Sweetness in the Belly (23 page)

“I can see why Islam had such appeal,” said Aziz, offering me a first bite—a bit of veal from the end of his fork. “Here we are born to Islam,” he said. “We are not asked to choose between one life and another. The problem, I imagine, is what you do with the other life once you have chosen this one.”

“What, indeed,” I said. You ignore it. Or you condemn it. You think of non-Muslims, including quite possibly and perhaps especially your parents, as hedonists. You call them selfish and unethical because it is easier than having to reconcile it all. And you strive to be good in your new life. You strive to be a very good Muslim. But then you meet a man who says it is possible to have a much more liberal interpretation—to have the occasional drink, to be alone with a girl. And you are that girl. And you are alone with that man. And you find yourself compromising everything you thought you believed in to be here with him. And ironically, though things feel even more uncertain in many ways than they did when your life was a nameless existence governed by the whims of your parents, you cannot resist being here.

I snapped out of it, boldly raised my glass of grappa. “In French they say: to your health.”

The fire tore down my throat.

Hours later, we stumbled together along the nearly deserted street with bellies full of cake and heads full of grappa. Aziz recounted a tale about his grandmother, a blind woman who was said to have healing power in her touch.

“She was a great believer in the saints,” he said, “a frequent visitor to the shrines of Ay Kulleeyay, the patron saint of broken pots, and Aw Warika, the saint who can make warts disappear—especially the very big ones with black hairs growing from them.”

I laughed in disbelief, but Aziz insisted he was serious. “Really, there’s a saint for just about every problem you can imagine. If it is only a little wart you can visit Sidi Abou.”

I grabbed his cuff and stopped him in the street. “You don’t believe in them, do you?”

“I believe people believe,” he said, looking away as he considered the question. “They need to believe in something closer than God, because God often feels too distant.”

He was right: the saints offer us a ladder to reach Him more easily. “And they bring people together,” I contributed.

He nodded. “They do. Or at least belief in them does.”

“One and the same,” I said, sounding much more certain than I felt.

I
t was a hot night, a night of memories visited against the backdrop of the old man snoring boisterously below. I was a reluctant spectator, watching my parents crawl up through the rabbit hole and throw off their costumes. They usually remained underground. Under our feet where the jinn live.

It was so much easier to keep them separate, to divide the world in two: male and female, dead and alive, black and white, misguided and Muslim. It was easier to be bitter and condemn, deny the relationship and keep the distance, because without judgment, Aziz was leading me to discover, there lurked longing.

Philip from Basingstoke and Alice from Dublin, two people who died in search of different lives. And the daughter who was perhaps living that life that eluded them. Alice, through the looking glass, had become Lilly … and Lilly, in the presence of Aziz, was unveiled.

He stood angelic in the doorway, his feet bare, moonlight electrifying his hair. He inhaled and stepped gingerly into the room, and sat on the edge of my bed. He said my hair felt strange: slippery, almost wet. He touched my cheek.

“What’s this?” he asked, wiping a tear from my chin. “Why, Lilly? What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I was just thinking about my father.”

“I’m sorry,” Aziz said. “Now you are missing him.”

“I was just thinking about a time … a time we were on the beach outside Tangier. There was a cluster of women sitting huddled in black under an umbrella who were pointing fingers at us and shaking their heads. I asked my father why they wore all those clothes, even at the beach, and he said they do it in the name of religion. But aren’t they hot? I asked him, and he said: I’m sure they are, but maybe other things matter more to them.

“Like what? I wanted to know. We were drying off, getting ready to leave, and he said: Maybe one day you’ll have a chance to ask them. It was odd—like he knew somehow that I would. That this would become my world. But at the time I said: They scare me. And as he pointed out, they seemed to be scared of us too.”

Aziz stretched out on his back beside me, his head sharing my pillow, his arms rigid at his sides. I pulled his right arm underneath my head and lay my cheek on his chest. His chest was warm and solid, his heart loud, and he smelled faintly of sweat, like pepper and the woodsmoke of Girma’s kitchen. He clasped his hands together to hold me there.

I
watched his soft face as the muezzins woke the world. Propped on my elbow, I leaned across his smooth, bare chest and lingered, eyes shining, lips hesitant and falling. His lips parted, pulled me in, filling my mouth with the sugar and warmth of his tongue. A bubble of silence carried us upward, where we floated on a sea of holy voices. He gripped the back of my neck and rolled his body lazily toward me, his eyes closed, as if in sleep.

He pressed his lean body into mine, his tongue still deep in my mouth, his hand slowly circling my back through the thin fabric of my diri, lulling me into something as tingling and drifting as mirqana. The movement of his hand kept me afloat as we rocked back and forth. He rolled me over, my back to his front. His fingertips circled my navel and he breathed heavily into my neck. I shivered and felt the hardness of him against the small of my back.

“Aziz! Why aren’t you awake, you lazy boy?” the old man hollered from the courtyard below.

Aziz wrapped his entire body around mine like a shell and squeezed me, the snail.

“I’m ninety-eight years old and I’ve got more energy than you!” he continued.

“Distract him, will you, Lilly?” Aziz whispered.

I straightened my diri, then slipped out the door and poked my head over the balcony. “Good morning, sir,” I called over the railing. “Shall I knock on his door?” I made a great performance of doing so. “No answer,” I shouted over the balcony. “Didn’t he say he had to run an errand early this morning? You don’t remember? Well, perhaps you had fallen asleep.”

“Perhaps,” the old man conceded. “Will you come and have breakfast with me, then? I’ve been waiting for some company for over an hour.”

“Of course,” I replied, hitching up my diri in one hand and making my way down the wooden staircase. But how could an hour have passed since the call to prayer?

I sat with Grandfather Ibrahim in the main room, breaking pieces of injera to lift lentils, but I could barely bring myself to eat.

“Where did Aziz tell me you were from?” the old man asked.

“Yemen,” I replied without hesitation.

“Ah yes, the
real
home of the great Queen of Sheba.” He nodded. “I don’t believe this Amhara story that she was one of theirs. I think they just invented this myth to convince themselves they were some kind of God-chosen master race. In any case … don’t get me started … Aziz says you’re visiting family here?”

“In Harar.”

“Pah,” he said with a dismissive wave. “I can’t see why Munir and Aziz are so intent on working there. We have a much better hospital here, and people aren’t so superstitious about it. I can’t stand all that nonsense—saints and miracles and that thing they do to little girls. It’s all folklore, not Islam. A pack of lies,” he said. “Believe me, I was married to an Italian woman for years. She was lovely and pure. Nothing dirty or dangerous about her.”

Aziz joined us, dressed and clean-shaven. He looked straight at me and smiled. I felt my burning red skin of guilt.

“There you are, my boy!” shouted the old man. “A good thing, too. If I’d spent any more time alone here with this charming girl I might have started to believe I’d finally found a wife young enough to keep up with me!”

eyes peek over the wall

W
e returned to a different city. The Imperial Army had always stayed out, letting Hararis run their own affairs, but suddenly we could see fingertips, followed by the whites of eyes, as soldiers began peeking over the wall.

Two ragged-looking soldiers had stopped the minibus I took back from Dire Dawa and interrogated the driver. He was forced to slip them some money before they let the bus pass through the city gate. The driver rolled up the window.

“They have caught the Negele flu,” one of the passengers finally said.

“I heard that the soldiers are sick,” I said to Aziz when we next met for bercha, “with Negele flu.”

“Who said this?” Munir asked abruptly.

“I overheard a man saying it.”

Negele was a town in Sidamo province, it turned out. Soldiers there had staged a mutiny after inflation had made it impossible for them to buy teff or rice. They were living on moldy potato skins and water, demanding raises, while their officers continued stuffing themselves with meat and injera and beer. The soldiers put their guns to the temples of their senior officers, saying they were doing this in the name of the emperor, weeding out corruption and disloyalty in the imperial ranks and rewarding those who actually serve the imperial regime.

“This flu is very contagious,” said Aziz.

“It’s about time,” said Munir.

I didn’t know what Munir meant, because this Negele flu made it increasingly difficult for us women when we went to market. The soldiers now loitered there, resting on their guns, reaching out to touch women as they passed. Men got angry with their wives because they were reluctant to go to market, then got angry at their wives for going to market and being accosted. Nouria and I braved it as we had to, but I was “the farenji” again. Nouria could see how angry it was making me, so she told me not to worry, she would go alone. She came home from the market disgusted, washing thoroughly after being touched by these men who were dirty and stank of Christian meat and urine and beer.

T
he television showed Haile Selassie smiling, greeting dignitaries from foreign countries, taking a trip to the southern provinces where thousands of his subjects in tribal costumes appeared enraptured and lay prostrate on the ground before him. Entire villages dancing, singing, “Long live the emperor, the King of Kings.”

We watched footage of a trip to Jamaica, where jubilant, long-haired masses shouted, “Jah Rastafari!” and waved placards that read “Selassie is Christ.” He was Ras Tafari until 1930, the year he was crowned Negusa Negast, or King of Kings, and adopted the name Haile Selassie, meaning “Might of the Trinity.” God, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

“Look at that,” Aziz exclaimed, “they’re recycling old news! This is from years ago!”

“And do you know the joke of this, Lilly?” Munir pointed at the tiny medaled man on the screen. “While these Jamaicans see him as a great symbol of African independence, the emperor denies Ethiopians are Africans at all! Ethiopians are the sons of King Solomon of Jerusalem, they claim. At least the Amharas are.”

“Certainly not the Oromo,” said Aziz. “They would never include the Galla—”

“—or the Shankilla.”

“—or the Falasha.”

“—or the Barya.”

“They have a term of insult for everyone but themselves,” said Aziz.

“And the Harari,” Munir added. “They don’t have a name for us.”

“No, they just call you greedy, self-interested misers who would sell your children to make money. You are the real Jews of Ethiopia.”

“That includes you, Aziz,” said Munir.

“Does it?” Aziz snapped.

They both sighed with exasperation and turned away.

T
he soldiers came closer, daring to approach the mosque: they were standing guard outside the women’s gate as we flooded through for Friday prayers, mocking with lewd insults and rude gestures. Women collapsed on the stairs at the entrance of the mosque, contaminated and unable to enter.

Once the imam realized a good portion of his congregation was missing, he himself came to see what was the matter. He had his assistants bring buckets of water so the women could wash the defilement away, and together, as a community, we recovered and kneeled down to pray.

The following Friday, the men of the council of elders, distinguished men with skullcaps and trim white beards, formed a human fence between us and the soldiers as we filed in through the women’s gate. The soldiers did not dare spew their evil over the heads of the leaders of our community. They stood in mocking silence instead as they watched us pass.

But our imam was not present that day, and it appeared no one had been appointed to take his place. Whispers rippled throughout the congregation. Perhaps he has disappeared like the muezzin, people were saying—speculation that struck fear in the hearts of everyone, for if a muezzin and an imam were not safe, was anyone?

Sheikh Jami called for peace and order, the stilling of hearts, belief in faith as our guide.

Afterward, I pressed Gishta for information. “Has the sheikh said anything, said whether it is true that the imam has disappeared?”

“He does not speak of these things to me,” said Gishta. “But on Tuesday nights I can extract from him anything I want, so give me until then, I will see what I can find out.”

But before Tuesday, the council of elders met to discuss the situation. They sent messengers into the neighborhoods to tell people it was a time for caution, for taking smaller footsteps, for observing the curfew that had just been imposed by the army prohibiting people from being in the street after six o’clock at night.

Everyone was silent, uncertain what it all meant. Reasons had not been given, implications not spelled out. For a day or so people remained closed in their compounds, as if no one had work to do, a shop to keep, a stall to man, homework to complete, vegetables to buy, food to prepare, children to feed.

“Commission” was the word on Gishta’s lips on Wednesday, some commission organized by a newly formed council of officers from the military and the police force, appointed to investigate corruption on the emperor’s behalf. Sheikh Jami told Gishta they had charged the imam with being disloyal to the emperor, though on what basis, he did not know, for this commission did not offer explanations. And it was they who had been responsible for the disappearance of the muezzin as well as several less notable others over the last couple of months.

“Have faith” was Sheikh Jami’s message. “The righteous will be rewarded; the perpetrators condemned.”

I did have faith, but I also had a desire for more information. I headed to the hospital after lunch, taking the road outside the wall to avoid the soldiers at the main gate. But the wide boulevard where the hospital stands was deserted, and the front doors of the hospital were closed, not a guard in sight. I looked up and down the street, growing increasingly anxious, for there was no one, no movement save for a couple of oblivious goats biting the fleas at their ankles. And then I noticed that the gates of the usually guarded and concealed royal residence across the road from the hospital were splayed wide open. I took a few steps forward and I could see they were ravaged like a face scarred by smallpox.

I ran, lost a shoe but kept running down the middle of the deserted boulevard to the closest point of entry—the main gate, where two soldiers stood guard. One stopped me and said something in Amharic, but all I understood was “Miss Farenji.” “Capisce questo?” he then asked, grabbing the front of his trousers. The other soldier laughed and whacked him on the arm with his gun. I bolted through the door of one of the shops near the gate.

At first I thought the shop was empty, but the owner slowly rose from the back room where he was chewing qat, pulled the curtain and stared at me.

“Haji Mahfouz,” I said, relieved to see a familiar face from the neighborhood.

“What do you want?” he asked, failing to greet me.

“The soldiers,” I panted, pointing toward the street.

“I don’t want problems being brought into my shop.” He stepped around from behind his counter and opened the door.

Again, I ran.

Aziz was at home, Munir with him, both of them still wearing their hospital clothes, when I arrived, completely out of breath, veil around my shoulders, unable to get out the words.

“Try and breathe first,” said Aziz, bringing me a glass of water. I put my head in my hands, trying to recover.

“What’s happening?” I finally asked. “I came to find you at the hospital—”

“That was very risky,” said Munir.

“But how was I to know?”

“You heard the message from the elders—it’s not safe at the moment, especially outside the walls.”

“I just wanted to ask you something, something I heard about a commission.”

“It’s not even safe to be asking questions now, Lilly,” Aziz said. “Why don’t you listen to your sheikh, who is preaching for stronger religious observance?”

He’s patronizing me, I realized. He doesn’t believe faith is the answer, at least not the answer for him. He’s sending me to a corner like a child. Or a woman.

I
t was the commission that was responsible for barging into the royal residence and spiriting the duke and duchess back to the capital. The army then took over the residence. And where was the emperor in all this? Nodding his head in support, apparently. But why was the emperor advocating the arrest of members of his own family? And why did I have to rely on Gishta for information charmed from Sheikh Jami on Tuesday nights when Aziz and Munir clearly knew what was going on? Their conversations on Saturdays were hushed, though they obviously had much to say. They were not stunned and paralyzed like so many people I knew, but buoyed, with great urgency to their exchange. I didn’t dare interrupt them with questions; I’d been warned.

Apart from Sadia, the other girls stopped attending berchas, preferring to remain closer to home. The other men felt excluded by Aziz and Munir and convened at Tawfiq’s house for berchas, at which he was very sorry, but it would be impossible to have girls.

One Saturday that summer, I turned up at Aziz’s uncle’s house as usual. The old man greeted me as he always did, gesturing welcome, proceed, but the room was empty. I found the usual thermos of tea and jug of water on the floor as well as a small pile of qat, but no one else until Sadia arrived a few minutes later, saying, “Munir says they have business today.” She either could not or would not elaborate.

“You want qat?” she asked listlessly, waving a stalk.

I shrugged. “Not really.” The point of it was the company. His company.

We turned on the television. It was raining in the capital. Except for one or two members of the Imperial Guard, the emperor stood alone on his balcony, poised to make a speech. He stood in the rain and addressed the nation, speaking compassionately about famine in the north. I was sure we had never heard him use the word
famine
before. He stressed the progress being made in economic development and praised the army and police for their fierce, undying loyalty, for guiding the commission that was ridding the country of corruption.

But was he crying as he spoke? Perhaps it was the rain, but for years afterward, people, regardless of whether they actually saw the broadcast or not, would say they had witnessed the exact moment when the lion began to die. With that throne speech it became apparent: a two-thousand-year-old dynasty was disintegrating before our eyes.