Cold White Sun

by Sue Farrell Holler

  Copyright © 2019 by Sue Farrell Holler

  Published in Canada and the USA in 2019 by Groundwood Books

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press

  groundwoodbooks.com

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Holler, Sue Farrell, author

  Cold white sun / Sue Farrell Holler.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77306-081-1 (hardcover).—ISBN 978-1-77306-082-8 (HTML).—ISBN 978-1-77306-083-5 (Kindle)

  I. Title.

  PS8615.O437C65 2018 jC813’.6 C2017-907517-9 C2017-907518-7

  Map by Mary Rostad

  Jacket design by Michael Solomon

  Jacket photographs by Egor Ukoloff, Sun Dogs over Calgary; and Audrey Scott / UncorneredMarket.com, Friendly Face at the Gondar Market — Ethiopia

  We gratefully acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Canada.

  To those who know what it is to be alone and afraid.

  Preface

  When the author and I began work on this story, I was hurt, confused, and didn’t understand what had happened to me or why. I was angry, but I didn’t know why I was angry and I didn’t know where to direct it — my country, my family, the set of circumstances that caused me to flee Ethiopia, or a combination of all three. My underlying anxiety was senseless but I couldn’t let it go.

  Sharing my story and watching it develop as a work of fiction helped me see my past in a different context. This perspective has changed my heart and my mind and brought me peace.

  — Tesfaye

  Prologue

  “He cannot stay here!”

  I jolted to sitting. Blind darkness.

  Muscles tensed, breath stopped. Heart bashing through my chest.

  Listening. Ready.

  Ready for what? No moving shapes. No threat of sneaking sound.

  Cold silence.

  An empty, black cavern.

  A dream, then. A nightmare of being alone.

  Just a dream. Rest now. Go back to sleep.

  I filled my lungs to capacity, let the air trickle from them like a small leak from a bicycle tire and patted beside me, feeling for Ishi.

  A wall of soft fabric, warm from my body. No brother. Where was he?

  “He has nowhere to go. He has no one.” A man’s voice, clear above the freezing room.

  “Pfft. You know nothing about him. What were you thinking? Bringing him here?”

  “I had to! He was alone. His face covered with blood.” His voice, familiar. A name stitched. Ahmed.

  I was a cornered rat, ears straining, eyes scanning the darkness, ready to bolt. But which way? How to get out?

  Movement above. Shuffling feet. The creaking of wood.

  “What if the authorities find out?”

  “They will not. They know nothing of him.”

  “What if he is a spy? What if he has come to report on us?”

  There must be a door. How had I been brought in?

  “Don’t be a donkey, you stupid woman. He is a kid. Not a spy.”

  “How can you be so sure? Informers come in all shapes and in all sizes. And the blood on him. What of that?”

  “We have nothing to hide.”

  “Nothing to hide. Nothing to hide,” she parroted. “We are hiding him, aren’t we? He cannot stay here!”

  There must be a way out. There was always a way out.

  My jaw vibrated. Back teeth clattering. It was too cold to think. I drew up my legs and huddled into the furry covering, pulling it tight around my shoulders.

  An object skidded above the ceiling. “I’ll take him with me to my work. He will come here only to sleep,” the man said.

  “What about my sister? Do you ever think of her?”

  The smells of fresh paint and disinfectant. Everything clean. Everything new.

  “He will ruin our chances. Ruin everything!”

  How dare she speak to him in that tone? Would he hit her?

  Thumping overhead, but not violence. The running of small feet. Squeals of children not yet in school, the type of children Gashe liked.

  I was below the ground, like a man already dead. But it was a room with a rug below my feet and a comfortable sofa.

  There had been stairs going down. I needed to find them.

  “And the stink of him,” the woman said.

  “Maybe he is someone. Maybe he can help us.”

  “Pfft. Now who is the donkey?”

  I dragged my hand just above the floor. The backpack was still there.

  A door opened. A rectangle of daylight. Ahmed stood in silhouette. The stairs now visible. A blinding light strobed as I strained in the glare to hold open my eyes. I snatched the pack and stood tall on the nubby carpet, shoulders back like a warrior. The warm covering slid in a cascade behind me.

  “Ah,” said Ahmed, coming down the stairs. “I frightened you. Do not fear. You are well?”

  “Yes. I am well.” The polite response was automatic, even when it was not true. I watched Ahmed and eyed the escape route. If he tried anything, I would stomp on his bare foot. Then, run.

  “Good. Good. You will come now,” he said. “Eat with my family.” Ahmed was wearing a pale blue shirt, buttons down the front, a circle of grease the size of a coin near the hem. His name was sewn over his heart.

  This stranger laid his hand on my shoulder and pulled me close, like a brother. He guided me to the stairs.

  “You will come with me to work. Until I can think of something,” he said.

  He showed me the toilet that flushed, pushed the single knob toward the mirror to make water flow.

  “Hot,” he said, pushing it left. “Cold.” He pushed it to the right. “These towels, here. Soap. Everything you need.”

  I noticed the vessel shaped with a spout, like a small container to water flowers.

  Muslim.

  I

  Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

  1991

  1

  The glow of the melting sun stained the clouds that hung low over the Entoto Mountains, turning all that was familiar into dark silhouette: the gates of the compound with their sharp points of wrought iron, the tall arms of the eucalyptus trees in the garden. Even the chickens looked different in the evening, like demons that moved their heads back and forth on a string.

  The guards shouted to each other and rushed to pull the gates inward. Gashe’s navy blue Peugeot rolled in. He’d arrived safely, home before curfew, when the gates would be chained and the Special Police would prowl. Night was a dangerous time, full of the unknown. People disappeared after dark, but inside the gates, Ishi and I were safe to race the chickens.

  “Go, Chicken Little. Go!” I yelled. My chicken was the best and she was winning. I jumped up and down to encourage her, then crouched to show her the juicy slugs I had collected for her prize. I would win this race and my brother would lose. My belly would be full this night. I would get his portion, plus my own.

  “Come. Come,” Ishi said, breaking the rules and going behind the chicken to flap frantically at the bird that could not fly. His chicken sat, fluffed her t
ail feathers and nestled in the dirt.

  “I win! I win!” I yelled. I fed Chicken Little the fat worms one by one and patted the soft feathers of her head. Ishi yelled, too.

  “No! I win! I win!” he screamed, moving his chicken and lifting a still-warm egg. He held it in the air like the prize it was. “Tonight, I will have this egg for my supper!”

  He twirled in a big circle, holding up the chicken’s gift as Gashe drove his car into the garden.

  Our father did not wave or nod as he moved through our game. He did not toot his horn or notice the prized egg, laid at such an unusual time. He pulled to the side of the house and parked in his line of fancy cars and the ugly pickup he used to drive us to school. We looked his way when he cut the engine, to see if he might be carrying a sack heavy with mangoes or papayas, but today his hands were empty. Ishi and I disappeared like cockroaches into the far reaches of the house. To be seen by Gashe was to invite a reprimand or a slap. We were too old for Gashe now that we spent our days in school, too old to swarm his car in the hope of the first piece of fruit, too old to hold his hand as he wandered through the garden bending to smell flowers and watering already wet plants.

  But we were not so old that we had forgotten the feel of his embrace as he laughed and held us close.

  Ishi and I hid in the top of the house, in the space with bare rafters where you could see stars through the tin roof at night if they lined up just right. The stars had not come yet and so we waited in this secret room where our cousins from the country would hide and lie quiet when the soldiers came to make them join the army. It was a good place to hide. The soldiers had never found this room.

  We rolled on the floor covered in a fine layer of silt and fought for the best place to see the sky, to be the first to see the evening star when it poked its way through the darkness.

  “It will be a good night to watch stars,” Ishi said. “No moon.”

  “No moon yet,” I said. “The moon will rise as big and round as Etheye’s belly before another baby comes. And the clouds. Do you not see all the clouds?” I lay close beside my brother. The two of us peered through the biggest hole worn by rain and hail. It was the largest, but still it was only the size of a coin, just big enough to glimpse moon and stars if you moved just right, and if your brother did not get his big head in the way.

  “Watch and wait,” said Ishi. He stretched full length on his back and folded his arms beneath his head. “Remember, I am the smartest. I am the boy with the egg.”

  My stomach called at the mention of food. I hoped this night it was three-burn injera with generous amounts of wat, and that Gashe was not so hungry, and that he did not have guests. We listened, as we always did, for the booming sound of Gashe’s voice, or the scuttle of servants sent to seek us.

  Pulsing light filled the cloud. The whap-whap-whap of rotors. The vibration shook our bodies. The helicopter cruised low, the belly of it just visible through the tin roof. It felt as if an earthquake had shaken the world.

  “It’s on top of us!” I jumped to my feet.

  “It’s going to land in the garden!” Ishi yelled. We dashed from the secret room, racing to be the first down the cement steps, to be the first to see.

  Rat-a-tatt-tatt-tatt. Machine guns. Rapid fire. Rat-a-tatt-tatt-tatt. Rat-a-tatt-tatt-tatt.

  From the street, maybe? From the top of a compound wall? Whose house? Whose house this time?

  Banging oil drums in the street. Rumbling. Motors. Rat-a-tatt-tatt-tatt. Loud voices. Commands barked. Screaming from the street. Screaming in our house. Our sisters’ high-pitched wails. Etheye calling the little ones to her.

  Ishi and I froze in the room where we slept at the bottom of the stairs. He ran to the window, standing on his toes to peer into the dusk, and I followed, our heads as close together as Siamese twins. There was no movement in the garden, just the sounds behind the thick wall that kept us safe. Rat-a-tatt-tatt-tatt.

  “Can bullets go through walls?” Ishi asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “They’re cement. Thick cement.”

  We moved to the middle of the room just in case.

  “Here!” I tugged the edge of a mattress. We flopped it against the window, the tall side nearly to the ceiling. We dragged another and another, until all of the mattresses covered the glass.

  Rat-a-tatt-tatt-tatt. Rat-a-tatt-tatt-tatt. The squeal of air released from a balloon. We fell flat on our stomachs like soldiers in a movie.

  Boom! A bomb exploded. Its echo traveled from cement wall to cement wall.

  Close. The sounds were close.

  “What’s happening?” asked Ishi.

  “I don’t know. Maybe someone was on the street past curfew,” I said.

  “Must be a lot of people,” he said.

  We wriggled like snakes across the floor, staying low. The groaning now a roar. Heavy machinery crawled on the street. Inside, the warmth of coffee beans roasting, the sound of girls whimpering. We edged the hallway. Another explosion. This one in the distance.

  “I want to see,” said Ishi.

  We slid beneath the layers of curtains, hoping to see what made this noise. We saw only a flock of startled birds through the window grilles.

  The window vibrated. We dropped low. The machine guns again. Commands shouted. We inched our eyes above the sill, just enough so that we could see. The clouds shifted to reveal the moon’s light. Soldiers with machine guns stood atop our wall.

  The guns were not at the house of a neighbor. The guns had come here.

  We were surrounded. Guns pointed at our house.

  The gate to our compound swung open.

  A woman and two men with wild bushy hair held AK-47s, arms extended, slightly bent, gun tips pointed straight ahead. They wore loose ragged clothing the color of dirt, and short pants. Strings of bullets draped an English X across their bodies.

  “Revolutionaries,” whispered Ishi. My mouth fell open in silence. We were as still as mice that smell a hungry cat.

  The leader marched across the garden where we played football. The others — the man and the woman — were behind him, turned with their backs to the leader, swiveling from side to side, scanning the yard, the roof, looking for someone to kill. The leader leapt to the veranda. Bang! Bang, bang. Bang! He drove the butt of his gun against the front door. Etheye screamed. Through the thin curtain we saw her hands fly to her face. My sisters and my female cousins howled in terror.

  “Silence!” Gashe commanded. Our eyes went to him. He stood tall and walked to the door. His gabi swirled like the robe of a king.

  Bang! The rifle butt slammed the door again. The intricate cross above the door that had come the long way from Lalibela shattered on the floor.

  “Kafatew! Open or we shoot!” yelled the man.

  I held tight to Ishi’s hand. His eyes were as big as the eggs of a chicken.

  Gashe clicked the locks one by one. The soldier kicked the door with the sole of his bare foot. The heavy wood crashed against the wall. The leader pushed past Gashe, followed closely by the other two. The rebel spoke rapidly in Tigrigna. I did not know the words, but Gashe listened. His face was serious as he concentrated on the meaning. Gashe nodded.

  What did he want? Why was Gashe not killed instantly? This soldier, this rebel, wanted to talk? Yet his words were abrupt. Harsh commands. Not the way people spoke to Gashe.

  Gashe scrunched his forehead. The man told a long list of names, some of which I knew, the names of Gashe’s father and his father’s father. How did he know this?

  This man was a relative? This dark man with hair as big as a lion? This man with a machine gun and no shoes?

  A smile melted Gashe’s worry. He nodded. Once, slowly. The man, the woman and the other soldier relaxed their weapons. Gashe approached the man and kissed him on the cheeks — once, twice, three times.

  �
�Welcome,” he said. “You have arrived.”

  I could not believe this trick my eyes played. Revolutionaries in our house?

  Gashe’s voice thundered, giving commands to Etheye to make more food. The voice of Etheye ordered servants to work and called to her daughters. Gashe welcomed the filthy people into the best room, asked them to sit on the fine upholstered furniture. Servants scurried to bring basins of water to clean the soldiers’ feet. The girls brought small bowls of peanuts and popcorn. Etheye brought the mukecha and zenezena to grind the coffee beans she had been roasting for Gashe’s meal. The soldiers watched her light a stick of frankincense and waited silently for the thin trail of smoke to weave toward the ceiling.

  I nudged Ishi’s arm and nodded at the front door that no one had thought to close. We slipped as smooth and silent as shadows through the garden to the gate. Our guards were gone.

  There were four round holes in the pillars of the gate, all lined up, one on top of each other. They were perfect spy holes where we’d sometimes watch beggars fight over the old clothing and rubber tires Gashe left in the street. Ishi took the lowest hole. I took the one above. A tank crawled in front of us, churning the pavement to mush. There were soldiers everywhere in the street, dressed in rags and the spongy Afros that bred lice. Some of the soldiers were women, but they looked as angry as men. They barked orders and moved fast. Dogs howled. The oily black stink of diesel thickened the air. Yelling. Gunshots with bullets traced in red. Fumes of cigarettes mixed with metal. The static of walkie-talkies. Angry faces. The street was alive.

  “Tesfaye! Ishi!” Gashe’s voice cut through the noise.

  We dashed toward the house, though we knew we would be beaten for being outside after dark. We stood before him, hands clasped behind our backs. We braced for the slap, the fierce words. We waited for Gashe to impress the visitors with the obedience of his sons.

  The smell of boiling coffee seeped through the air. My stomach shrieked now with hunger, though I knew we would not eat until this cousin and his friends had filled their bellies. Or perhaps this night we would not eat at all. Perhaps the guests would even get Ishi’s egg.