Beneath the Lion's Gaze (3 page)

They were on a smoother road now, rocky bumps giving way to a paved flatness that was far less damaging to his tires. If he had been alone, he would have sped up, but he wanted to linger in this moment in the car with his son and hear him talk of better days.

Along the side of the road, street vendors were taking down their stalls for the day, pulling out their long poles from the ground, folding large plastic sheets that served as awning against rain. Hawkers called out reduced prices on their wares, competing for attention in the noise and congestion. One young woman delicately balanced a baby on her hip as she arranged her neatly stacked rows of cinnamon sticks and
berbere
on a thin cloth in front of her, the bags of crushed red pepper bright as rubies. Shoeshine boys planted on every street corner squatted and whistled at businessmen rushing towards crowded parking lots. A lone voice climbed above the din and clamor, a prayer, and for a moment, a deep hush fell upon the scene and all that was heard were the churnings of engines.

They were approaching Yekatit 12 Martyrs’ Square at Sidist Kilo,
near
Haile Selassie University where Yonas taught history and Dawit was studying in the law program. In the square was an obelisk monument that honored the victims of an Italian-era massacre. At the top of the obelisk, a stone lion gazed proudly across the city, defiant. Four imposing tanks rested at each corner of the intersection. Two soldiers paced, their gazes lifting from their shoes as Hailu drove by. They watched the Volkswagen pass, then turned their attention back to their boots.

“They’re younger than some of the university students they’re supposed to be watching,” Yonas said. “Boys.” There was an overturned bus in the distance and a small crowd of street boys milling around with stones in their hands, kept at bay by soldiers’ kicks.

Hailu knew if Dawit had been there, he would have said something, would have made a passionate declaration about the need for a new constitution and freedom of expression, for land reform that gave the farmer ownership of what he tilled, for the removal of an old, tired monarch. But he wasn’t, and there was nothing in the brief pause that followed Yonas’s words but the rumble and rattle of trucks and cars whizzing past them and out of sight. Hailu slowed to let a young boy and his sheep pass. He stared at his hands, age spots now dotting the skin above his wrist, and he thought back to the day he first saw Selam’s tattoos, inked into her hands a week before their wedding.

“It’s God’s mark on me,” she’d said, blushing as he ran a thumb over a tattoo that was as green as a fresh leaf. “It keeps evil away.”

His own mother had similar crosses gracing the lines of her jaw, but he’d wanted to goad the young girl into showing the temper her older brothers complained about. “What if I don’t want a wife with a cross carved into her skin?”

“I’ll tell my father to find someone else for me. He’ll choose another man.”

“And what if no one wants a rejected girl?” He had been a brash student, feeling very bold in front of this beautiful girl from his village.

She stayed calm. “God doesn’t take without giving.” Even back then, her confidence had shaken his.

“God doesn’t take without giving,” Hailu repeated now to himself, wishing he could summon up her certainty.

“Did you say something, Abbaye?” Yonas asked.

“Your mother’s tattoos, the crosses,” Hailu said. “I love them, I always have.” He shook his head, and drove the rest of the way in silence.

YONAS HAD EXPECTED
his father to disappear into his office and change into his white coat as soon as he entered the hospital, to perhaps tuck his prayer beads into the large pocket in front, then hide his anxiety behind a professional demeanor. Instead, Hailu took the beads out of his pocket the moment he stepped out of the car. He held them in plain sight. Then he headed for Selam’s room and became just another nervous husband on his way to see his wife, his steps so wide and fast that Yonas was left several paces behind him.

In the hospital room, in a small bed tucked beneath a small window, Selam slept with an IV snaking out of her thin arm. She was dressed in a blue hospital gown. Her gold cross necklace rested on a chest that rose and sank with the help of an oxygen tank. Hailu stood by her feet, poring over her medical chart. Yonas reached for her hands. He kissed the tattoos on the back of her wrists, and he closed his eyes.

I told your father these crosses needed their own space, his mother said to him long ago, holding up her wrists and angling the inked crosses into the sun. Yonas had been forced to squint against the light that seeped into the prayer room adjoining his parents’ master bedroom. I told him he must build me a room big enough for the angels that watched over me, a place we could talk. Selam said this with a teasing smile, but as a young boy, Yonas had believed her and he’d held his own hands into the sun and wondered if his wrists, absent of crosses, were also worthy of holy ground. The story his mother told was that his father built the prayer room for her. Carved the space out of their large bedroom and erected a wall and door to mark where holy ground began and the physical world ended.

His father had traveled the 748 kilometers from Addis Ababa back to Selam’s former home in Gondar, in northern Ethiopia, to find the wood to make the door. He used the bark from the largest tree on her father’s land. It had roots that dug into the earth like hungry fingers, and I wanted to make a door from a tree that refused to let go of life, Hailu once said. He brought the trunk back himself, tied to the top of his first car, a two-door with a grumbling engine, then dragged it on horseback
from
Debre Markos when the car had stalled on the treacherous winding roads back to Addis Ababa. The door was thick and knotted, it held scars that polishing could not remove, and Hailu allowed no one else to construct and cut it into shape. The last bit of wood from the tree was used to make the long rectangular table that was the prayer room’s only piece of furniture.

Yonas was a thirty-two-year-old man now, with a daughter and a wife, but he knelt in the prayer room every day, held his naked wrists to the sun, and wondered again about his worthiness. His mother had been in the hospital for a week, but the slowing down of her heart had started years before. He alone witnessed the countless afternoons she came into the prayer room to weep by herself, unaware that her eldest son was pressed against the thick wooden door, listening. He was also the only one who knew that she’d stopped taking the medicine his father prescribed for her heart. He’d caught her throwing her daily dose down the sink one day, and had been so shocked and confused he’d merely stood there and stared. She’d looked up to find him, and given him a slow smile of resignation.

“My son,” she’d said, her hand gently twisting the pill cap on. “You understand, don’t you?” The light from the morning sun had been cold and gray on her face. “I’m tired of fighting what God wants.”

She’d hugged him, then gone downstairs to make his father coffee. Selam had needed no words from him, had asked for nothing except silence from this son who abhorred lying. And it was this silence that fed a guilt that had become nearly unbearable as he watched his mother grow sicker and his father become more desperate to keep her alive. He let the soft ache in his chest die away before opening his eyes.

His mother was stirring, her expression changing from placid to tense. Her eyes were closed but she turned her head towards the window, then hid her face in her pillow with a sharp jerk of her neck.

“Emaye,” Yonas said, laying a hand on her shoulder, “are you dreaming?”

Hailu moved to her side and held her face in both hands, cupping it tenderly. “
Emebet
, my lady,” he said, “it’s the medication. It’s not real. Wake up.” He glanced at the heart monitor, watched its rhythm increase. “Wake up, Selam. I’m here.”

“Is she in pain, Abbaye?” Yonas asked. “Should I go get the nurse?”

“She’s just waking up, that’s all.” Hailu kissed her cheek. “Selam.”

She opened her eyes, recognition softening her frown. She looked around her. “Am I still in the hospital?” she asked. Her large eyes, her most striking feature, were focused on Hailu, who lowered his gaze to check her pulse. She looked around the room. “Why?” She let a finger trace the oxygen tube to her nose.

Hailu put her hand down. “You’re getting better,” he said. He cleared his throat and looked again at the medical chart, stern and professional. “The medicine will work. It’s just a matter of time. I’m watching the dosage.”

Selam looked at Yonas and took his hand. “Your father made me a promise, did you know this?” She had set her full mouth in the stubborn line Yonas recognized as one of his own angry gestures. “When we first married—”

“Selam,” Hailu cut in, “this isn’t the time. You need rest and you need to eat.” He walked to the door and pointed at the bed. “I’m getting Almaz, she’ll get your food ready.” He walked out, running a hand over his face then letting it move to the back of his neck and knead tired muscles.

She looked at Yonas. “Yonnie, I want to rest, you know this. Talk to him.” Her eyes were pleading, desperate.

Yonas patted her hand. “God knows what to do, Emaye,” he said. “More than we do.” He dipped his head and hoped she didn’t notice the way he grimaced as he leaned in to kiss her.

“Dawit, tell him for me—” she said, then stopped. “Where’s my other son?” She tried to rise and groaned in frustration at the tubes that stopped her. “Dawit’s not here?”

Yonas brushed her hair from her forehead and kissed her cheek, he rested his face against hers. “Emaye,” he said affectionately. “Emama.” He heard above his head, through the small window, the faint sound of a car door slamming, a goatherd’s whistle, the padded thump of a noise that could have been a distant rock thrown, a distant shout, another rifle discharging above the heads of restless students marching forward. “He’ll come,” Yonas said, because there was nothing else to say.

4.

SARA HEARD THE
gate creak open and keys rattle. She wondered who was foolish enough to wander outside after sundown since patrol cars had begun to roam through the neighborhood. The police were everywhere these days, looking for possible suspects in the rash of bus burnings and shop lootings that had been taking place around the city. These bold acts of violence and rebellion, growing increasingly more persistent, kept most citizens locked behind closed doors once the sun dropped into the horizon. An unnatural quiet now descended on Addis Ababa’s nights. She heard the side door groan open and soft footfalls in the corridor. Dawit. She checked the clock above the TV; it was close to seven. Soon the family would be sitting around the television trying to ignore Dawit’s silence and Hailu’s stares.

Sara waited for Dawit to go into his bedroom, then got up and knocked on his door. She sensed the hesitation on the other side. “It’s me,” she said.

The door swung open and Dawit stood in front of her dressed in dark trousers and a black long-sleeved shirt. “What?” he asked, feigning a yawn.

“Why are you dressed like that?” she asked. His nonchalance, more pronounced since Selam had gone back into the hospital last week, was irritating.

He looked down at his clothes with a raised eyebrow. “Like what?”

She pushed past him and into his room. “Are you going to try to treat me this way too?” She and Dawit, though eight years apart, had always been close. When he didn’t answer, she sighed. “Abbaye keeps asking me to make sure you’re home at night. He’s trying to do so much all by himself. Help him.”

“I know,” Dawit said. “I’m being careful.” He set the notebooks on the floor and sat on the bed facing her.

She eyed his clothes. “I didn’t go to college but even I can tell you
look
like one of those troublemakers burning buses and cars.” It was when Sara looked closer that she saw his eyes were red, that streaks lined his cheeks. “Where were you?” she asked. She’d long suspected that Dawit grieved intensely and alone for his mother.

“At Lily’s,” he said, referring to his longtime girlfriend. “After a meeting,” he added.

She noticed a small red book next to his lamp. “You’ve been to three meetings already this week. At least that I know of. And now you’re reading Mao? You’re never home.”

She was struck by how age and muscle had chiseled his features into a more angular version of her husband’s, eight years his senior. There had been a time when the family could hardly distinguish a childhood photo of Yonas from a recent one of Dawit. The wide forehead was now more pronounced above thick eyebrows, and he’d developed a sharp, strong jaw. The brothers shared the same mouth, the same gentle curve of the bottom lip, the same mouth her daughter had inherited.

“There’s an important rally tomorrow. We want to force the emperor to give us a meeting and discuss reforms,” he said.

She laughed. “The emperor meeting with students?” She caught the hurt look on his face before he hid it with an arrogant shrug. She softened her tone. “We’re all going to the hospital tomorrow, even Tizita. Please come, just for one day.”

“I have things to do.” He was having a difficult time meeting her gaze.

“You’d rather go to a rally? You already missed going to the hospital tonight.” She watched his features harden, his mouth set as firmly as Tizita’s before a temper tantrum.

“You don’t know how lucky you are to have a family, and all you want to do is push them away,” she said. If her parents were still alive, there would never be a day of disagreements between them.

He stared at the floor the same way he used to do when she would lose her temper with him when he was a child.

“If you’re worried about another fight with Abbaye,” she said, keeping her voice gentle, “I’ll be there to help.”

He shook his head. “I have to go.” He sat back down on the bed and wrapped his arms around his pillow, becoming the small boy she’d grown to love like a brother.

—

THERE HAD BEEN
a new kind of confidence that fueled Dawit at the meeting. He’d relayed the latest statistics about the famine without faltering. He’d waved articles from foreign presses, explained their criticisms about ineffectual aid distribution plans in detail. He’d shouted in a voice he’d barely recognized as his own, its sharp fullness reminiscent of his father. He’d watched his peers nod and whisper furiously. And he’d felt a sense of purpose, an assurance that a path was being laid out for him, something all his own. Dawit let himself dwell on the memory of his outrage and exhilaration. He needed that charge in this room that was ultimately his father’s.