Beneath the Lion's Gaze (32 page)

Dawit shook his head, his face clouding. “There was one more. A boy, maybe nineteen, in a soldier’s uniform. Not far from Kidane Mehret Church, the one on Entoto.”

Solomon stopped writing. “A soldier?”

“A boy on his way home.” Dawit drew circles on the dusty floor. “He was alone.”

Solomon stared straight ahead, his face expressionless. “Did you get his gun?”

“You should be writing this down.” Dawit pointed to the paper, to the spot where Solomon’s unfinished word vanished into an expanse of white.

Solomon tapped his cigarette case and shook out another. “Where’s his gun?”

“In the suitcase.” He pointed behind him to a corner in the room. Dawit stared at the stacks of boxes ahead of him which blocked any light from entering through the windows. “He looked scared. He begged me not to do it.”

“Do you think he would have let you go if you begged?” Solomon asked. “The only advantage you had was quickness, not compassion.”

“I don’t know anything about my father.” Dawit turned so Solomon wouldn’t see his quivering chin.

Solomon exhaled a large puff of smoke. “You’re doing something for him, what you did tonight helps them all.” He stood and picked up the suitcase. “After this soldier, I think we need to move you. Things might get too hot for a while.”

Dawit sighed.

“I’ll walk out first.” Solomon rubbed his head, his eyes red from fatigue. “Nothing happens overnight, but every act counts.” He gave Dawit a small salute before taking the suitcase and leaving.

FROM A FADING TEAHOUSE
with plastered walls, a hushed name traveled like a current and grew into a tide of admiration: Mekonnen. Mekonnen collects the bodies. Mekonnen guides them to angels. Mekonnen, avenger of the weak, has heard our cries. And from mouths that whispered stories under candlelight and incense, Mekonnen, killer of soldiers, grew large and strong, more powerful than a thousand raging armies.

52.

AT FIRST, SARA
thought she could get used to the sight of those lifeless bodies. She was sure that the deaths of so many she’d called hers had prepared her for the evidence that dying leaves behind. She was confident that she was ready to face the steady succession of corpses. She had enough anger, she’d told herself, to carry her through the risks of stepping into each long night. She was shielded from the ordinariness of nausea and shock. But Sara was beginning to feel the weight of tragedy and injustice. Her steps were slower, she held her daughter longer. She craved her husband’s strong arms but pushed him away, aware that his presence would only raise questions she couldn’t answer. She walked alone in the space created by her breached loyalty, caught between what couldn’t be said and what needed to be told. She knew that her husband was asking without words and she turned from him more often, hoping her love could one day bridge the distance that shouldered them now and ripped them further apart.

“I CAME TO TALK
to you,” Mickey said, “I can’t talk to Dawit.”

Mickey and Sara were in the courtyard of the Ghion Hotel, its thatched-roof design a modernized version of the countryside huts that dotted Ethiopia. They were surrounded by blooming rosebushes and jacarandas, brilliant red hibiscus, and large, leafy trees. The staff, dressed in black and white, unobtrusively cleared plates and refilled teacups as hotel guests chatted discreetly. At one table, Russian and Cuban men pored over documents with Ethiopian officers. At another table, two young Ethiopian men and their female companions leaned in close to each other, their hands over their mouths, while stealing looks at the table of military officers.

“It’d be better if you tell him for me,” Mickey said.

Sara pushed her chair a little further from Mickey, her arms folded
across
her chest. “He’s been to your house looking for you,” she said. “You never even tried to contact him.”

“I didn’t know, my mother didn’t mention it.”

“Why didn’t you come see us once you found out Abbaye was in jail? You wait until now?” she asked. “You’ve known him since you were a boy, he’s been like a father to you.”

Mickey held up his hand. He stood up. “Let’s walk in the garden.” He’d lost weight around his face, though his stomach was bigger. His shoulders and arms seemed more muscular, but his walk, plodding and graceless, hadn’t changed.

They made their way to the back, where a lush, vibrant display of roses and bougainvillea drenched the courtyard in color. Mickey linked arms with her. “It’s for show,” he explained. He continued. “The minute they took Gash Hailu, they started watching me to see if I was connected.”

“Connected?” Sara took some pleasure in seeing her spit land on Mickey’s face. She knew he’d be too polite to wipe it away in front of her.

Mickey pushed his glasses up and blinked. He cleared his throat and pulled on the front of his shirt, then stopped. “It’s complicated …” he began.

“There’s nothing so complicated you can’t explain.”

“He’s alive,” Mickey said. “He’s kept away from the other prisoners, even most of the guards. I can’t get to him. I’ve tried.”

“Try harder,” Sara said. “If this were your own father, what would you do?”

Mickey shook his head. “He did something. He’s being accused of something big or else he wouldn’t be isolated like this.”

“What do you mean?”

Mickey wiped her spit off. “If he didn’t have information they needed, they’d have killed him already. I don’t know what it is.”

“Who’d know?” Sara asked. “You aren’t telling me anything.”

“The Colonel.” Mickey folded his arms over his round stomach. “He’s been the only one near him since his first week.”

“The Colonel?” An image of a thin-nosed, sharp-eyed man flashed in front of Sara. She’d heard about this Colonel, seen pictures of a man who stood so straight some said his spine had been replaced with a
metal
rod when he’d been injured fighting against Somalia. She’d heard rumors of his ruthlessness with prisoners of war, of his terrifying, methodical means of torture and murder. “Are they hurting him?”

“Most likely.” He lowered his eyes.

She shook his arm. “Can’t you do something?”

“I swear on my mother, I’ve tried. I love Gash Hailu.” Mickey swallowed hard. “You people who call yourselves revolutionaries, what do you know about politics?” he whispered. He squeezed Sara’s hand so hard she winced.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sara said, pulling her hand out of his grip.

“You do what you need to do to feel good about yourselves, then you go home and turn your back on all the ugly details.” He was full of contempt. “You turn your backs on the rest of us.”

He smirked. “We’re the ones in the middle of the blood trying to turn the gun away from a brother so it points to a stranger. That’s the war we’re in, it’s not this child’s game you’re playing.”

He took her hand again and caressed it, his touch gentle now. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said, the edges of his thick mouth curling. “I’m the one keeping you safe.”

Sara pulled away. She pushed up his sliding glasses and held the bridge of the frame tight against his forehead. “Earn the kindness he’s shown you,” she said, and left him.

53.

ON A GRASSY
hillside road above the sounds of traffic, Yonas rolled his father’s Volkswagen to a stop and turned off the ignition. The soft churn of the dying engine settled into the nighttime calls of a distant bird. The air was chill and a sharp wind drilled through an open window in the backseat and Yonas wrapped his thick brown sweater tighter around him for warmth. This was the sixty-first day of his father’s imprisonment and he still hadn’t been able to get any word about charges. He knew about Dawit’s continued early treks to the jail. He understood his brother’s need to feel like he was doing something to get their father out. What he didn’t understand was Dawit’s secrecy, the self-imposed solitude of his grief. Sara, too, had become more withdrawn, more sullen and distant. Tizita shied away from him, clinging instead to her mother, constantly asking about her friend Berhane. There were hours when he felt nothing but waves of helplessness and fury. And as the days edged into a new month, he found himself longing for the comfort of Sara’s presence, for Dawit’s innate confidence and strength. He spent more and more time in the prayer room trying to drive out the questions of where his wife went with his brother at night.

“TELL ME FROM
the beginning,” the Colonel said. He stared out of the tiny window in the small room. Threads of rain spiraled against the pane as thunder shook the sky outside. The light flickered, then shivered back on. “Tell me what she looked like.”

Hailu sat in a chair that was bolted to the ground, his hands tied behind his back, his bare feet roped together in front of him. Electric wires were clamped to his ears, the ringing in his head as loud as a thousand unleashed bells. He nudged his front teeth gently with his tongue; they were loose. What felt like an insect crawling down the side
of
his face was a drop of blood rolling from his mouth to his jaw. The punches the Colonel had pounded into him had been carefully aimed and precise. He was hit again and again on the jaw, just to the side of his mouth, and the impact forced the lower half of his face to buckle and snap against the swinging fist. It was after only the third punch that Hailu heard a splintering tree and knew his jaw was fractured. The crackle and brush of falling leaves deep inside his head told him his eardrum was damaged.

“Tell me,” the Colonel said, still facing the window. His hands were neatly folded behind his back. There was no trace of Hailu’s blood on him. He’d remained as immaculately clean as ever, as composed and controlled as a priest at prayer.

Hailu replied the same way he’d been replying, his memory for new words failing him. “She was weak.” He saw the Colonel’s hands tighten and his fingers pale from squeezing.

“Yes,” the Colonel said, nodding. “Weak. What else?”

“She had cuts on her legs.”

“And?” The Colonel nodded, brushing aside the detail.

“The bottoms of her feet had been burned, then whipped.”

“This is a lie,” he said, softer. “I know this is a lie, Doctor. But please go on. I have plenty of time to get the truth from you.” He tipped towards Hailu, his face watching his mouth intently.

“She’d been raped,” Hailu said through clenched teeth.

“It’s a privilege to be alive.” The Colonel backed away from him, he was talking fast, sweating. He began to pace. “To have the chance to see your children again, isn’t it?” He wiped his hands on a stark white handkerchief. “Do you love your children, Doctor?” he asked, staring at Hailu.

Hailu’s jaw was too rigid to talk. He tried to nod and found that his head felt welded to his vertebrae. He followed the Colonel’s pacing with frantic eyes he was sure would bleed again if moved too fast. He felt his head being pulled back by a fistful of hair until he was staring, wide-eyed, into the bright beam of the lightbulb. The Colonel’s face hovered above him.

“Tell me you love your children.”

“I love them,” Hailu said.

“Tell me what you would do if Dawit was brought in front of you
right
now and strapped into another chair. I could do that, you know. We have him.”

“No,” Hailu said. “No.” But he didn’t know what he was protesting, he didn’t know anything anymore. For a fleeting moment, he thought he saw Dawit huddled in the corner, tired and bruised, but when he blinked, there was nothing.

Hailu flinched as the Colonel’s hand came to rest on the electrical switch. He tried to stop the whimper that fled from his lips as his body jerked and burned and froze all at once. The bells clanged behind his eyes, he smelled his hair singeing. A hundred red ants scurried inside his stomach. He was cooking, his blood reaching the boiling point in milliseconds that stretched into eternal minutes. The ants were trying to chew their way out. If he hadn’t already emptied his bowels in the last rounds of shocks, he knew he would have loosed shit and piss onto the floor again.

The Colonel watched it all with disinterest.

“What are we without our children, Doctor? If we could stop their suffering, what is our own?” The Colonel wiped his face, his eyes, dried the sweat that had collected on his upper lip. “What is our own?” He lifted his hand off the electric switch to take Hailu’s. He used his handkerchief to avoid the wounds. “Are you a good father?” he asked, curious. He caressed Hailu’s hand, paternal and affectionate. “Would your son call you a good father?”

Hailu’s head sank into his chest. “No,” he said. “No.”

“Wouldn’t you give anything to get another chance to right your wrongs?”

Hailu didn’t know when the Colonel had moved across the room to watch him with intense concentration.

“Wouldn’t you give anything to fix your mistakes?” the Colonel asked, his back as straight as the wall behind him.

“Dawit,” Hailu said. “Dawit,” he said again, aching for a memory of a good moment between them.

The Colonel sagged against the wall. “Wouldn’t you want to kill the man who stood in your way?” Then, slowly and clearly, the Colonel said: “I’m asking you to tell me the truth. What did she say to you? Whose name did she give you?”

“She asked for her father. That’s all she said, ‘Abbaye.’”

The Colonel strode in front of him and landed another blow on his face with a fury that exploded from every pore. “You’re playing games! Don’t lie to me! I can kill you this instant!”

Hailu caught a thread of panic in the Colonel’s voice.

“Don’t say that to me again!” The Colonel began to choke Hailu. “Don’t say that,” he said. “I know what you’re doing.”

A fist slammed into Hailu’s face. Another tooth swam in his mouth, then down his throat. The room spun.

“She was brought in a plastic bag,” Hailu groaned.

“A plastic bag?” The Colonel fell back, his hold loosening from Hailu’s neck. “A plastic bag? No. She wasn’t. She wasn’t taken to Girma. She wasn’t taken to that monster.” He held his head. “She wasn’t to go there.” He paced again, his attention on his steps, on his feet, his teeth gnawing on his cheek. “You only wanted to fix your mistakes.”