‘She means you are clever about reading people’s minds,’ Em translated. ‘Like Mateos.’
‘So why can’t Mateos do it?’ I demanded. I was not sure how seriously to take these compliments.
‘Mateos doesn’t know about it either. And I don’t want him to get in trouble for sharing Italian military photos.’
‘What about you getting in trouble, Momma? What about me?’
‘The photos are ours so it’s all right. You were flying the plane when I took most of them.’
Em was a bundle of excitement over me doing a real live Black Dove mission, and she is also consumed with envy.
But it was easy – I just had to do what everybody told me to do and go where they took me. That is pretty much what I always do.
Before Mateos and I left in the morning, Momma slid a slim cardboard envelope into the front pocket of my khaki shirt as she kissed me goodbye.
Mateos gave me his extra spear so I wouldn’t look like an idiot. Or you could say it was to make me invisible. Following Mateos through the paths between the maze of huddled houses and shacks, I watched his feet, trying to move as quickly and quietly as he does.
Everything in Addis Ababa is new, and in the blue light before dawn it looks like nothing real – a jumble of shapes thrown together, packed tight, and none of them matching. And then you get to the parliament and government offices and you still feel like you’re in a dream. These buildings are all European and they are beautiful, but they are so new. The emperor’s palace was glowing as rosy as Beehive Hill in the early sun as we came close. Outside the gate were a thousand people waiting for jobs. It is fooling yourself to pretend they are doing anything else. It is still a poor country and we are always forgetting how lucky we are in Tazma Meda.
I got to walk right through this crowd on our way to meet Ras Assefa’s personal guard, because Mateos brought me. It feels a lot like pretending to be Black Dove even if I’m not pretending on purpose – it feels like I blend in but I don’t really belong here.
That set me a little bit on edge. With Momma’s photographs in my pocket, I couldn’t help feeling apprehensive. And I worried about what I was going to say to people, and not being able to hide my accent.
I know Mateos is supposed to be Ras Assefa’s advisor, but as far as I can tell, his work is just to make Ras Assefa look important. That is also what his personal guard does. The guard, the people I spent the day with, is a crowd of young men who are trained like soldiers and act as Ras Assefa’s escort. I got a glimpse of him as we escorted him to the parliament buildings, and he just looked like an ordinary railway official, a little heavy, in a dark European three piece suit and glasses. Mateos carried his sunshade for him – a white umbrella, also European. After Assefa and Mateos had gone inside to various meetings, the rest of us had to hang around most of the day waiting for them to come back out.
Everybody was wearing exactly the same clothes as me, khaki shorts and shirt, no shoes. Mateos had told them I was his nephew and might be able to join them as a guard some day soon. I tried to keep my role simple and play ‘Goatherd Visiting His City Uncle’. I got away with the accent too, by being from a highland village no one had ever heard of. But three of Ras Assefa’s retainers were about my own age and I couldn’t shake them off.
‘New boy! Play! Tell us a story!’ demanded one.
‘A battle adventure,’ said another.
The oldest, whose name was Sergew, came to my rescue. ‘What do any of you children know of battle?’ he scoffed. ‘You were all herding goats just like this fellow when the emperor squashed the coronation year rebellion.’
‘I am no goatherd!’ argued one of the others. ‘As you know, Sergew. I can throw a spear farther than you.’
‘Don’t listen to the boasting,’ the youngest of them said. ‘None of us has seen battle. But you should have been with us last month, when we went up to Aksum. We felt like real soldiers, even without a battle. We marched forty miles a day!’
‘We gave demonstration drills in all the villages in the Takazze Valley –’
I felt my shirt pocket to make sure I hadn’t squashed the photographs yet. I could guess what was coming.
‘The story can wait – let’s see if the country boy can throw a spear.’
So then we had to have a contest to see 1) who could throw the farthest, and 2) who was most accurate. Yosef and Habte Sadek’s lessons came to my rescue. I was able to throw farther than some of them, which was respectable, but I was at the bottom of being accurate. The sun got higher. We took turns making a protective wall around two or three of us at a time, playing games of gebeta with pebbles in the gravel. You couldn’t be seen to be loafing, but there wasn’t much of anything else to do.
‘So, country boy, will you join Ras Assefa’s entourage with us?’ Sergew asked me. ‘Or the Imperial Guard?’
A few of them laughed. My spear-throwing skills are not up to Imperial Guard standards.
At that exact moment a plane motored overhead. It was one of the biplanes from Akaki airfield, probably training. We all looked up. People pointed and exclaimed. People are amazed by airplanes, even in Addis Ababa.
‘Imperial Ethiopian Air Force!’ Sergew said.
‘Air Force!’ everybody clamoured. ‘Beautiful. That was how Haile Selassie finished the coronation year rebels – he sent in aircraft to shoot them down from the sky! Remember that?’
‘How fast can the planes fly? What do you have to do to join the Air Force?’
‘Do you know anybody who can get you in?’
I didn’t say anything. They weren’t aiming these questions at me anyway, but at anyone who would answer them, and I was working at being invisible.
‘How long did it take us to march from Aksum – ten days? And that was fast going,’ said one who looked younger than me. ‘An aircraft would take you ten hours.’
‘Less,’ said Sergew. ‘An aircraft travels five times the speed of a train.’
‘Take off just after dawn and arrive in time for dinner!’
Sergew seemed to know what he was talking about. Or know more than anybody else there anyway.
So I asked a test question.
‘Do you know what the plane was? The one that passed over us?’
‘Potez. Built in France. The emperor has three of them.’
‘How can you tell?’ That was an honest question, because I can’t tell one from another when they’re flying over. Except for a Romeo, of course.
Sergew laughed. ‘It’s the easiest. Our boss’s brother, General Amde Worku, took flying lessons in one of those. He has pictures of them in his house up north in Aksum.’
It took me a moment to realise that the man he was talking about, Amde Worku, had been my father’s boss – Gedeyon, my real father. The brothers Mateos and Gedeyon had worked for the brothers Assefa and Amde Worku, the emperor’s loyal advisors and soldiers. Too bad I didn’t have this to write about when I had to do that stupid theme about fathers for Miss Shore.
My father and Amde Worku must have taken lessons at the same airfield – maybe even flown in the same plane.
It made me shiver. To come all this way, to be among strangers, and to learn something like this.
‘You should learn to fly,’ I said to Sergew, who was obviously interested in planes. ‘You should go join the Imperial Ethiopian Air Force.’
‘I’d join if I could, but I was born a slave to Ras Assefa and was bound to his service before I came with him here to the capital.’
At the time I really couldn’t believe it. I mean, I did, but I couldn’t. Stupidly, I had to make him spell it out.
‘You were born a slave?’ I repeated.
‘Born before 1916,’ he told me. ‘That was the year of the reforms to gradually bring an end to slavery. The reforms started so we could join the League of Nations, long before Haile Selassie became emperor.’
I was born in 1919. Sergew, born a slave, is only a little older than me.
Of
course I know that slavery has not been completely outlawed here. It’s one of the things that Grandma complained about when we got here. It is something that Momma insists is changing. And we don’t see it, because the only wealthy Ethiopian person we know – Ezra – doesn’t have any slaves. Or if he did, he freed them a long time ago. I can’t imagine Sinidu keeping slaves. I really can’t.
So hearing Sergew say that he was born a slave was like being punched. He must have seen that in my face.
‘Don’t worry about working for Ras Assefa,’ Sergew assured me. ‘I have been free since I was a child. Ras Assefa freed all his slaves when the reforms were announced, and gave them work too. I have made a contract with him and will not leave his service for gratitude. The air force is elite – I could not learn to fly without a sponsor or my own income.’
‘Ras Assefa is a good man to work for,’ someone else added. ‘We are all among his elite. You’re with Mateos, country boy? He’s your uncle? He is highly placed.’
‘It’s true. When we’re travelling as soldiers, Mateos is Assefa’s closest advisor,’ Sergew said. ‘And we are lucky too. At the festival of Timkat, when we were in Aksum, we had the honour of standing guard at the gates to Maryam Seyon. That’s where they keep the Tabota Seyon, the sacred tablet that is the true Ark of the Covenant. It’s not a bad life.’
‘You stood guard at Mary of Zion during Timkat!’ I exclaimed. That really is an impressive honour. ‘What a blessing!’
I got to meet Ras Assefa himself right at the end of the day, when we escorted him back to his own house. At the gates of his compound our troop melted away – some of them went to guard the house, and some of them were dismissed. When it was just me and Mateos left standing there, Ras Assefa clasped Mateos’s arms and kissed him on both cheeks. Then he turned to me and did the same thing. Like the emperor, his European suit and glasses made him look as if he’d just come from a visit to the League of Nations in Geneva. Or like what he was: a railway official.
But I knew he was also an Ethiopian lord. A former slave owner. Someone who had made a decision to change things. Someone who was working on reform and modernisation, probably harder than most people. He is old and new Ethiopia all in one.
I really noticed it in his house. He invited us inside. The stone walls are completely covered with Ethiopian paintings and woven decorations from top to bottom, and the thatched roof is completely hidden by European chandeliers. I think there must be hundreds of them, Venetian glass and Irish crystal, like a cave of ice. There is no electricity, but they are beautiful in candlelight. It has given me a fantastic new idea for a story: The Land of Glass.
‘Sit,’ Ras Assefa said to me. ‘I want to hear about airplanes! Mateos, go ask Efram to bring us tea.’
Assefa and I were alone for about two minutes, and he didn’t waste any time. He said simply, ‘Pictures.’
I reached into my shirt pocket and gave him Momma’s photographs of mountaintops. He slipped them out of the cardboard sleeve and leafed through them quickly. I couldn’t see the pictures but I could see that she’d labelled them all with their geographic coordinates so you could tell exactly where they were taken.
‘Can these pictures be made bigger? Will she take more?’
‘I think so,’ I answered cautiously.
‘Very good,’ said Ras Assefa. ‘Please ask her to scout Tigrinya and the Eritrean border. She can stay with my brother, Amde Worku, in Aksum, when she is in the north. He can get her fuel.’ Seemingly out of nowhere he handed over a soft, heavy bag on a long cord.
‘Under your shamma, quickly,’ he directed.
Even without looking I could tell the bag was full of Maria Theresa dollars, at least a hundred. Each one of Momma’s pictures is probably worth Mateos’s wages for a month.
But it will pay for the fuel we owe Colonel Sinclair.
‘Thank you, Teodros. The emperor is indebted to Woyzaro Rhoda for sharing these,’ Ras Assefa said.
When Mateos came back in, soft-footed as a hunting lynx, we’d already made the exchange and he didn’t see any of it. So I guess Ras Assefa doesn’t want to involve him any more than Momma does.
‘Tea is coming,’ Mateos said.
‘Do you like yours sweet?’ Assefa asked me. ‘Coming from Tazma Meda, you must have a taste for honey!’ He was so jolly and friendly that it seemed impossible we’d just done this shady deal. Or that he’d ever been a slave owner.
I wondered if Mateos too had been born Ras Assefa’s slave. Probably not though, because my father did not work for Ras Assefa, and Mateos was my father’s brother.
‘So you are learning to fly!’ Assefa said to me. ‘My brother Amde Worku flew when he was in Europe. Amde Worku has been waiting for years to meet Gedeyon’s son, and what wonderful news to tell him that you are learning to fly! An Ethiopian pilot is a rare thing. Mateos, see that Amde Worku knows Teodros will soon be a licensed pilot.’
This is the kind of grown-up talk that always makes Em start squirming.
‘I’m not old enough to be licensed yet,’ I said cautiously.
‘You must meet Amde Worku soon,’ Ras Assefa said, ignoring my protest. He patted my shoulder, and I realised it was an order. He was reminding me he wanted Momma to photograph the Eritrean border. ‘Please take more tea.’ The question of whether or not Mateos had ever been a slave kept nagging at me. I didn’t dare ask him about it. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Aksum – the Eritrean border, Ras Amde Worku, the young soldiers who’d marched there on foot at the rate of forty miles a day. I could keep pace with Mateos as we loped home through the rough paths of Addis Ababa, but I couldn’t have kept it up for forty miles. Or been able to walk forty miles again day after day after that for a week or more.
‘When you were in Aksum for the Timkat festival, guarding the church of St Mary of Zion, did you get to see the tabot – the Ark of Zion?’ I asked. Habte Sadek would love to hear about this when we got home.
‘They never take the true one out, not even at Timkat. The only man who can go near it is the guardian, the monk who cares for it. Anyone else would be blinded on the spot if he saw the Ark of Zion!’
It is hard to get Mateos to talk about himself, but I could not help wondering about his opinion.
‘Do you believe that?’
Mateos fell silent for a long time.
‘I believe you would not survive an encounter with the Ark,’ he said finally. ‘It might not harm you to see it any more than it would harm you to see a priest in his full, rich finery, but you would be killed if you touched it. You would be killed before you got close. Someone would stop you. It is a treasure too holy to be made light of, and that gives it power – even if it is only the power of men acting on its behalf. With war looming and the Italians in Eritrea so near our border and Aksum, you can see why the priests at Maryam Seyon might want a military guard.’
‘Is there really going to be a war?’
It was worth asking Mateos – I bet he knew more than Momma.
‘I hope not. If there is, it will not be the emperor’s fault. He begs and begs for peace, for assistance from the League of Nations, for a treaty, for a solution.’
Mateos suddenly stopped walking and turned to me in the dark. I could only see his silhouette, not his expression. ‘I hope not,’ he repeated. ‘But I am afraid anyway. In Aksum, so close to the border, we saw aircraft overhead all the time – giant things with three engines, playing in the sky like well-fed lions in open country. They are safe enough at a distance, but what will happen when they get hungry? And how can anyone carrying a spear protect himself from cannons in the sky? Aksum’s priests and treasures and monuments will fall to them helplessly when the invasion comes, however hard the local warriors fight.’
He paused.
‘What will you do, Teodros, if we take up spears? You will have the advantage of flight. Will you fight for us? Will your ferenji mother stay here?’
‘She was a nurse in the Great War. She believes in peac
e. She will fly to aid the wounded in battle. Maybe I can help her.’
You know, that almost sounds like I am talking about St Kristos Samra – she flew to hell. She is the mother of peace.
If we can keep the plane, it is not too crazy to think that Em and I could help out in a field hospital if there is a war. I wish I had some kind of real training. Ezra and Assefa had to go to Scotland to learn their doctoring and accounting skills. Em and I will never learn anything more than what’s on Vera Sinclair’s bookshelf unless we leave Tazma Meda. Momma is right that teaching us to fly is the only education she can give us.
I was expecting Emmy to be like a hungry lion herself after her day of hanging around with nothing to do except to be jealous of my adventure, but she surprised me.
‘Momma and I went to make sure that the Sinclairs’ fuel was going to be delivered – we walked to the depot and nagged and bribed them and told them four hundred times where to leave the cans for the mules to pick up, and Momma even bought them food for the journey. And then we rode with them in the truck to the edge of the city and waved goodbye as they drove off. Walking home we were so hot and tired that when we came to St George’s Church we went inside just to sit down and cool off. The palm matting under your feet always feels like beautiful silk after you’ve been trudging along the road all day! We went and knelt on the women’s side, and you know what? It was so nice just sitting there with Momma, being quiet. Like being in meeting. But nicer, ’cause we were just doing it for fun.’
‘When did Momma ever come along with us to meeting!’ I laughed.
‘Huh.’ Em thought about this. ‘You’re right. She was always in bed.’
‘I know what you mean though. It’s like being in the chapel at Kristos Samra. Close to something you can’t explain.’
‘I know the churchmen look at us and think: ferenji heathens! But nobody kicks you out. They welcome you anyway, and let you think in their beautiful places.’
‘Like –’
She knew exactly what I was going to say and laughed. ‘Like being in the sky.’