Sweetness in the Belly

by Camilla Gibb

  The television showed Haile Selassie smiling, greeting dignitaries from foreign countries, taking a trip to the southern provinces where thousands of his subjects in tribal costumes appeared enraptured and lay prostrate on the ground before him. Entire villages dancing, singing, “Long live the emperor, the King of Kings.”

  We watched footage of a trip to Jamaica, where jubilant, long-haired masses shouted, “Jah Rastafari!” and waved placards that read “Selassie is Christ.” He was Ras Tafari until 1930, the year he was crowned Negusa Negast, or King of Kings, and adopted the name Haile Selassie, meaning “Might of the Trinity.” God, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

  “Look at that,” Aziz exclaimed, “they’re recycling old news! This is from years ago!”

  “And do you know the joke of this, Lilly?” Munir pointed at the tiny medaled man on the screen. “While these Jamaicans see him as a great symbol of African independence, the emperor denies Ethiopians are Africans at all! Ethiopians are the sons of King Solomon of Jerusalem, they claim. At least the Amharas are.”

  “Certainly not the Oromo,” said Aziz. “They would never include the Galla—”

  “—or the Shankilla.”

  “—or the Falasha.”

  “—or the Barya.”

  “They have a term of insult for everyone but themselves,” said Aziz.

  “And the Harari,” Munir added. “They don’t have a name for us.”

  “No, they just call you greedy, self-interested misers who would sell your children to make money. You are the real Jews of Ethiopia.”

  “That includes you, Aziz,” said Munir.

  “Does it?” Aziz snapped.

  They both sighed with exasperation and turned away.

  The soldiers came closer, daring to approach the mosque: they were standing guard outside the women’s gate as we flooded through for Friday prayers, mocking with lewd insults and rude gestures. Women collapsed on the stairs at the entrance of the mosque, contaminated and unable to enter.

  Once the imam realized a good portion of his congregation was missing, he himself came to see what was the matter. He had his assistants bring buckets of water so the women could wash the defilement away, and together, as a community, we recovered and kneeled down to pray.

  The following Friday, the men of the council of elders, distinguished men with skullcaps and trim white beards, formed a human fence between us and the soldiers as we filed in through the women’s gate. The soldiers did not dare spew their evil over the heads of the leaders of our community. They stood in mocking silence instead as they watched us pass.

  But our imam was not present that day, and it appeared no one had been appointed to take his place. Whispers rippled throughout the congregation. Perhaps he has disappeared like the muezzin, people were saying—speculation that struck fear in the hearts of everyone, for if a muezzin and an imam were not safe, was anyone?

  Sheikh Jami called for peace and order, the stilling of hearts, belief in faith as our guide.

  Afterward, I pressed Gishta for information. “Has the sheikh said anything, said whether it is true that the imam has disappeared?”

  “He does not speak of these things to me,” said Gishta. “But on Tuesday nights I can extract from him anything I want, so give me until then, I will see what I can find out.”

  But before Tuesday, the council of elders met to discuss the situation. They sent messengers into the neighborhoods to tell people it was a time for caution, for taking smaller footsteps, for observing the curfew that had just been imposed by the army prohibiting people from being in the street after six o’clock at night.

  Everyone was silent, uncertain what it all meant. Reasons had not been given, implications not spelled out. For a day or so people remained closed in their compounds, as if no one had work to do, a shop to keep, a stall to man, homework to complete, vegetables to buy, food to prepare, children to feed.

  “Commission” was the word on Gishta’s lips on Wednesday, some commission organized by a newly formed council of officers from the military and the police force, appointed to investigate corruption on the emperor’s behalf. Sheikh Jami told Gishta they had charged the imam with being disloyal to the emperor, though on what basis, he did not know, for this commission did not offer explanations. And it was they who had been responsible for the disappearance of the muezzin as well as several less notable others over the last couple of months.

  “Have faith” was Sheikh Jami’s message. “The righteous will be rewarded; the perpetrators condemned.”

  I did have faith, but I also had a desire for more information. I headed to the hospital after lunch, taking the road outside the wall to avoid the soldiers at the main gate. But the wide boulevard where the hospital stands was deserted, and the front doors of the hospital were closed, not a guard in sight. I looked up and down the street, growing increasingly anxious, for there was no one, no movement save for a couple of oblivious goats biting the fleas at their ankles. And then I noticed that the gates of the usually guarded and concealed royal residence across the road from the hospital were splayed wide open. I took a few steps forward and I could see they were ravaged like a face scarred by smallpox.

  I ran, lost a shoe but kept running down the middle of the deserted boulevard to the closest point of entry—the main gate, where two soldiers stood guard. One stopped me and said something in Amharic, but all I understood was “Miss Farenji.” “Capisce questo?” he then asked, grabbing the front of his trousers. The other soldier laughed and whacked him on the arm with his gun. I bolted through the door of one of the shops near the gate.

  At first I thought the shop was empty, but the owner slowly rose from the back room where he was chewing qat, pulled the curtain and stared at me.

  “Haji Mahfouz,” I said, relieved to see a familiar face from the neighborhood.

  “What do you want?” he asked, failing to greet me.

  “The soldiers,” I panted, pointing toward the street.

  “I don’t want problems being brought into my shop.” He stepped around from behind his counter and opened the door.

  Again, I ran.

  Aziz was at home, Munir with him, both of them still wearing their hospital clothes, when I arrived, completely out of breath, veil around my shoulders, unable to get out the words.

  “Try and breathe first,” said Aziz, bringing me a glass of water. I put my head in my hands, trying to recover.

  “What’s happening?” I finally asked. “I came to find you at the hospital—”

  “That was very risky,” said Munir.

  “But how was I to know?”

  “You heard the message from the elders—it’s not safe at the moment, especially outside the walls.”

  “I just wanted to ask you something, something I heard about a commission.”

  “It’s not even safe to be asking questions now, Lilly,” Aziz said. “Why don’t you listen to your sheikh, who is preaching for stronger religious observance?”

  He’s patronizing me, I realized. He doesn’t believe faith is the answer, at least not the answer for him. He’s sending me to a corner like a child. Or a woman.

  It was the commission that was responsible for barging into the royal residence and spiriting the duke and duchess back to the capital. The army then took over the residence. And where was the emperor in all this? Nodding his head in support, apparently. But why was the emperor advocating the arrest of members of his own family? And why did I have to rely on Gishta for information charmed from Sheikh Jami on Tuesday nights when Aziz and Munir clearly knew what was going on? Their conversations on Saturdays were hushed, though they obviously had much to say. They were not stunned and paralyzed like so many people I knew, but buoyed, with great urgency to their exchange. I didn’t dare interrupt them with questions; I’d been warned.

  Apart from Sadia, the other girls stopped attending berchas, preferring to remain closer to home. The other men felt excluded by Aziz and Munir and convened at Tawfiq’s house
for berchas, at which he was very sorry, but it would be impossible to have girls.

  One Saturday that summer, I turned up at Aziz’s uncle’s house as usual. The old man greeted me as he always did, gesturing welcome, proceed, but the room was empty. I found the usual thermos of tea and jug of water on the floor as well as a small pile of qat, but no one else until Sadia arrived a few minutes later, saying, “Munir says they have business today.” She either could not or would not elaborate.

  “You want qat?” she asked listlessly, waving a stalk.

  I shrugged. “Not really.” The point of it was the company. His company.

  We turned on the television. It was raining in the capital. Except for one or two members of the Imperial Guard, the emperor stood alone on his balcony, poised to make a speech. He stood in the rain and addressed the nation, speaking compassionately about famine in the north. I was sure we had never heard him use the word famine before. He stressed the progress being made in economic development and praised the army and police for their fierce, undying loyalty, for guiding the commission that was ridding the country of corruption.

  But was he crying as he spoke? Perhaps it was the rain, but for years afterward, people, regardless of whether they actually saw the broadcast or not, would say they had witnessed the exact moment when the lion began to die. With that throne speech it became apparent: a two-thousand-year-old dynasty was disintegrating before our eyes.

  a beach, a bridge

  Nouria and I had taken a job sewing cowrie shells onto the rims of finished baskets. The tedium of our chores worked to offset some of the uncertainty that surrounded us. We sang songs while we worked, folk songs Gishta had taught me about Harari children lost in the wilderness brought home on the backs of hyenas, about Noah and the animals and about girls who mistakenly marry for love.

  My voice faltered as the fence parted one afternoon and Aziz stepped through. The urgency of his expression pulled me upright, shells spilling from my lap onto the ground. He greeted Nouria and Gishta, who remained seated, and affected a smile before addressing me in English.

  He wasted no time. He apologized for his absence the Saturday before but said he needed to be elsewhere in his free time, with a different group of people, thus officially putting an end to our berchas. I felt numb.

  “Meetings,” he said, when I pressed him for more. “About what is happening.”

  “But what is happening?”

  “Changes,” he said quietly.

  “But can’t I be involved?”

  “Not with this group, I’m afraid. We meet outside the city.”

  “But I’ve left the city with you before, Aziz,” I pointed out, wondering if this had anything to do with an arsenal of guns lying underneath a man with no eyes.

  “This meeting is only for men.”

  I was stunned. “But you said you believed men and women to be equal, at least given the chance. Minti. Remember?”

  “Right now there is no time to give people a chance.”

  I looked at him coldly.

  “Look, Lilly, not everybody is like Munir and me. Some people are more conservative and prefer to keep those lines between men and women strictly drawn, particularly where politics are concerned. It’s a question of priorities.”

  He was choosing this over me. It reminded me somehow of the women on the Moroccan beach. Draped in black. Not feeling the heat, my father suggested, because other things mattered more to them. But I’d shed my black in order to be near him.

  “Why, Aziz?” I pleaded.

  “Because the needs of the collective have to take precedence over self-interest,” he stated, sounding nothing like himself.

  “But what about your exams next month?”

  “That will have to wait.”

  “You would choose to stay here rather than pursue your education in Cairo?”

  “Right now, if it came to that, yes. Yes, I would.”

  “But I thought you wanted that advanced medical training so you could help more people. That would benefit the collective.”

  “That’s a very Western way of looking at it,” he said.

  It was as if a bridge between us had just collapsed. Or rather, he’d just detonated it.

  I didn’t have a moment to survey the destruction. As soon as he left, Gishta leaned over and patted my hand.

  “It’s for the best,” Nouria said.

  I was too upset to reply.

  “He has to marry a Harari girl,” Gishta said. “If he were pure Harari, then maybe he would have a choice. Men have less choice about these things than women.”

  They obviously knew Aziz and I had some kind of relationship, but my relief that they were not angrier was fleeting. Gishta meant that our parts would never add up to make a Harari whole. I was furious that she had to reduce it all, once again, to marriage when there were much bigger things at work.

  “It’s got nothing to do with that!” I shouted, but immediately regretted having snapped at her. If women were truly kept away from politics, then I could hardly blame them. These were their politics. The affairs of the heart.

  part seven

  london, england

  1988

  butchering the stems

  Wow” is all I can say.

  “You don’t like it?” Amina asks, stretching her neck to take a look at the back of the skirt.

  “It’s just, you know, a rather unusual choice.” Tartan, just above the knees, secondhand and smelling of mothballs and patchouli, like the shop.

  “It is fashinn gidir!” she says.

  That might be. I just wouldn’t have pictured her in it, can’t picture her in it even now that she’s got it on.

  She jerks the curtain closed, pulls off the skirt and nearly tears the curtain from the rail as she reemerges and stomps past me to slap the skirt down on the counter, where a teenager with a pierced lip gladly takes her money. Thirteen pounds fifty for a moldy skirt.

  But it’s an occasion—the first anniversary of Yusuf’s arrival in London. He’s insisted he doesn’t want a big party, just the family and Mr. and Mrs. Jahangir, and though it isn’t our way not to share any celebration as widely as possible, we defer.

  We’ve spent the last three nights preparing a feast of special foods, dishes normally reserved for weddings and people’s return from the hajj. There is mulukhiya, a thick, green turgid soup we adopted from the Egyptians during their brief occupation of Harar in the last century; sambusas, small samosas introduced by Indian merchants; misr wat, stewed lentils we borrowed from the Sudanese; spaghetti Bolognese, introduced into our diet by the Italians; ruz bi laiban, rice pudding courtesy of the Arabs by way of the English; and ankhar mahtab, tripe stew, possibly the most unpalatable of all the dishes but the only one of them we can rightfully call our own.

  Amina burns incense to mask the dominant smell of fried onions and we sing folk songs while we knock elbows in this impossibly small space. We complain now where we once created such miracles out of brown river water, battered produce and unrefrigerated meat, which we cooked over wood fires, smoke in our eyes and black smudges on our faces, wiping our brows from the staggering heat with the corners of our skirts during droughts when we couldn’t even bathe or wash our clothes.

  I cover the table with a cloth Amina bought at a bargain shop—reindeer and holly, discounted in July—and arrange her fancy bowls and plates with the gold trim so that people can serve themselves. Amina lays down another plate.

  “We have enough,” I say.

  “Better one too many than one too few,” she says, twirling round in her new skirt. I can still smell the mothballs.

  Our honored guest arrives at six, ready to break the mirqana he has achieved with the Oromo brothers down the hall with a can of lager. He admires his wife’s outfit. “Very chic,” he says, eyes glimmering as he stares at her knees.

  “Masha’Allah,” I mutter and look away. It’s been a year since Yusuf arrived, but it is only now that he is returning to his wife
.

  Mrs. Jahangir brings the children. Sitta and Ahmed have bright red tongues and lips, though Mrs. J swears she did not ruin their appetites with sweets. Mr. Jahangir follows, huffing dramatically with the weight of his generosity—a gift for Yusuf, a heavy chess set made of brass, accompanied by an apology for the way their last game ended.

  Now that everyone has arrived and removed their shoes, Amina presses Play on the tape deck. Yusuf beams as the voice of his favorite singer fills the room.

  “Where did you find this?” he asks her.

  “He lives in Norway now. I sent him a letter.”

  Imagine. Someone who was so famous in Ethiopia that he had a band of bodyguards, an army of servants, a harem of women throwing themselves at his feet is now a man who lives alone in a small subsidized flat on the outskirts of Oslo, eating pickled herring on dry toast for supper, receiving a letter and penning a reply in his own hand.

  Amina is about to fetch the letter to prove it when there is a knock at the door.

  “We’re not expecting anyone else, are we?” I ask.

  She brushes by me, swings the door open, and there stands Robin, two massive bunches of flowers wrapped in purple paper in his arms.

  I could kill her—wait, I take that back—I could damn well near throttle her.

  Robin places one bouquet in her arms and offers the other over her shoulder to me. He brings the perfect flowers: pink and yellow roses for Amina, white lilies for me. I stare at their orange stamens. Family, Amina, remember?