Beneath the Lion's Gaze (31 page)

“I want to do it,” she said. “I have to.”

They were crouched inside Melaku’s kiosk, the old man standing guard at the counter.

“They have Berhane,” Sara said, choking. “They killed a pregnant woman and now they have this little boy. What if it were happening to me?” She covered her face.

Dawit wanted to comfort her, but then he thought of how he’d crouched in his room while she shouted at soldiers fearlessly, and he found himself shamed into silence. He nodded instead.

“I won’t tell Yonas,” she continued. The candle flame spread under her breath. Again, the scent of cloves and cinnamon, and Dawit imagined honeyed tea boiling under an umbrella of mint leaves and spices. He remembered her silhouette in the kitchen, the flush of her caramel skin, the quiver he wanted to believe he detected in her lips.

“It’s just us,” he said. He fought with the guilt his thoughts left behind. “We have to start immediately. If you don’t think you’re ready—”

“You shouldn’t even question it.” She dusted dirt off her skirt. “We’re family, we help each other,” she said. “You’re my brother.”

Melaku looked down at them. “I know of a small hut that’s impossible to see from the roads. It’s not far from here, in the hills of Entoto.” He grinned. “I haven’t used it in years.”

Dawit sat back. “How will you leave the house without Yonas finding out?”

“He reads at night, then sleeps in Abbaye’s bed,” she said.

Dawit was startled. “Since when?”

Sara hid her expression behind a veil of hair. “Recently.”

“What about Tizita?” Dawit asked.

“She sleeps with Yonas, to be near Abbaye, she says,” Sara said.

Her face, Dawit noticed, had grown more fragile in the last few
weeks
. Her high cheekbones pressed through tight skin, her eyes sunk into dark hollow circles.

“You’ll need to help me carry them—the bodies—to the hut,” Dawit said to her, watching her expression closely. She only looked more determined.

Melaku nodded above them, waving to a pedestrian on the road. “I’ll identify them.”

Sara grimaced. “I’ll tell the families, the mothers …”

Dawit fought to keep his voice steady, overcome for a moment by their loyalty. He reached for Sara’s hand. “I should have come out of my room when the soldiers were there,” he said.

She pulled away. “No you shouldn’t. They wanted to arrest any student they could.”

Melaku hummed to himself, then stopped. “Hurry,” he whispered. “Soldiers.”

Dawit went outside. Sara stood behind the counter, ready to serve the next customer. There was a group of soldiers lazily walking by, laughing easily amongst themselves. One looked up, settled his gaze on Sara for so long his companions moved on ahead of him.

51.

ONE DAY, HE
would tell his father this: that the eyes die first, that we make our way to dust and ash blindly. Dawit would tell him of the night he learned of this, the night they found the still-breathing woman by the road, her broken bones and open wounds covered in grass and dirt. Sara had taken a blanket from the car to cover her, her face grim and pained, but the woman’s eyelids had fluttered, then widened, and Dawit had watched her breath leave her body through her eyes. He’d stared, stunned, as a cloudy film covered them and seemed to travel through the length of her, stiffening everything in its course. He’d sat for longer than he should have, peering into her flat gaze and dilated pupils, fascinated by how terror fell away from her face and left only a gaping mouth. One day, he would ask his father if he knew that death shows no mercy on a fighting body, that those who struggle suffer rigor mortis more quickly than those who lie submissive and let death creep slowly. He would tell Hailu that this vengeful rigidity lasts no more than two days, that the body’s eternal desire for motion eventually takes control again, and limbs become pliant. He would tell him everything. He would even confess, never letting go of his father’s hand, that a stiff body could be broken, unsnapped from its rigidity by the simple will and exertion of his youngest son, then reshaped to fit in the back of a Volkswagen already full of the smell of decay.

THE BODIES WERE
easy to find, sloppily discarded by the road just beyond the new jail, dumped from roaring trucks in the first hours of dark. Dawit, Sara, and Melaku worked tirelessly, in the lull of soldiers’ shift changes and mealtimes. Dawit lifted the corpses, Sara helped drag them into the car, then both of them drove past homes into the hills, then to a dense patch of trees and shrub to a hut where Melaku waited
to
let memory guide him towards recognition. They discovered that soldiers who patrolled the area were inexperienced and lazy, that the Colonel kept the best in his jail monitoring his private collection of prisoners. They learned that bodies left alone for one day raised less suspicion than those they picked up immediately. And as family after family from neighborhoods beyond theirs began to gather at Melaku’s kiosk at dawn, desperate for news of their missing, they realized that they were not enough and would never be enough to rid the roads of this latest blasphemy.

DAWIT AND SARA
stopped at a barefoot boy lying faceup on the road, no more than fifteen years old. His shoulder was dislocated, face swollen, neck broken. A note was pinned to his torn cotton t-shirt:

I AM AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.

MOTHER, DON’T WEEP FOR ME, I DESERVED TO DIE.

Dawit got out of the car and worked quickly, flinching each time the wind scattered small rocks and blew the sound of hurried footsteps past his ear.

“Hurry,” Sara said, glancing at her watch. “It’s late.” She focused past Dawit, towards the edge of a row of trees. “I’ll see if anything fell,” she added. Some nights, they’d found torn slips of paper with the victim’s name, hidden in pockets or clutched in tight fists. Simple gestures of rebellion by those who refused to have their lives extinguished in anonymity.

He lifted the boy into the back of the Volkswagen and gently laid him on an old, frayed blanket, careful not to smudge the car seat with blood. He forced himself to keep his gaze away from the body, away from more tangible evidence that there was no God, that all his life he and this boy had prayed to nothing.

Dawit and Sara drove uphill, towards Melaku.

“I’m so afraid of finding Berhane, or—” Sara stopped and pushed her hair back under her scarf. “What’s the point in saying anything?” she whispered. She slept less than he did during the day, and the exhaustion
was
showing. “There must have been a celebration that kept them busy, there’s only one tonight.” She rubbed her eyes, then sniffed her hands and grimaced. “The smell never comes out.”

Dawit squeezed her arm. “You’re so tired,” he said. “Maybe we’ll take a break tomorrow.”

She shook her head and looked out the window. “Stop,” she said.

There was another crumpled body in the grass. A naked man. He had a wide forehead and long lashes. His white hair was stained with bloody patches and his dried lips caved in where his front teeth should have been. His ears had been cut off, burnt flesh curled around his eardrums, and he had a bullet hole through his chest. He could have been an older uncle, his father’s colleague, an elder statesman. But in this city, on this road, he was nothing but another warning, a rotting message to the living.

Dawit bent to lift the dead man when bright headlights sprang behind him and threw tall shadows in his path. He stepped away from the body, hoping tall grass would hide it. Sara, further back from the road, dropped to her knees, then lay flat on the ground, hidden.

“Don’t come out,” Dawit hissed. “No matter what.” He ran his fingers along the seam of his shirt collar and felt the tiny vial of cyanide. Sara had hers on her necklace, behind a cross pendant on a gold chain long enough to reach her mouth.

A military truck crawled to a stop behind his car. Squinting against the harsh lights, Dawit walked to the Volkswagen as casually as he could, dusting off his hands and yawning with exaggerated stretches.

A slender man wearing a military-issued jacket approached with an AK-47 tucked under his arm. Dawit glanced at the truck to see if another soldier was inside. There was no one else. This was a soldier on his way home.

“What are you doing?” the soldier demanded. He was a few feet from Dawit but still hidden in the glare of headlights.

Dawit didn’t know how to respond.

The soldier lifted his rifle and aimed it at his chest as he walked closer. “Answer me! What are you doing?” he asked again.

Dawit tried to see the soldier’s face. He saw only a silhouetted figure blocking more of the glare as it got closer. The crooked outline of the soldier’s finger hung in the light, poised gently on the trigger.

“I’m collecting these bodies,” Dawit replied. He was surprised by how easy it was to admit the truth.

The soldier stopped. In the distance, Dawit heard the deep-throated breathing of a pack of hyenas. The soldier kept his AK-47 leveled on the center of his chest.

“It’s almost curfew,” the soldier said, as if he could think of nothing else to say. His voice cracked as he spoke and Dawit realized that he was young.

“I’ll go home after this.” Dawit made a mental note of the quietness that had crept back to them again. The hyenas were gone.

The soldier lowered his rifle and glanced into the backseat.

“It’s just a body,” Dawit said. He could smell the soldier’s sweat. “You must be on your way home.”

“He’s a traitor to the revolution. What are you going to do?” His finger still rested on the trigger.

“He needs to be buried. He’ll stink soon.”

The soldier shook his head. “No funerals for the enemy. Let the hyenas eat.”

“It’ll be just a burial. No funeral.” But soldier wasn’t going to leave him alone.

“Dump it out,” the soldier said. “Do it now or I’ll shoot.”

“Comrade,” Dawit said, holding his hands in front of him, “can a dead boy still be an enemy?”

“Get it out!”

They stared at each other until Dawit nodded. “Okay. I’ll need help. It’s heavy.”

The soldier nudged him with his rifle.

“Open the door and take the body out,” he said. “And then you’re going to jail.”

Dawit turned away quickly, hoping his face revealed nothing of the fear he felt. “All I wanted was to get it out of the way. The hyenas come here, then they disturb the area.” He opened the door to the backseat with shaking hands.

The soldier cleared his throat. “Hurry up.”

Dawit lifted the small body. “I can’t do it alone. Help me hold the other side. Don’t drop him.”

“What difference does it make?” the soldier grunted as he moved closer and grabbed the other half of the body.

The soldier strained with the weight of the boy. Dawit didn’t think, didn’t allow himself the luxury of doubt. He wrapped his arm around the soldier’s neck until the young man’s chin lifted and stiffened. The soldier arched and flailed, trying to keep his balance.

“Please,” the soldier said.

“Quiet,” Dawit whispered, his own knees weak.

He cupped the soldier’s chin in the center of his palm and pushed it hard into the curve of his elbow. The soldier’s neck was turned as far as it could go without snapping.

“Please,” Dawit said, his throat starting to hurt. He swallowed back the tears. “Please don’t fight.” Two owls cooed from high above a tree.

The soldier stilled for that split second, his Adam’s apple moving up and down against the inside of Dawit’s arm. Dawit closed his eyes and asked forgiveness from the mother he knew was waiting for her son to come home. With a deep breath, he twisted the soldier’s neck, surprised by its pliancy, its snap muffled by his own startled gasp. The soldier slumped to the ground with the boy in his arms. Dawit slid the AK-47 to the floor, pushed the boy back into the car, then stripped the soldier of his uniform. He shoved the clothes underneath the front seat and dragged the body into the grass.

“Help me get this body!” Dawit said to Sara. “Hurry.” Then he stopped when he saw her standing with her hands covering her mouth, her eyes filled with terror.

He went to her and held her, both of them shaking. “Mekonnen did this,” he said. “I did this. Not you.” He kissed her forehead, his heart pounding, his senses attuned to every noise in the night. “Don’t think. Push it away until this is all over.” He pulled her hands from her mouth. “Let’s go.”

They hurried to the old man and struggled to put him in the car, on top of the boy. Dawit grunted to mute the sound of bone on bone. Then they got into the Volkswagen and drove away.

—

SOLOMON SAT IN
the dark storage room of a small shop in Mercato, paper and pen in hand. He nudged Dawit. “Don’t fall asleep. How many?” he asked. “We can’t stay here long.”

“Four since we talked. I know we missed some a few nights ago.” Dawit rested his head against the wall. Its hard coolness soothed his headache. “I’m hungry.”

He’d been with Sara and Melaku just hours earlier, the three of them afraid but resolute. Now, all he could think about was how hungry he was. He hadn’t slept yet.

“We have to finish this.” Solomon had the composure of a secretary taking dictation. He surveyed the boxes of newsletters and ammunition tucked under blankets, then glanced back down. “Injuries.”

Dawit didn’t want to imagine the body of the girl he picked up tonight. The wounds on her stomach had made even Melaku cry out. He tried to close his mind to the face of the man who was close to his father’s age. “The usual,” he replied.

“I need specifics, there’s nothing different tonight.” Solomon dropped the pen and pulled out a cigarette. “Don’t get lazy.”

“She was maybe sixteen, broken bones. Burns from an iron on her stomach, deep cuts. The man, teeth pulled.” He grimaced and looked at Solomon. “Cigarette burns.”

Solomon nodded and wrote. “How many?” He waited, then snapped his fingers. “Mekonnen! How many?”

“What’s the point?”

“We’re building a case.” Solomon tightened his mouth around his cigarette. “One day there’ll be a trial, these people will be brought to justice, and everyone will know what really happened.” He paused and stared ahead. “Any news about the little newspaper boy you know?”