Cold White Sun Read online

  Gashe ignored us. He continued to talk with the soldiers, grinning at them as if they were invited guests, as if they were business partners he sought to impress, as if they had not forced their way into our house with guns raised.

  The man who was my father’s cousin leaned forward on the sofa, elbows resting on his knees, machine gun propped near his leg. The woman was beside him, drawing a dagger beneath her fingernails to clean them. The other soldier was on the floor, head bent, dreadlocks covering his face.

  But it was the woman who took my eye. She was tough and beautiful. The darkness of her skin gleamed like polished mahogany. Her hair was as wide as a doorway, the soft shape of her body so clear beneath the bands of bullets that crossed her chest, and when she spoke, I heard not words, but music.

  Who was this woman who sat with the men? Who spoke as an equal? Who was this woman who did not serve men?

  The cousin pointed one finger. “You-pse,” he said, then crooked his forefinger toward himself that I should come.

  Gashe nodded. I stood before the man, eyes cast down, studying the cracks on his heels and the dirt they still carried. He tilted my face in his hands. Kissed me on both cheeks.

  “This one,” he said. He gestured with his muscled arm, invited me to sit between him and the beautiful woman, invited me to sit with him in a place of honor.

  “Ishi. Go,” Gashe said.

  My brother ran from the room, I guessed to the secret place above the ceiling, to press his ear against the floor and listen.

  2

  The rebel leader took me away that night. It was not possible to sleep away from my brothers, in the big room with the mattress raised above the floor and the heavy fringed drapes above my head, even though Gashe’s cousin lay beside me, smoothed his hand over my hair and whispered soft words into my ear. I kept my eyes wide through the long night to remember every detail to tell Ishi, about how the room flashed as bright as day from explosions, how the chandelier swung to and fro, making the tinkle of a thousand bells, and the snorting noises the stinky cousin made as he slept.

  I perched on his shoulders the next day, the way Gashe used to carry me when I was small. He held my legs tight, even though I curled my feet around the back of his ribs. He swayed back and forth, pretending to be an elephant as we sauntered through the rooms where the Emperor, Haile Selassie, once lived.

  Now I was the king and this was my castle.

  “Elephant! Down!” I said. He bent his knees slowly and lowered me to the floor. I clambered to the bowl with kolo and grabbed some in my fist. I climbed back onto the shoulders of my skinny elephant with spongy hair.

  “Elephant! Up!” I said. He trumpeted and moved his arm before his face as if it were a trunk. The rooms we passed were bigger than our house, bigger than six of our houses all put together, and the pillars so tall a real elephant could pass through.

  “You want a snack, Elephant?” I asked.

  The head and the trunk moved up and down. It felt like the movement of a ship on waves. I poked bits of roasted grain into his mouth as we passed through a secret tunnel.

  The Emperor’s throne sat high at one end of the room. Carpets of red and gold littered the floor. There was a high table for dozens of important guests, the top covered with papers and maps and green bits of khat. In the middle was a radio bigger even than Gashe’s, the sound on low. Around the table were chairs with curved legs and seats so wide that they would fit the fattest person in the world. But the soldiers in the room were as thin as my elephant who took me from his shoulders and nestled me beside him on the soft blue velvet. I swung my legs as if I was on the branch of a tree and ran my hands along the edge. I liked how the fabric changed from dark to light as I passed my fingers across it, then from light to dark.

  My elephant, whose real name was Isaias, talked and talked in a language I did not know. He pushed away my hand when I tickled him behind the ear, but he let me lean against him to watch the small rainbows dance on the walls when sunlight kissed the teardrops of the chandelier that was bigger, even, than me.

  I licked the last of the kolo from my palm and chewed it slowly, sucking at the spice and letting the grain roll over my back teeth before I swallowed.

  “Can we go now?” I whispered.

  My elephant shook his head and cupped his hand over my mouth. I wriggled from the chair to an empty one near him. I was on a ship. I pulled my legs close to my chest. Wild crocodiles with teeth like knives snapped at my legs, trying to sever my feet and make me a street beggar. My ship passed through strange lands where everything was as huge as the Fee Fi Fo Fum giant who threatened to eat boys. With a chair so big, had the Emperor been a giant? Did he steal golden eggs? Did he dine on boys?

  No, silly, I reminded myself. He ate injera and wat that smelled of curry. Remember the food left in the great hall? And he had so much clothing that he left it scattered among the potted palms and cement benches in the garden. Or maybe, he had so many children that he dressed them all in the same dull-colored clothes so they would not fight over who got the best shirt. And maybe, to tell them apart, he put on tassels and badges. But where were they, and why had they taken off their clothes? Were the children hiding nearby, waiting to play with me? Or were they sleeping now in the shade of the garden like the men I had seen in the street?

  Isaias stood. He crossed his forearms, then flung them open.

  “Silence!” he commanded. He leaned to the radio and turned up the volume. The voices inside the box had strange accents, speaking English as if they had clothespins pinching their noses. It was a channel Gashe liked. The BBC.

  “The rebels began pushing into the suburbs —”

  “Silence!” Isaias screamed again. This time, no one made a sound.

  “Rebel tanks moved up to attack the presidential palace and resistance did not last long. The rebels may look a mess, but they’ve beaten …”

  “Rebels!” shouted Isaias. His voice was angry. “They call us rebels when we save the country from a communist dictator,” he said. He made a pse sound with every word he spoke in Amharic that made laughter burble inside of me. I bit my lip hard, pressed my hand against my mouth and looked away. Surely he would slap me if I laughed.

  The hole between the arm of the chair and the seat was a secret passage. I slid through headfirst, then leapt like a frog across the room to the Emperor’s chair. It was like a small room made all of wood with a delicate carved crown sticking from the top. The red cushioned seat was big enough for all of my brothers, and maybe some sisters, to sit on all at once.

  My legs stuck out straight ahead on the seat. It was like being God on a cloud high above everyone, where I could see the entire hall. Giant posters of Mengistu, the boss of everyone, lay curled and ripped near the wall. All that remained, tilted on the wall, was a picture of his raised fist. Yellow banners with the red star, the hammer and sickle looked as if they had been trampled by a herd of goats.

  I picked up a flag striped with green, yellow and red. It had blue lines in the pattern of a circle, and a yellow star in a red circle. What I liked best was the head of the roaring lion. I wrapped it around me like a cape and ran through the great hall, letting it flutter after me as if I had just won the World Cup for my country.

  Isaias pulled the flag from my grip. “No-pse!” he said in Amharic. “Not-pse this-pse! Never-pse this-pse!” He ripped the flag from my hands, crumpled it and threw it to the floor.

  “I want to go home,” I said. My eyes floated with tears.

  His wife, with the mahogany skin and the voice of a stream bubbling over rocks, lifted me.

  “He is just a child,” Sabba said. “Leave him!” I clung to her as if I was a monkey and not a boy already old enough for school.

  Isaias shouted. Some of the men around the table walked away with him. All of them had the white flecks on their legs that meant their mothers needed to wipe Vas
eline over their skin.

  “I want to go home,” I repeated. At home was Etheye and brothers to play with.

  “Not yet,” Sabba said. She set me to my feet but kept hold of my hand. “We have things we must do.”

  My eyes squinted to slits when we followed Isaias through the giant doors studded with bolts and metal points in the shape of pyramids. The sun boiled the air into little ripples that I could see when I looked closely, just above the concrete. I could smell smoke, but I saw no fires.

  Revolutionary soldiers were still there, dressed in rags, squatted with their guns or hugging their weapons as they slept. Isaias spoke to one resting in the shade, in the tone of Gashe when he wanted no questions asked. The soldier sprinted away.

  A tank like an enormous turtle with a long nose groaned toward us and stopped. Its gun was pointed to the front, and the head of a man stuck from the top. Isaias scrambled inside. I wanted to be him. Imagine, inside a tank!

  He popped out his head and shoulders and waved that I should come. I stretched my leg to the ledge above the track. Sabba pushed me forward when it seemed I would slip on the oily, dirt-covered steel. The metal was warm on my skin when I crawled to the opening to grasp Isaias’s outstretched hand, but not so hot that it burned.

  The inside was cramped with Isaias and the driver, but I saw circular dials, like the ones in a car but many more, and binoculars to look through, and tiny rectangular windows.

  “You see? You like this?” he asked.

  “Yes!” I would like it even better if he would let me drive it with the lid closed and at top speed.

  Isaias sat me on the edge of the opening and held me around the waist when the tank nudged forward.

  We shunted in a long line of tanks and army trucks loaded with soldiers lifting their guns high. People streamed through the streets coming to the heart of Addis as if it was the Celebration of the True Cross. But this number was maybe greater still. People cheered and danced and waved their arms. The joyful noise grew louder as we approached.

  “Freedom! You are liberated!” Isaias called through a bullhorn. His words ricocheted off cement walls.

  “Freedom-pse! Liberated-pse!” came back the echoes.

  There were drums and loud singing. People held their two fingers up in the sign for peace, while others swayed flags back and forth from balconies.

  “Freedom! Freedom!” the people in the streets chanted. They punched the air with their fists. “Freedom! Freedom!”

  The bells of the cathedral clanged. The stadium rippled. It was as if all the world was in the streets of Addis, and everyone had gone crazy with happiness. The giant statue of Lenin lay on the ground, as if he had suddenly become tired and fallen onto his side to rest. People crawled all over his head and shoulder and arm. A man standing on Lenin’s right ear pumped both arms in the air, causing the flag he held to ruffle like a sheet on a clothesline.

  I hoped that Ishi would see me waving my arm on the top of the tank, and that he would be just a little bit jealous.

  * * *

  ◆

  A few days later, I was at home chasing the football with my best brother.

  “I was on top of a tank! I saw everything inside!” I told Ishi.

  “Don’t tell lies,” he said.

  “It is the truth! Why would I lie about such a thing?”

  Ishi stole the ball from between my feet and kicked it between the two rocks we used to mark the goal.

  “Yes!” he said. He threw his arms in the air. Fiyeli bounded across the garden, crushing flowers and kicking up her hooves. A gardener shook his head, then picked up the clods of grass and pressed them back into the ground.

  “Look out!” I yelled, but my yell was too late. The goat collided with Ishi and knocked my brother to the ground. Fiyeli flapped her long quick tongue and licked Ishi’s forehead, nearly goring me with her stubby horns.

  “Get off, Fiyeli! Go!” Ishi pushed on the animal’s neck, but the more he struggled, the more the goat wanted to taste his salty sweat. I shoved from the side. Fiyeli took a step back but kept the wide stance of a defender. Ishi rolled away and scooped up our lumpy ball.

  The goat stuck out her tongue and screamed, “Aw! Aw-lubba-lubba!”

  The ball sailed in a low arc when Ishi kicked it. We raced to get it, Fiyeli close on our heels. I snatched the ball with the bottom of my foot. I was Diego Maradona, shifting the ball from side to side and keeping it from my brother.

  “You saw me, didn’t you? I was the only boy.” I dodged the chickens as if they were opponents while Ishi jogged beside me, waiting for a steal. I jumped over the pile of black berries Fiyeli had dropped from her bum.

  “I was too busy. And besides, there were so many tanks, it was boring.”

  I knew he was lying. Tanks and soldiers and guns were never boring. I took a shot at the goal, but the ball curled the wrong way. Ishi took control of it before Fiyeli could.

  “There were more soldiers here at this house than I have fingers. More than I have fingers and toes,” he said.

  “No, there weren’t. They were all in the parade, on top of the tanks and in the backs of trucks.”

  “No, they were here. They slept in our secret room.” He turned his back to me to protect the ball. I swiveled my foot around him but wasn’t able to get my toes on it. “You should have seen all the food Etheye made. I have never seen so much. Goats and sheep and chickens all at once!” I snatched the ball and moved closer to the goal.

  “Well, there’s lots of food at the palace, too. Chocolate, even! And licorice wrapped in special paper.”

  “Etheye made kolo,” Ishi said.

  “I had kolo, too. I fed some to my elephant.”

  “Elephants now? You shouldn’t tell such lies about the palace or about tanks,” he said. “No one will believe you.”

  “The elephant wasn’t a real elephant. It was Isaias.” My brother had the ball. He pulled back his leg to punt it with the top of his foot, but I stole it away.

  “But I did sit on the Emperor’s chair,” I said.

  “Liar. Everyone knows only the Emperor can sit on the Emperor’s chair,” he said. “Or maybe Mengistu could. That was his name? After the Emperor went away?”

  “But there is no Emperor!” I practiced El Diego’s footwork to keep the ball from my brother. “And Mengistu is gone and so are his bad friends. Even their pictures.” My kick was true. The ball flew through the invisible net and landed in a bed of flowers. I twirled in a victory dance while Ishi fetched the ball. I could tell he still thought I was lying.

  He kicked so hard the ball went to the other end of the garden. The race was on, my brother in the lead. I did not have time to call out. Ishi did not see what I saw. He stepped in Fiyeli’s warm poo, slid and crash-landed. He was on the ground, dazed and looking at the sky. I grasped his hand and pulled him back to the game.

  “The chair was empty,” I explained, “and when no one was looking, I climbed on it. It is made of the softest velvet in the whole world, and it is as wide as a bed. My feet reached only to the edge.”

  I fetched the ball and nudged it to Ishi to make up for the black smear on his back. He loped with the ball and I followed. Fiyeli sauntered toward us, moving a tangled length of vines back and forth between her soft lips. Gash Hamdala shook his fist at the goat, a rope draped from his other hand. The gardener was not so fond of Fiyeli.

  “There were real sweets?” Ishi glanced at me. I snatched the ball and pressed my foot on top to guard it. I drew a crumpled wrapper from my pocket. It was black with white writing.

  “See?”

  “I want to go to the palace, too,” he said. Ishi liked licorice the way I liked chocolate.

  I hit the ball with the inside of my foot. Ishi intercepted it.

  “We could play football in the great hall!” I said. “No one would even car
e.”

  “Could we ride in a tank to get there?”

  “Maybe,” I said. I kept my back to Ishi and shunted the ball from foot to foot so he couldn’t get it. “I could ask Isaias. He is mostly kind, and he knows Amharic, but he speaks in a strange way, like a snake.”

  “Gashe says he is a great man. Very powerful.”

  I passed the ball. “How do you know? Gashe would not tell you.”

  “I have ears, stupid. Two of them. One on each side.” He headed toward the goal.

  “And Gashe said he is a great man?”

  Ishi kicked. Scored again, then turned to me. “He said he will protect us. Because of you.”

  “Because of me?”

  “Yes, he said you have brought honor to the family.” Ishi rolled the ball in circles beneath his foot.

  “But I have done nothing but play,” I said. “And eat sweets.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and Ishi shrugged his.

  3

  Gashe did not see us when we snuck past him. His eyes were focused on the red light of the radio as he turned the dial to move between stations, the Voice of America and Deutsche Welle. He tilted his head to the speaker as he worked through the static to bring in the sounds of the BBC for the news broadcast: “Ethiopian Radio says President Mengistu has fled to Zimbabwe. He left his government hard-pressed by rebel forces who advanced on the capital, Addis Ababa, one week ago,” the announcer said.

  Our older brother, Tezze, put his finger to his lips and waved for us to follow him. We moved quickly from the room where we slept, on our toes, careful not to disturb Etheye from her rapid chopping of vegetables. We made it to the glory of outside without being told to wash windows or Fiyeli.

  “Some of the soldiers,” whispered Tezze. “They are selling their guns. On the street.”

  “I wish we had money,” said Ishi. He twisted his foot into the soft mud and lifted it slowly, letting it squelch as it sucked at his toes. His eyes grew big and round. “Maybe we could buy one from the soldiers staying here. They look like poor men.”