‘Sir, please. Haircut?’ a man in a barber’s coat asked.
‘Thank you, I’m just looking.’
Under the stairs, in half-darkness, was the cashier’s desk. A woman was sitting there. I could see her now more clearly. It was Almaz.
My heart was racing. ‘You won’t remember me, but I came here twenty-one years ago—when it was Wonderland Tours.’
She smiled. She didn’t have a clue who I was.
But we went through to the Gentleman Salon and sat on a two-seater sofa. Almaz was wearing a sky-blue jacket. She placed her long fingers against her cheek. Before she married Mengesha she’d been an air hostess; it had been her face that had gazed out from posters of Ethiopian Airlines. The years had done little to her beauty.
I asked about Dr Mengesha.
‘Mengesha? They came one night and took him.’
‘Did they give a reason?’
‘They did not need a reason.’ Her voice was detached, distant. ‘Just “against the revolution”—that was all they needed to say.’
A man brought us tea on a stainless steel tray.
Slowly Almaz sipped from her cup, then replaced it in the saucer. She eased into speaking. ‘After Mengesha was taken, our son became very agitated. His school said to me, He is daydreaming, he cannot concentrate. So I thought if we could just see his father, it would be better. I went to the kebelle. I told them, Please, let me see my husband, you must let me see my husband…’
Her voice drifted off. She looked out through the open door.
‘Did they let you?’
‘We went to see him.’
‘How was he?’
‘The same old Mengesha! Joking and laughing. He was telling me, Don’t worry, Almaz, they are going to let me out very soon! He was so optimistic, always optimistic.
‘After that my son was better. But I was still worrying. I was imagining all the time, what will happen to Mengesha? And I was becoming very afraid for my son. Most mothers are pleased when they see their sons growing. But I just thought, they will take him to the army or to prison. In the end, I had to send him away. I said he was my servant’s son. They allowed him to go to the United States. It was many years before I saw him again.’
‘What about Mengesha?’
‘They moved him to another prison outside Addis. It took a long time before I could find out where it was. I used to go there with food—but I was not allowed to see him.’
A fat man in a suit came in, followed by the barber. The man took off his jacket and hung it on the coat rack. Braces swelled over his bell-shaped belly. The barber flicked open the folds of a towel and tied it around the man’s neck. He leaned back in the chair and fell asleep.
‘Then someone told me he was dead. But someone else said no, he was alive. I couldn’t imagine Mengesha dead so I convinced myself he was coming back. When the house needed redecorating, I did it in the colours he liked. He loved his books, and I took each one of them and cleaned them. After the Derg went, they opened up the prisons. I waited at home for him to come.’
We could hear the scrape of the razor on the man’s cheek. He was still sleeping.
‘One day on television there was a list of names. They said they had found papers saying Dr Mengesha Gabre-Hiwot had been killed in prison. That was how I discovered, like that.’
She was silent for a moment. ‘He loved this country. He was so proud of Ethiopia. He just wanted people to see it—“wonderland”, that’s what he thought it was.’
Reminiscence had made her fluent. ‘When I think of Mengesha now, I think of him always as an optimist. It made me afraid sometimes. It didn’t matter under the emperor. But in the Derg time, well, it was dangerous. I told him, It’s changed now, Mengesha, you cannot do that, not now. He just said, You must not worry, Almaz! He was always such an open man, so generous…
‘You know, before we were married, and he was away in Europe or America, he would telephone me every day. I would tell him it was expensive—he should not telephone. All right, Almaz, he laughed—and then the next day he would telephone me again. That was how he was.’
‘I know. What he did for me—it changed my life.’
We stood. We made our way to the front of the shop. As we
said goodbye, she cocked her head. ‘I remember you now—you went on a bus, didn’t you?’
‘That’s right. To Lake Tana.’
‘Of course. No foreigners went on buses. I said to Mengesha, This is not safe. There will be trouble. He just told me not to worry!’
‘What about Teklu, Almaz?’
‘Teklu?’
‘Teklu Abraham.’
‘He escaped to Kenya,’ she said. ‘Walking.’
‘Is he still there?’
‘No, no. He went to America—I hear he has a liquor store in Denver, Colorado.’
Addis Ababa was always a dog city. You’d hear them at night, after curfew, ranging the empty streets in yelping packs. Sometimes there would be the sound of a military Jeep and the stutter of gunfire, but once it had gone, it left just the sound of the running dogs. It was said they were the guard dogs and pedigree pets of the old nobility—those families whom the revolution had chased abroad or imprisoned or shot. It was also said that during the Red Terror they had developed a taste for human flesh.
There were still stray dogs. But the years in between had levelled the pedigrees to a sort of uni-dog. The sounds of the night now were more varied—screeching cats, night traffic, and at dawn the sound of a dozen muezzin echoing through the city. The churches’ amplified prayers began a little later.
One morning I revisited the Institute of Ethiopian Studies. I used to spend days up in the empty reading room, countering the fear and reticence of Addis with the enthusiasm of previous generations of travellers, historians and archaeologists. The institute was housed in the emperor’s first palace. Under the Derg, Haile Selassie’s private quarters were closed off, but now, at the end of a corridor behind the museum, I found myself in the empress’s bedroom. Across the hall were the emperor’s own rooms, and in his bathroom I met a man who for thirty years had worked as his valet.
Our voices echoed off the marble surfaces. Through the window, students went to and fro beneath the date palms. Mammo Haile had chaotic teeth, a hangdog expression, and an undimmed devotion to his master.
‘Day and night His Majesty thought only about his people. He was always thinking how to develop them. I have such a deep emotion when I think of him.’ Mammo Haile looked away. ‘His Majesty had a special way with dogs. If we were travelling and he saw some stray dogs he would say, Mammo Haile, please round up those dogs! I want to give them breads. His Majesty’s favourite dog was Lulu.’
I had seen a picture of Lulu sitting in the emperor’s lap while he stroked her with his small, feminine hands. She was a tiny, frog-eyed Chihuahua.
‘If there was a reception Lulu would go round among the legs of the officials. If one of them was holding a bad feeling about His Majesty, Lulu would touch the man’s foot and that was how His Majesty knew. One minister was very popular but Lulu touched his foot and after that no one trusted that man again. Lulu