Beneath the Lion's Gaze (26 page)

“Stay down until we get inside,” Solomon said as he rolled up to the gate and flicked his headlights. “Listen to me for once,” he added. Dawit ducked back to the floor when he heard the metal gate creak open, but he couldn’t help peeking through a hole in the blanket that covered him.

“There’s no one here,” the
zebenya
said. He was slight with a delicately chiseled face, a mouth that dropped down on one end, and eyes that never stopped moving over the car. “Go away.”

Solomon leaned out his window. “Engineer Ahmed is my uncle and it’s his birthday. I have a small gift for him, from his sister, my mother.”

“Which sister?” the
zebenya
asked.

“I’m the eldest son of his eldest sister.”

The guard swung the gate open.

Once inside, Solomon turned to Dawit. “Be polite to Kidus, he guards us with his life.”

Dawit could feel the old man’s ink black eyes on his face. Kidus kept an Italian-era rifle tucked under one armpit. A former soldier, Dawit realized, a patriot from the Occupation. Kidus locked the gate, then
sat
with his hands on his knees, his old rifle next to him, his bare feet perfectly even. He stared at Dawit with intense suspicion.

“Here?” Dawit asked Solomon, pointing to the front door. He saw the guard give a subtle nod. The door opened.

INSIDE WERE PILES
of clothes, blankets, dirty plastic bags, tired men of different ages hunched in groups of two or three, heads tipped in listless conversation, bloodshot eyes that followed Dawit’s every move as Solomon led him down the hallway.

Solomon paused to adjust a crooked charcoal sketch of two warriors with headdresses made of a lion’s mane. “In there, third door,” he said.

It was a bedroom with a plush bed and thick silk curtains. The wood floors were polished to a pristine shine and a cream wool rug lay in the middle of the room. A young man with a boyish face and open smile stepped out of the adjoining room.

“So Solomon says you’re ready,” he grinned.

“For what?” Solomon asked. “What I said is he’s spoiled.”

The man clapped Dawit on the shoulder and sent him tumbling into Solomon. His mouth still curved though his eyes were suddenly serious. “Spoiled?”

Solomon nodded. “He doesn’t listen.” Dawit felt a chill settle behind the man’s pleasant demeanor.

“Sit down”—the man pointed to the floor. “Engineer Ahmed doesn’t like us on the bed.” He slid to the ground and folded his legs casually. “Who are you?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

“I want to help,” Dawit said.

The man shrugged. “So? Why should we trust you?”

“You can trust me.” Dawit couldn’t catch Solomon’s eyes, he had his back turned observing a closed window.

The man smiled ruefully. “Would you tell us if we couldn’t?”

Dawit had heard rumors about the leader of the Revolutionary Lion Resistance, that the man was large and forbidding, stern and ruthless. That he’d shot through a roadblock just a month ago helping a former judge and his family escape out of Addis Ababa. The city waited every week for more news about the leader they’d begun to call Anbessa, “lion.”

The man frowned and Dawit saw lines around his mouth. He was older than he looked. “Why should I trust you?” he asked again.

Dawit stared down at his hands. “I believe this is a dictatorship, not a people’s government. I believe in your fight.”

The man burst out in laughter. “Our fight? Haven’t you been reading
Addis Zemen?
”

“That’s the government’s newspaper,” Dawit said.

“That’s exactly why you should be reading it. How else would you know that we’re all fighting the same fight? They’ve gone left, my friend.” He chuckled. “They’ve jailed us, they’re killing us, they’ve started dumping us like trash on the road, and now they’ve really done it, they’re stealing our ideology. Can you imagine? Those bastards! Creating socialist advisory boards with some of my own former friends, trying to create a joint forum.” He pulled out a cigarette. “We don’t have a fight anymore, we’re all saying the same things.” He lit a match. “What the hell do you believe that’s different from them?” The cigarette tip flared and darkened.

“My father’s in jail.” His declaration didn’t stir the man.

“That’s not a belief. Did you turn him in?”

Dawit flinched. “I’m not like that.”

“How are you with blood?”

Dawit swallowed hard. “My father’s a doctor.”

Solomon and the man exchanged a brief nod. “Anbessa. Or at least that’s what the people call me.” He grinned wide and winked. “Guns?”

“I can learn.” Dawit sat taller.

“He’s not the type,” Solomon said. “He can’t do this.”

Anbessa turned back to Dawit. “Who helped you get that girl’s body out of the square?”

“No one,” Dawit said, nervous in the face of Solomon’s stare. “I made sure nobody knew.”

“Start training him,” Anbessa said to Solomon.

“He’s good with organizing. I thought that’s why we came,” Solomon said. Solomon’s eyes seemed to move over Dawit anew, reassess all the flaws and shortcomings that had frustrated him since they’d met.

Anbessa frowned, and it was in the flare of his nostrils and snapping eyes that Dawit saw a hint of the rage that might have razed a dozen soldiers at a roadblock. “We’ll have new assignments soon.”

“They’re watching everyone. Especially students.” Solomon threw an angry look at Dawit. “And he argued with a soldier after seeing that body.”

“Have you looked in the living room?” Anbessa pointed towards the door. “There were forty more we couldn’t save,” he said. “Tomorrow, there will be more.”

“He needs time,” Solomon said.

“We’ve run out of time.” Anbessa put an arm around Solomon. Solomon fell silent and Dawit could feel his resistance and resentment. “My friend, we’re being cornered,” Anbessa continued. “Plans have to change. You’re too inflexible sometimes.”

Anbessa took out another cigarette and turned to Dawit. He slipped it between his lips but didn’t light it. “I have a good feeling about you.”

“I won’t let you down,” Dawit said, feeling a deep loyalty already for the friendly-faced man. “I’m a fighter.” And as he said it, he realized his father’s arrest and Ililta’s death made it easier for him to imagine himself shooting a gun and feeling no regret.

“Good,” Anbessa said. “Until next time. God guide you, and us all.”

Solomon led Dawit out of the bedroom and back into the living room. “Don’t try to recognize anyone.” Solomon ignored the thin men who watched them with flat eyes. “It’ll never do you any good,” he said before pulling Dawit outside.

44.

THE INSTANT THE
officer stepped into his cell, the lights snapped on. Hailu sat up, blinking away blindness, and watched this large man come toward him. The officer approached his bed so quietly he thought for a moment that all sound had gone the way of the dark and fled with the closing door.

The officer was thick-boned and meaty. He wore a clean, formfitting military uniform with a red medal.

“Get up,” he said, then came a startling clap like thunder breaking free of the sky. His hands were bulging knots of muscle and scarred flesh.

Hailu had no more time to think or begin counting before he was pulled from the bed. Rough palms kept him steady while he stumbled. His eyes watered from the light that flickered. It seemed brighter than before, brighter than any light he’d ever seen.

“It hurts,” Hailu said. “Turn it off.” Then he realized no sound had come from him.

“Stay alert,” the officer said.

Hailu fell into the chair shoved behind his knees and did nothing when calloused palms slapped his cheeks hard once, twice, three times. Instead, he clung to the officer’s broad shoulders without protest. He wondered where the scent of lemongrass was coming from. He wanted to pause all motion and try to remember where he’d stopped counting, pick up where he left off, feel the breeze from his cane field, touch Tizita’s soft hand again, but everything was swaying and tumbling and only the strong shoulders of this angry man saved him from falling into oblivion. Somewhere in between the buzzing somersaults of his brain, Hailu saw a dash of sky-bright blue behind the officer and he knew if he could reach out and touch that color, he could bring Selam to him.

But then the questions started.

“Why did you kill the girl? Didn’t you think we’d find out? Did you think you could lie?”

The sky went away and only words whirred above his head.

“Did you become a doctor so you could kill people?” The officer flashed a gold tooth and it glinted in the bright light. “Maybe you picked the wrong profession, Doctor,” he said.

The officer didn’t wait for a response. He pressed his elbow into the center of Hailu’s chest, kept pressing, didn’t stop, the same relentless pressure bearing down slowly, methodically. The pain bent him onto his knees.

“Dr. Hailu,” the officer whispered into his ear, “who told you to poison the prisoner?” The officer knelt, sat him upright, and gave Hailu full view of a broken nose. “We know you. Patriot, father of two, widower. You trained in England, married your wife before you left, your first child was born while you were abroad. Your granddaughter Tizita will be entering her second year of school soon. You might not see that. What a pity.” The nostrils flared, and Hailu couldn’t hear the rest of the officer’s words through the ringing in his ears. A sharp burn coursed through his back, set his spine on fire, shot embers into his head. His ribs grazed his legs, slender as twigs.

“Dawit told someone about what you did. Your own son betrayed you, and we can bring him in unless you tell us everything.” The officer chuckled. “Father and son.”

Hailu traced an image of Dawit’s mouth whispering his name into an eager ear and pushed the picture aside. He didn’t know his son sometimes, but he knew the man Dawit was growing into, and this man wouldn’t betray anyone, not even him.

His head was clearing. The ringing was drifting into a sorrowful moan. He was starting to hear his own breaths. Hailu knew if he tried, he could summon the strength to speak, but he didn’t trust his voice to float out of his throat so cleanly. Certain words would surely catch and clip inside his mouth; his son’s name deserved more than that.

“The Colonel takes over after me. He’s not going to be so gentle.” The officer’s eyes searched his furiously. “You only get this chance, right now.”

“She was already dead,” Hailu managed to say.

The officer’s arms swung and he grunted from the force of each
effort
. Hailu tried his best to move away from the momentum of that solid fist, but the rough hand that gripped the back of his neck held him suspended in an agony that sent spasms down his back. He marveled, in the sliver of light that cut into his swollen eyes, about the wonder of an arm that could swing with such abandon and still maintain such perfect precision.

SOLOMON AND DAWIT
were deep in the forests of Sululta, nearly thirty minutes out of Addis Ababa. Tall trees with tangled roots rose from rich, red soil and stretched to the sun. In the distance, the bray of cattle and a herder’s shrill whistle bounced through densely clustered leaves.

Dawit shouldered an unloaded rifle, an old Beretta, its weight getting heavier by the minute. He aimed at a tree stump. The empty gun pushed a clipped, dull thud into the quiet valley. He inhaled the scent of eucalyptus and waited for more of Solomon’s criticism.

“Guide the barrel with your eyes, rely on the sights,” Solomon instructed. He jerked the barrel higher. “Don’t you know where the trigger is without looking?” He chewed on a stick, working his jaws. “Forget it.”

Dawit raised the rifle and aimed. “Let me try again,” he said.

Solomon pushed the barrel down. “We’ve stayed too long and you’ve got other things to do. Let’s go.” He tapped on the gun. “This model has two safeties, don’t forget. Lock them.”

They didn’t speak inside the car. Solomon turned on the radio and listened to news of the Derg’s maneuvers against Somalia. As they got closer to the city, Solomon fished in his pocket for a crumpled slip of paper. He flattened it carefully on his leg, then tossed it to Dawit.

“Here,” he said. “Anbessa wants you to start working. Read the paper, then tear it up. It’s your location for the next few weeks.” He held up a hand. “No questions yet. Just listen.”

Dawit took the paper and opened it. It named a region and neighborhood of Addis Ababa:
Wereda
12,
Kebele
11. His own. His heart sank. He’d imagined moving in the shadows of night in clandestine operations far from anyplace he knew, hiding in secret homes and spending days and nights in underground locations surrounded by rugged, loyal compatriots. He’d never thought he’d be assigned to his own neighborhood.

“While we get ready for the big assignment, Anbessa thinks we need to work on new tactics of fighting. He likes what you did, picking up that body.” Solomon sighed. “But we need a more efficient system than yours.” He slowed for another car.

They were approaching Mercato, an area so congested and busy no one would notice Dawit getting out and going home. They pulled into an alley and sat in silence as a muezzin’s chants rose from Anwar Mosque.

Solomon stared at a row of shoppers filing past stores. “The Derg started what it’s calling the War of Annihilation a while ago. You know this. We’ve been fighting back. But now it thinks it can intimidate us and scare people by leaving those bodies all over the city. That can’t happen. If we lose hope, we lose this war.” Solomon’s cigarette pulsed a bright red.

“I can do it,” Dawit said. He wasn’t afraid of carrying one of those bodies, he was horrified by the thought of finding his father amongst the decaying. He shivered.

“It’s simple, but those are the hardest plans sometimes. Look for bodies, start before curfew. Take them to a location you’ll need to find. Have someone who knows people help with identifying and contacting the families. This means you need help, one or two others. No job should ever have more than three.” Solomon exhaled long and hard. He shook fiery bits of ash out the window. “Start before curfew, get done before curfew. Break as few rules as possible.” Smoke floated up and hung in Dawit’s face before Solomon flicked the cigarette out. “You’ll start when I give word.” He motioned for Dawit to get out. “Don’t do anything foolish.”