hand, cool against his arm, stopped him.

“Over here.” It was Solomon, an economics student, older than most, more sullen than any.

Dawit was surprised. The man had never spoken to him before.
Solomon
rarely addressed anyone, seldom looked beyond the invisible wall he’d built around himself and walked within every day.

“I’m looking for someone,” Dawit said.

“Get in front,” Solomon told him, pointing to the head of the crowd. “They’re not going to shoot. Not today.” He shoved a pamphlet in his hand. On one side of the pamphlet was a photo of a starving child with painfully swollen limbs. On the other, Emperor Haile Selassie fed his Chihuahua meat from a silver platter. “Keep it in your pocket. You don’t have time to look for anyone, it’s starting.”

“Are you sure they’re not going to shoot?” Dawit asked. Rumors said Solomon was one of those coordinating protests with students across Ethiopia and throughout Europe and America.

“Soldiers rebelled in the north because they don’t have clean water to drink while the emperor’s officers get beer and wine.” He nudged Dawit forward and pointed at the row of soldiers standing ahead of them, “A hundred thousand marched for the rights of Muslims and no one was hurt. Everyone wants the emperor out. We’re all on the same side. Move to the front.”

Dawit did as he was instructed, felt the low murmurs and excited talk rise at his back like a breeze. He swept his gaze once more across the square for Lily, but it was impossible to see her, there were so many and the crowd was getting larger. He focused on those who seemed to have been waiting for him, who nodded briefly and made room in the front, ready to march or fall with him. Dawit felt the first shivers ride through his body in waves and he let his shoulders loosen.

The first footfalls started from the right, a gentle thud on cracked concrete. Followed by another. Then the brush of arms raising fists. Solomon handed him a placard and Dawit grabbed it and held on tight.
LAND FOR THE TILLER
it read, its bold black letters crisp on stark white. Solomon raised his own,
A PEOPLE’S GOVERNMENT FOR ALL
. The five hundred, multiplied, faced the soldiers in ready silence. A thousand eyes staring into the barrels of two thousand loaded rifles.

Dawit looked across the front lines, into the faces of classmates familiar and unknown, glanced at the schoolchildren who flanked them, and he felt his heart swell and a feeling close to gratitude forced tears into his throat and he had to raise his voice with the chorus of others to
stop
from weeping at this sight of so many who for one moment were joined in a bond as strong as family, perhaps in a union even stronger than blood.

His first jump was involuntary, so instinctual that he scarcely knew what he had done. Dawit leapt again, chest pushed forward, and felt the surge of bodies moving with him and voices ringing like a thousand clanging bells. He didn’t know when the first shakes of his shoulders started, but he felt the tremors from those next to him, heard the deep-throated warriors’ cries that rose and fell, and his shoulders moved with a weightless rhythm, soft waves against a trembling wall. The students surged ahead, their ecstatic leaps growing wilder and free as the soldiers backed away in awkward, faltering steps.

8.

DAWIT LOOKED DOWN
the bright hospital corridor. It was strangely quiet, even though it was past visiting hours. There were a few nurses clipping their way from one task to another. He turned into the hallway that led to his mother’s room. It, too, lacked its usual activity. He stepped inside the room and shut the door softly.

She was asleep under a window that framed the angry voices and shrill whistles from the street. The curtains could not soak up all the noises coming from citizens who would soon flee into the shelter of their homes. Police sirens streaked past, and he squinted to sharpen the outline of his mother’s body in the rise and fall of light from outside. Herders’ campfires, newly lit, flickered in the distant hills, flaring and waning like bursting stars, and the warm glow of headlights broke the flat expanse of dark in the unlit room.

Dawit moved closer to the bed and touched his mother’s hand, held it and let his warmth soak into her cool skin. He laid his head next to hers and kissed her cheek, then traced the crescent-shaped scar he’d made next to her eye as a young, careless boy. The scar, once plumped by flesh, now folded into itself, evidence of the weight his mother had lost in the last week. An old shame came back to him, clung to him as strong as any smell in the building. His tantrums as a child had never been easy for her to control, and the scar was proof of the emotional damage he must have wreaked on this small woman. Dawit straightened the sheets and blankets that clung to her, then pulled a chair to sit at her feet.

“Emaye,” he said. She didn’t stir. “Forgive me.”

There were days when he’d spent entire afternoons like this, leaning against her legs as she sewed or stared out the window, listening to the hypnotic lilt of her voice as she told him of her Gondar, a land of noblemen and castles. The melody of her favorite lullaby stepped forward from his memory and into the room. Dawit hummed the tune, a series
of
simple notes. He draped his arms over her legs, then laid his head on the bed, making sure that a part of him touched a part of her. He relaxed, the crown of his head solidly against her leg, he let his breaths deepen and then slow into soft sighs. His song ebbed into silence, and Dawit fell asleep, comforted.

HAILU’S PRAYER BEADS
dragged on the ground, hooked to the arm of the chair; his radio was off. It was late afternoon, the sun was tipping into the shadows of night. A tepid breeze floated through an open window, and tension pressed on all sides of the house, bearing down on Yonas.

“Why isn’t he home yet?” Even though Hailu’s voice was pinched, it was smooth, frighteningly soft. It shook Yonas’s nerves and settled his senses back in a jumbled order.