Garden of Eden

by Sharon Butala

  “Take me to the hotel,” she says. Tears stream down her cheeks; she wipes her face furiously. Giyorgis says nothing, does something funny with his face, wiping away emotion; he starts the vehicle and inches away; Mrs. Rich White Woman having a tantrum. What is she doing in this terrible country anyway?

  Lannie, she reminds herself. You’ve come for Lannie. But she finds she can’t remember who Lannie is or why she so badly wants her to come home. For one bewildering second she almost asks Giyorgis.

  Alone again in her room, waiting for dinner, she throws herself back on her bed. But she’s too upset even to close her eyes or lie still. Every time she does she sees the corpse in the hole in the rock wall lying there like a cast-off shoe, she sees the forty-year-old beggars who look seventy, she sees the beggar child’s tears and the sticks that are his arms and legs, she sees the men, how thin they all are — and dust and dirt everywhere, not a blade of grass.

  She would tell herself, It’s no use thinking about it, there’s nothing you can do. But turning away no longer works, she can’t let this pass. If she does, she is indeed the fool she’s always suspected deep down that she is. She knows now finally, two-thirds of the way through her life, that she’s responsible for these people. And she will never turn away again.

  When Giyorgis knocks to let her know it’s dinnertime, she gets up, combs her hair, puts on a fresh blouse, and goes out to meet him. All through dinner, in the midst of the laughter and multilingual chatter of the other tourists, she and Giyorgis sit in silence eating, or make polite conversation about the food, about going back to Kombolcha in the morning. And all the while she sees the little girls smiling in the dust, the barefoot infants herding animals on the rocky mountain slopes, the women bent double under their loads of water or firewood.

  After dinner there is folk dancing and singing. This isn’t arranged by the hotel — first a thin young man comes around to each table and asks the tourists if they will pay to watch the dancers. Iris doesn’t care, but she opens her purse and pays what he asks. The dancers are a troupe of local men and women, and they give a rousing performance full of the vigour and the sense of fun of the non-professional. They are accompanied by drums and by stringed instruments, which Giyorgis says are called a kirar, which is like a small guitar, and a masinko, which has only one string.

  As the program goes on, the men, laughing at their own exertions and at each other, are clearly trying to outdo each other in the display of finesse and speed with which they dance. Grinning, they snap their heads in unison to the left and to the right, knees wide apart and bent, hands on their waists, their torsos tilted back and rippling effortlessly. The women advance, shaking their shoulders, their small breasts bouncing in a way that at home would be considered provocative, but that here has a beauty and a clarity of meaning that Iris recognizes as the frank joy of being female.

  Despite the shouting, the drums, the clapping and cries from the watching tourists, after a while Iris finds she can’t concentrate on the display before her. She can only think of all she has seen, of the reason she has come here, and finds herself sitting among strangers in this shameful, counterfeit palace. The noises fade, the swaying, red-banded white skirts, the full white cotton trousers, the golden arms and hands and faces of the dancers blur.

  In the shadows around them she sees Lannie’s face, but finds she’s no longer sure that the woman she has been scurrying after really is the child she and Barney raised. For the first time it occurs to her that if Lannie had wanted to be found, she’d have written; if she needed help and wanted it from Iris and Barney, she’d have asked for it; if she’d wanted her brother and sister and her father, she’d have stayed with them. What Lannie? Who is she?

  Now, in the cacophony of voices, a singing that sounds to Iris more like wailing, in the insistent, high-pitched jingle of the sistrum and the unrelenting rhythmic boom of the drums, she feels herself transported, removed. It’s as if she’s sitting here at her table in front of the performers, while at the same time part of her is viewing the scene from above and beyond it. And suddenly, hovering above, she understands clearly that when Barney died, he did not love her.

  Sitting here in this remote dust heap of a town, she can hide it from herself no longer. He wanted children, he wanted us to have babies of our own. He said so, but I couldn’t hear him; I wouldn’t hear him.

  Abruptly, a huge weight has descended on her. It is the weight of knowing her own selfishness finally destroyed Barney’s last shred of love for her. She can’t move, she can’t stand up, she can’t breathe.

  And I came all this way, she marvels at herself while in front of her the dancers shake their shoulders in frenzy, the drummers drum frantically, the singers keen in an eery, minor timbre that makes her want to throw herself on the ground and wail along with them, I came all this way, all the way to the dark side of the world, to this ancient, stony kingdom so I wouldn’t have to face myself.

  Cock’s Crow

  Iris sleeps badly, fitfully, waking over and over again to a noise she thinks is an intruder or to some dreaming imperative that vanishes when she opens her eyes to find herself in her dark room, the stone of the hotel absorbing and deadening all sound so that it’s as quiet as a night back on the farm. She has been dreaming, she knows, but what the dreams are about she can’t remember, only a veil of figures, pale green and blue, soldiers maybe, but what they were doing she can’t bring back.

  At first light she gives up, extricates herself from her knotted bedcovers, and begins to get out of bed, but her body is stiff and aching, her eyes feel grainy, her mind buzzes stupidly; her head fills with recurring images, as if in a film projector gone mad. She puts both hands up and rubs her face hard.

  Her old life shines in that space behind her eyelids. This morning it appears as one of those small glass domes inside of which a plastic scene is anchored, Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, plastic snow drifting downward to glitter on the village rooftops. The farm, her own village, hovers there for an instant before it slowly dissolves and vanishes. A confection, a falsity, a foolish dream.

  There’s still no water, so without washing she pulls on yesterday’s clothes. There’s no electricity either, and it’s so early the room is still deep in shadows. She feels claustrophobic, in need of fresh air and space to wash away the night’s accumulated woes. And she has to wait for Giyorgis to get up before they can leave. She pockets her key, opens her door quietly, and, concentrating on holding it so it will shut noiselessly, steps into the hall.

  “Sister,” someone whispers loudly near her ear. She spins around, taking in her breath sharply, stifling an exclamation. A tall, very thin man she guesses to be in his forties is standing behind her, one hand raised as if he meant to touch her shoulder and then thought better of it. “I must speak to you,” he whispers urgently to her startled face. “I wait here — all night,” he says, “so I may speak to you.” Then, while she’s still getting over the fright he has given her, he walks a couple of steps down the hall, going in the opposite direction from the lobby, stops and looks back. “Come,” he whispers, his eyes glittering, when he sees she’s not following.

  Iris hesitates, reluctant to follow a total stranger in this strange place, thinking of the benefits to him of kidnapping a ferenji, but then she reminds herself that she’s in a modern hotel inside a guarded compound, that on three sides there is a sheer drop of twenty feet or more. Probably the grounds are patrolled regularly too. All she has to do is scream and people will come running from all directions.

  He says again, “Come, sister, please.” The way he says it, in a tone more imploring then commanding, and all the things she saw yesterday — especially all of that — overcome her caution. She follows him in a way that’s almost angry, nevertheless rising onto her toes so as not to make a sound on the stone floor. They turn the corner and walk a few feet to an exit leading into the hotel garden, but where an angle of the building shields them from the view of the guards at the compound entrance
. He holds the door open for her, then follows her as she goes through.

  It is going to be another cloudless, bright day, but this early there are still shadows in the clefts of the mountains around the town and high up the sky is still a deep night blue. The air is chilly and she shivers. The man stops and faces her. He is darker skinned than most Ethiopians she has met and she guesses from this he is a farmer. Or is he a priest, who apparently are also farmers? Does he perhaps look a bit familiar? Maybe she saw him yesterday in one of the rock churches, or leaning with his companions against the wall in one of the passages.

  “Yes?” she says uncertainly, staring up into his eyes. He bends his head toward her and stoops a little from his shoulders to better compel her attention.

  “I ask you, sister. We have no food.”

  “What?” she says, although she has heard him perfectly well.

  “Sister, you must tell the NGOs to come.” He’s treating her as if she’s his last hope in the world, as if she absolutely must understand him. As the import of his message strikes her at last, she takes in her breath sharply. “The NGOs,” he repeats urgently. “You must tell them to come. You are Canadian — we need Canadian grain.” How does he know she’s Canadian? Oh, yes, her passport presented at the desk. She wonders suddenly if the hotel guards let him come in. Or is he, maybe, one of them? Still perplexed, she asks, “But — but won’t the government help you? I saw all those truckloads of grain going up to Tigray —” Abruptly he drops his eyes from hers.

  “We cannot get government grain,” he mutters, as if he is ashamed to say this, or afraid. After a second’s hesitation Iris says, “What?” again, thinking she couldn’t have heard him right. Aware she’s frowning, thinking out loud, she says, “But they’re building that new air strip —” meaning that if they can build a new air strip, surely they have the money and the means to transport food here? He shrugs and looks over the barbed-wire fence to where the distant mountain Giyorgis told her is Abuna Yosef is flooding with the clear, pale light of the rising sun.

  I suppose the answer is too complicated for him to tell me, Iris thinks. I suppose I wouldn’t understand anyway, or it wouldn’t make the slightest difference. Or he doesn’t dare tell me for fear of — she stops here, not knowing what: the police? the army? the government? Then she thinks, I’m a stranger — how can I judge? I can only refuse him or accept what he says.

  She stares into his eyes as he looks gravely down at her, trying hard to see whatever it is there that contains the answers to her questions. No, she cannot read that darkness; she does not speak that language, she from a country created only yesterday, from a people who believe that by crossing a mere ocean, they’ve escaped the weight of history. She takes in a deep, slow breath.

  “I will tell people you need food,” she says. “I’m going back today to Addis and I will tell the NGOs. And when I get home, soon, I will tell the people back in Canada.” She imagines the truckloads of grain rushing up the winding mountain road, or maybe the NGOs will ship the food in using the new airstrip. Then she wonders whom in Canada she can tell and whether anyone will listen to her if she does. Lannie! she thinks. Lannie will know where to find the right people to tell. And I can call that woman in Addis who helped me find her — Mrs. Samuels.

  He lifts his head abruptly, looking off in the distance before he brings his eyes back to meet hers. It’s as if he’s searching as deep inside her as he can go, looking perhaps for some promise he can trust. Then, he bows.

  “Thank you, sister,” he says, and disappears around the corner.

  While they’ve been talking, the sun has risen to bathe the countryside’s rough peaks and valleys, the flat-topped buttes Giyorgis says are called ambas, its dusty roads, its distant, dark-red, round, two-storey dwellings. Such a busy landscape, she thinks, with its ups and downs and ins and outs, its varied palette, it tires her this morning to look at it. She thinks of her own country with its long, gently sloping lines, unbroken for miles by buildings or people, its pale yellows and tans and dusty blue-greens, and its enormous sky that’s both a steady question and its own unreadable answer.

  A motorized vehicle is roaring down the road on the far side of the hotel and Iris recognizes that the world is stirring at last. It occurs to her to wonder why, in a hotel full of tourists, this man has come to her, but she knows the answer. The other tourists travel with guides from their own countries and have the blessing of the government because of the money they bring. To disturb them would surely bring harsh penalties to the local people. And because she’s alone, travelling with an Ethiopian who isn’t an official guide, because she speaks English, not French or German, like the other tourists.

  Thinking hard about what she will do, she goes back to her room, where she quickly packs her few things and takes her suitcase through the lobby to the desk to check out. People are about now, mostly hotel staff, but even though she studies the faces of the several men who are standing in the lobby or passing through, none of them is the stranger who spoke to her. She says hesitantly, carefully to the desk clerk, “I see you’re having a drought here.” He nods, handing her back her passport, then speaks slowly, in a soft voice so that she has to strain to hear him. “Yes. There has been a crop failure. And there is no rain.”

  He looks down at the stack of papers he’s filling out, no computers here — of course not, there’s no power — and Iris notices that his collar, the collar of the desk clerk in what was once a Hilton Hotel, is frayed almost through to the stiffening beneath the cloth. Whoever is paying him isn’t giving him enough money, she thinks. He shuffles his papers without looking at her while he waits for her to finish signing her traveller’s cheques, and she thinks it’s as if he’d like to say something more to her, but keeps changing his mind.

  As she hands him the cheques, Iris sees Giyorgis coming across the lobby, carrying his bag.

  “Are you well this morning?” he asks. His voice is gentle. There must be signs in her face of her sleepless night, nor has she bothered with makeup or teased her thick hair into a coiffure, just pulled it back and tied it with a scarf at the nape of her neck. She supposes she looks terrible; she finds she doesn’t care.

  Giyorgis loads their bags, they drive slowly out of the hotel compound, waving to the guards whose faces Iris doesn’t recognize, and turn down the dusty road that will lead them to the Chinese Road, then to Weldiya, Dessie, Kombolcha, and, she hopes, to Lannie. Iris leaves the town with no regrets, and yet with an absence of relief.

  The words of the stranger in the hotel corridor continue to sound in her ears, and she is determined to act, although she is still not sure what she’ll do. If she tells people, she’s afraid no one will believe her. She expects she’ll be viewed as naive, as a silly tourist who, on seeing the standard poverty of the Third World for the first time, has mistaken the commonplace for a crisis. She can’t think how she’ll overcome that. Perhaps she can’t.

  In any case, she thinks, she will at least try her very best to convey to someone in authority that the people here are desperate enough to have asked her for help. After a while she turns to Giyorgis and asks him bluntly, “Why won’t the government give them food?”

  He starts to, then doesn’t reply, only shrugs and grasps the steering wheel more firmly. She would press him to get him to speak to her, but she’s anxious not to put him in a bad position. But when she sees some country people walking up the mountain road to the town, she makes Giyorgis stop and ask them about the food situation, which he does without apparent reluctance.

  “They say they have no food,” he tells her. “They say there was a crop failure last year, and a poor crop the year before that, and if the rains don’t come,” he gestures to the clear blue sky, “there’ll be another one this year and they will starve. They will have to go away to find food.”

  Twice more, with several kilometres between each group, she makes him stop to ask the same question of different bands of people walking along the road or crossing t
he fields with loads of firewood on their backs. Each time Giyorgis tells her, “They have only firewood, they have no food.” The second group has also asked them to send the NGOs.

  All the way as they head south from Weldiya to Dessie to Kombolcha they meet truck after truck loaded with grain and heading north. Now she and Giyorgis don’t even mention them, Giyorgis poker-faced, Iris staring grimly at them, knowing that none of these trucks are turning off at Weldiya to take grain to the hungry people at Lalibela. A relatively stable government, they’d said in Canada, a step toward democracy. Why would they say that if it isn’t true? They know things about this country you haven’t even dreamt of, she reminds herself.

  It is late afternoon when they finally reach Kombolcha. Iris notices that the people here are thin too, although not as thin as those in Lalibela, and some of them laugh and talk as they walk along, which she didn’t notice people doing in or around Lalibela. There they were mostly silent and grim as they trudged along the road with their burdens or chased their animals, at least, that’s how she remembers it.

  They drive through the gates of Afewerk’s Inn. How is it that nothing has changed here, the flowers are still blooming red and orange, the guard who opens the gate is the same impassive, tall man, swathed now as evening approaches in a thick wool shamma. In silence they park, get out, and walk with stiffened joints, inside. Hagosa, still wearing her patterned cotton housedress over her bulky figure, her white shamma loosely draped over her black hair and sturdy shoulders, greets them at the door to the threadbare reception room.

  “You return,” she says, beaming shyly at Iris. Then she directs her gaze to Iris’s rumpled, dusty clothing, her uncombed hair that’s escaping the scarf she’d tied around in the morning. “You have been travelling,” she remarks. She seems concerned.