Cold White Sun Read online

  “We are poor men ourselves,” said Tezze. “We don’t have money.”

  “What would you do with an AK-47?” I asked. I wiggled my toes, letting the muck squeeze into the space between them, then clenched my toes opened and closed rapidly, trying to squirt the mud into the air.

  “It is better than an ordinary rifle. You can shoot while the bad guys are moving, and you can shoot more than one at a time,” said Ishi.

  “Do you see any bad guys around here?” I extended my hands, palms up. “I think we are safe. That’s what Isaias’s soldiers are for.”

  “How much would it even cost?” asked Tezze. I shrugged.

  “How do you even get money?” asked Ishi.

  Tezze and I both lifted our shoulders and let them drop. “Gashe gets it. In those big sacks he brings.”

  “I still need an AK. I’d use it to protect you,” Ishi said. “You would never have to go to the palace again. You could stay here forever.” He held his arms like a rifle and pivoted from side to side. “Rat-a-tatt-tatt,” he said, using his finger to shoot at a pigeon.

  “We have bigger problems than that,” said Tezze. He picked up the ratty football and shoved the rags back in. Ishi and I pulled up some grass and stuffed that in, too, to make it rounder. “If we kick this, it is going to fall apart even worse.”

  “We could just use a rock,” said Ishi. He picked up a curved stone about half as big as a football.

  “Too heavy. And think of the bruises,” said Tezze.

  “What if we tell the girls we want to play house, and make them sew it,” I said.

  “They will never believe it,” said Tezze.

  Our heads turned as one to the sounds of commotion on the street. We ran to the gates to spy through the holes. Hundreds of people were walking all together and chanting, “One Ethiopia! One Ethiopia!”

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. We need to see better,” said Tezze. “Come on!”

  Ishi climbed on Tezze’s shoulders and onto the wooden beam that ran near the top of the wall that overlooked the street. I followed. Tezze grabbed the steel hook where animals were slaughtered and swung up beside us. The three of us watched the crowd grow bigger and bigger, as if it was pulling everyone up from the streets.

  “They look mad,” I said. “Not like the day of the parade at all.”

  “What does your friend Isaias say of this?” asked Tezze.

  “I don’t know. He’s in London. To talk peace, he said.”

  “This does not look like peace,” said Ishi.

  “Come on, let’s go.” Tezze stretched his leg to the top of the wall.

  “Into the street? Gashe will kill us if he finds out,” I said. I felt dizzy so high above the ground with nothing to hold. And Gashe, when he was angry? Who knew what he would do? It would be better to stay safe.

  “So, don’t tell him.” Tezze leapt from the wall and disappeared.

  “We can’t let him go alone,” said Ishi. He stepped cautiously along the beam to where it joined the wall just above the guard house. “Come on!”

  It was a long way down, but I couldn’t let my brothers see my fear. I landed upright on the pavement, but my shins ached as if someone had smashed them with a stick.

  “We should have gone back for shoes,” I said.

  “No time,” said Tezze. “They have already moved on. Hold hands. And hurry!”

  We ran to catch up with the rolling mass of people.

  More and more people joined as we flowed up the hill, as hot and steamy and airless as lava going backwards. Even the groups of men who stood in small circles all day arguing about politics and football left their favorite spots on the street to join the pressing rush.

  “We should go back,” I said. The pavement burned my feet, and we were getting too far from home. The beating from our older sisters would be fierce.

  In the distance I saw the two cement lions that topped the Imperial Palace where Isaias liked to talk to his friends.

  “It’s too far. If we go back now, no one will know,” I shouted. I dragged on Ishi’s arm, pulling him toward home. But Tezze’s pull was stronger.

  Car and truck horns honked. The drivers shouted and waved their fists out side windows. There were so many people flooding the streets that the cars were forced to stop. I saw a driver push open his door, leave his car and join the mob.

  “One Ethiopia! Keep Eritrea!” People yelled and shook their raised fists as they moved up the hill. Tanks rolled in from the sides.

  “We shouldn’t be here. Let’s go,” I said. The crowd moved us farther and farther from home. I yanked hard on Ishi’s hand and leaned back like an anchor. If he came, Tezze would have to come, too.

  “One country. One nation. One Ethiopia!”

  “I don’t know what to do!” yelled Ishi. He looked like a stick man being pulled in opposite directions. Tezze was solid. His eyes were huge when he turned to me.

  “Look at the tanks!” he said. “Can you believe how many different kinds?” Belching clouds of black diesel, the machines crawled toward the crowd, the churning sound of them drowned by the protestors. The greasy tanks coated in dirt were covered with soldiers holding weapons.

  “We have to go!” I said. Ishi dragged on Tezze’s one arm, and I on the other, but our brother didn’t budge.

  “I’m scared,” I yelled.

  “Me, too,” said Ishi.

  “Don’t be such babies,” said Tezze. “You need your —”

  Rat-a-tatt-tatt. Rat-a-tatt-tatt.

  Insane screaming. People swirled all around us, pushing every which way. I glanced at the soldiers. Their weapons were pointed upward. They weren’t shooting at the crowd, just firing warning shots. The pack pushed backward, pressing on us, then swelled forward, taking us with it.

  “Now! We must go!” I yelled into Tezze’s face. Should I slap him? Shake him the way our older sisters sometimes shook us?

  Ishi kicked him in the bum, so hard that Tezze stumbled forward. We used the momentum to change direction and to pull him toward home. Running and pushing, we ran straight into the face of another crowd, so thick it blotted out everything but the tallest buildings. People covered the pavement and the neat cut bricks. They trampled the grass and crushed the purple flowers. They yelled and raised their fists.

  “One Ethiopia!” they screamed. “One Ethiopia!”

  Above the mob, the United States flag flapped on a tall pole beside the Ethiopian one.

  The United States flag? There was only one flag in Addis with the stars and stripes of America. The American embassy. It couldn’t be.

  I was good with directions. I looked for landmarks. I watched the position of the sun the way Ababa had taught me. I never got lost.

  But I had led my brothers entirely in the wrong direction — north, instead of south.

  More tanks appeared. More soldiers. Rat-a-tatt-tatt. Rat-a-tatt-tatt. More shots in the air. We couldn’t get through. The crowd surged closer to the soldiers and engulfed us.

  “One Ethiopia!” they screamed. “We will not be ruled by scum like you.” We were near enough to see men spit toward the soldiers. “You are worthless,” they said, and curled their lips in disgust. The men dug up paving stones and hurled them at the soldiers.

  It made no sense. Weren’t the soldiers the good guys? Rat-a-tatt-tatt. Advancing tanks moaned and spat pavement. Exhaust choked off my breath. A hail of bricks and stones landed on the tanks. A soldier toppled. Another dropped his gun and grabbed his shoulder. The crowd cheered.

  Rat-a-tatt-tatt. Rat-a-tatt-tatt. Rat-a-tatt-tatt. Rat-a-tatt-tatt. All around us. More shots.

  This time, not in the air.

  The mob screamed and pulled away in all directions at once, the way water will when it meets a drop of oil.

  The shooting st
opped and there was silence.

  Then gradually, as if we were in a slow-motion movie, the crowd retreated, still quiet, all eyes on the soldiers with machine guns pointed again to the sky. People dragged the bleeding protesters behind them, the limp bodies trailing long dark streaks on the pavement.

  My hands, my arms, my legs trembled beyond control, as if they didn’t belong to me. Tears washed my face. Everything was all wrong. I ran and squirmed and shoved between people, not caring if I stepped on feet or knocked people off balance. I ran without looking back.

  I had to get home. To safety.

  I collapsed like a heap of rags outside our gate, curled into a ball and rocked back and forth, boiling hot, then shivering, crying and howling until my throat ached itself raw.

  Where were Ishi and Tezze? I should have looked for them. Why didn’t I wait? How could I be so selfish?

  A guard carried me like a baby inside the cramped gate house. My blistered feet bled and my heart felt as if it might stop beating. I had left my brothers who could not run as fast or as far as I could. How could I have left Ishi, who I loved as much as Etheye, and who wanted to buy a gun to protect me?

  “What is going on? Why were you outside?” the guard demanded. He and the other guard leaned close to me. Their breath was hot and smelled of garlic.

  “Don’t tell Gashe,” I pleaded. “Don’t tell.”

  I was afraid of what Gashe would do to me, but even more, I was afraid of what he would do to Etheye. He would hold her responsible for what we had done.

  The guard’s hand stung my face when he hit me, and my tears spilled again, like those of a girl.

  “What have you been doing?” he yelled. “What game is this?”

  I had no answer. What if my brothers were trampled? What if the soldiers began firing again? Ishi would never have left me, no matter what. Why did I leave him? How could I have done this?

  The second slap was worse than the first. And when he shook me until my brain came loose inside my head, I was grateful. It was a just and fateful punishment for my disloyalty.

  4

  Ishi was a part of me, like an arm or a leg. We were together in everything. We were interchangeable, my brother and me. Our age was the same. We wore the same clothes and played the same games. We ate from the same plate. We slept snuggled together on the same mattress, talking to each other even as we slept.

  But we were not twins. I was three weeks older, and we were born of different mothers.

  The first time I saw him, Ishi crept slowly from the cab of Gashe’s pickup, as if he was afraid.

  “Come,” Gashe said. He led him by the hand to where my brothers, sisters and I had stopped playing football to stare at him. He hid behind Gashe, but slowly, very slowly, leaned his head and shoulders to the side to peek at us. His eyes, as round and afraid as a lemur’s, took up most of his bony face. He gazed all around the garden, at the trees and the grass and the flowers and at us, as if he could not trust his eyes, as if he were in a dream.

  He examined us, first as a big group, then with his eyes searching each of ours, from one to the other as if he might run and hide if we moved too quickly. And so we stayed still.

  When his eyes found mine, they stopped searching.

  “This is Ishi. A cousin. A brother now,” Gashe said. He often brought older cousins in the back of his pickup to work as servants and to go to school. But never before someone so much like me.

  Ishi was smaller than I was and much skinnier, except for his belly. His stomach was as round as a ripe pumpkin, and I saw the plump button of his belly poking out like a small stubby nose through a gap in the front of his shirt. He was dressed in grubby rags, and I could see his bum through the holes worn in his shorts. He was barefoot like us, but his feet looked hard and tough, as if he had the bottom of sandals glued to his feet.

  He looked like a beggar from the street with wild dirty hair and yellowed teeth that did not fall in a straight pattern.

  But when our eyes met, they locked and held like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

  I took his hand from Gashe’s. Ishi’s skin was rough, and his fingernails were broken and dirty.

  “I am Tesfaye,” I said. “Let’s play.”

  It was as if Ishi and I had grown together in the same womb, but he knew nothing of the rules of football. We had to teach him how to score and when to cheer.

  I never left his side. I stayed with him even while Etheye cleaned him in the big basin, outside by the water tower. She patted the edge of the tub and told him to climb in.

  He shook his head.

  “Ayi. Ayi,” he said, then scurried behind me, scrunching up his shoulders so he would appear even smaller.

  No one liked baths, but even I could tell he needed one.

  “It’s only a bath,” I said. He pointed his arm and his filthy finger straight at Etheye. His big eyeballs looked as if they would pop from his head and roll on the ground.

  “Very too much.” He spoke Amharic, but he made many mistakes. “Ayi. Ayi.” He clutched my upper arms to use me as a shield and turned me to face Etheye.

  “Come. Come,” Etheye said, her voice soft and slow. She trailed her hand back and forth in the water. “It be nice and warm.”

  Ishi squeezed my arms so tight I thought they would snap. He pulled me a step backwards. Etheye sighed.

  “Take off your clothes,” she said to me. “Show him about a bath.”

  The water was silky warm from the heat of the sun. Etheye poured water from a cup onto my head.

  “See how nice,” she said. I smiled as if it was pleasant, but it wasn’t. She had gotten a lot of water in my eyes. I got out to shake myself dry, but still, Ishi would not get in.

  “Take his hand,” said Etheye. “Both of you, get in together.”

  “There isn’t room,” I complained, and whoever heard of two baths in one day? The hardness of Etheye’s eyes ordered me to climb in and make room.

  He gripped my hands tightly when we sank into the water and didn’t let go.

  “Only before. Small bits water,” Ishi said. “Water for thirsting.”

  Etheye didn’t touch me, but she scrubbed him hard, all over, with lots of soap, until it seemed his skin would wear out. She clipped his nails, and she cut off all of his hair, the way a farmer will shear a sheep. The clothes she brought were the clothes I usually wore. They hung on his body like the garments of a stick man used to scare birds away from coffee cherries.

  Dressed in my clothes, with short hair, he looked exactly like me, except smaller. Even our skin was the same clean shade of brown. I showed him how he looked in Gashe’s tall mirror. His smile, with all those crooked teeth, told me he thought the same thing, and that it made him happy.

  I could not believe my luck, that Gashe had found the missing part of me.

  We were lured from our reflections by the scent of roasting spices. Etheye placed the plate of injera topped with diced vegetables and shiro on the floor for us.

  “Bihlahh!” she said, but I needed no encouragement. I ripped off a large piece, scooped wat and shoved it in my mouth before my sisters came to push us away.

  “Take some. Take some,” I told Ishi, moving my hand in small circles and gesturing to the round platter piled with food. “Eat! Hurry.”

  He approached cautiously, though he looked most hungry. He gazed at me, eyes large, the way a boy looks before he will get a beating. He dipped just two fingers in the wat, then scuttled away.

  “Take the best parts,” I said. “Before the others come.” I stuffed my mouth with food, so much that it jammed my throat when I swallowed. I grabbed my neck to hold it together. Surely it would split in two. I coughed, but the knob of food did not move. My eyes filled with tears. I wheezed and rubbed my neck to help it work. But Ishi did not move to grab food or to help me. He sat curled in the corner with his leg
s pressed to his chest and a look of fright on his face.

  I swallowed as a snake will, feeling the lump of food bulge through the pipe to my stomach and land at the bottom with a thump. My throat felt as if it had been scraped with a shovel.

  “Come. You must eat,” I croaked when my breath returned. Ishi remained still. I scooped dollops of each of the toppings, except for the gomen which I did not like, and scrabbled beside my new brother. I held the food to his mouth and when he opened, I fed him. He ate slowly, rubbing the taste over his lips. I grabbed more food — a whole roll of injera — as my older sisters came in, talking loudly and pushing me away. Although my stomach still rumbled with hunger, I ate nothing more. I fed what I had taken, a bite at a time, to Ishi.

  * * *

  ◆

  Now, sitting alone before two guards near the gate, I had betrayed him. I had left him in the street with an angry mob, with soldiers and machine guns. I had saved only myself.

  The guards argued among themselves, then one slapped me again.

  “Speak!” he demanded, but what did I have to say?

  The circle of the sun hovered over the edge of the horizon. Etheye would notice her sons were missing if we didn’t come to eat, and she would cry with worry and wring her hands, wondering what to do. The guards shoved me from the gatehouse. I hobbled on blistered feet toward the aroma of roasting meat, but the smell made me feel sick.

  Meat meant Gashe was here.

  I glimpsed the bottoms of Gashe’s feet in the room where he and Etheye slept. I knew he knelt in humility, hands pressed together in prayer. My head hung low. I knew how quickly he could change, from penitent sinner to raging bull, like the snapping of fingers. I should tell him what I had done. I should confess.

  Egzi-Abeher, save us. Save my brothers. I will do anything.

  But I must not disturb Gashe’s prayers. The cold floor soothed the torn bottoms of my traitor’s feet as I slunk to the room I shared with my brothers.