Beneath the Lion's Gaze (13 page)

22.

THE TAXI DRIVER
who picked up Sara in front of the French Legation was crying.

“To St. Gabriel’s Church,” Sara said as she got in the backseat. She avoided his open display of grief.

“I can’t believe it,” he said, shaking his head and wiping his eyes as he put the car into gear. “All of them.” He looked into the rearview mirror to talk to her. “Even General Amman,” he said. “That great man helped us win the war with Somalia. He wanted to avoid a war with Eritrea.”

“What happened?” Sara asked, shifting her legs to ease the pain in her knees, and looked out the window. They were on one of the many roads carved out of the side of a hill in Addis Ababa. Below, a sprawling community of shanties with corrugated-tin roofs rose from what had once been a lush valley. The gray sky hung heavy and thick above them.

Sara glanced out the window as they drove by Arat Kilo and the university’s Faculty of Science. There was a row of tanks with soldiers hanging off the sides, their rifles pointed into traffic. Another group of tanks waited at an intersection ahead, more soldiers walked back and forth at another street corner. The few people passing by were moving with haste, their faces hidden by the
shammas
they’d draped over their heads and across their shoulders.

“Why so many soldiers?” she asked.

The driver tapped his radio. “You didn’t hear?” he asked, turning around, then back to the road again. “The Derg killed sixty officials last night. Just shot them like criminals.” He wiped his cheeks. “Even the prince and the prime ministers. Ex-prime ministers. No trials.” He ran a hand over his face but the stunned expression in his eyes remained. He couldn’t stop shaking his head. “They killed General Amman in his home. They killed them …” His voice trailed into silence.

“That’s why it’s so quiet,” she said.

It was morning and the sky felt empty without the melodic prayers that would normally be rising from the copper-domed Holy Trinity Cathedral at the break of dawn. Only the faint lingering wails of street beggars, especially plaintive that day, hovered over the startled city.

Sara touched the side of her face as she leaned her head on the window and stared at the ground. She flinched when her fingers pressed into the bruise left from Yonas’s blow. She fought her tears and watched the tires swallow, then spew small stones, leaving them behind for the next traveler.

“I cried when I heard, too,” the taxi driver said. “I can’t stop. How is this possible? They promised no bloodshed.”

They drove the rest of the way in silence. The taxi driver frowned at a group of soldiers in front of the Parliament building as he approached St. Gabriel’s Church. “They should be ashamed to come out today.” He glared at one, who dropped his head and walked to another corner of the street. “My neighbor’s son is a soldier,” he said, pulling over to let Sara out. “He wore civilian clothes to work and carried his uniform with him. They should all be that afraid of us.”

“Thank you,” she said, dropping extra coins in his palm. She avoided the stares of the soldiers and waved the taxi on.

A SLENDER EUCALYPTUS LEAF
spiraled to the ground and twirled gracefully in perfect circles. Sara saw the leaf land on an old beggar crouched on one row of steps surrounding the eight-sided church, his blind gray eyes roving in their sockets like hungry rats.

“Are you back again, my daughter?” he asked, pushing his nose into the air.

“It’s my last time.” Sara fought the urge to turn away from the stench of rotting skin surrounding him.

At his side, a little girl shuffled on scarred knees that extended to a pair of shriveled legs trailing limply behind her.

“Raise your voice so the angels can hear you.” The man looked directly into the rising sun. “Keep whatever promise you make, there’s no other way. Otherwise …”

He nudged his chin in the direction of the small girl who was
dragging
herself to a smartly dressed group of women. One of the women kicked her away with an irritated huff.

“God blesses all who give. Give and you shall be blessed,” the girl cried out as she hobbled towards the elegant group of women again, careful this time to keep a safe distance.

“Abbaba, I’m very sorry for your troubles.” Sara dropped coins in the center of his wrinkled palms. The silver shimmered in the light, dulled by the man’s closing hands.

“May God bless you, my daughter. May you never see days like mine,” the old man wailed.

Sara blinked back the tears that threatened to fall and made her way to the small road that encircled the octagonal church.

DAYS AGO
, Sara had paid one of the beggars to bring broken glass and scatter it along the path, and shards still sparkled against the sun. Her knees on that first crawl around the church had been merely bruised, spotted with tiny red cuts. She’d prayed quietly, in murmurs respectful of the other worshippers who prayed with their foreheads touching the walls of the church, their lips brushing stone.

The second day, her hands were cut and her back ached, she’d had to raise her voice to help relieve her pain. By the third, she was hunched low on her arms. She’d had to stop several times, lie flat in the dirt until she could pray in words worthy of her anger. On the fourth visit, she was so focused on the effort to move she ignored the crowds of people who stopped to stare at her, at once shocked and compelled by her determination. Her bleeding legs no longer shook, the pain had dulled into a thick ache across her body, only her voice was sharp, getting louder with each move.

By the fifth day, she was immobile, a shivering body in the dirt.

A group of elderly monks, wearing faded robes and long white beards, approached her. “We’ll pray with you,” the eldest of them said, his sad deep-set eyes almost hidden in folds of wrinkled skin. “One of ours has been jailed.” They sank to their knees on all sides of her and nudged her ahead.

It was on the sixth day that a woman knelt beside her and held out
two
woven pads of eucalyptus. The leaves were layered and carefully sewn together with a thick thread as red as blood.

“For you, sister,” the woman said. “When the leaves split, the juice will help your knees heal.” She was one of the beggars, a doe-eyed hunchback with no front teeth. Sara had noticed her intense stares each morning.

“Go away,” Sara said.

“There is enough of your blood on this road.” The woman nudged the leaves towards her, then finally set the pads down in front of her. “Didn’t Christ also bleed so we wouldn’t have to?”

Sara slid on top of them and instantly felt their coolness. “Thank you.” Her mouth was dry and tears had caked inside her throat and left her hoarse.

“I see you here every day,” the woman said. “So many people come to church before they visit their family in prison. Even our monk is in jail. Is it the same with you?” Sara didn’t respond, and the young woman sank to her knees and began to crawl next to her. She refused to leave her side even when her back hurt and rendered her mute.

A BREEZE FLICKED
along the path, sent dust blooming over the group of well-dressed women. Their muttering drifted past Sara as they stepped gingerly over rocks, careful not to scar their leather shoes. Their voices mingled with the buzz of hovering flies, dipped again into delicate whispers.

The gravel cut into Sara’s feet. She let her eyes circle the span of the church, and her legs shook from dread. Her pads were nearly shredded, streaks of sap and blood had dried along their thin branching veins. She knelt, the pressure on her wounds making her break into a sweat at the same instant that she shivered. A bird’s thin screech sailed high above her head, and she thought of Tizita, lying in her bed. She began to crawl and pray.

You. You have cursed this womb and torn yours out. Mixed my blood with premature ash. You have heard my bitter cries and sat silent to my prayers. You have made me into nothing but the mother of one, the daughter of none, a woman carrying twin monuments of grief. Leave me alone. Let me be as I am. I ask for no more. Sara prayed. If this
God
demanded blood, if her father and mother and two babies weren’t enough, then she would give of herself until he was forced to concede, if not out of compassion and justice, then out of a damning guilt born of having watched his own son die on a cross while pleading to a father who had forsaken him.

A gentle hand touched her shoulder and pressed softly.

“My sister, I’ve come again.” It was the hunchbacked woman. “I have more leaves for you today.”

Sara hadn’t realized that she’d stopped crawling. Her skirt was ripped and the padded leaves were now shreds of green laced in frayed red thread.

The woman knelt beside her. “My mother did this when I was born, too. Sometimes your pain isn’t enough. All the blood you spill, it might not be enough. This is a hungry God we beg for mercy.” She turned her soft eyes towards Sara.

“Leave me.” Sara continued her slow shuffle. The high-pitched shriek of a bird floated in circles above her head. She tensed her back to still the shivers.

“I’ll go with you the rest of the way,” the young woman said. Her eyes traced Sara’s face and she smiled a gentle smile. “Today, we’ll make our voices loud. Today, we’ll shout into the clouds. Today, for your daughter, and for my monk, we’ll do this, and may God have mercy on our pain. May God forgive and help us forget these days.”

Sara and the young woman crawled around the church. Deafened by each other’s prayers, they didn’t notice the monks had come again to make the journey with them. Their voices rose in waves—a rippling chorus beating against the sky. Drops of thickening blood marked their path around the road, a brilliant red border glistening in the sun.

23.

A RED RING
of fire flared around the burning end of a dying cigarette. Solomon paced, his stride assured. He smoked in three quick inhalations, then a long exhale, the release drawing his energy taut. Dawit felt himself suffocating in this man’s power. Frightened and awed by his command of every step.

“What do you understand of what I’ve said?” Solomon asked.

Dawit stepped forward, then backed away from his cutting glance. They were in a small house near the university. City lights blazed and dimmed in the haze of a cool fog. Dogs wheezed and coughed outside the door.

“I’m going to collect pamphlets from the printing press and deliver them to the house,” Dawit said. He tried to make himself sound confident. “After you tell me where the house is.”

“What else?” Solomon asked, disappointed. “What is it that I haven’t told you? What do you understand without being told?”

Dawit’s heart raced. No answer came. Sweat collected in pools under his shirt and he knew Solomon noticed, so Dawit did what he did when he didn’t want his father to see him nervous: he trained his eyes forward, jutted his chin, pressed his arms to his side. He became a young tree that refused to be bent by the push of the wind.

“What else?” Solomon was impatient, dismissive. He turned the dying cigarette in his mouth, finished it off, and started another one.

Dawit struggled. “I don’t know.”

Solomon let the cigarette sag. “Pick a code name, or I’ll give you one.”

“I don’t understand,” he said. The pamphlets he’d be passing out were simple ones, there was nothing illegal about them.

“There’s no law against pamphlets,” Solomon echoed Dawit’s thoughts. His dark hair was sprinkled with white strands, and tiny wrinkles creased the edges of his black eyes. “Not yet, but the day will come. It’s inevitable when a military junta won’t allow a civilian government.
If
you get caught, we’ve got to make sure you can’t give anyone else away.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Dawit said.

Solomon sighed. “Pick a name, no one in the organization can ever know you by anything else.”

Dawit considered for a moment, thought of names he’d wanted, warriors he admired: Adane, Amare, Menelik, Kassa, Teodros, Alemayehou, Getachew.

Solomon clapped his hands. “Enough. You’re Mekonnen,” he said. “Like your father’s hospital, though I heard they’re changing the name.”

Dawit repeated the name softly, the hard, crisp letters snapping in his mouth. It sounded strong, full, the name of a man. He smiled, nodded. “I’m Mekonnen.” He paused. “Your real name’s not Solomon?”

“We’re finished here.” It was when Solomon dug in his pocket for another cigarette that Dawit noticed his hands for the first time: shaking, uncontrollably loose-limbed. There was a pause and then a look from the other man before both shifted their eyes away from the momentary shame.

“Go home,” Solomon said, both hands in his pockets. “I’ll let you know when we’re ready.”

DAWIT MET SARA AT THE GATE
, agitated. “The Derg sent five thousand men from the Imperial Bodyguard to Eritrea.” He held a newspaper in his hand. “It’s not right.” He looked down at a headline and held the gate open for her. “Teferi Bante is the new chairman, but Guddu seems to be the one in charge.” He stared in disgust at a front-page photo of two men in military uniforms marching across a field, fists raised. “Have you heard of him?”

Sara felt weak, her back ached, deep scratches on her knees had broken open, they were bleeding. “I’m tired,” she said. She leaned against the gate. “I need to sit.”

Dawit was still looking at the newspaper. “Doesn’t this make you angry?”

A military truck spit rocks and dust as it barreled down the road in their direction. She met the glance of a soldier. He dropped his head and rolled up the window.

“Let’s talk later,” she said. She ignored his surprised look and went into the compound and sat down on the veranda. She and Dawit had spent many hours recently discussing the day’s headlines. She felt his curious stare and let her hair fall over her face. She knew this man who was a brother to her would be able to read her expression; he’d always been able to see a part of her that Yonas overlooked. If he’d been older when she’d first married and moved to this house—in those days when her homesickness rubbed against the old pain of two dead parents—she would have confided in him about everything, would have found in him that person strong enough to understand the scar that ran across the top of her head.