Beneath the Lion's Gaze (16 page)

“Soldiers are asking for you,” she said, looking down at the stain on her uniform. “They usually stay on the other floors, with the Russians,” she pointed out. “They’ve come here now.”

“What do they want?” he asked.

“They don’t want to talk to anyone else,” Almaz said. “You should go.” She wiped the front of her uniform with quick, nervous strokes then stopped when she saw nothing would remove the stain. “There’s a girl,” she said again, looking at him, then away.

—

A SILVERY SPIDERWEB
clung to a corner of the hallway. Large drops of water and muddy footprints traced a sticky path from the hall into a room. Once again, Hailu was momentarily stilled by the changes that had taken place. He pointed to the mud on the ground.

“Someone should be cleaning this up,” he grumbled.

“Everyone’s been assigned to the Cubans and Russians from the front,” Almaz said. She knelt down to wipe the spot with a handkerchief. “What about our own people?”

Hailu winced at her earnest attempt to scrub the stubborn stain out. “We don’t have time for that,” he said.

She wiped her hands on a clean handkerchief. “She’s being guarded,” she said as they stepped into the elevator. “She’s very bad.” Almaz seemed to be getting more agitated as the elevator doors opened.

HE HAD BEEN
a doctor for nearly thirty-five years, treated infections and war wounds with calm efficiency, battled unknown illnesses with cunning and forethought. He knew the sight of a body better left to die on its own, could decipher the clues that spoke to a life still struggling to hold on. But what could have prepared him for a girl wrapped in a clear plastic sheet? What medical book could have taught him that a sheet of plastic as big as a body could dig into wounds like this? That wounds this deep and vicious could be on a young girl? He looked at her again. Clumps of hair had been pulled out of her head. Blood had soaked through her trousers and bright, flowered blouse. Her swollen feet hung off one end of the gurney. All of this was covered and displayed in plastic like a butcher’s oversized trophy. Seeping out of the opening of the plastic bag was the smell of excrement and burnt flesh, shit and cruelty, a new obscenity.

“What is this?” Hailu heard himself say. A sour taste coated his mouth. “What’s happened to her?” Automatically, he reached for his stethoscope and put the plugs in his ear, then found he couldn’t move. “Why is she here?” he asked. “Almaz?”

Two soldiers he hadn’t noticed before stepped out of a corner of
the
room. They glared menacingly at Almaz. She dropped her gaze and stared at her folded hands.

“Who are you?” Hailu asked. He cleared his throat and lowered his voice, trying to portray a semblance of calm. “We are not equipped to treat her. There’s been a mistake.” He could hear the panic in his voice. “What happened to her?” He turned to his nurse but she was stiff and silent, stripped of her usual authority.

“She needs to get better as quickly as possible,” one of the soldiers said. “So we brought her to you.” He was thin and deep wrinkles draped around his eyes like extra skin. The rest of his features were smooth.

Hailu took him and his partner to be a little older than Yonas, maybe close to forty years of age. He stayed quiet for so long he caught the faint strains of a radio in the room next door. The rigid beats of a military march told him it was tuned to another Marxist-Leninist lecture.

“She has to stay alive,” the second soldier said. His gaze wouldn’t settle on the girl lying exposed on the hospital gurney. “We all know the story.”

But that story that had built Hailu’s legend in the early days of his career was false. The man had been very much alive, only temporarily so deep in unconsciousness that his breathing had slowed, then nearly stalled altogether. Hailu had been the only doctor amongst the roomful who had taken the time to wait and listen for the faintest pulse on the man’s wrist. He hadn’t refuted any of them when they signed medical documents accounting for the exact time of the patient’s death; a humble farmer who had collapsed in front of his frightened wife and children. Instead, he’d let the room clear quickly, as it tended to do on Friday night shifts, then he’d slid the white sheet off the man’s face and called for Almaz to bring in an IV. Every Christmas, the man still brought a goat to his house as a present. But that story had circulated around Addis Ababa and beyond, and though he’d tried for years to explain what really happened, Hailu found himself slave to a myth he had helped to make as powerful as truth.

“I don’t understand this,” he said in a whisper. “What has happened to her?” he asked again. He noted the nervous twitch in the second soldier’s large hands. He looked at the girl more closely. She was most likely one of those whom the Derg labeled an anarchist. She’d been arrested for suspicious activity, dragged out of her home or pulled from
a
café as she drank tea with friends, given no time to change out of her flowered shirt and stylish trousers. She had been taken to prison and questioned endlessly, all night. Now, she was here. “What did you do to her?” Hailu asked. He saw both soldiers flinch.

The first soldier stepped forward. “You delivered my baby boy, we named him Hailu,” he said. “He’s four now, a strong boy. A good boy.” He was slender with a potbelly and knees that bowed awkwardly.

Hailu refused to look his way. He stayed focused on the girl. Her interrogator had been careful not to touch her face.

The second soldier, thick-limbed and deep-voiced, stepped closer to Hailu. “She has to stay alive. No one can know she’s here, make sure this hallway is blocked off. This is between you and your nurse,” he said, clearing his throat. “We’re under strict orders.” He looked at Almaz sternly. “Do you understand?”

She nodded, her face expressionless, her hands still folded in front of her.

Hailu walked around the bed to look out the window. Addis Ababa returned his gaze, sunlight twinkling like a watchful eye. He drew the curtains.

“Did Russians train you how to do this to people?” he asked, his chest so full of anger he was sure his voice was tight. “I heard these Eastern Europeans have been teaching you how to interrogate your own people,” he spat out. “Is this what happened?”

The bowlegged soldier stayed silent, his head low. Neither spoke until the soldier with the deep voice stepped forward again. “There will be no questions,” he stated flatly. “Do what you do best. Heal her.”

He opened his mouth to reply, then shut it when he saw Almaz shake her head. “She needs a bath. Leave us with her for a few minutes,” he said.

The soldiers walked out. The girl moved her head. Hailu lifted a corner of the thin plastic away from her hand. It drew a small patch of burned skin with it. He saw one of her fingers shake.

Almaz wrung her hands, eyes finally gazing around the room. “This isn’t good.”

“She’s trying to say something,” Hailu said. He wanted to step close to her, but couldn’t. “See if you can hear her,” he said.

Almaz pressed her ear against the girl’s mouth. Hailu saw the girl’s
chest
expand, her eyes fluttered to slits, her pupils rolled under her eyelids.

“Come here,” Almaz said, grabbing his arm and pulling him near the girl. “Listen.”

The girl’s breath was sour and smelled like dried blood. She spoke faintly: “Abbaye.”

Hailu drew back sharply and shoved his hands in his pockets. He searched instinctively for the prayer beads he still carried with him every day. “God help her,” he said. He started pacing, rubbing his eyes, a headache growing in a thick band around his temples. “Help her. Who is she? Ask her name, quick, before they come back.” He didn’t want to think of the father who was frantically looking for his little girl right now. He stopped, frustrated by Almaz’s slowness. “Find out who her father is!”

“What did you say, my daughter?” Almaz whispered soothingly, hovering close to the girl. “Who is your father?” She waited, then shook her head. “Nothing. She’s out.” She looked at Hailu with terrified eyes. “What do you think they’ll do to her once they get her back?”

Hailu turned away from the bed, stared at a cobweb draped in one corner of the room. “We have to take the bag off,” he said. He wiped his brow; he was sweating. “It’s going to take some time.”

Through the curtains, trees shook shadows onto the hospital lawn. There was the sound of leaves rustling in the wind, the blaring horns of traffic, and the shouts of farmers and vendors. Life outside these walls went on as always. Inside, it seemed the world had shifted off its axis and was breaking into two.

27.

TIZITA, NEARLY SEVEN
years old and long-limbed, skinny, and temperamental, kicked a ball and jumped, twisting and twirling in that leap, causing Sara to gasp. Sara tried to focus on
Democracia
and an article about rebel control of major cities in Eritrea. The capital city, Asmara, and the port of Massawa were under siege. Cubans were training new recruits of the Ethiopian army. The Derg, the article said, was using fascist tactics against civilians.

“Emaye, I’m kicking higher than Berhane!” Tizita yelled. “Look at me!”

Sara let the somersaults of her heart still before allowing herself to watch her daughter play with their servant Sofia’s son. She tried to remind herself that her daughter was healthy, that her prayers had been answered. She wished she could accept Tizita’s recovery as a gift, and not a concession she had forced from a grudging God.

“I’m the winner!” Tizita ran towards Berhane. A grin as wide and open as Sara’s stretched across her face. She had her bright eyes, Yonas’s thick eyebrows, and lips whose gentle fullness echoed Selam.

Sara set the newletter aside and pretended to cheer the children’s earnest game of soccer. Her body was tense and she didn’t understand why. She’d kept a careful eye on Tizita as she played outside all day, afraid this anxiety was a sign that her daughter might get sick again. The close scrutiny was exhausting. She was sweating and her back ached. She glanced at her watch, a gift from Yonas to her on Tizita’s sixth birthday, and clapped her hands loudly.

“Dinner,” she called out. “I need to go inside and get ready. Come help me, both of you.” She didn’t want to let her daughter out of her sight.

“I’m not finished,” Tizita said. She tossed the ball to the boy.

Sara clapped her hands again, more emphatically. She recognized the ready pout on Tizita’s face. “Get in,” she said.

“No,” Tizita said, her lips jutting out, frowning. “I don’t want to.”

Sara took the ball away from Berhane.

“I told her,” Berhane said. He raised a handsome, alert face to Sara. “I’m hungry.” His sincerity made her smile and she hugged the boy to her. She regularly begged Sofia to move in with them and out of their shack, but the younger woman had refused, citing her husband Daniel’s disappearance, though Sara had suspected it was also a question of pride.

“If we’ve moved, how will he find us when he comes back?” Sofia responded, her dark eyes sad.

“Emaye, look,” Tizita said, pointing at the gate.

The gate was shaking. Its bottom scraped the hard ground. There was a struggle on the other side to open the gate through sheer force. Every resident in the compound knew the latch would stick if not jostled just right.

“Someone’s trying to come in,” Berhane said.

Sara stepped away from the gate, opened her arms, and let the children run to her.

“Go inside, get Abbaye,” Sara said, pushing Tizita towards the front door. She picked up the copy of
Democracia
and handed it to her daughter. Sara pushed her harder. “Hurry!”

Tizita didn’t move. “Bad soldiers are coming,” she said, whimpering and standing closer to Sara.

“Go inside!” Sara shouted. “Take this”—she tucked the newsletter under her daughter’s arm. “Go. Go get Abbaye.” The children scrambled up the stairs. “Yes?” she said, stepping back and unlatching the gate. “Who is it?”

She saw the barrel of a gun probe through the open gate, then a hand, calloused and ashy, a thick leg, heavy boots, an entire body, and she tried to piece together the man’s grim eyes, his high forehead, the military uniform, his words: “There’s an order …” Papers unfolded in his hand, grew from a perfect square to a neatly creased declaration. “Residence nationalization … new
kebele
rules … mandatory.”

The soldier stepped in. Following him was a thin man with a long, slender scar that ran from cheek to cheek, extending the edges of his mouth.

“I got your letter,” Hailu said; he’d walked up without Sara noticing. “But I thought I had a week.” He gave the soldier a disdainful look. “Can’t you follow your own instructions?”

“What’s going on?” Sara asked, surprised by Hailu’s terseness and noting his red-rimmed eyes. He looked tired.

“They’re nationalizing the house in the back, where Bizu sleeps,” Hailu said, settling his eyes on the thin man next to the soldier. “As if they haven’t taken enough. All of my grandfather’s land is gone. So is the land Selam’s father gave us. Now this.”

The soldier cleared his throat and raised the papers higher. “Orders,” he said.

“Nationalizing the house?” Sara asked.

“Anyone with an extra house is now required to offer it to the Derg as part of our efforts to help all of Ethiopia’s poor,” the soldier said.

“But it’s not extra,” Sara said. “It’s Bizu’s. That’s where she sleeps. She’s been sick lately and needs it.”

The soldier smirked and pointed to the man who’d moved to stand beside him. “This is your new
kebele
officer, Shiferaw. He’s proven his true revolutionary spirit to us and he’ll be here to collect taxes, just like the old
kebele
officer. But you must also report any deaths, weddings, or births in your household to him. He’ll be giving weekly classes on socialism. He’ll live in your compound.”

Shiferaw nodded his head in eager obedience as the soldier pushed him forward for all to see. His mouth pulled into a smile when the soldier looked his way, the thin scar moving higher across his cheeks, distorting his grin.