4th Estate
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018
Copyright © Aida Edemariam 2018
Cover photograph by Kazuyoshi Nomachi
Aida Edemariam asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007459629
Ebook edition: February 2018 ISBN: 9780007459612
Version: 2018-12-20
For Rahel
CONTENTS
THE THIRTEENTH MONTH
Rains broken by occasional sunshine. Examination of boys in church school to decide who will be deacons. End of fiscal year. New Year’s Eve.
Four coals huddled into a low clay pot, glowing red through their films of ash. My grandmother reached in among the folds of her shawl and drew from a small pouch a kernel of frankincense. She dropped it among the coals and at once it melted, hissing, releasing sweet smoke that rose and tangled with the smell of roasting coffee, of rain gathering beyond the open door, of unfurling earth.
If it rains on Ruphael’s Day, my grandmother said, the water is holy. When we were children we’d tear off our clothes and dance through it singing. And if there was a rainbow it was as though Mary’s sash had been thrown across the sky.
Above our heads, on the corrugated-iron roof, the rain began. Thud. Thud. Thud-thud. Each drop carrying with it a sense of great chill distances travelled, of interrupted speed.
And all through Pagumé anyone young went down to the rivers before dawn, said my grandmother. You had to get to the water before the birds could taste it. She held the round-bellied pot high, so the coffee clattered into the little porcelain cups. Added sugar, or salt, or tiny tear-shaped leaves of rue,