After Sinidu had told us all this, Habte Sadek turned around so that his robes and crown flashed in the feeble light of the yellow beeswax candles. He stood in front of the glittering caskets and candlesticks on the altar and spoke in his low, lilting, fierce voice. When he’d finished, Sinidu said, ‘Every treasure you see here, the crowns and the gold and silver crosses, the jewelled censers and candlesticks, the gilded books – all of it except the paintings on the walls – my uncle and his friends and brothers carried over the mountains from Magdala. A church is nothing without its tabot, its copy of the holy commandments. So when they saved their tabot they saved their church. They worked like spiders and mice, creeping beneath the noses of the English while they loaded their own wagons. Spiderwebs joined together can catch a lion.’
Habte Sadek made a little movement of his hand. Yosef lifted his candle and swept it around the chapel, splashing reflections of flame across the walls. And I knew something else then too – this place was holy because people had made it holy. They’d brought God there themselves.
‘Teodros was defeated at Magdala,’ said Sinidu,‘but my uncle remembers with pride how he fought for him. My uncle is the only one left of those soldier-priests. My grandfather, his brother, died before I was born. And his other brother went north to Aksum and never came back. But he took Habte Sadek’s story to Aksum, to the priests at the Cathedral of Maryam Seyon. They are the ones who guard the true Ark of Zion, the Tabota Seyon, the tablet bearing the commandments God gave to Moses. All tabots are copies of the true Ark.’
‘What did they do when they heard what your uncle did?’ Em asked. ‘Were they pleased?’
‘They gave him the honour of choosing a new name for this chapel,’ Sinidu said proudly. ‘So now it is dedicated to the saintly woman Kristos Samra. Habte Sadek was born near Gondar, in the place where Kristos Samra lived hundreds of years ago.’
Habte Sadek said something else, and he said my name.
‘He is telling you that the Emperor Teodros was Ethiopia’s first great reformer,’ Sinidu explained. ‘Teodros modernised his army and unified the nation – he reached out to Europe and –’ She paused, listening hard to get everything her uncle was saying. ‘And Teodros was the first to try to put an end to slavery in Ethiopia. And that you should be proud to bear his name. And since you are so interested in my uncle’s boyhood as a soldier, he wants to show you how to throw a spear,’ Sinidu finished.
And just like that Emmy and I both fell completely, hopelessly in love with Habte Sadek.
He took us up a narrow stairway cut in the rock above the chapel, so narrow you had to climb it sideways or your shoulders wouldn’t fit. Sinidu followed, and Yosef came after a bit more slowly, carrying spears. The stairs were steep.
The stairs came out on top of Beehive Hill and it was the most wonderful view in the whole world, looking all across the Beshlo River valley and the Simien Mountains to the north, with farmers’ green terraces and coffee trees growing in the sparse forest below. Bearded vultures soared above us and even though it was the beginning of December, it was summer in the Ethiopian highlands.
We had seen it from the air, but now we were standing in it. Now it felt real.
So then we spent an hour judging a spear-throwing competition between Yosef and Habte Sadek. They made me try it too. Yosef was very patient with my complete lack of accuracy. Habte Sadek could throw twice as far and as fast as Yosef. He had an arm like a major league pitcher.
Em got restless because they wouldn’t let her try.
She was working hard at being White Raven in disguise as a polite girl tourist, she told me later. It’s the only way she can make herself be polite sometimes. Equality comes in different forms, and it is a lot harder being a girl in Ethiopia than it was in Pennsylvania, even if people are nicer to us in general.
After a while, Em said to Sinidu, ‘Habte Sadek is still a soldier!’
Sinidu told him, and Yosef grinned and handed Habte Sadek another spear. He took it thoughtfully. You could tell he was pleased. But he had a serious answer for Em, which Sinidu repeated in English.
‘This is only a game,’ Sinidu explained. ‘My uncle says he is a man of peace, so he uses the weapons of war to test his skill and keep his eyes keen and his arm strong.’
‘You can tell him that our mother does the same with her flying machine,’ said Em. ‘People can use them in a war, or they can use them for flying doctors around to fix people. Momma uses her flying machine for peace.’
Sinidu told her uncle, and he laughed, and said something that made Sinidu laugh too.
‘He says you argue like a churchman,’ Sinidu said. ‘Also that your flying peaceful mother is like St Kristos Samra herself! Kristos Samra is the namesake of this hermitage and chapel. When her twelve children were grown she devoted herself to God, and she flew to hell to make peace between God and Satan. Say it – Kristos Samra, the Mother of Peace!’
‘Kristos Samra,’ we said. ‘The Mother of Peace!’
‘Habte Sadek named the chapel,’ Sinidu repeated. ‘He was born near Gondar, in the place where Kristos Samra lived hundreds of years ago, and when he came here with his rescued holy treasures he was allowed to give this place her name so it could be devoted to her and the peace she went to hell and back to win.’
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is not anything like our own, but I can say that I feel at home in the Kristos Samra chapel. Our mother has flown to hell and back too. It is nice to live in a place that is dedicated to peace, whatever God they believe in, and even if war brought them here a long time ago.
Essay by Teo
Theme for Miss Shore by Teodros Gedeyon Dupré
Subject: ‘The Language I Dream In’
Beehive Hill Cooperative Coffee Farm, Tazma Meda
Teqemt 30, 1927
Nov. 9, 1934
Here is a conversation I know I had in English.
First I need to explain that Momma never gets paid. She works as a nurse at the clinic in Tazma Meda, and every couple of months she takes Ezra in the plane to hop around the province and help out sick people in other villages. Her salary, and Ezra’s, are supposed to come from a new government public health programme, which also sends them medical supplies. And every so often, about twice a year, a couple of mules come up here with a supply of aspirin and morphine and hypodermic needles. But there is never any money, not even for Ezra. He can afford to live without a salary because he is the district governor and the landowner, and the Sinclairs pay him rent. Momma can just about afford to do it because she sells pictures to American and German magazines. She has been taking pictures since before we came to Ethiopia, since before she learned to fly, and she takes them on the ground as well as in the air. She has a closet in the Sinclairs’ house that they let her use as a darkroom.
I am one of her bestselling subjects.
Ethiopia is the first place I ever lived where as long as I keep my mouth shut I can blend in like a native. This was my biggest and most beautiful discovery when I set foot here for the first time. As long as I keep my mouth shut, even the Tazma Meda kids seem to forget that I’m the crazy ferenji flying woman’s boy, even though I go home with Emmy at the end of the day. During our first year here we spent almost as much time chasing goats with the Tazma Meda kids, or throwing spears with Yosef, as we did reading.
We have been here four years now. Emmy will be sixteen in three months. She blends in less and less all the time, but I’m getting better and better at it.
Even though I’d rather not be noticed at all in everyday life, I get noticed all the time in glossy magazines around the world. I wear a shamma and carry a stick over my shoulder just like the Tazma Meda goatherds. So I guess in a way I’m a circus performer like the rest of the family whether I like it or not.
Here is the English conversation which I had with Em not long ago:
Me: ‘But I’m not Ethiopian. I’m American. If I stand wearing a shamma under a bee tree in front of the St Kristos
Samra hermitage I’m still not Ethiopian.’
Em, shrugging: ‘Your father is Ethiopian, which makes you officially Ethiopian, and you live in Ethiopia and you wear a shamma all the time.’
‘But so do you! But –’
‘I don’t see what difference it makes whether Momma takes a picture of you or of Yosef! This way at least the person she takes a picture of gets a cut.’
‘Momma says the caption in Vu means “Abyssinian shepherd boy”.’
Em gave a snort of scorn. ‘Well, you look like whatever the French people think an Abyssinian shepherd boy looks like. If they don’t even call a country by its right name, they won’t care if they’re looking at an actual shepherd boy or not. Why do you care, Teo? They’re the ones getting buffaloed.’
‘Imagine if I grow up and design a train that runs on balloon power, or figure out how to make radios work without batteries or something, and instead of taking me seriously everybody just points to those pictures and says, Well, you are a fake. I would care. I bet Delia would care.’
That made Em clam up for a moment. Then she said, ‘If you think it’s wrong, tell Momma.’
‘Are you crazy? She got two hundred dollars for that picture.’
That one photograph was worth more than her non-existent clinic wages are supposed to be for the whole year. You can’t really argue with facts like that. It should make us just about the richest people in the whole district, except that all the money is spent on fuel and film and developing fluid.
‘The thing is, Teo, you work so doggone hard trying not to look like a ferenji that you’re already a humbug.’
I am the only one of us who can actually get away with not looking like a ferenji. And it’s embarrassing to admit it, but Emmy is right. I spend my whole life trying to think of ways to make myself fit in. I watch Ezra. I watch Habte Sadek. I watch Yosef. I watch the Tazma Meda kids more than I talk to them. As long as I keep my mouth shut, I can make it work. Em is the most fluent Amharic speaker of any of us – mine is accented just like Momma’s. But I’m the only one of us who looks the part.
When we’re in Addis Ababa I can fool people into thinking I’m a farm boy. Or Em’s servant. Neither one of us likes that, but it’s a side effect of being together all the time.
Unlike me, Em wears whatever the heck she wants to wear in Tazma Meda. She is the crazy ferenji flying woman’s crazy ferenji daughter, trailing around in lace shawls and green glass beads and flying goggles and sunsuits that she makes herself out of Mrs Sinclair’s patch bag. I think that in a corner of her head she is always pretending to be White Raven. She wants to be like White Raven, not afraid of anything, always able to fool people into doing what she wants and always able to figure a way to make everything come out all right in the end.
This theme is supposed to be about the language I dream in. I’ve described a conversation I know I had in English, so here’s a conversation I know I had in Amharic. This happened two days ago.
The clinic where Momma works is the newest building in Tazma Meda. It is stone with a corrugated-iron roof that sounds like thunder when it’s raining. There is a wooden ladder bolted to the wall at the back so you can get to the radio mast and the water tanks on the roof, so me and Em spend a lot of time climbing up there while we wait for Momma. You can spy on the whole village from the roof – the clinic is right on the edge of town because it’s so new, and higher up than the rest of the houses.
I say you can spy on things, but you aren’t really hidden up there because anyone who looks up can see you. And people do look up at the roof of the Tazma Meda clinic because of the radio mast. The wooden tower got put up about two years ago, but Akaki Station only started transmitting last month. The mast takes up the entire clinic roof and is five times as high as the building itself. It’s like having our own copy of the Eiffel Tower in Tazma Meda. Momma says it’s very useful to use as a landmark for lining up to land on the airfield at Beehive Hill.
Em and I were sitting on the roof yesterday when the soldier from Gondar came riding up the valley and along the track into the village.
I saw him come to a halt, and I climbed down because I figured he’d want someone to take his horse. Em stayed sitting on the roof with her legs dangling over the edge.
I jumped the last four feet to the ground and came to meet the stranger. I nodded politely, holding out my hand. The soldier and I were both wearing khaki shorts and shirts and white shammas, both of us barefoot. We were not too different, two modern countrymen meeting in front of one of Haile Selassie’s best, brand-new twentieth-century clinics. The rider frowned at Em, then spoke to me.
‘There’s a radio inside?’ he asked in Amharic. ‘Does it transmit?’
That was not a question I was expecting.
I hadn’t really looked at him before, I guess. I’d seen a tired man on a horse, carrying a rifle. Everybody carries a rifle, so that wasn’t too remarkable. But now I saw that beneath his shamma his uniform was the greenish-khaki of an Imperial Guard, like we’d seen at the coronation. His rifle looked brand new, not something his grandfather had picked up at the Battle of Magdala in 1868. He didn’t look like someone who ought to be travelling alone in the middle of nowhere. He looked like part of an elite regiment.
‘The clinic radio can only receive,’ I said. ‘But if you need to send a message . . .’
Momma has sometimes flown messages to Addis Ababa. But it isn’t an offer I’d dare to make without telling her about it first.
‘I need to ask my mother,’ I said. ‘She works in the clinic.’
The stranger glanced up again at Em sitting on the roof with her bare legs dangling over the edge. We’ve been working on a story where White Raven is disguised as the kidnapped queen of Constellatia, the Kingdom of the Stars, while Black Dove tries to rescue the real queen. So Em was dressed up as the queen of Constellatia. She had her hair frizzed out as far as she could get it with two beautiful big bunches of highland roses in it. She wore a marshmallow-like fairy dress that we made out of two shammas sewn together (with Sinidu’s sewing machine), and she also wore a cardboard crown (cut from a film packing box someone sent to Momma) which I painted with ground-up pieces of glass from a broken jam jar of Mrs Sinclair’s. So Em was actually sparkling, sitting up there in the sun in her tiara.
The soldier looked at her for a long time. Then he must have decided that despite her womanly body under the weird outfit, she wasn’t old enough to be my mother, and was also the wrong colour. (Of course so is Momma, but he didn’t know that yet.) He looked back at me expectantly, dismissing the sparkling queen on the roof.
I was dying to ask him what message he wanted to transmit, but I knew I had to be polite. ‘You should come inside and sit down while you wait. I can get you some water.’
‘Who is the head of your village?’
‘Ato Ezra, Mr Ezra. He’s also the doctor here. My mother helps him. She’s called Woyzaro Rhoda, Mrs Rhoda.’
‘It is a matter of urgent importance,’ the man said grimly.
‘We can make the radio work for you now, if you just want to listen,’ I said. I tilted my head at Em. Get down here.
Em scrambled nimbly down the ladder at the back of the clinic. She was wearing khaki shorts too, beneath her stately Constellatia robes. I helped the Imperial rider tie his horse, so Emmy went in first to warm up the radio.
Inside the stone building, Sinidu was guiding a whooping baby and its upset mother in to Ezra. The baby was alternately coughing and trying to grab at my old die-cast Spirit of St Louis plane which is now hanging from the clinic ceiling to distract people who are having their broken arm set or their tooth pulled or something. According to Em, Sinidu took one look at her outfit and burst out laughing. Then she ignored Em and took the coughing baby in to Ezra.
The queen of Constellatia tried to tune into Akaki, which is the only transmitting radio station in the country. But we didn’t hear a thing except static, which is mostly what we’ve heard since Akaki
was inaugurated. Emmy coaxed and petted the wireless, and then she gave it a whack, and suddenly it bellowed forth an unlikely burst of a symphony orchestra. It was astonishing, but not newsworthy.
The stranger squatted down, bent over his knees with his head in his hands. You could almost smell his frustration. He’d wanted serious information, not European opera.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked him.
‘There will be war within a year.’
I didn’t stare at him but I can bet Miss Shore will stare at me when she reads this. It is just as unbelievable a package of bundled words as if he’d told me, ‘Your father didn’t die of influenza in 1919,’ or, ‘There’s no such thing as a bird strike,’ or something like that.
‘A war where?’ Emmy asked. ‘Against what country?’
‘Here. Against Ethiopia. Italy holds colonies on all our borders, and it wants Ethiopia as well.’ He hesitated, and looked up. He considered that I looked like his countryman and that Em, for all her ferenji foreignness, spoke Amharic as flawlessly as anyone who belonged here. The soldier added, ‘Italy against Ethiopia. The only African nation never to be colonised now has invaders on our doorstep.’
He didn’t know her father was Italian. Or her name – Emilia Menotti.
‘How do you know?’ I asked. It made no sense.
‘It is starting. Small things are going to become bigger things, and they are happening now. I’ve come from Gondar. I have been two days riding – I will kill my horse if I go faster. But I must waste no time in reaching Addis Ababa.’
Sinidu appeared out of nowhere, which she is good at, carrying a jug of water and the big bowl of fried barley which is usually reserved as a treat for bleeding Tazma Meda kids. ‘The American children forget you are a guest,’ she said, blithely giving away the game and revealing us as foreigners. She handed him the water and he drank, and Em switched off the radio, because Sinidu had left the door open and everyone in the clinic was trying to listen.