Beneath the Lion's Gaze (36 page)

“I’m sorry about your brother.” Dawit knew his tall frame dominated the cramped space and dwarfed Robel. He hunched into the wooden stool. “He was a wonderful boy. I promise you we’ll do everything we can to get back at them.” He’d managed to beg Solomon for one night in his neighborhood to speak to his family. “How is your mother?”

“He was smart. He should have been in school.” Robel’s arms were clamped stiffly to his side, his hands balled into fists.

Sara watched from the corner, waiting for her turn to talk.

“If your mother loses anyone else, do you know how sad she’ll be?” Dawit asked. “I know you want to do something. I came here just to tell you, so you understand, the best thing for you to do is take care of your mother. Let the rest of us fight.”

Robel’s clear brown eyes met Dawit’s, brimming with anger. “They took my father, too.” His mouth trembled. “I was supposed to look after my brother.”

Dawit saw that this small boy could grow into a full-blooded adult menace, a destructive force borne of grief that had been treated as inconsequential. He pretended to think for a moment.

“My mother used to show me stones like this one.” He picked up a tiny pebble and rolled it between his fingers. “This can’t do anything, it’s too small. But inside a shoe, it can make a grown man stumble. Do you understand?”

Robel frowned, shook his head, but was listening intently.

“You’re my pebble. I want you to tell Melaku anytime you hear something when you’re working. You hear men talking, right?”

Robel nodded enthusiastically. “They don’t think I can hear them.”

“Good, that’s perfect. We need you. And you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone you saw me.”

“I won’t,” Robel said, looking back at Sara.

“I won’t tell anyone you were here,” she said to the boy. “Not even your mother.”

“Stand straight. Put your feet together.” Dawit’s heart ached at the sight of the eager, obedient boy. He gripped his shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Seyoum. That’s your new name. Any message you send me through Melaku, make sure it’s from Seyoum.” He paused. “I’m Mekonnen.”

“Mekonnen,” Robel said, looking up at Dawit in awe.

SARA AND YONAS SPOKE
in soft voices across a divide that was larger than the dining room table separating them. The weight of betrayed trust rolled in the undercurrents of tension.

“You knew? All this time you knew and you didn’t tell me?” Yonas asked. “I went to that, that morgue, and you knew?” His words strained against his own disbelief.

“I didn’t know then. I just found out he’s been hiding, he wouldn’t tell me where. He said to tell you he’s all right.”

“No.” Yonas shook head. “You knew, I could tell something was different, you weren’t as worried, you didn’t even start looking until a week after he’d been gone. Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

Sara spoke in even tones. “You’ll have to trust me.” She stood up. “I need to check on your father.”

“What else is going on?”

She stopped and turned around. “What do you mean?”

“There’s more.”

“There’s nothing else,” she said. Fatigue and love softened her tone.

“You don’t think I know about the late nights? You go somewhere and don’t come back until curfew. I used to pace until you came home. I knew you were with Dawit, and what could I say?” He swallowed hard.
“After all the things I didn’t do that I should have done … How could I blame you?”

Sara shook her head, surprised. “It’s not what you are thinking.”

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

She stiffened. “You’re my husband and there’s never been a moment when I didn’t know that.”

“You’ve always been a bad liar, Sara. Like me,” he said, smiling ruefully. “Can’t you tell me one of your many secrets after all these years?” He reached for her and drew her near. “What is it?” He kissed her cheek, then each eye, and settled his mouth on the top of her head. “On my life, I swear never to tell anyone.”

She leaned on his strong chest, tired, and began to tell him about the bodies, the identifications, the nausea and the stench, the broken bones and destroyed families, the wailing mothers and stunned fathers. She told him of the late night drives in the womb of a shuttered city, the crawls under starlight and trees. “We worked as fast as we could, but the next day, there’d be more. And the mothers, the mothers,” she said. “I had to tell the mothers.”

He tightened his grip on her, squeezed gently, and kissed her. “This was dangerous.” He shut his eyes. “You were so close to so much danger. Melaku was helping?”

She nodded.

“That’s why he looked so tired all the time. Did Emama Seble know?”

“Do you have to ask?”

They both grinned. He grew pensive again. “What’s next?”

She pressed deeper into his embrace. “Curfew has been moved from midnight to dusk. Dawit is hiding. There’s nothing to do now but wait for him to come home, for Abbaye to get better, for us to be together again.”

“He’s not any better.”

“He needs sleep,” she said. Hailu called for Selam in his sleep each night, sat up in mid-conversation with her, then dropped back to the bed dazed and mumbling.

“We can’t bring a doctor to check on him,” Yonas said. “Who’d get near him?” Almaz had been dragged out of bed soon after Hailu’s arrest and executed in front of her daughter. “Nothing is getting better.”

62.

THE COLD WINDS
of the day before had settled into a gentle breeze. Stray blooms of bright
meskel
flowers lined the road. It was the beginning of Ramadan and everything was closed, including Melaku’s kiosk. Sara went there now to visit with the old man.

“Look at the sky, look!” he exclaimed, pointing to the spot where others were already staring, their mouths hanging open. Melaku tipped out of the window of his kiosk, body draped on the counter.

In the center of the sky, surrounding the burning sun, were halos of vivid colors—red, yellow, orange, blue—with dark, nearly burnt edges.

An old woman, her wrinkled face set in a stern frown, shook her head. “It’s a curse. See that dark lining at the ends? Satan’s setting heaven on fire.” She sighed sadly but remained transfixed by the colors. “He’s winning.”

“It’s a blessing!” one neighbor shouted. “Things will change.”

Sara felt herself sway under the red-circled heat. Her mother had described such a sun on the day she’d decided to take the Italian’s life. She’d told her that even as she closed her eyes, froze her body, and began to squeeze the general’s neck, the colors from the sun had stayed under her eyelids, brightening her darkness.

“Don’t stare so long,” the old woman warned her.

Sara saw several patrons run home, but more emerged from their compounds and gathered in groups on the road. There were so many people it was beginning to look like the start of a procession. Several were on their knees praying with upturned palms. Sara noticed soldiers looking up as well, confusion and curiosity on their faces. Their forgotten guns leaned clumsily against their thighs or drooped behind their shoulders. Shiferaw stood apart from everyone, gawking into the sky with his deformed smile.

“What do you think it is?” she asked Melaku.

“It’s a sign of forgiveness,” he replied. “It’s a sign of redemption for the people we’ve become.” He rubbed his eyes. “Come inside.”

He gave her a stool and offered her a Coca-Cola. “It’s my last one. Our socialist friends don’t realize this is an imperialist drink.” He sat next to Sara and patted her leg, all energy drained from him, suddenly older and tired.

“Save it,” Sara told him, setting the bottle back on the counter. “Are you all right?”

He was already lost in thought. “I used to be a good man,” he said.

Melaku’s words traced the days when he stood atop a shaky wooden lookout and swung a slingshot at the hyenas that prowled near his father’s goats. He wove a tale of the young son of a peasant who found himself in an emperor’s palace and used his songs to mingle with noblemen and princesses, senators and princes.

“Then I met a girl,” he said. “But her father wanted grandchildren worthy of palaces. Elsa. My Elsa. I wasted all my money on this spoiled girl while my father was breaking his back in the sun. He died while I was in the palace,” Melaku said. “I was too busy wooing Elsa to go back when they told me he was sick. I thought I had time.”

“If you knew you’d have gone back,” Sara said.

He continued, leaning forward. “What do we ever know about the time we have? What do we know about anything? When they installed a box at the police station to inform on reactionaries, I put Elsa’s husband’s name in it. They took both of them, even her father, an old, old man by then. They had to carry him and his wheelchair out of his house. When I realized these new officers were nothing but murderers, I tried to get them out but I couldn’t. They’re gone.”

He draped both hands over his head and pressed into his temples. “I asked for a sign that I could forgive myself. Show me there’s still light underneath all this I said. I started helping Dawit, penance for all the people I destroyed.” He moved his hand across his chest. “Show me, I said, because my heart couldn’t feel. I watched for signs every day, every night we collected a body, I worried I’d find Elsa, I prayed I’d find Elsa, I prayed to get caught. But I see something today in this sun. I’ve seen it.” He pointed outside. “This sun.”

—

“DID YOU SEE THAT?”
Dawit asked, pointing to the sun. “All those colors. What is it?” Dawit tried to distract himself from Solomon’s instructions on his new assignment, details about his new weapon, reminders to aim for the cleanest kill. All happening that day.

“You’re good, almost better than me.” Solomon reached in the back of his car and took out the suitcase Dawit had once given him, the one that held a dead soldier’s rifle. Inside was the same AK-47. “Remember this?” Solomon asked, holding up the weapon. “I saved it for you. It’s been tested, works well, you don’t need to squeeze as hard as the older model I gave you last week. Everything else is the same.” He pointed to the trigger, then clenched his fist to hide a hand that was shaking more than usual. “Practice some rounds now, then we have to go.”

Dawit took the weapon and tried to control his shivers. He was holding the gun of a man he’d killed, on his way to kill another. He looked into the sky again. There had been a time when all he’d wanted to do was help the defenseless.

“What’s wrong?” Solomon asked.

“Do you think this means something, the sun? I’ve never seen it like this,” Dawit asked, trying to hide his thoughts.

“Are you scared?” Solomon slammed the trunk shut. “We can’t depend on signs.”

“No.” There was a tightness climbing in Dawit’s chest. The first waves of nausea descended.

Solomon put an arm on his shoulder. “I’ll drop you off at Revolution Square, there’s a big rally. You’ll see a line of Mercedes and jeeps. When you hear the first shot, aim for the second-to-last car and start shooting. Simple.”

“Who am I aiming for?” Dawit asked, beginning to sweat.

“Anyone in that car. With enough of us, we’ll have full coverage. As soon as you fire, get lost in the crowd. Meet me back here.” Solomon took in the clearing in the forest. “If you’re not here by curfew, I’ll have to come back the next day.”

“People will see me with the gun.”

“I’ve brought a uniform for you.” Solomon sized him up. “It’ll fit. You’ll be second in line to shoot, people will think you’re aiming for the
first
shooter. Don’t waste a second. Aim for the backseat. Keep shooting until you can’t. Run with the crowd.”

Dawit wondered if Solomon could smell the sourness in his breath. Fear this strong had a taste.

“I don’t care who else you get, and if you don’t get him, there’s a good chance somebody else will. We failed the first time, we know what to do now.” Solomon flexed his hands. “I don’t mind fear, I hate doubts.”

“I’m sure,” Dawit replied.

Solomon clapped him on the back. He took the time now to look into the sky. “My father told me about a sun like this once.” Then he shrugged and handed Dawit the uniform.

SARA LAY ON TOP
of Yonas, chest to chest, mouth against mouth, and told him everything. She watched him listen to her stories, attentive and loving. She let his hand trail the top of her head and find the scar. “I’m my mother’s daughter,” she said. “My father was Mikael Abraham. They ran away to Qulubi and I was born there, the daughter of Abraham’s son.”

“You are my wife,” Yonas said. “I don’t care about anything else. Your history began here, with me.”

She brushed her lips over his. “It started before you.” She smiled into his eyes. “But we mold ourselves out of our fates, don’t we? My mother once said this to me.” She let her stomach rise and fall into his, felt the softness of flesh on flesh, rested in his muscles and strength. “I’ll stop grieving for what I never had, for those two. I promise.”

He hugged her tightly. “Both of us will stop grieving for those who are happier with God.”

“We’ll be a family again,” she said. “With Dawit.”

Yonas blinked back tears as Sara kissed the corner of his mouth. “You two will have a chance to talk when this is over. He’s hiding to be safe, and he’s safe. He’ll come back,” she said.

HAILU DREAMS:
a truck on the road to his house roars its way to his gate, soldiers clamber out of creaking doors, scurry with a thousand legs and a hundred shouts to his window. They dangle Selam’s picture and tear
it
to shreds, extend a photograph of a newborn Dawit, and with millipede legs and reptile hands rip his baby’s picture in half and Hailu hurls himself out the window into a cool breeze and a ringed dark sun and he hears above the cacophony of cockroaches and rats, above the buzz of angry locusts, his own voice come back to him, virile and steady.

63.

THE ROADS WERE
deserted that afternoon, no jeeps patrolled the area, and there were no soldiers pacing in front of homes.

“It’s so quiet,” Sara said to Emama Seble. They were at Hailu’s bed, waiting for Yonas to bring Tizita from school. It was almost five o’clock. Sara looked out the window. “They should be here.”