After I had filled my jerrican with water and balanced it on my shoulder, I staggered to find my way back through the confused crowd. Soldiers were dashing to and fro like mad. Women were shedding tears. Small crowds had formed here and there, watching the smouldering smoke. I realized that the Somalis had done significant damage this time around.
A crowd had gathered around the spot where my friends awaited me, so I pushed my way through. Nothing I had left behind remained. The Jeep was gone, the tree, my friends … surely I was lost. Then I realized that one of the shells had landed right inside our small bit of shade and all three of my friends had perished, their remains scattered over a large area, intermingled with ragged shreds of metal. I was not shocked. I was not angry. I did not cry. I didn’t feel lucky for having survived, either. Strange as it may seem, I almost felt relieved for them, because I knew that wherever they now were it could not be worse than the life they had lately led on earth.
I took the jerrican to Mam. She had already been to the site and was visibly shaken, tear stains marking her dusty face. I had no words to offer her. I found some shade nearby and sat alone, watching as the dispossessed walked up and down, up and down. Everyone was carrying a gun—young and old, rich and poor, Muslim and Christian, the sick and the healthy—everyone. Stranger still, those who carried these guns were for the most part unable to afford a single meal a day. A bag of flour (ten kilos) cost forty dollars, a soldier’s monthly salary, whereas ten dollars could get you a slightly used AK-47 machine gun. If you bargained with the seller, they might even throw in a hand grenade or two for free. Life in the camp was inscrutable and tragic.
On the night of the explosion, it rained for the first time in well over four years. Children had been born and raised without ever knowing the touch of rain on their faces. They were mesmerized, ecstatic. The sky lit up with fire and heaved and shook. And the children discovered to their delight that the heavens were not about to swallow them up or break their tiny bodies under a torrent of cannon fire, but would pour down on them water—dear, precious water.
It rained for hours. There was no shelter from the rain, but it didn’t matter. The rain opened the people’s hearts, brought out a faith in the Prime Mover that none believed they still possessed. The storm, although harsh and accompanied by hail and wind, was considered a very good omen. It was agreed by all that God had opened the heavens so that our sins would be washed away, along with the filth, the rot, the stench of the camps. The future had been remade into something bright, something clean and forgiving.
The next morning the settlement was eerily silent. There was no sniper shot or cannon fire. Dawn broke quietly for the first time in memory. It was as though the rain had affected the Somali soldiers with the same heavenly thoughts as us. We scrambled to leave the valley quickly, as soon as there was enough light to find our way. The effect of these sudden storms is often felt hours after they have stopped, when the accumulated rainfall gathers enough momentum to wash away everything in its course. It is not unusual for a storm in southern Ethiopia to sweep away loaded trucks and buses full of people like specks of dirt in the bottom of a tub.
That day the 20,000 of us walked until sunset, by which time we were out of sniper range. The flood had come behind us, sweeping across the valley, creating an insurmountable divide between the enemy and us. The rains had washed away the remains of my three friends and then built up into a huge force, which literally tore a chasm into the land between Jijiga and Harar, saving the lives of some 20,000 beleaguered refugees in the process. The next day we rested our sore bodies and ate our first decent meal in days. We were in the fringes of the highlands and able to buy fruits, milk and other food we had almost forgotten existed.
My youngest brother, Henok, had been coughing for days by then and had difficulty breathing. A knowledgeable nurse diagnosed him as having asthma, reassuring Mother that it was not life-threatening. She observed that since Henok was so young, the condition might even heal in time. Mother kept him warm by wrapping him with her netela at night and massaged his chest when he began to wheeze. Medicine was still days away.
Four days after the miraculous storm, we finally arrived in the city of Harar. Those four days were uneventful ones. No one was killed or seriously injured. We knew then that the rain had indeed been a good omen. It had written itself into the people as well as the land.
RETIRING SAINTS
HARAR IS AN ancient city founded on the rolling grounds of the eastern highlands, indented by perennial brooks and streams, graced by towering trees. The green-carpeted hills, scenic valleys and mild climate of the old city made a lively contrast to the eternal dust, scorching heat and barren countryside of my hometown. Harar had better roads and a more advanced infrastructure than Jijiga; the buildings were ancient, graceful and built with the shortage of real estate in mind. But what made Harar strikingly different from Jijiga, or any other town or village I had been to, were the stone walls that had been built around the old city, rendering it a fortress.
Harar had once been an independent city-state, home to the Adere tribe, one of the two Semitic peoples who had settled far from the northern and central highlands. The other Semitic people, who had drifted away from their kinsmen, were the Gurages. The Aderes, who at the best of times numbered 35,000, faced a great threat from the surrounding Cushitic peoples—primarily the Oromos, but also the Somalis. In the early sixteenth century, after the Oromos had been driven from their homeland by their Somali kinsmen and thrust into the eastern highlands and farther north, it became painfully clear to the Aderes that this human tidal wave would swallow and digest them as well. There was nothing more unacceptable to these proud people than being assimilated by a people at a much lower stage of civilization. The Aderes had never been warriors, but they were intelligent; they realized that to retain their unique way of life what they had to do was fence themselves in, creating an enclave formidable to an aspiring aggressor.
The stone walls they built around their treasured city were three metres high, broken only at four strategic locations where heavy wooden doors had been installed between the stones. The city opened and closed its doors, taking its cue from the honourable sun. The main gate stood facing the major street, a shout away from the city centre, which was a roundabout. The shops and trading places lined this major artery and the roundabout, each building shouldering up against the next. There were no empty lots in this ancient city, and no farms or green lawns either. The roads, roundabout and walkways were all lined with cobblestones.
The residential areas were immediately behind the business district. Here, the houses were mostly two stories high, built from carved stones, and whitewashed. Each individual property was fenced in, once more, with high stone walls, making the neighbourhood look like a wild honeycomb, each small cell separated by a shoulder-width walkway. The walkways ran into one another like a tangled nest of sleeping snakes, making it completely unfathomable, and impenetrable to an intruder.
Traders were welcome in the ancient city, as the Aderes were merchants, but the visitors left for home before the setting of the sun, when the watchman announced the closure of the city gates, pacing up and down the busy streets, his customary words amplified by the hollow bull-horn dangling from his neck. No outsider was allowed to remain behind.
From time to time, a bandit would steal into town disguised as a merchant, and stay behind the closed gates of the city. Soon, however, he would discover his mistake. Unable to find his way through the wild tangle of city streets, the lone venturer would invariably be caught by the city guard. The Aderes are not violent people, they would never molest a trespasser. They simply placed him in a shelter, fed him and threw a blanket over his shoulders to keep him warm during the chilly highland nights; but to avoid his secret escape, they also provided their prisoner with shackles for his legs and chained him to a heavy post. The sun rose and the city opened its gates, but the intruder remained chained. As meal after meal and day after day passed, the
intruder wondered what exactly was going to happen to him, and why he was being fattened up. He would discover his fate only when the Arab merchants came south, for at that point the Aderes unchained him, put him in decent clothes and sold him to the highest bidder.
Today, the old town of Harar is still an exclusive residence of the Aderes, enabling them to retain their unique language and culture in a massive sea of Cushitic peoples and self-righteous invaders. The business centres of downtown Harar are, however, shared by other entrepreneurs, and new settlements have sprouted outside the gates of the old city, extending the boundaries of the ancient city and multiplying the population four- or five-fold. The Aderes are, now, a minority within greater Harar.
* * *
WHEN WE FINALLY arrived in Harar four days after the flood, the city was bustling with activity. Thousands strolled the streets. The shops and businesses were open, the market full of merchandise. Had it not been for the distant grumble of cannon fire and the overhead singing of fighter jets, Harar would have seemed completely removed from the theatre of war.
The day we arrived in Harar, we caught sight of army ambulances dashing past us at breakneck speed as they headed for the hospital, and we followed their lead. Henok’s breathing problem had become alarming.
In Ethiopia, hospitals have always been regarded with suspicion. Many will resist a visit so long as there is some alternative—whether it is traditional medicine, a holy fountain or the Adbar. It is only after all the bitter roots have failed to cure the ailment; after the holy water has gone amiss, refusing to wash away the sting of the evil eye; and after the sacred tree has failed to defeat the Devil, that the patient is sent to a sanatorium. It will then take a miracle to keep the individual alive. No wonder hospitals were reputed to be places of the dying.
We took Henok to Jegula Hospital. In its heyday, this institution had been the pride of the nation. King Haile Selassie had always regarded the city of Harar with fondness, and did everything he could to support it. He established the only military academy in the nation within its city limits; he gave his blessing to the American proposal to found the first agricultural college within a stone’s throw of the city; and, when it became obvious that modern medicine was indispensable for an aspiring nation, he broke ceremonial ground for the foundation of Jegula Hospital. While he remained in power, the King paid frequent visits to the hospital, wishing its patients a speedy recovery, and ensuring that his pet project didn’t go awry. Regrettably, in the few years the junta had been in power, the quality of care given at the hospital, as with much else, had quickly plummeted.
I had seen Jegula Hospital in better days. I had strolled under the graceful eucalyptus trees lining the fenced compound; I had rested on its manicured lawns, appreciating the mature gardens; and I had slipped inside the building itself, leaving with a secret pride in my beloved city, in the extraordinary world that existed behind what was otherwise a very ordinary building facade.
As we walked in with Henok, I thought that there must have been some mistake, that we had taken a wrong turn. The building which I beheld might have been lifted from some devil’s sketchbook. The wide green lawns I remembered so well were littered with human misery, the bodies of the sick and their families camped before a building scarred with years of neglect. Indoors, the cleanliness that had once tickled my pride had been replaced by utter squalor, the dirty floors checkered with missing tiles, and the corridors pervaded by the smell of something dead and rotting.
There was nowhere to register, and no one to turn to. Neither a waiting room nor a queue existed to indicate that something was being done. We saw several patients brought in on makeshift stretchers who died and were removed without having ever seen a nurse. Several nomads led camels through the gate of the compound, the patient balanced on one side, sacks of grain on the other; they could neither sell their produce at market nor hear the diagnosis of the ill. They, like the whole institution, and everything in it, were in complete suspense.
The only discernible activity came from the part of the compound cordoned off from the public. A number of military tents and army ambulances were in the lot. Indoors, what had once been a tuberculosis ward was now an operating triage and intensive care unit, run by the Cuban Army. No civilians were permitted in these areas, but as each truck and ambulance pulled in to deliver the war victims, a mob of local people followed. They ran behind the tent and peeked through the cracks, standing on each other’s shoulders to look through the windows of the operating theatre. They had never seen a white man die before and would not pass up the bloody opportunity, even when the soldiers persuaded them with the butts of their rifles and the heels of their boots. They had to satisfy themselves that in death, the white man finally regained his human colour, very much like a piece of wood in a fire, which crackles and burns red for a short while, turning dark and sooty once again when the fire is out.
I was intrigued and saddened by their behaviour. In Ethiopia, as in many countries, people maintained a healthy respect for the dead. In fact, a dead person was often accorded far more respect than he or she had received while alive. In the presence of a casket, no one spoke out loud; whistling and playing music were taboo; laughing was wickedness; and above all, no one gazed upon the remains. What I had witnessed that sunny day was a mob that had broken free of the intricate chains of tradition, willing and keen to do what had always been forbidden—just because the context had been redefined, and the subject seemed alien, not looking or behaving like them.
Although I had never liked what the Cubans and Russians had done on the continent, and sometimes went so far as to wish them immediate death, it was sad to see their young men sacrificed for a people they hardly knew. Watching the wounded and dying, I couldn’t help but think of their mothers who, so far away from the continent, were unaware of what had befallen their dear boys. I couldn’t help wondering what went on in the minds of those young men on the stretchers as the final curtain fell over their brief lives. Did they pass into oblivion confident that they had advanced the international spirit of Marxism-Leninism?
As I was engrossed in my own thoughts, I felt a soft touch on my shoulder. When I turned around, I was confronted by a beautiful woman in her late thirties. She was grinning, confident that I would recognize her immediately. Disappointed, she pursed her mouth and raised a single eyebrow, asking, “What is the matter, Nega? Don’t you recognize me any more?” She removed her oversized sunglasses, pulled off her nurse’s cap and shook loose her hair. I recognized her immediately—the infamous Kibret. I called out her name; we embraced and kissed. She, too, was a newcomer to Harar, having recently been transferred from her home town of Addis Ababa. Kibret had once lived in Jijiga, where we had been neighbourhood friends. I apologized for taking so long to recognize her, and reminded her that I had never before seen her in a nurse’s uniform.
Kibret was a striking woman who possessed a tall and slender hour-glass figure. Even the starched white anonymity of the uniform she wore could not erase her graceful curves. Anyone who knew Kibret, even for a matter of minutes, would be witness to two remarkable facts—she was a fashion cultist, and would sleep with any man who had a title.
Kibret was the first woman in town to wear a miniskirt—long enough to conceal her sex, but no longer—and a murderous shade of red lipstick, soon named for her by the other women of the town. She invariably wore high heels, precarious stiletto spikes that bore her lithe figure over rough dirt and gravel roads alike—her hips cutting curves like a snake as she sauntered past a group of men. Quite conscious of the effect she had, Kibret would stop and swiftly turn her head, catching the boys staring after her, before flashing a smile and resuming her majestic gait.
Kibret had a reputation as something of a celebrity hunter. She was always in the company of one of the big shots in town—today it might be the police chief, tomorrow the army general. If a new civil servant was sent to work in Jijiga, and if he had any rank at all, you would be sure to see him esco
rted through the streets by Kibret.
All this, of course, was a kind of hobby for her. She had a much softer side as well. While in Jijiga, Kibret had fallen in love with my good friend Wondwossen. For a few months, they had been inseparable. As she was twice his age, their relationship quickly became the talk of the town. Wondwossen and Kibret strolled the streets of Jijiga, utterly immersed in one another, seemingly unaffected by the baffled looks of civil servants and the disapproving stares of the general public. Though she was insulted and taunted at every turn, and even berated by her boss at the hospital, she remained adamant, believing that her personal life was her own affair and that sacrifices should be made for love. As mysteriously as it had begun, the affair ended. One day, Kibret simply refused to see Wondwossen again, and would not explain, either to him or to us, his friends, why she had undergone the sudden change of heart. It would take weeks before the slow machine of talk revealed the truth to us. Wondwossen’s father had offered her a choice—highlighting the correct answer with a gun to her head.
I explained Henok’s problem to Kibret, who looked him over, then reassured Mam that she would see that he received the medicine he needed before the day was out. She led me inside to look for a doctor, but there was none in sight. We decided to wait at the nurses’ station, where half a dozen nurses giggled and chatted.
I paced up and down the corridor, trying to find some order in the chaos that surrounded me. A few doors down from the nursing station, I came across a male nurse carefully stitching a gash on a patient’s forehead with a hooked needle. The patient, a woman, was the victim of domestic violence. The stitching was being done without any anaesthesia. Her face contorted with pain. As I watched, I developed a great deal of admiration for the woman. The nurse pricked her forehead with the needle, wound its steel curve through her skin and pulled it up. He had repeated the procedure twice, and was piercing the lips of the wound a third time when the woman shrieked. Undoubtedly, he had been careless with the needle, I said to myself. He put the needle down and rolled up his shirt sleeve, after which I expected to see him comfort her. To my amazement, he gave her a hard slap instead, first on one cheek, and then the other. He barked at her in warning: “If you keep on screaming like that, I will walk out of here and the flies will take care of it for you.” Then he looked up, noticing my presence for the first time. “Get lost,” he told me, “or I will give you your due.” I decided to walk.
Notes from the Hyena's Belly Page 20
