Notes from the Hyena's Belly

by Nega Mezlekia

  According to Mr. Alula’s thinking, the loss of his dogs makes your neighbour realize their material worth, so that when he gets replacements, he will make sure that they are properly chained, fed and watered. The immorality of killing the dogs is, therefore, temporary and fleeting. The fact that the new dogs are treated well makes the whole act completely moral.

  Alula’s Rules of Morality had some surprises in store for Dad. For instance, Dad, like many members of the community, had always maintained that the hyenas that invaded the town after dark should be mercilessly killed. They not only posed a great threat to property, but made it immensely difficult for anyone, without proper protection, to venture outdoors in the evening. The streets of my childhood were deserted after nine o’clock, with no street dog, beggar or lizard in sight. It looked as though the entire town was under siege.

  Mr. Alula proceeded to shed light on the morality of wandering hyenas. He explained not only why it was moral to permit the hyenas to reclaim the town at night, but why we should encourage them to do so by throwing discarded bones into the streets after the compounds were locked. He persuasively argued that without hyenas, the city would be forced to hire street sweepers to remove the carcasses of goats run down by speeding trucks, or the remains of street dogs hacked by angry butchers, or the vultures killed in battle over decaying meat. Without timely intervention by the hyenas, the city might even have a homelessness problem.

  Sleeping outdoors in Jijiga was the ultimate suicide. It was a vanishing act. The hyenas would cut you up into pieces quicker than the gods could put you together. They would devour you, your shoes, bracelets, linen and anything else you had touched. Beggars knew this; they might go hungry, but they always had shelter. They would pull together their slim resources with ten or more of their colleagues and rent a room with a strong door and eighteen latches. Mr. Alula did not enjoy the spectacle of people being eaten by hyenas; but he was a moral man, and had to make tough decisions. He was willing to sacrifice a few individuals so that the rest would have homes. Homelessness, concluded Mr. Alula, is a vivid indication of a shortage of hyenas.

  * * *

  I NEVER LIKED Mr. Alula, a fact he was well aware of. I got into serious trouble with him once, when I ran out of ink during a Morality class and so was no longer taking notes. I was simply sitting and watching as he wrote diagonally, from one end of the blackboard to the other, talking to the wall. His head mesmerized me; the shiny scalp with the slight salting of white hair at the periphery was quite enthralling. As I watched, the back of his head mysteriously changed its appearance and I could see the face of someone with a grey beard and tiny eyes, which were crossed in an unnatural way. The mouth of this stranger was slanted, more vertical than humanly possible. It was staring at me with a demented look, winking at me and crying at the same time. I quickly realized that it was the Devil, teasing and testing me. A shock ran down my spine and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I was both afraid and courageous, calm and perturbed.

  I fished a piece of rubber band from my pocket, made a V out of my left thumb and index finger, and fastened the band around it. With my free hand, I tore a piece of paper from my notebook, rolled it, and bit it with my teeth to make it strong. Tucking the paper wad into the end of the band, I aimed my weapon at the eye of the Devil, pulling the rubber as far as it could go without breaking before releasing. I hit my target.

  The Devil lost his eye, but it was Mr. Alula who screamed, dropping the chalk to the floor and rubbing the back of his bald head with both hands. His first impression was that he had been bitten by a mutant mosquito, but, noticing the wad of paper at his feet, he quickly realized that it had been no act of God. Looking around him at the little devils in the room, he demanded to know who the culprit was. Instead of answering, the students were laughing, cherishing the moment, having never before seen such a contorted face on the almighty Alula. Unable to contain his anger, the teacher let out a torrent of abuse and ordered us all to kneel down. Walking from row to row and looking each student in the eye, he ordered a few suspects to stand and face the chalkboard. I was among them.

  Mr. Alula ordered us, the selected few, to empty our pockets on his table, and he proceeded to go through the items with keen interest, looking for some clue. Unsatisfied with what he saw, he ordered us to turn our pockets inside out. That was when I knew I was in trouble. The rubber band dropped to the floor and Mr. Alula regarded me with the tortured look of someone who had just broken a healing bone.

  “Nega,” he mumbled, “it is you again, is it?” It was a question to which he did not expect an answer.

  With a defeated look in his eye, Mr. Alula surveyed the class, which had withdrawn into distressed silence. He allowed everyone else to return to their seats, then turned to me. He stared for a long moment, weighing forms of punishment, deciding which among them would be suitable for the atrocious crime I had just committed.

  “Stand facing the class,” he muttered, reaching for the persuader. He flexed the whip, rolling and unrolling it.

  “Bend over and hold the end of the table,” he commanded, recovering from his initial shock, and becoming once again the familiar Alula.

  With the ferociousness of an aging lion fighting some feckless upstart, Mr. Alula raised the persuader high above his head and dropped it on my rear end. It felt as though someone had made a long incision in my flesh before sprinkling chilli pepper in the wound: the sensation was more scalding than boiling water, more bristling than dry ice on one’s soul. Mr. Alula whipped me for five generations, pausing only to stretch his arms now and again or to wipe the sweat that gathered on his brow with the sleeve of his jacket. There was a gasp of collective torture from the class, and a few students shed tears. Mr. Alula liked tears, so I refused them, though inside I wept tears that rolled from my heart like flames. I felt I might burn down from the inside out, turning into an ashen heap. I knew right then that this was going to be a battle that would not end in my defeat.

  When he was exhausted from having exerted himself so wildly, Mr. Alula dismissed me, the persuader still dangling from his plump fingers. I headed for my seat, limping, gathered my books and things, and left the classroom quietly. At the gate of the compound, the watchman inquired why I was leaving school before class had been dismissed, and he demanded a note from the teacher. I looked at him for a long while, the contempt and anger that was building in me showing plainly on my face. The contents of my stomach were churning, and threatening to spill out all over his starched uniform. But I refused to open my mouth. Instead, I hurled my books at his smug face and walked out of the school compound with a resigned spirit.

  Once outside, there was no stopping the tears that coursed down my cheeks as though they had been waiting a thousand years to break free of the tortures of schooling. I sobbed, not because of the pain—the persuader had numbed all the nerve endings, and so I felt none—but because I knew that I had, just then, ceased to be a carefree schoolboy and become a man: a vengeful man who had just picked a fight with the entire world.

  Mam demanded to know why I was home so early, but I didn’t stop to answer her. Instead, I headed for my bedroom, sank my face in the pillow, and refused to acknowledge her presence. The primitive instinct that all mothers share told her that this was not your usual run-to-mamma incident, but it took quite a bit of persuasion and petting on her part before I opened my mouth.

  On seeing the wild tangle of lash marks cut into my behind, the bruises that marred my nine-year-old skin, Mam jumped from the bed, her hands covering her mouth to stifle a scream. She thought she knew who the culprit was, but wanted to hear it from me. I merely told her what she already knew.

  Confirmed in her belief that Mr. Alula was indeed the Devil’s messenger, Mam vowed that he would never set foot in our home again. She promised me that she would not let this incident pass, that she would first seek justice from the school director, and then from the Adbar. Then she tended to my wounds by soaking dried leaves and roots in
water, adding some divine oil to the mixture, applying this poultice to my skin, and covering my back with a clean wet towel. After instructing me to lie still, she left the house.

  Mr. Taddesse, the school director, came to see me at the end of the day. He joined our family for dinner, and spent most of the evening drinking arake and speaking in subdued tones with Dad. Before leaving, the director came to my room, woke me, assured me that I would be all right, and said that I should just stay in bed until I felt better. I spent the next four days at home, recovering.

  Even after my wounds were healed and I could walk again, I still harboured a great deal of resentment against Mr. Alula, and felt that I could not go on living unless I exacted some form of justice. But my boundless rage did not make me reckless. I carefully studied the situation. My good friend Wondwossen and I spent many hours dangling from a tree across the street from Mr. Alula’s residence, deciding on what needed to be done.

  Mr. Alula and his wife lived in a compound with two other families. The compound was not fenced in by a stone wall, like our residence, but by a wooden one. In the middle of the lot there was a water well with a creaking windlass, and a big kitchen shared jointly by the three families, which belched out torrents of smoke throughout the day. The only barn in the compound was owned by Mr. Alula, and housed his four prize cows. The barn was fenced in by wooden planks and reinforced by thorny twigs. It had a strong door, but no roof.

  Like many families in the community, Mr. Alula hired a shepherd boy to take care of his cows. The boy would make his rounds early in the morning, gathering sheep, goats, cows and bulls, which he would turn out of town to graze. Shortly after sunset, the boy brought them back, walking them along the main route and separating out a few at each juncture to find their own way home, which normally they did.

  Watching this clockwork routine, I was struck by an idea. I climbed down the tree, feeling a rush of excitement, and urged Wondwossen to hurry after. I told him about my plan, and he thought it was the best thing, next to a blazing firecracker taped to the tail of a wicked cat. We decided to meet the next day, with our water pistols loaded and ready.

  * * *

  IT WAS SATURDAY afternoon. Wondwossen and I kept Mr. Alula’s residence under intense scrutiny, watching for the cows to come home. We waited, hidden in the bush, full of excitement at what we were about to accomplish.

  As the afternoon wound down, passersby became a rarity. Life reverted to the compounds: chairs and drinks were brought out and neighbours joined in, sharing the feast and gossip alike. Children ran and played under the watchful eyes of their parents.

  The cows kept their schedule. The shepherd boy separated Alula’s four from the countless others, which he drove ahead. The routine was so well practised that no one waited for the cattle at the gate. The cows sauntered the thirty metres with ease, queueing at the gate of the compound to enter one at a time.

  That night Wondwossen and I changed the routine a little. The moment the shepherd boy passed out of sight we left our hiding places and walked slowly towards the unsuspecting cows. I approached the one at the head, and after rubbing her neck to gain her trust, lifted her tail and injected the special fluid from my water pistol into her back end. The cow seemed disoriented. She stood in her tracks as though the earth’s gravity had finally taken hold of her, then with a mad fury she leaped high above my head and landed on the ground with a savage thump. She ran wildly past the compound, her hind legs kicking at the sky, as though she were trying to buck an invisible rider. Wondwossen administered the solution to the other cows, and they soon joined in.

  Mr. Alula’s neighbourhood was transformed into a wild Roman circus. The cows ran back and forth, kicking at invisible enemies with their hind legs. Their eyes were protruding so wickedly that they threatened to pop out of their sockets any second. Their mouths were foaming as though they had gorged themselves on a box of detergent, and they were moaning loudly, pleading with their God to intervene. Wondwossen and I were too shocked to run away. The spectacle was too much; it was not what we had expected. We wished we had thought of some other plan, but it was too late.

  Disturbed by the commotion, a girl wandered out of the compound. I could see where she stood, frozen in her tracks, overwhelmed by the scene around her. Her jaw dropped and her eyes blinked wildly, as if she were trying to slow down the reel running fast in her brain. But no effort could change the bizarre spectacle unfolding before her. She turned and fled, wishing to alert an adult to the strange and frightening occurrence. But before she could reach the safety of the compound, one of the cows rammed her savagely, tossing her body into an open ditch as it headed for the gate. Once inside the compound, the cow charged towards a woman who sat washing laundry in a large metal basin on the ground. As it passed her, the cow stepped on the edge of the vessel, overturning it. Caught in the sudden lake of suds and soaked clothes, the animal slowly and ungracefully toppled over, where it remained for a while before finding its legs.

  Two other cows struggled to enter the compound. Unable to decide which would go first, both thrust their heads inside, pushing and shoving. The door was knocked from the rickety wooden frame, and part of the fence came crashing down. Once inside, the two cows continued their mad dance, sending everyone indoors. Mr. Alula was seated in a rocking chair, sharing a bottle of spirits with his neighbour. He pulled his chair out of the way before making a valiant attempt at calming the animals. Indeed, one of them appeared to heed his soothing words: as she stood facing the kitchen, she let loose a wild torrent of urine. Then, remembering the steps to her dance, she threw her hind legs high, catching Mr. Alula in the balls and sending him flying. He came to a rolling stop in the black soil, soaked with laundry water.

  One of the neighbours, a young soldier, quickly intervened. He drove the cows back with a bat, pulling Mr. Alula to safety. He then called for Mr. Alula’s slave, who was in the backyard, and together they managed to herd the cattle into the shed. Mr. Alula was taken indoors, as the rest of the household gathered to assess the damage and discover what events had precipitated this mayhem. The soldier found us where we stood transfixed and asked us what we knew about the cause of the disaster, which was, of course, nothing. He shook his head with sorrow, speculating that the cows had eaten some poisonous weed, or had been touched by a paid curser.

  People from the other compounds gathered in the streets, trying to learn what they could about the incident. Wondwossen and I walked away unnoticed, with mixed feelings of happiness and distress. We were satisfied that no one would ever know we had injected the cows with a chilli pepper solution. And, as no one was seriously injured, we felt the mission had gone divinely.

  * * *

  EARLY THE NEXT day, Mr. Alula came to see Dad wearing a bandage over his head. He was convinced that Wondwossen and I had given his cows something to drive them mad, and wanted to know what it was. The cows refused to be milked the night of the incident, and the morning after as well. Mr. Alula had asked the shepherd boy if any of his other customers had experienced similar problems. He had been assured that they had not. Whatever had happened to Mr. Alula’s cattle must have taken place after they turned the corner.

  Dad asked me, a resigned look on his face, if I had anything to do with it. He promised he would not punish me, as the cows were still alive. He explained that knowing what the cows had eaten would help them find the right herb to restore their vigour. I strongly objected to any implication that Wondwossen or I might have poisoned the animals. I recited the story that Wondwossen and I had agreed upon: we had been out hunting birds with a sling as they came home from the countryside and we had just been passing by Mr. Alula’s residence when we noticed the dancing cows. Mr. Alula was not convinced.

  Mam intervened on my behalf: “Don’t torture my boy any more; you’ve already done enough harm to him,” she snapped, taking me by the hand and leading me to the kitchen. Mr. Alula left our home a dejected man, still convinced that Wondwossen and I were the culprits, but
not knowing what we had done.

  After seeing the visitor out, Dad came into the kitchen to ask me one last time if I had done what he suspected I was quite capable of doing, but I held my ground. He turned to Mam and suggested that perhaps it was time for me to see the medicine man. Mam acknowledged that she had been thinking about it for quite some time.

  A few days later, Mam came into my room with a glass of milk, to tell me that we were going to see a medicine man the next day. She assured me that nothing bad would happen, that I wouldn’t even be injected with a needle. Mam promised to take me to an Arab shop afterwards to buy me sweets, so long as I didn’t tell anyone.

  * * *

  THE MEDICINE MAN lived in the Muslim part of town. The man was ominously big, with a very long beard and a moustache that covered his mouth. He wore a black patch over his left eye and a white turban perched on his head. His house had two rooms, the front one much larger than the back. The doors to both rooms faced the street, and were aligned. The medicine man sat in the back room facing the door. One could easily throw a stone from the street and knock the turban from the learned man’s head.

  When Mam and I walked in, there were eight men in the front room, seated along the perimeter of the wall, chewing chat. The room was enveloped in a haze: a wild mixture of burning incense, ood, and centuries-old sweat. It was stiflingly hot and uncomfortably quiet. A light, transparent curtain hung over the doorway to the inner chamber. The stillness of the air was accentuated by the dead immobility of that gossamer curtain. A housemaid sat on a stool in the middle of the front room, brewing coffee over a portable burner fuelled by a stack of charcoal.

  “Can I help you?” she inquired.

  “We are here to see the medicine man,” replied Mam, who looked noticeably ill at ease.