Beneath the Lion's Gaze (25 page)

“You won’t need this.” One soldier took his suitcase away. “Or all the layers you’re wearing. We’ll keep it safe for you.” A small smile spread across his lips.

Hailu held on to the handle. “Why can’t I keep it?” He spoke slowly, careful not to lose count of the numbers in his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the bright stream of light glinting off the other soldier’s black shoes, ricocheting back against the wall. “It has all my things.”

The soldier took the suitcase from him. “Orders. The Colonel’s very strict about these things.” He reached into Hailu’s jacket pocket and fished out his keys. “I’ll take this, too.” He wrote a note on a sheet of paper. “The list”—he held up the sheet—“will keep track of everything.”

Hailu watched him print in an awkward, childlike script. “When do I see the Colonel?”

The soldier smiled again. “You’re eager?”

“I have work tomorrow morning.” He paused for effect. “I’m a doctor.”

“We know who you are.”

Hailu closed his eyes and visualized each numeral, drew their characters on an imaginary blackboard.

“Follow me,” the soldier said. He motioned to the long corridor.

THE CELL WAS
the length of his dining room and nearly airless. It had a heavy door that was indistinguishable from the flat concrete wall. There was no window, only a low ceiling that cupped a lightbulb entwined in what looked like an iron web. The floor was just a continuation of the walls: smooth, polished, the color of dirty water. There was a plastic bucket in a corner. It was too cold to be barefoot, though he was, and the hardness made the arches of his feet ache. The cell felt like a coffin, a box created to hold the forgotten dead.

“Enjoy,” the soldier said. “It’s not as bad as it could be, you’re lucky.” He walked out carrying the extra clothes Hailu had been wearing, and left Hailu immobile in the center of the tiny room.

He stared at the lightbulb caught in the iron web, tried to find the edge of it, that point where dark gave way to bright. He strained to hear something, anything besides his beating heart. He listened so closely, and for so long, that the buzz of the bulb grew until it made his ears ring and shot slivers of pain through his head. Then the light suddenly vanished, shut off by an invisible hand somewhere outside his cell, and Hailu sat on his cot, blanketed in darkness.

BOOK THREE

42.

THE NEWS OF
Hailu’s summons had traveled like a current from open door to swinging window to shuttered blinds until routine morning greetings had dissolved into dead silence. No one had come yet to offer condolences to the family. They’d shut themselves away, suspicious and afraid that the next person betrayed might be them. Emama Seble sat next to Sara with her trusted horsetail fly swatter flicking from one leg to the other. At their feet, Tizita played marbles by herself.

“Sit up,” Sara told her. Tizita sighed and straightened her shoulders.

Emama Seble glared in the direction of Shiferaw’s house. “Tell him to petition for us. Hailu hasn’t done anything.” She pointed to the other homes. “They haven’t come to see how you are?”

“People are scared,” Sara said.

“Of what? It’s them we should be scared of,” the older woman said.

“Melaku’s been here.” Sara noted the brief pause before Emama Seble spoke.

“Any news?” Emama Seble nudged a rolling marble towards Tizita.

“He’s asked some of the soldiers. They shut up when he mentions the Colonel.” Sara reached down and pulled Tizita’s shoulders straight.

“I can’t play like that.” Tizita shrugged off Sara’s hands. “Where’s Berhane?” she asked, settling herself against Emama Seble’s chair.

“Do you miss him?” Emama Seble asked.

Tizita nodded. “Sofia said he’s working. Can I work, too?”

Sara smiled. “You’re in school.”

“Is Abbaye working?” Tizita’s bright eyes held on to Sara, she clenched large marbles in her hand and waited for the answer.

“Don’t lie to her,” Emama Seble said.

“Look,” Sara said, holding Tizita’s arm and pointing at her bracelet, “how can you miss him when you have this beautiful bracelet he gave you?”

“You know, don’t you?” Emama Seble asked.

Tizita nodded. “He was packing his suitcase, that means he had to go to jail.”

“You’re right,” Emama Seble said, “but he’ll be back.”

“Will Daddy have to go?”

“Let’s go inside,” Sara said. She wasn’t sure how to explain what she still couldn’t fully comprehend.

MICKEY’S TINY BOX
of a house seemed even smaller than Dawit remembered. He and Yonas hunched on short wooden stools in the living room that also served as Mickey’s bedroom. Mickey’s mother, Tsehai, hovered over them, a thin woman with wrinkled arms and loose skin. She walked slightly bent, a hand resting on her waist when it wasn’t flying into the air, punctuating her agitation.

“Mickey should be home soon, but these days, it’s hard to say.” She adjusted a neatly pressed khaki uniform that hung near the door. She wiped a speck of dust from her faded pink walls. “He’s been given so much responsibility.” Tsehai sat down, fidgeting in the silence. She scooped spoonfuls of vegetables,
misser
, and
shiro
on the large plate of
injera
in front of them. The flavorful lentils and crushed chickpeas filled the room with spiced scents.

“We haven’t seen you in a long time.” Yonas pushed the plate her way. “Please eat,” he said.

There was a time when Tsehai visited regularly. As Mickey progressed in the military, she’d avoided all unnecessary contact with neighbors.

“Dawit, how’s school?” she asked. “Mickey always wished he could have gone to university like you.”

“Abbaye’s in jail,” Dawit said. “He was summoned.”

Tsehai’s face gave nothing away. She picked at her food with skeletal fingers.

“He’s done nothing,” Yonas said. “We don’t know what the charges are, they won’t tell us. At least if we can find that out—”

“I don’t get involved in those things,” Tsehai said.

“When will Mickey be home?” Dawit asked.

“I don’t know.” She watched them eat. “It’s so hard to get good cabbage these days, isn’t it?” she said, pointing to the vegetables.

“We need reasons, no one seems to have any.” Dawit pushed the
plate
away. “I’ve had enough.” He looked at the half-eaten plate. “I’m sure Mickey’s position gets you plenty of vegetables. Don’t you care about what he’s paid to do?”

Tsehai muttered as she took the plate and walked towards the kitchen. She turned back suddenly. “My Habte died working in the fields. You think I wouldn’t trade all these ration cards for his life back?” She stared at a faded photo on the wall. “You want reasons? You come here asking Habte’s son for reasons?” She spat. “We’re getting justice, finally.” She stopped, biting her bottom lip

“We’ve had enough.” Yonas stood and pulled Dawit up.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything about your family,” she said.

“We’re leaving,” Yonas said. They walked out.

MELAKU’S OLD
, cracked radio sat on the ground next to his feet. The room was dark. “They take Radio Voice of the Gospel off the air and give us Radio Voice of Revolutionary Ethiopia. Communist lectures instead of American music. Didn’t Marx enjoy himself once in a while?” he grumbled. He set a steaming cup of tea next to Dawit and lit a candle. “What does it matter anyway? No electricty again.”

“She’ll never tell Mickey we came,” Dawit said, deep in thought.

“Probably not. That woman is very angry,” Melaku said. “Has Mickey come home yet?”

Dawit shook his head. “I’ve been watching the house.” He stirred his tea. “I would have made Abbaye stay.”

“You know Hailu when he says something, that’s the way it is,” Melaku said. He dropped another sugar cube into Dawit’s tea. “My last cube until I can get more. Enjoy it.”

“What does he know about the way it is?”

Melaku smiled, the wrinkles creasing his eyes. He patted Dawit’s arm. “I remember when your mother used to fight with him. She’d complain about the same thing. Your father’s a strong man, stronger than you think,” he said. “They would have come after you or your brother if he didn’t report to jail.”

“Let them come.”

Melaku raised his palms to the sky. He rolled his eyes dramatically. “To be young and foolish again.”

“I would have done something.”

“With what, a slingshot?” Melaku asked.

“I’m not scared.”

“Fools die unafraid.” Melaku came in close, a hand on Dawit’s shoulder. “And what makes you think you can do something better men haven’t been able to do?”

Dawit shrugged off his hand. “I can.”

Melaku let out a bitter laugh. “Are you better than the men born before you? Do you think the rest of us just sit by, sipping tea, while the people we love die? Melaku began to pace. “Is that what you think? That you’re better than me, than the patriots who made sure this country didn’t become Italian? You think you’re stronger?”

“Sit down.” Dawit patted the stool. “I didn’t say that.”

Melaku sat. “You don’t know anything. Don’t promise your life away so easily. You’re like my son. I’m telling you this for your own good.”

“What if something happens to him?” Dawit’s chin quivered.

“They need doctors in the hospital. They need him, can’t you see that?” Melaku asked, though his face, too, was drawn and worried.

43.

“IT’S TOO BRIGHT
, turn off the light,” Sara said. “Why can’t you just use the candle? You should be used to it.”

Yonas held up his Bible. “The candle isn’t enough. And who knows how long the electricity will be on. I want to read while we have it.”

She moved across their small bedroom to the window and closed the curtains. “It’s too much.” She switched off the light. “I’ll bring a bigger candle, I bought more today.” She sighed in relief at the sudden darkness that descended into the room. It felt warm, and even the blasts of gunfire outside seemed to dim. “They’ve started early tonight,” she said. The back-and-forth rattles shook the windows.

“Reading with a candle gives me a headache, you know that.” Yonas switched the light back on. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked drawn. He had aged ten years in one week.

The crunch of tires, then a sharp horn broke into the room. Sara quickly shut off the light again. She grabbed a sweater and pulled it over her nightgown. “I’ll get the candle,” she said.

They hadn’t talked about Hailu since his arrest. They’d fallen into a ritual of silent protests and unspoken tensions. Each time Sara tried to talk about his father, Yonas retreated into himself and answered her with a blank stare. Their interactions consisted of noting the absence of things: rain, visitors, their daughter’s laughter, and now, light.

Yonas set the Bible on the table next to their bed. “Forget it. I’ll go to the prayer room.”

“You’ll wake Tizzie, she insisted on sleeping in Abbaye’s bed,” Sara said.

“I’ll bring her here,” Yonas said. “I’ll sleep in the other room.”

“You don’t want to come back?” she asked. “I have a hard time sleeping.” She swallowed.

“I’ll be back then.” He made for the door, then paused. “You’re scaring her.” He turned to her. “She’s scared at night now because of you.”

“There’s reason to be scared. They can make us do anything they want.” She regretted her words when she saw him flinch.

“She’s too young to understand,” he said. “You should tell her that sleeping in Abbaye’s room isn’t going to make him come back faster. You should talk to her.”

“Why can’t you tell her yourself?” she said. “You don’t talk to anyone anymore.”

Yonas shut the door behind him without a word.

HOW MANY SECONDS?
How many days? How many weeks? There was no marker in time, no night and day, nothing to help him shift from one minute to the next except those moments he shuffled his eight steps to urinate in the plastic bucket that had long since begun to overflow, then dry around the edges with his waste. It stunk of him in this cell, the worst parts of him: the fear and paranoia, the regret and loneliness, the uncontrollable tears that came unbidden and stopped just as suddenly. Did she feel like this? Hailu wondered. Did she feel her sleep guided only by the weight of her eyelids? Did her chest cave into her spine when she lay on her back? Did she ache, before the torture and the beatings, for pain as proof that she was human and living? Had her stomach, too, known this gluttonous gnawing that only the starving understood? Soon, soon, there will be nothing left of me, nothing except my sons, my Dawit—

How many days he’d been in the cramped cell, Hailu didn’t know, but in that time he’d only eaten handfuls of dried bread. Urine-sprayed water served in a rusting can was in plentiful supply, however. The can was set just inside his door by a pair of hands he’d come to imagine as disconnected from a body, set on the floor with a silence so complete, so cushioned from any threat of noise, Hailu hummed to convince himself he hadn’t grown deaf. But my eyes have flattened in this terrifying small room, they have been robbed of color and distance, shapes and textures. How it hurts to look at these corners and edges and find crisp lines bent and blurred.

He’d begun to forget the sound of his own voice, though he spoke to himself continuously.

“How long, Doctor?” he asked himself. “How long have I been here?”

And in his best professional voice, he’d reply, “Days. Weeks. Perhaps months. The body doesn’t understand time the way we do.”

“What does it understand, Doctor?”

“The body knows itself,” he said.

“But it doesn’t,” he challenged. “How can it, when I can’t hear myself?”

“Listen, listen, listen,” he said. And he did, and he waited, and he heard nothing, not one sound that could hurl him out of this lightless well and into life.

THE HOUSE WAS
located on the outskirts of the city. It sat behind an imposing stone wall peppered with shards of broken glass. Its manicured lawn was crowded with thick rosebushes and wild bunches of African lilies. Its windows gleamed in the sun. It was small, Dawit thought as he peeked from his crouched position in the backseat of Solomon’s car, too small to be the headquarters of the Revolutionary Lion Resistance.