The adjoining room was full of languishing patients, milling about dazedly and waiting for something to happen. The sole nurse in attendance toyed with her ballpoint pen. As the day was hot, the ink in the tube had rushed to the tip, threatening to spill out. She casually removed the tube, placed it inside the centrifuge machine and turned the motor on. Satisfied with the result, she replaced the tube inside its sheath and put the pen by some papers on her desk. Then, she became aware of an imperfection in her fingernails, clipping one and filing another. Finally, it dawned on her that there were patients in the room, waiting for her attention. “Next?” she called.
I returned to the nurses’ station, where the number of nurses idling about had increased to ten. It was noisier than the local market. Bells were ringing on the board from the nearby ward, but they fell on deaf ears. One of the bells rang continuously, finally getting their attention. A female nurse rose from her chair angrily. She pulled the broken handle of a broom from beneath her desk and strode towards the ward. As soon as she entered, the seven bedridden patients pointed at the man responsible. The nurse stood over his bed, eying him, as if to confirm his sin. As soon as he confirmed her suspicion and began to attempt to explain himself, she started beating him in earnest with the broom handle. He cried, pleading for mercy, but she was unconvinced. She stopped only after the fourth brutal whack, warning him that next time it would be much worse. On the way out I heard her muttering: “They eat excessively, and when they get constipated they give us a headache.”
I told Kibret what I had witnessed, thinking that the hospital authorities should know. Although physical violence is often tolerated, and even condoned, I believed that a bedridden soul should be exempt. Kibret was surprised by my ignorance. Apparently this practice was as old as modern medicine in our nation. She took me on a tour of the maternity ward, to better demonstrate how refined and theatrical the entire practice had become.
As we watched, a woman in her early thirties was wheeled into the delivery room, where she was transferred to the operating table. A single blue sheet, stained with the blood of previous patients, had been hastily laid beneath her. There were three nurses in this room. One fiddled with a needle, a bowl and a flickering lamp—the hospital’s only sterilization equipment. She was attempting to fish the needle out of the hot metal bowl with a tiny tong. Having failed repeatedly, she grabbed the edge of the bowl with a piece of cloth, tilting it to the side, thereby drawing the steaming water away from the needle. She then grasped the needle between forefinger and thumb, dropping it on the dirty linen when her finger was singed. Afterwards, she fetched a syringe, affixed this needle to its tip and administered some kind of medicine to the patient.
Soon after, the doctor made his entrance. After a hasty conference, the doctor and nurses began to work on the patient. The doctor absently fiddled between the patient’s legs, hidden from view by a square of linen spread across her knees. A few minutes passed before labour began in earnest. Overwhelmed by the pain, the woman shrieked wildly. The head nurse coolly responded: “You should have thought of that before lifting your leg.” The same nurse followed her pronouncement with a solid whack to the woman’s head with the side of her hand. The other nurses followed suit: whack, whack. If I hadn’t been incredulous before, what occurred in the next moment would have rendered me so. A hospital worker casually strolled into the room, in order to pick up the dirty linen. As he did so, he watched the performance of the nurses, and on his way out gave the patient one last slap himself.
The doctor continued his absent fiddling, indifferent to all that occurred around him. The patient screamed again, and was rewarded with another series of blows to the face. I blanched and turned away. I had seen quite enough for one day. A few hours later I came across the mother in the corridor, as she was being wheeled to her room. She was proud of her new delivery, a beautiful baby girl, and offered a weak smile. Her face was a mess. She had a black eye, a swollen lip and a wound on her cheek.
Kibret had finally spotted a doctor and sprinted after him, presenting her diagnosis of Henok. The doctor slapped her on the ass, pulled a writing pad from his pocket and scribbled some small words. As we thanked him, Kibret leaned over and whispered something in his ear that lit up his eyes and seemed to erase all the fatigue lines from his face. I could see his eyes following her as we made our way farther along the corridor.
The hospital pharmacy was better stocked than any of the private ones, and far cheaper, as it received its supplies from foreign donors. When Kibret and I presented the prescription to the pharmacist he muttered something about supplies being low and only emergency prescriptions being filled. Kibret sent him an icy glance, and told him that this was an emergency. Reluctantly, he slowly walked to the shelves, returning a few minutes later with the precious medicine.
As Kibret filled out the necessary forms, I read the label on the bottle and noted that the medicine had long ago expired. I pointed this out to the pharmacist, who told me that the numbers meant nothing, but that if it were important to me, he would be happy to erase them.
Kibret insulted him, calling him a bribe slave as she passed through the swinging door that had separated us from the pharmacist. A few moments later she returned with two bottles of fresh medicine. The pharmacist was fuming in anger and threatened Kibret with all kinds of retaliations. But in vain. Having laid the hospital director, the chief surgeon, the head gardener, the chief cook and the master plumber, Kibret was the most powerful person in the establishment, and he knew that very well.
* * *
WE STAYED IN Harar for over a week, stationed in a refugee camp along with thousands of others. Mam was planning to take us to her birthplace, the town of Asebe Teferi, where many of her close relations still lived. Her mother owned some property in town and would give us a place to stay.
Asebe Teferi was about three hundred kilometres west of Harar, and though the route was unaffected by the war, it was almost impossible to procure a bus ticket. Many beleaguered refugees were trying to get out of town, and most buses and trucks had been appropriated by the army to move troops and supplies. While we waited for a miracle to lift us from the camps of Harar, I was imprisoned in a blind roundup.
It was as if all the intervening years—the war, the amnesty, the long trek to Harar, two years of my life—had been instantly erased. A Meison cadre in town had been killed by EPRP members and the regime was out for revenge. Suddenly things had returned to how they had been before I joined the Somali liberation movement, before Wondwossen’s death. Every youth who walked the streets was arrested, and some were even taken from their homes. By the end of the day the various prisons and jails were teeming. I was caught while walking downtown, along with two friends. No one asked us for identification or proof that we resided in Harar. As refugees, we were unlikely to have known the victim, even if it was assumed that we were likely to have bumped him off. But this was considered a minor detail. We were loaded on a truck like a flock of sheep and sent to the detention camp.
The regime had already announced that suspected EPRP terrorists would be dealt with very severely. Suspects were detained longer; fact-finding procedures, otherwise known as various forms of torture, had been refined; and the ratio of so-called terrorists executed to cadres killed had risen significantly. The Red Book set a goal of a hundred terrorists done to death for each comrade killed.
On the first night of our imprisonment, about ten suspects were randomly selected from our ranks and shot to death in the prison compound. We could hear the machine-gun fire from our cells. Their bodies were later laid out in the streets for the public to see. No one, not even members of the immediate family, could show grief for the deceased, for that would be treason of the highest degree. The relations could claim the remains of their loved ones at the end of the day, for an inconspicuous burial.
The following night we were bracing ourselves for what might well have been our turn when the father of one of the boys in prison came to see u
s. His father was a highly decorated military officer from Jijiga who had won the admiration of the chairman of the junta, Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, for his bravery on the northern front. He had recently been promoted to general and had been sent to lead the Mechanized Brigade in the south.
The general considered it treasonous that his only son should be sent to jail while he was putting his life in jeopardy so that others could live free. He flew from the front not only to secure the release of his boy and the children of his comrades, but also to get revenge. He wanted to show these spineless civilians who was in charge.
The confrontation between the hot-tempered general and the cowed Meison cadres was quite something to watch. The general had brought along two truckloads of soldiers, armed with machine guns, keen to dispatch anyone at the wink of their patriarch’s eye. They disarmed the cadres and the kebele officials, and brought them before us for interrogation.
Initially, the cadres made an attempt, though feeble, to stand up to him, arguing they needed more time to consider the matter. After all, they said, when lives are in the balance things must be carefully thought through and one should not assume that they killed people who were only randomly rounded up. The general swatted aside their arguments like drowsy flies. He ordered the release of his boy, the children of other soldiers and finally everyone from Jijiga and the other towns from the annexed area. He took down the names of the cadres, promising them that it wouldn’t be the last time they’d hear from him.
Mother was waiting in the compound when I was released. As she cried, she felt my body like a blind woman, to make sure that I was not injured. Despite the anxiety and shortage of food in the prison, we had not been tortured. In fact, as we waited to see who among us would be chosen to spend the night in the hyena’s belly, we had longed for the good old days when all you could expect of prison was the “helicopter,” the “spread-eagle” or the “pilgrim.” But those days were gone for good.
Mother appeared to have aged a great deal since we’d left Jijiga. I don’t know how old she was then, but she couldn’t have been more than twenty years older than me, which would have made her about forty. Mam was like most Ethiopians: she would cite a historical benchmark when asked her age. Typically, if asked how old she was, Mam would respond that when the Italian fascists invaded the country and when her father took up arms against them, she was five years old. The war itself lasted about five years, so one could figure out her age with a likely margin of error of two or three years.
Father had been less clear about his age. His benchmark was a remarkable flood that had destroyed part of his hometown, at which time he lost his wisdom teeth. Assuming that there was a record of the flood, this case poses a daunting problem—how does one establish the average age at which a Christian male from the eastern highlands loses his wisdom teeth?
* * *
FOR THE NEXT few days Mam, the kids and I set up camp at the bus station, attempting to buy tickets to Asebe Teferi. Bus stations in Ethiopia are open laboratories for social dealings. It is here that new products are tested, and fresh schemes plotted and launched. Masculinity is demonstrated by fist fights, and sweethearts sought. Long before the hummingbirds of Africa announce the break of day, and well after sunset is marked by the crane’s swift flight past the terra cotta line of the horizon, the bus terminal is alive with furtive gestures and desperate schemes.
Each morning children as young as five leave the clinging warmth of their blankets before dawn to earn a few birr in the tumult. Thermoses filled with steaming coffee dangle from hands as frail as the bones of a bird. On each head is balanced a massive basket heaped high with various fruits, sweets and deli morsels. The children come to the terminal unaccompanied by adults, carefully avoiding the rabid dogs that plague the early morning streets and beggars who would not hesitate to rob them of their produce if the opportunity presented itself.
The bus terminal offers these children no more security than the streets. The adults they serve—passengers, coolies and bus drivers—do not see them as innocent victims of rampant injustice and the poor social conditions that plague the country, but as willing accomplices of these forces. These children can expect to be shortchanged at every opportunity, robbed of their merchandise by adults whose height gives them the advantage, and beaten without the slightest provocation. They are regarded with suspicion by the very society that has brought them into existence—as though their lives required justification.
Not unlike these children, inner-city sheep and goats leave their barns early to scavenge a living from the refuse and litter scattered on the grounds of the bus terminal. Here, these domesticated animals are engaged in a desperate bid for survival, stealing and fighting at every turn. There is no shepherd to watch over them, except perhaps a canny instinct that these animals have developed over time, alerting them to the precise moment in which to snatch a banana from a fruit stand; just when to make that surprising leap onto the sill of a window and escape from a speeding truck; and how to avoid those shady characters walking slowly backwards into hidden places, some small morsel in hand—luring them to certain death, with the intention of slaughtering and taking home that precious meat.
Bus terminals also house those that are considered the most loathed and feared members of society: beggars, thieves and the insane. The only lunatic asylum in Ethiopia is to be found in the capital city of the nation, far too long a journey for most. And since the mental hospital offers little more in the way of therapeutic treatment than the bus terminal, even those living nearby dump their demented relations at the station. Besides, people passing through the terminal are happy to contribute to the quick recovery of the insane by beating them, dousing them with cold water and giving them “Spotting Therapy”—an early form of electric shock treatment in which a gang of hoodlums ties the lunatic to a utility pole and burns his skin with cigarette butts.
As in many cultures, beggars are despised. They are living reminders of an uncertain future, of what could happen to many “respectable” citizens if that next paycheque doesn’t come, if the marriage ends, if the gods call home the family’s breadwinner. Beggars are not violent; in fact their job requires them to be more refined in their manners than the average person. They are quite entertaining and are expert at understanding the human heart. No two beggars beg the same way—the rhythmic narration, the heartbreaking melody, the subtle reminders of a coming judgment day are wound into performances that rival the national theatre. Learned at an early age, these eerie arias are passed from generation to generation with unparalleled respect for copyright.
There are variations on this age-old tradition. While waiting for our ticket in Harar, I witnessed a most original and enterprising school of beggars. The troupe consisted of a dishevelled couple and a well-dressed woman. This seemingly respectable lady casually strolled throughout the terminal, watching for possible victims, typically wealthy women travelling alone who had recently lost a loved one. Mourning families signify their loss in the clothes they wear. A woman dressed completely in black, for instance, is likely to have lost a very close member of her family in the last six months. If her dress and netela are only trimmed in black, it is likely that she is past the immediate six-month period of mourning. If she wears her regular dress with the netela upside down, and the head-wear to match, then she is probably remembering a distant relation who passed on a long time ago. If one end of the netela is tied at her waist, the light fabric draping low behind her, and the other end is carefully folded around her shoulders, she is just coming from a funeral.
As I watched, one of the troupe, the well-dressed woman, approached a mourning lady, greeted her sombrely and, in a low tone that expressed her respect and sympathy, asked about the woman’s recent loss. The stranger gave her detailed information on how her six-year-old boy was afflicted by the evil gaze of an unknown Buda on St. Michael’s day, becoming delirious and feverish for two days, before suddenly succumbing to the illness on the third. The two women s
hed tears together, and parted.
A few moments later, a dishevelled couple could be seen begging in divine melodies, pausing here and there, before casually stopping before the lady in black. They expressed their humble sympathies for the dead, and urged the lady to cease her mourning. They implored her to give thanks to a kind God that had seen fit to bless her with the beautiful daughter that still accompanied her. The girl, about three years in age, clung to the hem of her mother’s netela, watching the exchange. Without missing a beat, the beggars related their own tragedy, telling of the sudden death of their six-year-old son, who had been afflicted by an unknown Buda on St. Michael’s day. They told her of his last delirious days, sweating like a candle in the sun, before he passed away on the third day without saying goodbye.
The mourning woman was stunned. She raised both hands to her mouth to stifle a scream, her dazed eyes shed tears and her frail body trembled. She had never expected to share her most private torments with such a down-and-out couple as this. The beggars, if they noticed any change in her demeanour, didn’t let on. They continued to relate the details of their tragic existence. While grieving for the loss of their son, they continued in tandem—one voice taking up the narration when the other was too overcome with grief to speak. They railed against the gods, saints and good spirits for their misfortunes, only to be suddenly reminded of how much worse their lot in life could be when, a few months later, their beautiful three-year-old daughter was snatched from them by a pack of wild hyenas.
Notes from the Hyena's Belly Page 21
