Sweetness in the Belly

by Camilla Gibb

  In the past, if any child was ever absent for more than one day, I’d always made inquiries. This time was no exception. To my face parents said, “Times are uncertain; we would rather keep them home,” but then, as I shortly discovered, my students had been turning up at the Bilal al Habash Madrasa instead, their teacher none other than Idris—Sheikh Jami’s other apprentice, a man who, in our couple of encounters, had not hidden the fact that he despised me.

  “When times are uncertain, people prefer the authority of a man,” Idris said smugly when I dared to confront him outside the madrasa.

  The following Sunday, when Sheikh Jami was scheduled to visit his mother in Dire Dawa, I went to Hussein to confirm my suspicions. Hussein, sitting on his own at the shrine, said that Idris had waived the fee as compensation.

  “Compensation for what?” I demanded.

  There had never been secrets between Hussein and me, but he was reluctant to get involved. I was angry enough to twist his arm without touching him.

  For what Idris was apparently calling “their inferior education up to this point.”

  “And why does it suddenly suit him now?” I shouted. “And why don’t you defend me?”

  Hussein hung his head.

  “You’re a coward, Hussein,” I said. Even I was stunned by my harshness.

  One by one, the channels of communication were turning to static.

  And then no students turned up at all.

  “Where is Rahile? And where are the boys?” I asked Nouria the next day.

  “I sent Rahile to collect laundry. The boys are in the market. If they have no school, then they have to work.”

  “But I can still teach them,” I said. “It will be like it was in the beginning.”

  “Soon, insha’Allah,” Nouria said. “But for now, we need an income.”

  I sat down and stuck my fingers into a hole Bortucan had dug in the dirt.

  feast and famine

  Despite all the uncertainty, Sadia was still talking about little other than her forthcoming wedding. I didn’t understand how she could carry on pretending life was perfectly normal. She hadn’t even seen much of Munir over the last few weeks, busy as he was, like Aziz, with these mysterious meetings.

  She was insisting we go to Dire Dawa on the weekend to shop. “There are so many things I have to choose,” she gushed. “Oh, it will be so much fun! We just walk from shop to shop saying, ‘I’ll have this and this and this,’ and then Munir must come with his mother and they will buy everything. And then when we move into our new home, there it will all be—everything a new wife needs to make her husband comfortable.”

  I indulged her: her enthusiasm was a refreshing break from the apocalyptic mood that had infected everyone else. Her flippancy shouldn’t have surprised me; this was the girl, after all, who, when she talked about Mecca, didn’t even mention the Ka’bah. To her, Mecca was a great place for buying perfume and cosmetics. Fashinn gidir, indeed.

  We left for Dire Dawa just after dawn on a Saturday. Sadia insisted we take a private taxi now that we had a choice again, not one of the crowded minibuses. In the backseat she chattered on as if there were no politics in the world. We were lucky the driver didn’t speak our language.

  “You know why we haven’t seen Warda in weeks?” she whispered.

  “Don’t tell me she gets invited to these meetings,” I replied.

  “No!” Sadia whispered, pulling her skirt outward and inflating her cheeks.

  “What?” I shrieked.

  “Uss!” Sadia chastised, laughing. Warda’s mother was keeping her hidden. Once the baby was born her mother would claim it as her own. “This is normal,” Sadia said.

  “Sadia?” I ventured hesitantly.

  “Yes, farenji?” she cooed.

  “Have you and Munir . . . ?”

  “Oh my God!” She covered her mouth with both hands and laughed.

  “Well, have you?”

  She nodded and held up two fingers.

  “Did it hurt?”

  She winced and mouthed pain.

  “Did you have absuma?”

  “Of course,” she says. “But only the small one. Not like Warda, she has the big one.”

  “That must really hurt.”

  “Sure there is pain. But there is much, much bigger pleasure in here,” she said, tapping her temple. “And you and Aziz?”

  I shook my head.

  “It is funny,” she said. “They say it is farenji girls who are sharmutas.”

  The taxi deposited us in Dire Dawa’s central market, and Sadia took my hand, pulling me down familiar streets. She stopped outside the unmistakable blue gate of Grandfather Ibrahim’s house.

  I grabbed her by the wrist. “Why are we here?”

  She shrugged. “The old man is my family.”

  “But I thought he was Munir’s grandfather.”

  “Well, he’s my grandfather too. Munir is my cousin. It would be very rude of me not to visit when I am in town, wouldn’t it?”

  The old man was happy to see me, though he berated me for not having come to visit him again. He teased Sadia about Munir, saying she was like rrata, a piece of meat stuck between the poor boy’s teeth.

  Sadia giggled at the compliment, and then the old man leaned over to me and said: “He’s waiting for you upstairs.”

  I looked at Sadia, but she only grinned. “Go on,” she said coyly.

  He greeted me with his own apprehension, his smile strained, his gestures tentative. I wanted to press my forehead into his rib cage. I wanted to cry. I wanted to rewind the last few months and sit in the innocent silence of our dark room.

  His words took their time, a couple of false starts, beginnings phrased as: “What I mean to say . . . ,” “What I thought . . .” and then finally, “Lilly, I didn’t mean to be unkind. I’ve been trying to protect us both. I’ve never asked you how you knew the emperor, the extent of your involvement with him, but it doesn’t matter at this stage because any association puts you in grave danger.”

  “And I suppose that means your association with me puts you in grave danger,” I said.

  “It does,” he admitted. “And if it weren’t for the fact that I am committed to a movement that condemns the monarchy, it would be a little less difficult for me to reconcile.”

  “You’re afraid that your new friends will reject you because of your association with me.”

  “There is something you need to see,” he said gently.

  “More guns?”

  “You’ll understand in a few hours,” he said and fell silent.

  He dared to bridge the distance between us by reaching for my hand. It wasn’t fair. His thumb traced the lifeline on my palm. He was trying to pull me back.

  “Lilly, please,” he implored.

  In the blue dark we watched as a parade of skeletons wobbled across the screen. Everything—bodies, earth, road and sky—was the color of sand. The thin membranes stretched over the chest cavities of these creatures fluttered with the profound effort of movement. They fell forward onto their bulbous knees and their rib cages splintered with the impact. Women carried dead babies with crusty mouths and giant eyes framed by fly-covered lashes. There was absolute silence. The parade thinned, leaving a trail of bodies lying on the road that continued into the northern city, where the market was overflowing with sacks of sorghum and teff and wheat and mountains of split peas and lentils.

  Members of His Majesty’s army were standing guard throughout the market, keeping the beggars at bay with their rifles.

  Hundreds of miles south, Haile Selassie was standing on his balcony greeting his royal subjects on the occasion of his eightieth birthday two years before. We watched the emperor tossing copper coins down to the poor and feasting at the palace with white dignitaries, feeding them champagne and caviar flown by the planeload from Paris.

  Haile Selassie’s officials in the north ordered the army to rid the streets of the embarrassment of these tens of thousands of diseased,
walking cadavers. This was a celebration, after all.

  We saw footage of the army gunning down starving civilians in honor of the emperor’s birthday, while the emperor roamed the lush palace grounds feeding his pet leopards and dogs choice cuts of meat from silver platters held high by his servants.

  We had heard the words famine and starvation, but we had never seen images before. Haile Selassie had only begun using the words the previous month. Until then, he had denied such things existed in Ethiopia. Now we had the images to accompany the words, thanks to a British journalist.

  Sadia hurried from the room partway through with her hand over her mouth.

  Grandfather Ibrahim was the first to speak into the dark. “It’s over,” he said, wonder in his voice.

  He was old enough to remember a time before Haile Selassie. He was old enough to remember a time before Ethiopia was even a country.

  “It has to be over,” replied Aziz, who had known only this country, and known it only to be this way.

  I saw a pool of blood on the steps of the palace. I saw the imperial lions, starving in their cages, too hungry to discriminate between enemies and friends. I saw cadavers clinging like barnacles to the palace steps and kicked off the sheet over me. It was a stifling night.

  The moon cast a silver pool of light over the balcony. To my left, the floorboards creaked. Aziz was beside me. We stood arm against arm.

  “They’ve already shown this film in Britain,” he finally said. “The military council thought it was time our own people knew the truth. The emperor has been accused of taking a hundred million dollars of state money and hiding it in a Swiss bank account. The commission sent in its officers and they found thousands of dollars stuck to the floors under the carpets. They seized documents and read lists of figures over the radio—money held in other accounts, foreign properties and investments all in the names of his ministers—assets purchased with money drawn from the state treasury while these hundreds of thousands of people in the north were dying of starvation. Nobody will be able to deny those images.”

  “But what will happen?”

  “The council is talking about an entirely new basis of power—in the hands of the peasants and the workers—the majority. And to do that? The land has to be taken from the wealthy who own it and given back to the poor who actually farm it. From the royal family, the Church, the mosques, the landlords. No more forced labor, no more rights to collect tribute from the peasants, no more payment for military service and allegiance in the form of land grants, no more private ownership.”

  “That would mean taking land away from the Hararis,” I realized aloud. The Hararis thrived under feudalism; it was the basis of their economy, though for them to admit this would be to indict themselves as beneficiaries of the emperor’s corrupt system.

  “They are one of the wealthiest communities in the country,” Aziz said.

  “But I don’t imagine they will just give over their land.”

  “That’s why it’s so important that some of us from Harar, Hararis included, at least some of the young and educated ones, have joined the revolutionary party. We know there’s going to be resistance. Hararis have enjoyed centuries of privilege—their wealth comes from the exploitation of peasants. Harar was one of the biggest slave markets in East Africa. The Hararis would trade black people like me for goods from the Orient. A black man for a bolt of silk from China. My father was bought for a vat of gunpowder.”

  “So even in his lifetime . . .”

  “Even in his lifetime. I carry this name—Abdulnasser—slave of his Harari owner.”

  “But Bilal al Habash was a slave,” I offered.

  Aziz sighed. “Well, in principle, Islam is about equality. We have tried to believe, but I think . . . many of us feel socialism, Marxism, might be the only possibility for equality. Not religion. Do you know about Marx?”

  I shook my head.

  “I could lend you a book,” said Aziz. “A small red book.”

  I woke with the call to prayer to find Aziz lying beside me. I stared at his feathery eyelashes, which trembled as if he were watching a film in his sleep, Charlie Chaplin, perhaps, from the way his mouth turned up at the corners. I could feel his whole body swelling, but just as he was about to levitate, I lay across him, my weight barely enough to hold him down.

  Aziz opened his eyes, took me by the shoulders and rolled me onto my back. He stared at the middle of me, and began to stroke my stomach through the thin fabric of my diri. He drew hesitant circles, his fingers winding ever closer, my skin melting with his touch, my body begging. He kissed my stomach through the cotton, inching upward to kiss my nipples. I held his earlobes between my fingers and pinched while he bit me hard and warmth rushed through me.

  He tugged up my diri and stroked the insides of my thighs with the backs of his fingers, watching his own hand against my skin. He propped himself up on one hand then and untied his sarong with the other before lowering himself gently on top of me, hard against my stomach and thighs. Life was too short in Africa for this not to happen. I spread my legs and he took his penis in his hand and moved it against me, stroking me with slow rhythm that grew faster until I lunged into his open mouth, my back arched, the clash of teeth, the twist of tongues, the good God, the please, the pleasure.

  I dug my nails into his chest as the waves rolled over me. Then a slow burn—a cautious push inward on his part—and my mouth falling open. Tears streaming from the corners of my eyes with wonder and unbelievable pain.

  He licked the tears that had fallen into my left ear, filled my mouth with the salt on his tongue and slowly pushed deeper. I reached out and grabbed him from behind to pull him in as close, as deep, as could be, me the shell, he the snail, home.

  “Aziz!” the old man hollered from below. “Why aren’t you awake yet?”

  Aziz sighed and collapsed on top of me. “Shit,” he said harshly, burying his face in my hair. “Shit.”

  We lay in this defeated heap for a minute, hearts knocking against each other’s ribs.

  Finally he spoke. “Whatever happens, Lilly, please know that I love you.” He pushed himself up onto his arms and looked down as he slowly pulled out of me.

  I lay hollow, flat, still, jaw slack. Whatever happens? It was as if my stomach were made of glass and a bird had just flown into me, causing a hairline fracture with its beak.

  “I love you too, Aziz,” I said weakly, holding my stomach, afraid it was about to shatter.

  He took the corner of his sarong and gently wiped the blood from between my thighs. No matter how chaste we are, we are guilty until this moment of being proved innocent. If this had been our wedding night, he would have taken that piece of cloth and draped it over a large bowl of sweets that he would present to my mother that morning. Nouria, I suppose. Nouria and Gishta would have run out into the streets waving the sarong and ululating loudly so that everyone could celebrate the proof of my virginity. If this had been our wedding night.

  september 12, 1974

  It was New Year’s Day according to the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian calendar. Aziz and I and the old man sat listening to the radio as we shared a bowl of sorghum porridge. Sadia had left for the shops early, determined to proceed according to plan. The old man was having difficulty, his teeth didn’t seem to be sitting quite straight in his mouth that morning. Each time Aziz reached out to spoon another mouthful I felt the hairs on his arm sting my own.

  The music came to an end, and the New Year began with a proclamation over the radio in Amharic. Aziz translated.

  “Even though the people treated the throne in good faith as a symbol of unity, Haile Selassie I took advantage of its authority, dignity and honor for his own personal ends. As a result, the country found itself in a state of poverty and disintegration. Moreover, an eighty-two-year-old monarch, because of his age, is incapable of meeting his responsibilities. Therefore His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I is being deposed as of September 12, 1974, and power assumed by the
Provisional Military Committee. Ethiopia above all.”

  With that, Parliament was dissolved, the Constitution suspended and the Supreme Court abolished. The emperor, who was the ultimate authority over all three, did not resist arrest. They say that he who had initially denied the famine at all, then denied its extent, then denied any knowledge of military involvement had been forced to sit down with the leaders of the Dergue the previous night at the palace and watch Jonathan Dimbleby’s film as it was broadcast to the nation. He was reputed to have replied, “If revolution is good for the people, then I, too, support the revolution,” then retired to bed.

  Sadia managed to select the following items without my help: six sets of Egyptian cotton sheets (even though virtually no Hararis slept in beds), a toaster, a blender, a television (even though very few Hararis had electricity), a telephone (even though there were no telephone lines in Harar), a jug and twelve matching glasses (to serve her guests contaminated, parasite-ridden water?), six ice cube trays (even though there was no refrigeration) and enough clothes, shoes and gold jewelery to keep her looking extraordinarily rich for a lifetime.