CHAPTER ONE

WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL, I WAS CONSTANTLY BEING told by the three venerable elders of our household, “You are the one who is going to tell our stories.”

Round the coffee pot warming on the brazier sat the women. The elders, slightly off in a corner, wrapped up in their white shemma and looking distinctly like protective birds, blessed the coffee for the women and took note of everything around them.

“She’s very curious,” whispered old Selemon with an air of satisfaction. The others agreed, slowly nodding their heads. They were well aware of that irresistible bait that hooked my soul whenever the adults used to tell stories and anecdotes about other people, and especially when they spoke about the secrets of Ato Mulugheta. But that is another story that I’ll tell you some other time.

“So curious that she becomes patient!” whispered old Yohanes. The other two continued to agree, slowly nodding their heads.

I was quite capable of waiting a long time for the beginning of some tale born by chance on the lips of a woman, while she was putting down her empty cup after her first coffee.

“So curious that she becomes patient—and wily. Look at her!” whispered old Yacob, and the three pairs of eyes converged on me.

Children were not allowed to listen to the conversations of grownups and curiosity was considered bad manners, but I managed to listen without their noticing me. I would sit in a corner and play while the women chatted. I was able to split myself in two: on one side my body was busily absorbed in play that, to the casual observer, gave the impression that I was totally uninterested in what was going on. On the other side, my mind was paying attention to every single word, every blink of an eye that came from the women.

I was able to blend in like a chameleon. Nobody had ever noticed anything, to the point that when one of the women had some spicy gossip to report to the others, she would glance at me and, just to be sure, said, “What about the little girl?”

My mother would answer, “Don’t worry, when she is absorbed in her games she is totally unaware of the world around her—a war could break out and she wouldn’t notice anything. Come on, sit down and tell us!” No one noticed the flash of amusement in the complicit glance of the three elders.

“So curious she becomes patient and wily,” whispered old Yacob.

He was my favorite and every now and then he would stretch out his arm to scratch my head. I would look up and he would smile, his mouth wide open, with that solitary upper tooth dangling like a white rag hanging out of an open window.

I would return his smile. He would then bend down and, like a bird trying to peck at something, bring his face close to mine and whisper, “Hold on tight to that curiosity of yours and collect all the stories you can. One day you’ll be the voice that will tell our stories. You will cross the same sea that Peter and Paul crossed, and you will take our stories to the land of the Italians. You will be the voice of our history that doesn’t want to be forgotten.”

Then I grew up and forgot all about the words and the glances of our three elders. I even forgot about the day that old Yacob had suddenly opened the kitchen door facing the rear courtyard and had gone outside. The cats, huddled on the landing, waiting for leftovers, had scuttled off in every direction, and he had smiled, satisfied with that trick that always worked; then he had stretched out his arm through the door and with his hand had gestured for me to follow him. Abba Yacob had gone down the stairs and, slipping along the wall of the house, had taken me to the other courtyard. The one by the main entrance with the garden full of flowers that was my mother’s pride and joy. Passing under the arch of the purple bougainvillea that climbed up the wall to the second floor, up to my brothers’ room, he had opened the door to his room and had invited me in.

It was the first time this had ever happened. We children were not allowed to cross the threshold of the rooms of the three elders. They were considered sacred. That was why they lived on the first floor, in single rooms of their own, in an area separated from the rest of the house.

I felt honored by the invitation and, stiffening my body into an almost military pose, I tried to assume the demeanor I deemed suitable for the occasion.

Old Yacob smiled. “Don’t stand there all stiff,” he said to me. “Watch out, I know you! You have my permission to take a look around!” Everything was flat inside of me; no feelings, no desire to look around came from my curious soul. Only that acute sense of the honor bestowed upon me that kept me frozen like a statue.

“So . . . show me what you can do.”

In order to please him, but still not moving a muscle, I strained my eyes in every direction to observe as much as possible.

He laughed with that solitary tooth of his. “Woi gud anchi lij! My God, what a phenomenal child! You don’t have to satisfy your curiosity just with your eyes—you have my permission to touch everything.”

Intimidated by such extreme indulgence, I lowered my head.

“Come, sit on the bed. Here, next to me,” he coaxed.

I joined him and sat down by his side.

The skirt of my dress rustled against the bed blankets. “I like your dress,” he said. “Skirts are becoming to women. They make them even more beautiful. Remember that when you grow up.” I kept my eyes lowered, fixed on my hands that I was wringing while waiting to get over my embarrassment.

“So?” he taunted me roguishly, “don’t you want to give in to your curiosity?”

But what curiosity? In that moment it was as if it didn’t exist. It was out of reach, buried deep in my soul to escape the spotlight of his attention trained on me.

With an enormous effort, just to please him, I began to explore, moving my head in every direction.

There wasn’t much in the room. On the stone floor rested the feet of a bed frame with a mattress, and next to the bed frame were some empty shelves. In a corner there was a small table with some icons on it, including one of the Virgin Mary that stood out, making the others invisible; the stub of a candle, and then spiders. Spiders and cobwebs in every hole and in every corner of the room. Finally, at the foot of the bed frame, there was a trunk covered in green paint, peeling in some spots, and fastened with two huge brass-colored padlocks.

My mind lit up.

Who knew what could be in there! Perhaps the secrets of old Yacob’s life. I didn’t know much about him. While drinking coffee together, the women had never said anything about him. And how could they? The three elders were always present, and as often happens, people didn’t talk about those who were present. Only a few times, in the evening, at home, when the three elders had retired to their rooms downstairs, I had heard a few comments. My mother and my Uncle Mesfin said that the three elders, especially old Yacob, had been valiant warriors, great arbegna, but, so my father said, old Yacob had only fought for two years, and then he had been forced to return because of the birth of Rosa, my mother’s second cousin. My father’s observation was like the signal from a conductor to his orchestra. Immediately, one of my uncles began to tell the story of my favorite elder. Unfortunately, after the first few comments, my mother said that it was getting late for us children and sent me to bed on “empty ears.”

With my imagination captured by the trunk, my mind had started to spin, moving from one fantasy to the next. In the background I could hear the fukera, the war songs, coloring my imagination. Heroic deeds by the three elders paraded through my mind as if I were watching an Indian movie, like the ones they showed at the cinema in Debre Zeit. Those corny movies with heroes galore.

“Have you finished your reconnaissance?” asked old Yacob, bringing me back to reality. Biting my lip, I turned my head toward the trunk.

“Woi gud anchi lij!” he said with an air of satisfaction.

He put his hands under his shemma, rummaged in his pants pockets, pulled out a set of keys, and handed them to me. As if they were on fire, I instinctively hid my hands behind my back, and I began to shake my head in a sign of denial.

I wasn’t going to take them.

Old Yacob got up, went toward the trunk, and opened it. “Come on, come over here,” he said. I got off the bed, went up close to him, and sat on my heels, just like him. “If you want to know what’s inside you’ll have to stick your hands in.”

“In your trunk?”

“Certainly!” he answered. I looked at him incredulously.

Something unbelievable was happening. An adult, an elder in fact, was encouraging me to openly break one of the most important rules my mother and father had taught me: don’t put your nose in grownups’ business, each person to his own place.

“Come on,” he continued, “put your little girl’s hands in the trunk and show me where your curiosity takes you.”

I glanced at the trunk, tickled by my inner curiosity that wanted to know what was in there. I resisted the impulse.

Perhaps it was a trick. If I gave in to my inner temptation someone would punish me: if not old Yacob, then certainly God, who was looking at me along with the saints from the icons on the table. He would punish me through the spiders. I had already been bitten on my foot by one of those little beasts. It hadn’t been pleasant. My mother had to take me to the herbalist because it had swollen up and I wasn’t able to walk.

“So? What’s going on, you’re not interested in my trunk?” teased old Yacob.

I was interested, and how! I perused the trunk and then locked eyes with him. “There aren’t any spiders in the trunk, are there?”

He understood. “I swear by the Virgin Mary on my altar that nothing and no one will punish you, neither I, nor the spiders, not even God. This will remain a secret between us. Come on, show me what you can find.”

I took a deep breath and focused on that inner itch that was beginning to fan into blazing flames of curiosity. Following their cue, I stretched out my arm and stuck a hand into the open trunk.

My fingers touched the soft fabric of a shemma. I ran my hand over the wavy folds, then slipped my hand into the next layer and explored every inch of it.

There was nothing there.

I moved on to the next layer.

Again, waves of soft cotton woven by the Dorze people from Chencha, and nothing else.

I sifted through all the layers of the first shemma, then of the second, and finally of the third. There was nothing there.

I pulled my hand out of the trunk, undecided whether to continue or not, and I turned toward old Yacob. “Go on! Go on!” he said.

I took a breath.

“Go on! Keep looking!” he repeated.

Once again I stretched out my arm and put my hand in the trunk under the third shemma. I found a coarser fabric, cotton used for shirts. I fingered collars, pockets, buttons, the thin thread of the stitching, the patching, and nothing else. I pushed my hand further in and found some pants, two with belts, others without, and again side pockets, back pockets closed with a button, stitching, mending . . . and under the pants in a corner a small rectangular cardboard box. I opened it and pulled out the contents. It was a box of candles. One was missing, probably the stump that was on the altar.

That was it for the contents of the trunk.

“Abba Yacob, your trunk is empty.”

“Empty? But it’s full of clothes and shemma!”

“All the same, it’s still empty.”

“What do you mean?” His eyes were shining.

“I mean that in your locked trunk there is nothing but your clothes!”

“And what did you expect to find in there?”

With a whisper, as if someone else could hear and scold me, I went up close to him and said, “Stories . . .”

“What kind of stories?”

I was so flustered that the words couldn’t come out of my mouth.

“Go on, try harder and explain to me what kind of stories you expected to find in my trunk.”

“Stories that . . .”

“That?”

“That talked about you. About your secrets,” I said all at once.

“But perhaps I have no secrets.”

“That’s not true! All adults have secrets! And I know that you must have some as well!” I said, thinking of those fleeting comments I had heard every now and then, at night.

“Woi gud anchi lij! Here’s what we’ll do: I’ll tell you one little secret. My trunk holds something that you haven’t been able to find yet.”

His words sounded like a challenge. Without saying anything I turned toward the trunk and stuck my hand back in. I went through it carefully, inch by inch: shemma, shirts, and pants. Back and forth, over and under.

There didn’t seem to be anything there.

I started all over again; if something was there I was going to find it. The third time, I heard a crinkly sound coming from one of the shirt pockets. I undid the button, put my hand in, and deep down, rolled up, I found an envelope.

I felt triumphant. I pulled it out and, laughing, I waved it under old Yacob’s nose.

“Woi gud anchi lij!” He was satisfied. “Come, let’s sit on the bed; I’ll show you what’s inside.”

Old Yacob took the envelope, opened it, and pulled out a small yellowish sheet of paper with ragged edges. He shook it and the little sheet unrolled, filling the air with dust that tickled our noses, making both of us sneeze. Stretching forward, I craned my neck to get a peek at the contents. It was full of stamps and writings, not in Amharic.

“It’s written in Italian,” old Yacob told me, and he flattened it out with his hands and laid it down on my dress. The stamps and the writings danced before my eyes. I lifted the sheet and sniffed it. I sneezed again. I turned it over in my hands. “What is it?” I asked.

“It’s called a Submission Paper: when our country was occupied by the Italians you always had to have it with you. You had to show it to the Italian soldiers whenever they asked you for it. If you did not have it you could even be killed. We used to go around carrying a very long cane with the paper stuck through the point so that the soldiers could see it.” While he was speaking he jumped off the bed to act out the scene. He stretched his arm out in front of him with the sheet between his fingers. “We used to hold it this way! You see, like this,” he said, “and when they passed by we used to do this . . .” He lowered his head and started speaking in that strange language that sounded funny.

I burst into laughter and he continued to hop up and down on those little bird legs that stuck out of his shemma, speaking that strange language. I kept on laughing and he looked at me with satisfaction.

After a while he sat back down and laid the form back on my dress. “I did not get this form right away—at first I was a rebel, an arbegna, I fought against them, you know?”

“I know, sometimes at night, when you are asleep, Mama and Papa talk about you . . .”

“They do? That’s why earlier you were so sure I was harboring secrets.” I remained silent and he went on, almost chuckling. “And what do they say?”

“Mama says that you were a valiant warrior and Papa says you only fought for two years, and then you returned. Because Rosa was born.”

“Your mother is right, and so is your father, but I had no other choice,” he said, talking more to himself than to me. “And then, what else do they say?”

“I don’t know—when they start telling your story, a little after that, Mama sends me to bed!”

“If you want to hear it, I’ll tell you.”

I wanted to hear it, and how! I nodded.

“But it is a long story—are you sure you want to hear it?”

I certainly did. I nodded again.

“Okay, I’ll tell you, but you must listen very carefully because one day you will have to tell it.”

“Me?” I asked surprisedly, opening my eyes wide.

He chuckled, making his bony shoulders shake. “Woi gud anchi lij! Yes, you!”

“But Mama and Papa do not want me to tell things about grownups.” I lowered my gaze. “Actually, they don’t even want me to listen to the adults’ conversations.”

He laughed again, shaking his bird-like shoulders. “Don’t worry, the story I am going to tell you today will remain a secret between us, and as far as telling it is concerned, you won’t have to do that now. Later, when you are a grown-up.”

“So, if that’s how it is, then it’s all right,” I said, continuing to lower my eyes. “When I am grown up no one will be able to scold me because I talk about adults’ business!”

He laughed again, and this time I laughed a little too.

“Now, my dear child, make yourself comfortable. Do you want to lean against the wall? I’ll give you my pillow. Take it!” I took the pillow, propped it against the wall, and slid back to lean against it. I fixed my dress and turned my head toward old Yacob.

“Are you ready?” he asked me. I nodded.

“So, dear child, open up your heart. This all happened a long time ago. I was only twenty years old. We had lost the war against the Italians and I, like many others, had joined the Resistance. We had been hiding for some time in a place called Mengesha. A forest with huge, ancient trees, over four hundred years old. It was almost a magic forest that protected us. The trees had been planted by our great Zeri Yacob. The rays of sunshine played among their emerald green leaves, and on their branches sat little groups of gurezas, the great black-and-white flying monkeys. It was a safe hideout. We had been taken there by our leader Haile Teklai, after our hideout near the source of the Awash River had been discovered. He had grown up on land near the forest and as a child he used to play there. He knew every hole, every secret of the forest. There were many of us—men, women, even children, sons and daughters of the rebels, some donkeys, some mules, and a herd of sheep. In the forest there was a rock face with two caves. That’s where we slept. They were like houses; we had put everything we needed in there and at night they sheltered us from the cold mountain wind.”

While old Yacob was speaking, I began to feel a bit restless. I tried to ignore this feeling, but it had already spread to the muscles of my legs, which began to twitch. Old Yacob interrupted his story. “What’s the matter, child? Are you uncomfortable?”

“No, Abba. It’s my legs that don’t want to stay still,” I said.

“Then try to rest your feet on the floor—perhaps that will relax your legs.” I slid forward on the bed. I rested my feet on the floor; I fixed my dress and motioned to old Yacob to go on.

“As I told you, we had created real homes in the caves where at night we found shelter from the cold mountain wind, even though we men spent many nights away from the hideout, because it was when darkness fell that we attacked the Italian soldiers. They didn’t know how to orient themselves at night, like guests who cannot move around in the dark in a house they don’t know. So we proceeded, and as quick as leopards we attacked them and then ran back to the forest.”

I became increasingly uncomfortable.

There was something in the way old Yacob was telling his story that I didn’t like and that made the story totally uninteresting. My whole body was twitching in discomfort. To calm myself down I began to let my eyes roam round the room. He became aware of it and immediately stopped recounting his story. “What’s the matter, child?” he asked me.

“Nothing,” I answered, a little embarrassed.

“Perhaps you don’t like my story?” As if bitten by an ant, I jumped to my feet. “So? You don’t like my story?” he asked again. I did not answer. “Come on child. Speak up!”

“It’s not because of the story.”

“So? What’s wrong, child?”

I didn’t know how to tell him. “Abba . . .”

“Tell me!”

“It’s just that . . .”

“Come on, speak up!” he urged me.

“I no longer listen to Abbaba Igirsa Salo’s stories on television,” I said.

“What does that have to do with it?” he asked me. It certainly had a lot to do with it, but if he hadn’t asked me that precise question I would never have told him. I was embarrassed enough as it was. He understood. “Okay, tell me, why do you no longer listen to Abbaba Igirsa Salo’s stories on television?”

“Because he tells them using words for children.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. I did not answer. “Come on, child, be brave, you can tell me what you think without feeling worried. I promise it will remain a secret between us.”

I stared at him to figure out if he really meant it. His eyes were clear. Filled with sweetness. A sweetness that was directed at me. I could trust him. “When the women gather to drink coffee I listen to the stories they tell each other, grown-ups to grown-ups,” I said in a low voice, my eyes staring at the floor.

He began to laugh heartily. “Woi gud anchi lij! You do?” I nodded my head vigorously. “And what if you don’t understand?” he asked me.

“I understand everything; I’ve grown accustomed to the way they talk.” I stared at him and in a whisper I confessed, “Sometimes Mama Eleny suspects that I am not really playing—she is the only one who sometimes has doubts—and she begins to tell the story of Ato Mulugheta using difficult words, but I understand everything all the same.”

Old Yacob laughed one more time. “You really surprise me. All right, may your wish be granted! Make yourself comfortable, I’ll tell you the story of the Submission Paper. One grown-up to another.” I sat on the bed with my feet resting on the floor, my elbows on my legs, and my face cupped in my fists. “Are you ready?” he asked. I nodded.

Yacob’s Story

I was about twenty years old. We had lost the war against the Italians and I, like many others, had joined the Resistance. After fighting in the North we had retreated. Ras Imiru’s army, under orders from the emperor, had headed for Gore, to try and form a government far from the capital but still on Ethiopian soil. I, along with others, had decided not to follow them. Instead, we had headed for Holeta and joined the Resistance that was already on the move.

For about ten months we had been hiding in the Menagesha Forest, that ancient forest of trees planted by Zera Yacob hundreds of years before. We had been living there ever since we had abandoned our previous hideout near the source of the Awash River. After a series of attacks on the railroad, the Italians had put the area to the sword and had forced us to flee. The place had been chosen by our leader, Haile Teklai. That was where he was from. He had spent his childhood in that part of the forest and he knew every hole, every nook, every cranny. It was a secure hiding place that would save us from constantly having to move from one place to another. From the paved road up to the great olive tree the path was invisible to those who did not know about it. It consisted of rocky crags and patches of grass. Without the help of local spies the talian sollato, their banda, and the Zapatie would not be able to find us, unless they stumbled upon us by mistake.

That day we were awaiting the arrival of a messenger from Ras Abebe Aregay, the great, revered leader of the Showa Resistance. You must remember this name: Ras Abebe Aregay. It is the name of a man so great that merely uttering it causes the celestial forces to tremble.

Usually the messengers arrived between the final hours of the night and the early hours of the morning, when the sun had not yet warmed the air.

One of our young men was on the lookout in a field at the edge of the trees. Disguised as a shepherd, surrounded by our little flock of sheep, he was keeping a constant watch over the valley beneath us, known as the Hollow of the Virgin Mary. A valley encircled by two treeless mountain ridges which descended sharply, leaving barely enough room for the path that passed between them. Dawn had just broken, the sun was beginning its ascent into the clear sky, melting away the night mist, but a thick fog still enveloped the valley, concealing from our eyes the path that crossed it, as it wound its way up to where we were located. Only one point was visible, but barely. A slight elevation in the terrain, right in the middle of the valley, broke through the fog, parting it on either side. The path passed along that elevated terrain, and the eyes of the lookout were constantly fixed on that spot. Our safety was in his hands. From that elevation it only took a few minutes to reach us, just enough time for us to prepare for any eventuality.

Suddenly the lookout alerted us with a first whistle. Some shadows were passing along the spot he was observing, a group of people. Perhaps it was the messenger with some followers. Maybe they were Italian soldiers who were looking for us, or maybe they were simply people passing through.

We prepared ourselves. Each man took up his position, while the women stayed back, spreading out toward the caves. Two whistles pierced the air. It was not the messenger. Haile Teklai, our leader, signaled to us. We had to be ready to shoot. A shout from the lookout stopped us: “Stop! These are women!”

Deadened by the dense fog, snatches of voices reached us from below: “We are looking for Yacob Haile Mariam Shifferaw!” It was my younger sister, Amarech. A chorus of voices shouted, “We are his sisters!” Barely able to distinguish each voice I counted them: Helen, Seble, Selam, Dagma. Four plus one. They were all my sisters. I was stunned. What were they doing here?

Haile Teklai nudged me with the butt of his rifle. “So? What are you doing? Why don’t you run toward them?”

I went down the hill. They welcomed me with smiles. “Good,” I thought. “They haven’t come to bring me bad news.”

We greeted each other. Endemin adderachihu? . . .1

I embraced and kissed each one of them and only later did I realize that they had traveled with two mules, one loaded with supplies and the other with a saddle. Without asking any questions I led the way up to my fellow rebels. We would have a chance to talk later.

I left them with some of our women, who took them to the cave area so that they could freshen up and rest. We were not used to these kinds of visits. Their arrival had livened things up. Our women began to talk about what foods they might cook, which quickly turned into a heated argument, and at some point Alemtsehay, Emebet, and Meron decided to put an end to it. There was not much to discuss and not much time to waste. It was the right day to kill a couple of our rams.

And that is what we did. Some men butchered the rams and the women cut up the meat and prepared the tibs for everyone. The sound of knives chopping, of pots and voices, went on for several hours, and then a woman summoned all the men. The food was ready.

I went to call my sisters. Amarech was sleeping in the large cave, on my pallet. I stopped to gaze at her for a few moments. Her face reflected a world of enchantment. With eyelids closed and a peaceful expression, she still had that look of an angelic little girl which she had always exploited to get into all kinds of mischief.

I wondered why they had come. I roused her gently; she awoke out of her dreams. She smiled at me, her eyes still half closed. “The food is ready,” I said. She got up without saying a word and followed me into the thicket where our women had already placed the pots in the middle of small groups. We ate.

To liven up the meal for our guests, Aron, our azmari, took out his masinko and started to tune it. As soon as he moved to take hold of the masinko the air began to vibrate, like the body of a young bride in front of her groom. Music, along with Aron’s songs and improvised verses, made for one of our few happy moments. Aron waited for the air to be filled with expectation and when the tension matched that of the stretched skin of a drum, he began to recite his verses, accompanying himself with the music.

They were verses in my honor:

Afer tekelelachew iellum behiwot
af keftew motu Yacobn siaiut
Dust envelops them, they are no longer alive,
they have died with their mouths wide open at the sight
of the great Yacob

The shrill sound of the single-string violin opened up the dance to the words. Every verse referred to an event of which I was the protagonist. Worku, Nuguse, and Haile Teklai recounted the details of these events. Aron would begin, and then they elaborated on them. Stories and more stories about me. About my heroic acts to be preserved for future memory, and everyday facts, those silly facts that bring laughter to the lips of the listeners.

Anecdotes about those long months with the Resistance followed one another like unraveling rolls of yarn. Looking at my sisters I thought that it was nice to have someone to tell these stories to. Someone who was not part of our everyday life. Someone whom we had left behind in our past, in the world of before, when the war against the Italians had not yet begun. To me, they seemed like a ray of light brightening our objective. After more than two years spent fighting and organizing the Resistance, our objective had receded in the face of the emergencies created by our day-to-day existence shaped by weapons and blood. Just by being there, they restored color and vigor to our objective, bringing it back to the forefront: we were fighting for a dream, in order to return to our families, and to taste the normality of sharing food and talk around the domestic hearth, in a country that was both free and ours. As it had always been.

In front of me, Alemtsehay, busy fanning the coals under the coffee pots, smiled at me. She seemed to perceive my thoughts. Her eyes were shining with encouragement: “Soon, very soon, that is the way it will be,” they said. Those big eyes of Alemtsehay, serene as a mountain lake. There existed a special bond between us. We had been together during the battles in the North. She was following her father, one of the leaders of Ras Imiru’s army. And fleeing south, we had traveled together to Holeta to join her brother Haile Teklai. And she had become the coordinator of our women, of our warrior women who shared everything with us. Even death.

When I was still a child, my father often said to me, “Women are the solid pillars on which humanity rests.” For us they were like the wooden structures of our cottages called gojjo, and among them, Alemtsehay was the great central pillar that gave stability to the house and on which rested the roof. She was the one in charge of organizing the supply of ammunitions, along with Meron and Emebet, her seconds-in-command.

Alemtsehay had managed to befriend Ato Kebede, a farmer who sold his produce at the Saturday market in Holeta. A man known as someone who kept to himself, who had never wanted to get involved in the government business between us and the Italians. He had always said he was only interested in his own work, the selling of the fruits of his land, but Alemtsehay had managed to make him cross the boundaries of neutrality, to come over to our side. His help was invaluable and had been won thanks to her. Earlier when he wasn’t yet on our side, our ammunition supply had been irregular, characterized by messages, counter-messages, waits, interceptions, ambushes of the Italian garrisons, and flights from hideouts. Often it had come at the cost of someone’s life, especially of the women, who went to pick it up disguised as beggars, dressed in ragged, stinking clothes. After Ato Kebede joined the Resistance, the supply of arms had become more regular. The messengers from Ras Abebe Aregay left the ammunition at his stall, especially the bullets and hand grenades, and Alemtsehay and the other women picked it up and took it to the hideout, inside sacks of agave, among onions, potatoes, and carrots. No one had ever suspected anything since Ato Kebede’s neutrality had always been very evident to everybody. Even to the Ascari and to their Italian commanders who had tried in vain to befriend him. Even after the events of Yekatit 12, those violent events that soaked our land with blood, causing it to moan and scream, those events that made our Resistance more united and focused all over the country, Ato Kebede’s little stall continued to be our point of reference. One of Alemtsehay’s cousins, Mesfin, had infiltrated, signing up to be an Ascari in the fort at Holeta, and had managed to get close to an Italian who worked in the telegraph office. He came from southern Italy and didn’t consider himself very Italian—he recounted how the Italians had colonized his people as well, and said that he was willing to sell information about the movements of the Italian battalions, and about the movements of the small consignments of weapons that we could attack. The exchange of information for money took place at Ato Kebede’s little stall. Ato Kebede took the money from Ras Abebe Aregay’s messengers and gave it to the Italian in exchange for the information that he then passed on to Alemtsehay.

After the meal I went off with my sisters to a small clearing among the trees, a few yards from the place where we had eaten. The time had come to talk amongst ourselves, to find out why they had undertaken such a long journey.

We sat in a circle on tree stumps and rocks. Next to me was my older sister Helen, while furthest away, almost opposite me, sat Amarech, and spread out were Seble, Selam, and Dagma.

We had all grown up together. We had slept in the same beds, and yet that day they looked at me as if I were a stranger. A swirling vortex of looks passed between them. The air was filling with complicit giggles but they didn’t utter a word. I seized the opportunity to feast my eyes on their presence. I hadn’t seen them for over two years. In spite of the trip they appeared fresh and rested, and that game of complicity lent a special luminosity to their faces. They were beautiful in their white dresses with embroidered borders. They reminded me of flowers offering themselves up, all aquiver, stretching toward the sun of life. I observed Amarech, my little one. In reality she wasn’t much younger than me, we were only two years apart, but “my little one” was what I had always called her. We had grown up sharing the same bed. I knew every variation of the fragrance of her body. The perfume of her dreams, the smell of her sweat, the drops that collected on her forehead when she feared being scolded, the dew that dampened her body after her long runs, her skin after bathing. That mix of soap and wild flowers. Wild like her.

My beautiful Amarech. She was a terror. She had an incredibly strong character.

When we were children in our shared bed, we slept with one head facing the top, the other facing the bottom. Since I was the older one, I got to choose first. After all, the bed was really mine. Had she never been born, I would not have had to share it with anybody. Neither of us liked sleeping with our head at the bottom of the bed, but since it was I who decided, Amarech was forced to sleep in that position which, as she complained with a whine, made her feel all crooked, with no part of her body in the right place. But that terrible child, exploiting the fact that I slept very heavily, was able to turn me around during the night. In the morning, I would find her sleeping with a triumphant expression on her face, her head exactly where she wanted it to be.

Time was passing by and I thought I needed to start talking about something. I understood that I could not go straight to the heart of the matter so I ventured onto neutral ground: “I’m curious to know how you found me!” There was no indication that their giggling was going to stop. The words that reached my ears were jagged like mountaintops, eroded by their warbling, a mixture of sounds, white teeth, and exchanged looks.

“You know how it is,” said Helen. “News finds its own way. Every so often some of Ras Abebe Aregay’s fellow combatants come to visit us. We found out from them where and how to reach you. They advised us to go as far as Addis by asking for a ride with a convoy; once there, we were to hire mules and continue on for Holeta, spend the night at the house of the local priest, and with his help find a peasant for the following morning who could accompany us for the first part of the path. As far as a giant olive tree whose spreading branches gave shade to a large field. After that we could continue on our own. They even advised us to tell whoever asked us that we were going to Melkam Petros, beyond the valley called the Hollow of the Virgin Mary, to visit a family. Relatives. Peasants who work the land belonging to Commander Zerihun Yetimgheta. But no one ever asked us anything.”

“Well done, well done! And at home?”

“Everything’s fine. Mother sends you her blessing,” said Helen, without dwelling on the subject. We had reached the end of the neutral ground and I didn’t know how to go on.

I looked at Amarech. A few rebellious braids of hair peeped out from under the netela which covered her head. I would have liked to go over to her, hug her and tease her a little, but something in the air forced me to restrain myself.

And yet, what in the world could it be? There was no indication of bad news; on the contrary, the feeling was festive. I tried to find another subject for conversation: “I noticed that you came with two mules, one loaded with provisions, the other with a saddle. How come? Who traveled on the mule?” My words had unexpectedly hit the right spot and suddenly there was silence. “Goodness,” I thought. “Bullseye!”

Our roles were now reversed. This time, it was my turn to have some fun. I felt as if I were a boy again, almost an adolescent, taking part in those shared skirmishes of long ago in which they, the girls, had a secret and I, the only male in the family, tried to crack open the shell in which they were hiding it. I wanted to play with them like old times.

“Have I come too close to the reason for your visit?” I asked.

Amarech could not contain herself; her face brightened, and the others sent her furious looks. “Ah, girls!” I said. “You’re making the game too easy. Is she the one who has the news that you have come to give me?”

The air became as tense as a masinko string, like the skin of the imperial negarit announcing war. A feeling of irritation upset my nerves. “Come on, why all this game of hide and seek? I understand that Amarech rode up on the mule, and that this is tied to the reason for your visit. Now, are you going to tell me what it is or not?”

The eyes of Sebele and Selam rested on my little Amarech’s abdomen. “What?” I said, half in astonishment, half in joy.

“Your Amarech is expecting a child,” confirmed Helen.

“I’m going to be an uncle! I’m going to be an uncle to my little Amarech!” I rejoiced, close to tears. “And who is the father? Do I know him? And will you get married? When? Have you come to tell me of the wedding?” The string of questions coming out of my mouth rendered the air more still, almost motionless. Cautious. My voice dropped until it died before their silent faces. What was wrong? One by one they had lowered their eyes, except for Amarech. She kept her head erect, her eyes challenging mine. “Yacob, I love the father of this child. He is an Italian soldier.”

At those words, there was an explosion inside of me. Like the bombs on a battlefield, but louder. Everything was happening inside instead of outside. A blinding white light was gradually becoming stained with red foam. Evil-smelling, spewing rage, a mad rage. I could taste it in my mouth. It made me spring to my feet with a sole desire which could not be restrained: I wanted to kill my sister with my own hands. I began to yell. “An Italian? An Italian?”

She in turn began to scream: “Woine! Woine! Woine!” Haile Teklai and four of my companions ran over to restrain me.

“An Italian! She’s pregnant by a filthy Italian soldier. Possibly someone in the air force, one of those who sprayed gas on us, who killed our father.” I was shouting, trying to escape from their grasp. Meanwhile all the other fighters had come closer, putting themselves between her and me.

Now that she was safe, protected by a line of men, Amarech shouted, jumping up so that her voice could reach me better: “He’s a simple soldier. He was recruited and he has never shot anyone. During the war, he fired his gun in the air. He was even wounded. Yacob, he’s a good person.” I could have stripped her flesh from her body with my bare teeth. “Good person! The Italians become good people only after they have surrendered their souls to God and He has cleansed them.”

We spent that first night apart. They slept in the large cave and I outside further off, on a pallet that Alemtsehay prepared for me. Haile Teklai, Aron the azmari, Nuguse, and Worku were to sleep with me. Together, they were to watch over me to protect Amarech from my rage.

Before lying down to sleep, Haile Teklai went to see her and they spoke for a long time. Then he came over to where we were going to sleep. He sat next to me and allowed silence to fill the space between us. He gave himself time to assess whether I would be open to listening to him. After a few moments it was I who started the conversation. “So? Why are you gazing at the fire in that way? If you want to speak to me, do so!”

“Yacob, she says he’s a good person. I believe her. Surely not all the Italians are devils. At least some of them must be worthy of admiration, respect. . . . Let me remind you that much of the work we are doing is thanks to that Italian soldier who works with Mesfin.”

“And let me remind you of one thing, actually two things. First, he expects to get paid, and second, he doesn’t feel Italian.”

“Maybe it’s the same thing with this one. What do you know? Listen, Yacob, try to trust your sister.” He stood up, moved over a few feet to where his pallet was, and lay down.

The next day, my sisters made sure to keep out of my sight and I asked Haile Teklai if I could be the lookout for that day, with the herd of sheep. I would spend the morning in the clearing at the edge of the forest, keeping my eyes fixed on the Hollow of the Virgin Mary. When the morning mist had lifted toward the sky, Mama Worknesh appeared out of the field behind me. The oldest of our women and the mother of one of our fighters, she was carrying a wooden bowl containing some fir fir of quanta. “Eat up, son! An empty stomach doesn’t help your thinking,” she said, sitting down next to me.

“Mother, there’s nothing I have to think about.”

“Son, don’t say that—listen to the words of an old mother. Eat up.” So as not to offend her, I thrust my fingers into the bowl and ate a few mouthfuls. “Good! Son, do you want me to sort out your dreams from last night?”

“Mother, my night did not speak to me. I did not have any dreams last night.”

“That must be why my night spoke for you. I had a dream last night and you were in it! Would you like me to tell you about it?”

“As you wish, mother!” I said, totally unconvinced.

“It was nighttime. You were immersed in that darkness typical of moonless nights. You were climbing up a hill. In the sky there was only one star. While you were climbing, the pale light of dawn began to appear. By the time you reached the top, day was already breaking.”

“Mother, I do not think that day is about to break within me.”

“Hmm! So you want to let rage dry out your heart, do you? But your heart isn’t that weak. You’ll see you will find the way. Your rage against your sister won’t last beyond tomorrow. If your dreams haven’t spoken, mine told me this: that the time of your darkness will soon come to an end.” She spent the rest of the time sitting next to me in silence. When I put the half-empty bowl down on the ground, she took it, stood up, and left.

How could Mama Worknesh say that day would soon break within me? That the darkness of these events could be dissipated?

My gaze stretched out toward the mountain ridges that encircled the Hollow of the Virgin Mary. Ridges devoid of all the thickness of forest trees. Only half-dried grass, aloe plants with their red flowers, and the occasional thorny bush. It was just like the vegetation of another place. Of the high plains in the Tigray region, of the northern plateaus. Never more than on that day had they seemed so similar to me. And the ridges, they could be those same mountainous ones surrounding the small valleys that climbed and then descended to the Tekeze River. Valleys, clearings, ravines, rocks, forests, and crevices. Everything around me could have been another place in another time. My mind was whirling like a merry-go-round and was dragging me backward. It wanted to drag me to that place, and I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to see it again, but my mind won. Suddenly I found myself there, on that first day. The first battle. The Tekeze River.

From behind a spur the gun barrel of a tank had appeared. My feet were nailed to the ground in surprise. Still as a rock. I couldn’t imagine what that thing was. Behind the gun the rest of the tank had appeared. Then the gun had fired a single shot. A flash that had ploughed through the air and had landed with a loud bang, sending dirt flying in every direction. After the flash had died down, there was a hole in the ground. An uncontrollable sense of fear took possession of me and forced me to flee. Yes! I had fled, filled with terror. We had all fled, a disorderly scramble up the rocks, looking for shelter: the fighters with Shiferraw, leader of the advance party, those with Tesemma, I and the small group of men that my father had assigned to me. Those white men and their devils. They certainly spewed forth countless infernal inventions. While we were running off shouting, “Ere! Seitan, Seitan, the devil, the devil!” Tesemma, the leader, climbed up onto the tank, blew his horn to call us back, and began to shout: “What are you, women? Look at me, I am not afraid. They the devil, we God!” And with the handle of his round sword he began to bang on the lid of the turret: “Open up! Open up!” he kept yelling. And the Italian soldiers had opened up. I don’t know whether they had opened out of surprise at such an unexpected action or in order to shoot him from the opening. Brandishing his sword, as fast as a diving hawk, he had sliced the air and the heads of the Italians inside the tank. One head had bounced out like a ball and had spun around in the air before ending up on the ground. Tesemma had raised his sword dripping with blood. “See, they die, like everyone else!” he said. We had turned in his direction again, a screaming horde, ready to fight. From the Italian fort up on the pass other tanks had descended, eight of them, and a platoon on horseback. Tesemma had sounded the attack on his horn. I, along with my father’s men, had attacked and had surrounded a tank that had gotten stuck on an incline. One of the belted wheels was off the ground. The tank was revving its engine without moving forward. The three soldiers had opened the turret from inside. My father’s men had killed them, one after the other. We had annihilated all their iron monsters and had surrounded the fort. The Italian soldiers had fled; Tesemma had shouted, “Don’t let those dogs escape!” We had chased them in order not to let a single one escape.

On that first day, singing about our victory and enshrouded in a cloud of dust, we had caught up with the rest of our army that had stayed to the left of the Tekeze. They had greeted us shouting with joy. We were convinced this was only the beginning of our long triumph against the enemy who had come to take our land from us.

I had found my father in the middle of the rejoicing, he had praised me, we had won, and the men he had assigned to me were all alive. That night he honored me with a gibir, with all his men. His only son’s first battle.

That evening, while we were celebrating our victory, we had no idea that the diabolical inventions of the talian sollato were not limited to planes and tanks. Never would I have imagined that less than fifteen days later I would see all our leaders disoriented, sitting on the ground among the dead, and Ras Imiru shaking his head and lamenting, “This is not a war among men. They are cowards.”

In the early afternoon Nuguse came to relieve me. He shook me out of my thoughts. I had slowly slipped down on the grass, and I was stretched out with my eyes closed. The sheep had wandered off, and Nuguse did not hide his irritation: “And now, who is going to bring them back?”

I looked at him as if dazed. I was coming from another place, another time. “What?” I asked him.

“The sheep!” he repeated. “Come on, help me.” But looking at my eyes he thought better of it. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll do it myself.” The sheep had gathered together almost at the edge of one of the mountain ridges. He went to rescue them, on his hands and knees the whole way. It took him over an hour and when he came back he sat down next to me. “What were you doing before with your eyes closed?” he asked me.

“Nothing, I felt sleepy!” I replied.

“Don’t lie to me! You never get sleepy when you are the lookout!” I began to angrily twist some blades of grass. “Yacob, you were thinking about the North, right?” he asked me in a scolding tone.

“Right, I was thinking about the North!” I raised my head, my gaze stretching to the horizon.

“Why? Why do you want to torment yourself?” he asked me.

“This is the first time I’ve thought about it this way.”

“What way?”

“As if everything were happening here, now. There were the same plants near the Dembeguina Pass, in the small clearings among the rocks, aloe plants with red flowers. Perhaps because it was the month of Tahsas, just like it is here now.”

“Yacob, don’t let your mind take over. You must resist it if you want to continue fighting.”

“All right, I’ll stop now,” I reassured him. He wanted me to stay with him, but I wanted to be by myself. I let him take over and, without going by the camp, I headed off among the trees. I went to the springs to bathe, in the hope that the cold water would release me from my dark thoughts.

When darkness fell, I went back, but I didn’t go near the caves. I settled down again where Alemtsehay had prepared my pallet the night before. She arrived, just like the night before, she laid out the five pallets, and waited until Haile Teklai joined us. They nodded to each other. To avoid any kind of conversation, I lay down, and Alemtsehay, going off, blessed my sleep: “May the God of Ethiopia watch over your night, shed light on your darkness, and bring you peace!” After a few hours of sleep I woke up screaming. I had had a bad dream. About the bombing, the poisonous gas, the hissing of the bombs falling onto the ground, exploding and releasing that cloud that burnt inside the lungs. Our men were screaming, tearing at the skin of their throats with their fingernails. Ras Imiru yelled amid the rumbling of the planes: “To the hills, run to the hills!”

I was gasping for air; Haile Teklai, Worku, and Nuguse ran over to me. “Yacob! Yacob what’s wrong?”

“The poisonous gas, the gas!” I kept repeating.

“Calm down. There is no gas now. We are here, in the Menagesha forest. Calm down.” Haile Teklai tried to soothe me.

Aron ran over to the large cave and had returned with Alemtsehay and Mama Worknesh. I was agitated, still immersed in my hallucinations caused by the nightmare. Aron, Mama Worknesh, and Alemtsehay came closer, and I started to wave my arms violently. “Get away, get away, I need air.”

“Yacob, there is no gas,” Haile Teklai kept repeating.

Alemtsehay put her hand on my shoulder. She was the only one among them that I would allow to touch me. “Yacob, look at me, it’s me! It was a dream, only a bad dream.” I felt better, and I managed to shake off my nightmare. Mama Worknesh said that with the arrival of my sisters, the spirits of those who had died in war had made their presence felt. They had knocked on my soul and it had let them in. She gave me some herbs to chew.

“I don’t want them.”

“Son, you must take them. They will help free you from the spirits. They come from the kallicha of Addis Alem, they are healing herbs mixed with fresh grass burnt by a bolt of lightning.” Alemtsehay, Aron, Nuguse, Worku, and Haile Teklai fixed their eyes on me as if they were snipers and I their target. I had no choice, I took a handful and put it in my mouth. I chewed slowly while they were watching me. I forced myself to swallow only after the two women left and Aron, Haile Teklai, Nuguse, and Worku lay down. I fell asleep and I dreamed I was throwing up something black. I awoke and I vomited my dream. Then I felt better. I fell asleep again and in the morning I woke up empty. I remained lying still, listening to my inner peace. I hadn’t felt this way for a long time. With a steady soul, without that frantic galloping that never left me time to rein in my thoughts. Without that uncontrollable headlong rush of those who cannot stop.

I turned my head and I saw Alemtsehay making her way through the trees. She was smiling at me with her usual calm. I smiled too. When she reached me she sat down on one of the pallets. Her mere presence lessened my pain. She could read my heart, and I hers. Our fathers had died together, in the North, two days before Timket, killed by the gas. They had died in our arms, first one, then the other. We had not had time to mourn them. When my father died, Abba Yousef, the priest who was with us, had torn his body from my hands: “My son,” he had said, “concentrate on continuing the fight, take over the command of your father’s men—I will take care of his soul.” In the evening, counting the victims, we realized that on that day Abba Yousef had died as well.

Before being hit, Abba Yousef had drained my father’s blood into a clay jar. The jar had remained intact, in the hands of Melak Settegn, the faithful servant who, during the war, had followed my father, carrying his rifle.

Entrusting it to Melak Settegn and four of our fighters, I had sent the clay jar home so that they could bury his blood and mourn him with full honors. I had also sent his horse, Abba Mebrek, back with them. The great white warrior with his gray mane decorated with the trappings of war. On his saddle were tied my father’s sword and his shield made from hippopotamus skin. My father, the great warrior who was no more.

“How are you feeling today?” Alemtsehay asked me, putting one of her hands on my shoulder.

“Better!”

“Then you can talk to your sisters.”

“Not yet. Tomorrow, maybe.”

“Today I will pray for you,” she said. I didn’t answer and she left.

I spent the day in the forest. In the evening I went back to the place of our makeshift beds. Mama Worknesh and Alemtsehay were waiting for me with dinner. I ate, then they told me that they would spend the night next to me praying to God so that He would bring about the dawn of Mama Worknesh’s dream.

I believe God took pity on me and truly shed light on my darkness. The sky was sparkling clear in the morning, an intense blue. I could see some patches among the trees, crisscrossed by black kites and swallows. The air was cold and clean. And so was my soul. Without any effort on my part the blinding rage had left me, swept away by the light, just as Mama Worknesh’s dreams had predicted. My delusional state of the previous day was gone as well. The only feeling left was sadness, as cold as the morning air, but that would stay with me for a long time. I thought of Amarech. I felt relieved that I was no longer outraged; on the contrary, I was almost willing to listen to her. I asked Alemtsehay to go look for her. Some time went by without anything happening. I was thinking of what to do, whether to get up and go look for her myself, or whether to wait for something to move toward me, but I didn’t have the time to make up my mind.

I heard a noise behind me. I turned around and through the leaves I saw Amarech come toward me with her gazelle-like gait. She was carrying a pot with some freshly cooked genfo. “You used to love genfo when you were home!” she said, handing me the pot.

“Sit down here and eat some too,” I answered back. “Mama always recommends it for pregnant women—she says it makes their backs stronger.” But she wasn’t listening to me.

“Yacob, I swear. He is a good person.”

I wanted to get upset, at least a little bit, but I couldn’t. To my surprise the dreams and prayers of Alemtsehay and Mama Worknesh had washed everything away. I surrendered almost completely. “All right, tell me about him; let’s pretend he is a Habesha.”

She laughed. “Yacob, that’s impossible!”

“Why?”

“He’s very different from us. Too much so. All of his colors are different from ours. You know, he has a piece of sky in his eyes. The sky at the end of Meskerem, when the swallows come back. It is as if God has given him those eyes to make us see the sky from up close. And his hair . . . that too . . . you know what it is like? Golden, the color of ripe teff announcing the time of the harvest. When the houses are emptied of men, and in the fields, together with the flashing of sickles, there is the sound of thanksgiving songs. All of his colors are the colors of the season of fruit and harvests. Can a man who bears the signs of the bounty and generosity of nature be a bad person? Yacob, he is my man.” Her voice floated in the air, then came back down, more intimate, closer. “He speaks Amharic very well!”

“Hmm!” I mumbled. She knew. Something that morning had touched my heart and she was taking advantage of it. On her face there was a triumphant look of satisfaction, just the way there was when I was a child and I would wake up in the morning to find her sleeping with her head toward the headboard.

“Okay, let’s hear what you want from me! You have everything you desire, right? You have a man you love, you are with child, what else do you want?”

“What I am about to ask you comes not only from me. It comes from our sisters and our mother as well. This is her message: ‘Son, come back, this is your mother asking you this. Give up being an arbegna, come back home! Enough of this war against the Italians. Now, one of them is part of our family. We must live in peace.’”

“What? What?” I began to yell and bawl. The calm of the morning within me was overtaken by dense, dark clouds, heavy with rain and wind.

Haile Teklai, from the small cave, hearing my shouts, ran over to protect her. The blinding rage had left, but I was still a fighter, whose blood, for the last two years, had been constantly on fire, like the air of the sunken desert of Dancalia. Blood ready to strike. This is what my leader had thought. Amarech, however, had not become alarmed. Haile Teklai may have known the fighter, but she knew my inner man’s soul, she knew the anger might come back, but it was not going to be the dangerous rage of that first day. She had managed to find the chink in my armor that would forestall my belligerence. She had come with a request not just from her, but also and above all from our mother. How could I ignore it? Could I perhaps set it aside without weighing those words and let my rage return? “Son, come back, this is your mother asking you.” Could I suppress the echo of those words inside of me? She knew the answer and had remained seated next to me. With the quiet elegance of a princess she had lifted her hand to accompany her voice with a gesture: “Helen, come here. Why don’t you explain things to this hard-headed mule!”

Helen joined us and sat on my other side.

Amarech invited Haile Teklai to stay and take part in our discussion, keenly aware that she had acquired a precious ally.

“Yacob,” said Helen. “We are tired of having all of our men away fighting the war. All of our husbands are at war, you are at war, our family is at war. Enough! We want you all back home.”

“So tell me, who has already agreed to come back?”

“You are the first we have been able to reach.”

“It seems I am blessed by fortune!” I answered wryly. Then I took a deep breath—I wanted to put all of my strength in what I was about to say. The strength of an age-old tree, deeply rooted and unmovable, in order to counteract the weapon used by Amarech. I took my two sisters’ hands and said, “I cannot, I cannot come back. I made a promise to our father, on his deathbed. That I will not return until the Italians are gone from our land.”

“And your mother is begging you to come back,” replied Amarech.

I jumped to my feet. I was enraged by that wiliness of hers that knew how to touch me to the quick. My mother . . .

I began to walk nervously. Back and forth, forth and back.

My comrades, pretending to be absorbed in other things, were sharing my dilemma. I was ready to snap. I had no thoughts in my mind, only a kind of endless mantra: “I won’t go, I won’t go.”

I headed toward the edge of the forest to look out over the Hollow of the Virgin Mary. I wanted to be alone to try to think. From behind, I heard Alemtsehay and Haile Teklai yelling at me: “Be careful not to stray onto the commander’s lands. Yesterday there were some Ascari down there. Don’t go too far down the path, it’s daylight, it could be dangerous.” They kept shouting out all the possible dangers I had to avoid, just like a mother reminding a child where the hyenas are hiding when he goes out to play. I did not answer. I didn’t have words to alleviate the fear they felt for me in that moment.

Once I reached that natural overlook I sat down, then I got up, then I sat down, then I got up again. It was my inner restlessness. I didn’t know which way to go. Toward my mother or toward my father. Without reaching a decision, I let the day pass until it blended into evening and then turned completely into dusk. I ate nothing all day. Only toward evening did I accept a little shiro and then I prepared my pallet. I wanted to seek refuge in sleep, to stop myself from being torn apart by the contrasting feelings that were confronting each other inside me. I went to bed without seeing my sisters again after our morning discussion. I was almost asleep when Haile Teklai came to lie down next to me. I was half awake, half asleep, but his words reached my ears: “Goodnight Yacob. May the God of Ethiopia watch over your sleep.”

The following morning I woke up in the same bad mood as the night before. I tried, unsuccessfully, to fall back to sleep again. An obsessive inner dialogue took possession of me: “Father, when I was little, you always used to tell me that I had to learn. That I had to learn what it meant to be a male, grow up, and have a family. Being a male, you said, means to be conscious of certain things.

“‘For instance,’ you told me, ‘the children you will have. If you disagree with your wife about them, remember that your wife must have the last word. If God didn’t want it to be so, He would not have made life begin in her womb. There will be other instances in which you will have the last word. Even with your mother, the last word about you and your siblings is always hers. Even if I do not agree about certain things at first, I later understand that it was better to follow her ideas. You know, women have a unique instinct about children. An umbilical cord through which heaven channels the right information.’

“Father, how I wish you were here in this very moment, so I could find out if you would say the same thing now. Should I listen to my mother or to what you asked me to do? Should I listen to my mother or keep faith with your dying words: ‘Son, our land, fight!’? I just don’t know what to do.”

Haile Teklai came toward me out of the small cave. “Yacob, are you awake?” I didn’t answer. “You must be awake. Your eyes were open a few minutes ago.” I continued to remain silent, focusing on not moving my eyelids, which would have let on that I was awake. I was hoping that he would go away. Nothing doing. He was not going to give up. “Yacob, stop acting like this. This is an order: open your eyes and listen to me.”

Looking for a fight, I shouted out, “What is this? Is the whole world on my back? Even God the Creator? I’m not taking orders from anyone today, got it? Get out of here and leave me alone!”

“All right. Then, I beg you, in the name of everything we have fought for up to now, I beg you as your old comrade-in-arms, listen to me.”

I realized that he was not going to let me off the hook. In that situation, I was the one who was really wavering, worn down as I was by my dilemma. I gave in and raised myself up on my elbows. “Go on, speak up but be quick. I have things to do,” I said to him, almost snarling. He gazed into the middle distance, far off over the trees, and I lost my patience. “Do you want me to listen to you or do you want me to keep you company while you let your mind wander? Let me remind you that I have things to do, I have concerns that I need to deal with.”

Ignoring my provocative words, he began to speak. “I still carry with me the image of our first attack, the one on the small truck transporting arms. Do you remember?”

How could I not remember? If nothing else but for that band of Ascari who retreated under a hail of scorn and insults from the people. “What kind of question is that? Do I look like someone who’s lost his memory?”

“Yacob, I know that every moment, every second of that day is etched in your memory, but let me recall it. Only a few months have gone by since then, but it seems like ages. Do you remember? Mesfin had left a message from Ato Kebede: the following Saturday a small truck loaded with arms would be passing through on its way to the fort at Addis Alem. They were taking advantage of the road filled with people going to the market. A clever move to protect themselves against a possible attack. Besides the fact that we never attacked by day, they also knew that never in a million years would we have done so and endangered all those people’s lives. So certain were they in their presumption that, like the stupid lion in the story of the monkey, they hadn’t even provided the convoy with the necessary escort. The escort from Addis Ababa had stayed in the barracks and the one from Addis Alem was going to meet them on the road. There were only three platoons of Ascari, half in front, half behind, and an Italian junior officer with the group in the front. You were the one who came up with a solution: make up a song, simple lines that would announce the attack. You and Aron, dressed as shepherds, were going to jump into the road and sing the song. The people would understand and would scatter and we would launch the attack. You were going to start singing as soon as the convoy was past you, making it harder for the junior officer to understand what was happening. The rest of us, crouching by the side of the road, half in front, half behind, would surround them and subdue them by force. So many arms fell into our hands that day thanks to that ambush! Machine guns, ammunitions, rifles. The people themselves helped us carry them. Some lent us their donkeys, others their mules, some their hands, their backs. Remember?”

Sure, I remembered every single moment of it, but I said nothing. Haile Teklai continued.

“We distributed the arms to the group in Addis Alem and in Birbirsa. Our fellow soldiers in those areas held a gibir in your honor. Remember?” This time I nodded. “Listen, that day I thought that you had led us a good stretch down the road of resistance. But then there were other attacks, like the one on the tank stopped by Alemtsehay, and then the one at the mouth of the Awash River when you saved my life. Each time, after every action in which you were the determining factor, I thought that if ever you were to leave us, you would have already paid your dues.”

“But I’m not going.” I repeated, shouting, “I am not going! Not going! Till the very last day. Either the Italians go or I will die. Only these two reasons can make me take my leave of you all.”

“Amarech is right. You’re a stubborn mule.”

“Don’t let yourself be taken in by her. She is just like the woman who fed the lion.”

He laughed. “The woman who pulled out the hairs from the lion’s mane?”

“Perhaps you find it funny, but I don’t. Amarech is trying to manipulate you, but I know her and even if she manages to convince you, you can forget about convincing me!”

“Listen, Yacob, go home, stay for a few months and then come back. You don’t have to spend the rest of your life at home. Think of it as a bit of well-deserved rest.”

“You don’t get it. I am not going anywhere until that lot has gone back to where they came from.”

“That’s enough, Yacob. I’ve finished talking to you as a friend. Now I shall talk to you as your commander. This is an order. And should you choose to disobey me, I shall order everyone to kick you out and not consider you one of us. And I shall spread the word to our groups near and far. Not one of them will take you on because you do not know how to obey your leader.”

Three days later I left. With my sisters, who were ecstatic while I was a useless rag. A condemned man with the noose already around his neck, waiting only for the stool under his feet to be kicked away.

I set off along the path of the Hollow of the Virgin Mary with the shouts of farewell from my companions echoing in my ears, eighty of them in all, men and women, with whom I had shared dreams, battles, rain, sun, songs, and words.

I didn’t raise my head to acknowledge them, nor did I turn round.

Nothing but my eyes fixed on my feet moving forward in spite of everything.

I hadn’t seen my mother since the beginning of the war. Since the moment when, during Meskerem over two years ago, my father, his men, and I, followed by wives, children, servants, mules, and loaded donkeys, had departed with Ras Imiru’s army and she had not wanted to come along. She had stayed behind with my sisters to look after our house and our lands. Our big house with its modern roof, the corrugated tin roof like that of the Gebi, the imperial palace of the Ras, and our lands at Woha Petros and Melkam Woha. Fields of red earth, our generous, arable land that we had in part left to nature, to the tropical forest and to its animals.

Seeing her again did not lift my spirits. As is customary with us, my mother embraced me and kissed my cheeks, while I kissed her shoulders. Our embrace did not last long because even love, so say our elders, must have a certain decorum. The depth of her longing, of her love, was expressed in those sweet eyes of hers that never left me for an instant during those first few days. During the first three days the household greeted me with the lament for my father’s death, to give me the chance to participate in the collective mourning and to receive the condolences that I had missed. The following three days were celebrated with songs, dances, and food for my return. During all those days, I moved about as if sleepwalking. I greeted the guests and I talked with the people I had not seen for a long time. It was as if, inside, there were two of me: the one who had received a rigorous education and who knew how to conceal his suffering because when there are guests, everything has to take second place to the welcome, and the one who was wandering around, trying to keep his mind focused on the mountains where the oppressor was being fought.

After the celebration, my days felt empty. Bare cliffs of hostile rock, down which the hours rolled away only to fall into nothingness tinged with bewilderment. My mother came up with the idea of sending me into the fields to work with our farmers. “A bit of hard work is what’s needed for the spirit to regain some peace,” she said.

Strangely enough, we still had our land. I didn’t ask her how she had managed to keep it; it didn’t interest me. Perhaps it was those endless prayers of hers asking God to protect her that had helped. I had heard her recite them since I was a child. Be kegn awlegn asaderegn kifu neger saiwutagns awtag. “Keep me at Your right side, give me rest beside You so that nothing evil will swallow me up.” There had been a time when I had recited them too. But from the time we had lost the war, I had stopped. Now, whenever I turned to God, it was only to flood him with my anger.

My mother, without waiting for the questions that I would never have asked her, briefly explained everything to me. When the Italian soldiers had arrived, she and my sisters had gone to speak to their commanders. Not with the blackshirts, with the others. That was the time that Amarech had met her man. “A good man,” emphasized my mother. He and his sergeant had spoken to their junior officer, and then all three with the senior officer. In the end it was decided that for the moment the lands were to remain in our family’s hands. A kind of stewardship. In return, our family was to give over a part of the animals and the grains for the battalions of the Ascari.

Without resisting or accepting, I let my mother send me like a small parcel a few miles from Debre Markos to the farmers at Woha Petros, with two mules and our trusted servant Old Alemu, who had raised me and my sisters. Before we set out, I overheard her telling the old servant what to do: “Make him work hard, he must tire himself out, and make sure that he eats. Genfo, heals the back, you need a good back to heal the torments of the soul.” My mother’s voice sounded worried.

Alemu was a man of few words, someone who was used to living and expressing himself through popular sayings and proverbs. “God did not create the world in one day. To each thing, its own time,” were the words he used to reassure her.

I don’t have a clear recollection of what happened in the ensuing days. Only a vague sense of the earth in my hands and in my nostrils, of moving around like a sleepwalker. That dense fog that each morning I used to see descending on the Hollow of the Virgin Mary now seemed to have invaded the emptiness inside of me, rising up to my head, to my inner eyes that lay inert and glazed over.

I followed the farmers with mechanical gestures, and in the evening I had trouble recalling even just one image of what had happened during the day. As soon as dusk fell, Alemu began bustling between the house and the open fire. He prepared steaming dishes of food and soups that he then brought to me, ordering me to eat while taking up a position in front of me like a guard with an unchained prisoner.

I had enormous respect for him. He had raised me. I did not dare contradict him. This was why my mother had put him on my heels. But the two years I had spent fighting in the war and in the resistance had left an indelible mark on me. It was as if a branch of a different species from the tree I belonged to had grown inside me and was preparing to sprout. Alongside the respect and the education I had been raised with, I experienced a torment that aggressively repelled all annoyances and bothersome facts.

One evening, with an insolent gesture, I overturned the bowl that he was handing to me. His little, watery eyes narrowed just like they did when I was small and he was about to hit me for some trouble I had gotten into. But this time, with the empty bowl in his hands and his white gown stained with splotches of butter and chili pepper sauce, he turned on his heels and left. I heard him moving around and slamming the door. Soon after came the echo of the mule’s hoofs as he trotted alongside the dwelling. Alemu was returning home, mortally offended.

The next day, my mother, accompanied by Melak Settegn, my father’s faithful servant, came to see me. She was angry. “Alemu traveled by mule all night, in these times when, if the wild animals don’t kill you, then the Ascari or their white commanders will.” Her eyes were flashing with fury. “You cannot put the lives of other people in danger just because you don’t want to snap out of this state of yours. If your father were still around, he would whip you, I would beg him to stop, you would ask Alemu to forgive you, and everything would be settled. But your father is dead, and nobody can take his place. I have nobody who will whip you till I beg him to stop and it’s clear that I will not beg you to come out of this darkness of yours. A mother does not beg her children. She commands them. If you do not agree to heal your pain, I shall find another way to punish you. I swear I will.”

She packed up my things and the next morning she took me back home.

We went back along the same road we had taken with old Alemu, climbing up the gentle slopes of the same hills we had come down a few days previously, at times passing through dense forest growth.

I could have gone along that road with my eyes closed. How many times, as a child or as an adolescent, had I taken it, riding my mule next to my father, to Melak Settegn, and to a few of his men. We used to go to help with the sowing of the teff, during Meskerem, immediately after the feast of Meskel, and then we would return to check on the growth of the blades of wheat and my eyes would feast on the sight of that sea of green that swayed in the wind. Finally, we would return for the harvest, when the fields that stretched as far as the eye could see were as golden and as glowing as the sun, and for days the farmers would cut the blades with their scythes. Every evening there would be a great feast. “Father, where are you now?” I thought, wracked with a profound feeling of solitude.

We reached Debre Markos by the end of the day, just before sunset. When we arrived at the entrance to the house, the door opened. Behind it was old Alemu. He did not greet me. Quickly he came to meet my mother, gave her mule to Melak Settegn, and entered the house with her, without deigning to look at me. With the air of a sisterly accomplice, Amarech told me that I had really messed up this time. I pushed her aside. There were far bigger problems out there.

Several days later, clearly at my mother’s request, our family’s spiritual father, Abba Gebre, came to see me. Contrary to what I might have expected, he didn’t lecture me, but only said, “At times even prayer becomes a kind of battle, a kind of resistance. My son, we must resist in hope,” and then he began, Egzio Meharene Kristos, Egzio Meharene Kristos, Egzio Meharene Kristos, and I recited with him.2 I followed him as you would follow someone who asks you to go along with him and although you don’t know where he is going, you agree because, after all, you have nothing else to do. He prayed in my room, all day long, and I with him, and by the time he left, the prayers had calmed my breath. They had relaxed and lengthened it. How much time had passed since I had felt that sensation that is born of prayer?

Egzio Meharene Kristos, I continued even after he had gone.

That ancient prayer, the chant that came from the past. From the time of Zera Yacob, even before that. All my people had recited it.

Egzio Meharene Kristos, I repeated, and it seemed as though I could hear a chorus behind me that joined in with my voice. Warrior men, monks, warrior women, women hermits . . . a whole crowd that grew behind me, reaching to infinity.

Egzio Meharene Kristos. They were all my ancestors and they were there next to me, liberating me from my loneliness.

Egzio Meharene Kristos. I began to pray even in my sleep. Over the following days, the fog began to lift, to rise toward the sky with the prayers, and the pain began to emerge like the bare earth.

Egzio Meharene Kristos. I was beginning to live again, clutching at hope. On my lips, the name of God was born again.

More than a month had gone by since my return. I was gradually embracing life again and certain things took on their old rhythm. The comings and goings of home, the emptiness on market days, the women rocking babies, the smell of food coming from the kitchens. . . . My mother asked me to take my father’s role with the farmers who came to ask our advice, and who then stayed for the evening and exhausted our reserves of tej and areke. Now that my father was no more, I had to accept the role of leader. Or at least try to do so.

My older sisters, the married ones, had returned to their husbands’ families to wait for news of their men, and little Amarech’s belly had begun to show a slight roundness. A small amba concealed by her clothes, visible only to those who were very familiar with the shape of her slim body.

She was happy, in spite of everything. A happiness that seemed selfish in my eyes. She chirped all the time, like small birds when trees are blooming. I had not yet met her Italian soldier. My mother had wisely ordered her to keep him at a safe distance, and I was relieved, but I was aware that my meeting with that unwelcome man was getting closer all the time. One morning I heard Amarech singing more than usual and there was a voice behind hers. Words in Amharic, full of excruciating mistakes and in a strange accent. “This is it,” I said to myself, and immediately I had a ridiculous thought, a kind of mean satisfaction: “So this is the Amharic that he speaks so well?”

My mother came to call me.

Words cannot describe the feelings I had in that moment. I felt defeated: the enemy had occupied and taken possession of our country even to the point of worming himself into our families.

They introduced him to me. “Daniel.”

In a gesture of respect that imitated our customs, he bowed forward and stretched out his hand, the palm of the other hand holding the forearm of the outstretched hand. I, in a gesture of disrespect that was meant to imitate Italian customs, remained standing upright, my hand barely touching his in a swift, halfhearted gesture. My sister froze and stopped singing. He gave an understanding smile.

I never spoke to him, and when he was in our house, which was often, I shut myself up in hostile silence. He pretended not to notice.

Every so often my mother told me that I should stop it—she reminded me of our culture, of our tradition of hospitality. “I do not welcome devils,” I replied.

“If you could only let yourself get to know him, you would realize that he is a good person,” she said.

I cut her short. “Mama, he is a presumptuous devil. Only a presumptuous devil can go around with the color of God’s sky in his eyes. We are the color of the earth and, like the earth, humble and welcoming. Between us and him there can be no meeting points.” I was determined not to let that being, who in my eyes was as filthy as the foulest beast, get close to me.

But at home they often spoke about Daniel’s upcoming demobilization. I caught snippets of conversation. I never heard any talk about Italy or Ethiopia, of their occupation. It was a dangerous subject that they had decided not to touch upon, but Daniel’s demobilization was discussed every day.

The request had already been sent to his battalion commander, who in turn had sent it on to the governor of Gondar. Once demobbed, he and Amarech were going to live at Woha Petros. Daniel knew how to work the land. They were going to oversee a small part of our property, together with the farmers. Abba Ghebre was going to bless their union and baptize their child.

These were subjects that kept on coming up over and over again. Once the last sentence had been uttered, a few hours later, people in the house would start the discussion all over again. And although I wanted to stay out of the whole business, in the end I had not been able to remain completely deaf.

Another month went by, and Amarech’s belly began to be unmistakably in evidence and her singing increased. She was getting impatient. She wanted her man all to herself. She no longer wanted just to see him for a few hours each day and then have to think of him for the rest of the time as he worked on the other side of the wall of the fort.

One Tuesday evening Daniel rushed into the house, excited. The previous day a telegram had arrived from Gondar; the sergeant had told him that a unit was due to arrive at Debre Markos the following morning and with it the orders for demobilization. The sergeant was certain that Daniel’s would also be among them. “Let’s go together to pick the order up,” he said to Amarech, embracing her in front of everyone. My mother bowed her head, embarrassed by that bold gesture of affection in her presence, and I turned away in a show of displeasure. The two of them were going off, free, while I had to stay home, far from my post. I had trouble falling asleep that night, and the following morning I did not notice the bustle when Daniel came to get Amarech and they went off chirping like two little birds in springtime busily preparing to build their nest. When I got up the house was empty. I was relieved. I didn’t feel like seeing anybody.

Halfway through the morning the front door flew open, banging against the wall. At first I thought it hadn’t been closed properly and that a gust of wind had violently thrown it open, but immediately after that disruptive bang, shouts could be heard. It was Daniel. He seemed out of his mind. He was shouting wildly in Italian, repeating himself without stopping to take abreath: “RoyalDecree 880, Royal Decree 880! What, didn’t you know that there existed Royal Decree 880? Sure, RoyalDecree 880,880.” He was in astate and was throwing things around the room. Behind him came Amarech, sniffling and begging him to stop and explain everything to her, but he just went on repeating “Royal Decree 880.” I thought he had completely lost his mind. Amarech began looking for me. I heard her hurried steps around the house as she went from one room to the next. I went toward her. There were drops of sweat on her face, her netela had fallen from her head and revealed a mass of untidy braids, her clothes were torn in places.

“Yacob! Yacob. Help me. I don’t know what has happened, but I am afraid.” She knelt before me and stretched out her hands. “I beg you. I beg you in the name of our God. I beg you in the name of our father. I beg you in the name of Christ. Go to him. Speak to him.”

I went to him and asked my sister to leave us alone.

He was surrounded by broken pieces of the obj ects he had thrown to the ground. He was gazing around with glassy eyes, wide open like those of the crazy people who used to make me take to my heels as fast as I could when I was a child.

A shudder made the hairs on my skin stand on end.

As soon as he saw me he stopped looking for things to throw around and he began yelling again—“Royal Decree 880, Royal Decree 880”—and, continuing to shout, he came up to me. “What,” he said with his face almost touching mine, “what, they said to me, but don’t you know about Royal Decree 880? Royal Decree 880, you understand, Royal Decree 880. You do know that Royal Decree 880 exists, don’t you? Eh! Yacob! Yacob, Yacob, you have to help us. We have to run away. We have to leave here. You will help us reach your friends, right? The fighters? Yacob, we have to run away. You will help us, right? You’re the only one who can help us, what do you say, I beg you, say yes. I beg you, brother of my Amarech.”

“Calm down, Daniel.”

“Yacob, you’ll help us, right? We’ll go to your fighter friends, what do you say?”

“Calm down, Daniel.”

“Yacob, they want to put me in jail, you understand, in jail. But I haven’t done anything. I haven’t done anything.”

I took him by the shoulders and began to shake him. “Daniel, calm down!” I felt the tension in his body dissipate in my hands. He began to weep, at first slowly, his tears falling and furrowing his face, and then his weeping increased until he was sobbing uncontrollably.

“I knew,” he began to say between one sob and the next, “I knew that damn decree existed, but I didn’t think it would really be enforced. I have seen so many soldiers going with the women from here and everyone in the fort knew about it. I thought they had proclaimed it to keep the Fascists at home happy. Not so. You can go with the women from here but you have to treat them like prostitutes. You cannot love them, have children with them, dream about having a family. If you do something like that, they enforce the decree. Got it, Yacob? There is an Italian law that condemns me because I love your sister and I will have a child by her. Italy, that great promoter of civilization. This is her real face. Today they should have given me my demobilization papers. I thought I could finally come back here to your house a free man; instead the sergeant told me that an order is on its way sending me back home and condemning me to five years inside because I broke Royal Decree 880.

“I have known the sergeant since I did my training in Italy. When we embarked at Leghorn, his wife and five-year-old daughter, Lucia, came to see him off. While he was embracing his wife, his daughter was trying to open his suitcase. She seemed to be more interested in that than saddened by the upcoming separation. Every now and then she would tug her father by the sleeve of his j acket and ask, ‘But if it’s such a big thing, how come it can all fit into your suitcase?’ He smiled at her without answering.

“Once on board, he explained it to me. He told her he was going to Africa to take civilization there, and she wanted to see civilization, this thing that was so important that it was the cause of their separation. She thought he had it in his suitcase.

“As soon as his wife’s letters arrived he would come to read them to me. She told him that in the evening Lucia would scribble on the kitchen floor with a piece of chalk, saying that she was writing to Daddy; she wanted to know if this darn civilization had been delivered and if he could finally come back home. This morning, informing me of the order to return to Italy he said, ‘I have to tell Lucia that it is not true. We did not come to deliver civilization but to destroy one, just like the barbarians did in the past. You must never lie to children. Daniel, you were betrayed by a Fascist centurion who noticed Amarech’s belly getting bigger.’

“On my way here, I met those bastards and they began to make jokes: ‘So, you filled the belly of your little black girl, eh? What’s it like putting it into a pregnant black woman?’ they taunted me.

“Ah, but he isn’t fucking. No, he’s making love.’

“‘Right, because this peasant from around Venice is a dumb ass and he can’t read. He doesn’t know that Royal Decree 880 exists,’ said another. Areal coward, short and lily-livered, who as soon as he hears shooting outside the fort, pees in his pants. A useless blackshirt scum. He only feels strong when he’s with others. Areal prick.” Now Daniel had stopped weeping. “I am not going back to Italy. I want to live here with Amarech and our child. I have the right to live with them. Yacob, you must help us escape. Take us to your friends, to the fighters. I swear, I shall fight with them against the Fascists.”

For a second, but only for a split second, his pain made me feel that he was one of us, that he was suffering too, because of the Fascists. But then, immediately after, he became an Italian again, the sollato, the one who arrived in our midst wearing the uniform of the enemy. But in that second of empathy I made a promise, with my whole being. A promise that I could not break. “I will help you. I will help you escape with Amarech. I will take you to my companions.”

There followed days of frantic preparations. We had to act quickly, since the order to return to Italy could arrive from Gondar any day. Even Daniel’s sergeant, to whom we said that Daniel and Amarech were going to stay with some relatives in the south, helped us by donating some tinned food for the trip, while Daniel, shut up in the barracks, pretended he was fearful of the forthcoming return to Italy.

It was going to be a long journey. We could not ask, as we had done two months previously, for a ride from one of the convoys of trucks between Debre Markos and Addis Ababa. We were going to have to do it all on foot. Over 120 miles—along rough paths, cutting down by Malka Kalo where we would ford the Abay River, and then straight down to the paved road to Addis Alem. And all this with Amarech who was five months pregnant.

Within a week, before the order to repatriate came from Gondar where the seat of the Italian government for North Ethiopia was located, we were ready.

On the morning of our departure, long before dawn, Alemu came knocking at my door: “Getochl”

I opened the door and he came in. “Since when have you called me getoch?”

“When you were born I was given a task: that of raising you. And that’s what I’m doing, right at this very moment. I call you getoch, so that you become aware of your role. Now that your father is no more, you are the getoch, the master of the house. Having made that clear, let me add this: getoch, you cannot accompany Amarech and Daniel.” He paused. “Ask me why not.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Since when does the one who has just been born say to the mother, ‘I am the wise one here’?”

“What do you mean?”

“You are a young buck. You know nothing about women and children. How can you think of accompanying your sister in her condition? What’s needed is someone like me who has experience.” My muscles tensed up and I leaned forward as if to protest. He narrowed his eyes. “This time I shall not turn around and go away as I did at Woha Petros. If you show me disrespect, I will kick you as I did when you were small. So, first listen, think about it, and after, speak. There’s something else. Ask me what.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“You cannot leave the house empty.”

“But the house is not empty. There’s my mother, there are all of you.”

“A house without its master is empty. Every master is like the great sycamore tree that protects the farmer’s animals from the sun. The woman is like the farmer who keeps the grass under the tree clean and the man is the tree. And have you ever seen a tree move? And here’s the last thing.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“The sollato know that you are here! They haven’t asked where you came from, because the sergeant took care of things, but if you go away they’ll come and question and torment us in the certainty that Amarech and Daniel are with you. Think about it,” he concluded, and off he went.

Soon after, Abba Gebre knocked on the door. I let him in. He extended the cross to me and I kissed it. “My son,” he said, “I don’t think it is a good idea for you to leave. For everybody. When the sollato realize that Daniel has escaped, they will come here. I cannot even begin to imagine what would happen if you were not here. Someone might talk out of fear. The sollato might find out that you were a fighter and that you have never taken the Oath of Submission. The consequences would be endless. You must stay and face them when they come.” Once again, as before with Alemu, I wanted to protest, but Abba Gebre didn’t give me time. “My son, I will go with them as far as Malka Kalo. I will help them ford the river and I will hand them into the care of the priest of the Medania Alem Church. He is a friend of mine. We studied together in Waldibba. I will ask him to accompany them to the next church and to entrust them to the priest of that church. They will continue in this way, accompanied from church to church, up to the paved road at Addis Alem. There they will go to the priest at the Bete Mariam Church who will find someone trustworthy to escort them to the great olive tree on the path. From there Amarech knows the way. Ah! I know that Alemu wants to go with them. It would be a good idea. He is an Oromo and much of the territory they will be crossing belongs to the Oromo people. He will guarantee their safe passage.”

Dawn broke. Among the colors in the sky, the last star was still shining. The little caravan was ready. My mother, my two unmarried sisters, and I accompanied Daniel and Amarech to the Yesus Church. My mother had given my sisters orders not to shed any tears. Amarech and her man needed to feel support, not despair. We said goodbye to each other as if they were going off on a joyful pilgrimage. My mother embraced little Amarech. “Don’t worry” she said. “God will be with all of you and also with us. We shall follow you with our prayers. My daughter, I shall be here in body, but every moment, every instant, my spirit will be with you, in prayer.” They mounted the mules. My mother blessed them. “May the Virgin Mary be with you! May she help you when in difficulty. May she keep your path free of danger. May the light follow you.” As one, they answered “Amen.” The mules moved forward. The last one to pass by was Alemu. A veil of sadness descended on my mother’s eyes—she was parting from her youngest daughter. She nodded to the old servant. He answered in the same way, then, passing near her, he whispered, “I shall protect her.”

We lingered until they were out of sight; then my mother, my sisters, and I headed toward the house, our hearts as heavy as stone.

All that day and evening we didn’t have any visitors. None of the military came to askwhere Daniel was. Itwas the sergeantwho had played for time. “He must be at his little black girl’s to say goodbye forever,” he had joked with a blackshirt who had asked about Daniel. The next morning the Italians came. They banged on the front door, kicking it. I went to open it. There was a group of them, and among them was a short squirt who was hopping back and forth aggressively, probably the coward Daniel had told me about. One of them pushed an Ascari forward. “Where’s your sister?” the Ascari asked me.

“She has disappeared with the Italian soldier!” I replied.

The Ascari turned toward the blackshirts and translated into Italian. Their faces darkened in anger. I suppressed a smile. By now Amarech and Daniel were far away and the sollato would not have been able to find them. One of them who seemed to be their leader raised his voice and barked out. The Ascari translated it into Amharic. “Where have they gone?”

“What do I know? They went off without our permission.”

“What do you mean?” asked the Ascari.

“We were against my sister’s relationship with the sollato/’ I answered.

The Ascari turned toward the blackshirt leader and translated into Italian. The leader came up to me and grabbed me by my clothes. He spoke, and in his anger saliva sprayed out of his mouth. “You, little black face, here we are the ones who decide and j udge relationships,” he yelled. “Here, we are the ones who do not want our race dirtied by yours.”3 The Ascari translated, and when he had finished speaking, the blackshirt leader kneed me in the belly. I doubled up in pain. The short squirt chuckled with satisfaction. “One day,” I thought, “we will turn your grin into a howl of misery.” They left.

Five days later Abba Gebre returned. The soldiers paid him a visit too. He got rid of them without much trouble, saying that he knew nothing about an Italian soldier and Amarech. He had gone to pray at the Betenugus Mariam Church. The priest of the church there could confirm it.

It took Daniel, Amarech, and Alemu almost fifteen days to cover the 120 miles to my old hideout where they met up with my companions. I followed them in my mind all along the way. Each night I lay down with them and in the morning I awoke with them. I followed them as they prepared breakfast and as they loaded the mules, and when all was ready, we traveled along together. I, too, went down the steep path toward the Abay River, carefully so that Amarech’s mule would not slip on the stone steps; I suffered and sweated in the heat of the canyons; I forded the river at Malka Kalo and, once past the ford, I wound upward, reached Abuie, crossed the valleys of the Guder River and the plains of Abebe and Birbisa, until I was within sight of the Awash River, by now on the paved road to Addis Alem. I counted every house, every village, every church. I scrutinized the face of each priest to whom, from time to time, they were entrusted. I followed them right up to when Amarech got off her mule to embrace my leader, Haile Teklai. After that, I fell into a long, deep sleep that lasted for a whole day and night. When I awoke, I went to see Abba Gebre. Together we spent the night in prayer. To give thanks.

A month and a half after they had left, an unexpected guest, a messenger who had passed through Holeta, brought us news. They were well, all of them. Daniel, old Alemu, and Amarech, who, in spite of the rigors of the j ourney, had not had any problems. When the guest left, my mother rushed off to the fort to give the sergeant the good news. After that first messenger, at regular intervals we received guests and news about Amarech’s pregnancy, about old Alemu and about a particular development: a strong bond, a brotherly bond, had formed between Haile Teklai and Daniel. Daniel had entered into the Resistance movement, keeping the promise he made to me the day he asked me to help them flee. That he would fight the Fascists. Those words, that phrase, had not been dictated by the anger of the moment, as I had thought that fateful day. Daniel had taught the group everything about the weapons that the Italians used, about the military organization, the patrols, the platoons, the companies, the battalions. He had even taught them how to taunt the Italians in their own language in order to force them to leave the protective walls of the fort. “Your wives are having it off with the Fascist higher- ups.” “You are a bunch of girls, your mothers can only bear girls.” He had taken my place within the group. Some of the messengers told me that sooner or later Aron was going to teach him to sing the fukera, and soon, very soon, Haile Teklai was going to have him take part in the attacks against the military and the Italian militias.

Despite hearing through the messages about how Daniel had become one of “ours,” I continued to feel a persistent mistrust in his regard, which, at each message, was mixed with envy: here I was, near the fort, and there he was, among my companions. And if that weren’t enough, I had ended up here because of him.

A week after each visit from one of the messengers, my mother would begin to examine the signs that presaged the next. She would sift through nighttime dreams, and she checked the movement of the wind, the flight of birds at dawn when she opened the door to sniff the air. She could announce with precision the day when someone would stop by to bring her the embrace of her little one, Alemu s greeting, and the stories of my Italian brother-in-law who was fighting on our side. In perfect synchrony, perhaps also following some strange sign himself, when the messenger left, the sergeant would appear. We had a debt with the Italian army. They had left us our lands, and in exchange we paid in produce. And the sergeant would come to us using this excuse. He came to claim their credit. In fact, he used to sit with us, eat, and get the news about his dear friend and Amarech. I think he guessed that I had been with the rebels, but he never said so openly. Each time, at the end of the meal, he would ask me to accompany him to the door, and before going out, he would say, “Yacob, sooner or later you must come to request a Declaration of Submission paper and to hand over your weapons, if you have any. It’s what you must do; you are a leader. As long as you stay closed up at home, it isn’t a problem if you don’t have the form, but if you ever needed to move around, it could be very dangerous.”

Opening the door, I would say to him, “I have no need to go out. At home I have everything I need, and I do have a rifle, but I am not going to hand it over. In our culture, men, in order to be considered as such, must have a weapon. A rifle, a spear, or a sword!” He would begin to walk away, shaking his head. I think I know what he wanted to say: “I won’t be able to protect you forever.”

In that period of transition, when the dry season still prevailed but the wind, the boom of distant thunder, and the brief, scattered showers announced the arrival of the great rains, Amarech gave birth. A little girl.

Two weeks later, when the sky had already initiated the dance of the first big storms, a messenger brought the news of the happy event, together with the words of old Alemu: “Mother, everything has its time in life, and when one’s own comes around, each person cries, laughs, or speaks too much. Today it’s my turn to speak too much. I’m sending you news that I am holding in my arms the child of our Amarech. It is a happiness too great to bear.” That was the last message. Then the rainy season took over with its usual fury and the life of us all, as happened every year at that time, retreated inside. There wasn’t anybody in the fields, or animals grazing, or traders or traveling merchants. Not even the trucks and the buses of the Italians dared move. Life went on inside, within the walls of the house. Outside, there was nothing but water and mud.

Aside from the occasional necessity, we spent the rainy season closed up at home. Almost two months huddled around the fire, telling stories, sharing events, and drinking the three ritual cups of coffee. Abba Gebre spent the entire season with us, right up to New Year’s Eve.

The rains beat down rhythmically on the corrugated tin roof of our house. Between one story and another, we followed its course.

First the beginning, the sharp sounds of the first drops. Then increasing, the rhythm getting faster and more intense. Then the explosion, with noisy bursts and water that beat down on the roof, gusts of wind that displaced the rain, creating a lull of a few seconds in the violent hammering. Then, again, water, more water, and gusts, the deafening sound of thunder, and sudden shafts of light that lit up the dark rooms. Occasionally within the explosion there was a double rhythm: together with the water there also came hail, balls as big as peanuts. And then the gradually decreasing sound. The storm was coming to an end. A gentle, light rain tapped on the roof.

Between one storm and the next, under a sky that showed little promise of clearing, the rainwater formed pools, dripping from the plants, from the houses, from the hills . . . from every which way. It created rivulets that flowed one into the other, increasing little by little until they became a river of water and mud that forced its way down toward one of the tributaries of the Abay River. When the river began to subside, the wind brought another storm and the water started up again, beating down on the metal roof.

The rains continued without interruption until the end of the month of Pagume. On the first day of the year, suddenly they stopped. In just a few days the imperious sun dried the roads and my mother began to search in vain for signs of forthcoming news. The sergeant, who during the rains had rarely come to see us, now stopped by every day, only to leave soon after, disappointed that there was no news.

For the feast of Meskel, fifteen days after the new year, the yellow flowers that were used every year to decorate the houses for important celebrations inundated fields, gardens, road sides, meadows . . . their yellow stretched everywhere, as far as the eye could see. Only the return of the swallows was needed in order for us to know that the dry season had begun. But the swallows did not return. Days went by and instead of festive twittering, unseasonable clouds appeared. The sky turned leaden, a layer of persistent, stagnant grayness that showed no sign either of clearing up or of rain. Then, one evening, came the rain. For an infinite number of hours there fell a strange rain, slow, silent, that produced no sound on the metal roof, no rivers of water and mud that swept down to the valley. Only water that disappeared into the cracks of the earth, leaving no visible trace.

The following morning my mother came to wake me. “Last night’s rain is a sign. It is announcing news that will bring well-being and flowers, or stifled lament. May God keep us from pain.” After a few hours somebody knocked at the door. It was Abba Gebre. He, too, had read the same message in the rain and had come to receive the news that would arrive. He was not going to leave us alone. Together we would celebrate or face the suffering.

At lunchtime there was another knock at the door. My mother, the priest, and I rushed to open it. It was the sergeant. My mother invited him in. “Today we will receive news!” she announced to him, and then she asked him, “Is anyone expected today?”

“A convoy that left Addis Ababa on its way to Gondar. It will stop here for the night.”

“There you are. You’ll see, Sergeant, someone for us will come with the convoy!” she stated with certainty. At about five o’clock, the evening breeze carried the sound of the convoy of heavy-duty vehicles entering the city. From that moment on, our waiting grew more and more tense.

An hour and a half went by, and it was already dark when there was a knock at the door. We all rushed toward it. I was the one who opened it. The surprise hit me like a hard punch straight to the stomach. I was left speechless. Before me stood my companion-in-arms, Alemtsehay. “Welcome,” I said to her. The words came out of my mouth spontaneously while I stood before her, completely confused.

“Selam, Yacob,” she said. I wanted to step aside to let her in, but the slowness of my movements was too much for my mother, who pushed me away from the doorway. Without following the ritual greetings, she went up close to Alemtsehay and in a worried voice she asked her, “Daughter, do you come bearing good news?”

Alemtsehay did not answer her question. “Mother,” she said, “first let me in.”

My mother was deaf to her words. She was not prepared to listen to anything except the answer to her question. “Daughter, tell me, do you come bearing good news?”

“Mother, don’t worry, I will tell you everything, but first let me in. I am tired—”

My mother interrupted her. “I beg you, daughter, tell me, have you come bearing good news?”

“Wait, mother, just a moment, let me in, close the door behind me, and I will tell you everything.”

“I beg you, daughter, in the name of God, tell me, have you come bearing good news?”

Alemtsehay, overcome by my mother’s insistence, gave in. She lowered her face with an eloquent gesture. No, she had not come bearing good news. My mother collapsed on the ground and began to scream, beating her chest with closed fists. Abba Gebre dragged her inside.

The night rain did not presage well-being and flowering, but stifled lament. A mourning that we would have to bear in silence and solitude, without erecting the mourning tent and calling people to come to weep by our side. In order not to show the military authorities that we had always known where Daniel and Amarech had fled and that we were in touch with them.

I remained on the threshold, stunned. Alemtsehay asked me if she could come in. “Certainly!” I said. “Forgive me.” The sergeant came toward us. In the bewildering confusion created by the events, I had forgotten about his presence. The anguish in his eyes was palpable. He began to ask Alemtsehay questions, he wanted to know what had happened, but Alemtsehay did not answer him. She wanted us to remain alone, just the two of us. She wanted to tell me, her companion-in-arms, what had happened. I asked the sergeant to go into the kitchen and get them to give him a plate of food for Alemtsehay. She and I sat in a corner of the sitting room in the glow of the oil lamp. One in front of the other. She took my hands, placed them on her knees, and began to recount what had happened.

“In the beginning we were all wary of Daniel—one or two people asked themselves how you could have even thought of sending a white man to be with us, and only Haile Teklai had welcomed him without hesitation, out of respect for your name. Then it was Daniel who showed us the way, not just because of the fact that he had entered the Resistance but also because of his character. He was a simple soul, without malice and without secrets. Always ready to undertake any kind of work. He said he was the son of farmers from northern Italy. The son of poor folk, he was used to working and to being ordered about. Your sister, when she spoke of his origins, used to joke, ‘Woi gud, I’ve ended up with a poor peasant, me, the daughter of a commander.’ Alemu called him Ato.’ He used to say that God had created him a gentleman in his ways and in his soul. A man to be respected and to be imitated.” Alemtsehay gave a deep sigh as she paused to give herself a chance to steel herself to continue. “They captured them on the path to the hideout, near the paved road. A group of Zapatie on horseback. Alemu and Amarech did not have their Submission Papers and Alemu was carrying an old rifle—you know how our men are, never without a gun. It was an old piece of iron that did not even fire.

“Daniel tried to resolve the matter by saying that he would guarantee for them that Alemu and Amarech were his servants. But when they asked him where he lived, he did not know what to say. He didn’t know the area well, and he couldn’t recall the name of any of the villages. They knew that among the rebels there was an ex-Italian soldier. Two weeks previously Daniel had taken part in an attack and someone had seen him. The Zapatie became suspicious. In a few seconds the situation deteriorated. They tried to escape but the Zapatie blocked them. There was no way out. Alemu raised his rifle and threw himself against them, yelling that he wanted to die right away so as not to witness what they would do to his Amarech. They killed him instantly.”

Alemtsehay stopped talking; she did not have the courage to go on. I squeezed her hand until I could feel my nails in her flesh. “For God’s sake!” I said. “Go on!”

“They killed Daniel inside the fort. In a room. We found that out from one of our infiltrators: a shot to the head out of the sight of anyone. They did not want it known that an Italian was on our side. Amarech, they hanged. In the square in Holeta. They left her body swinging there all day, with a notice attached to her back: ‘This is what happens to rebels.’ The priest of the church in Holeta, after incessant begging, managed to have the body returned to him. He buried her himself, in the church cemetery. We were not able to take part.”

A deep icy cold took hold of me. I did not know whether it came from outside or from inside of me. I tried to feel something, any kind of warmth to make me come out of it. But everything was still, frozen. I couldn’t feel anything, not even my hands gripping Alemtsehay’s. I couldn’t feel any part of my body. Perhaps it was no longer part of me, nothing was part of me, except for my thoughts, words that floated around in my head, uselessly.

“My Amarech. My beautiful Amarech. Old Alemu, they even killed my old Alemu.”

“Yacob! Yacob!” Alemtsehay squeezed my hands, just as I had done with hers. Her voice reached me from afar. “Yacob! Yacob!” I tried to answer her, but no words came out of my mouth. “You must pull yourself together! You cannot let yourself go! You have a duty.” Through the cold air came a faint whimpering sound. Something so unexpected as to be able to crack the iciness and penetrate it to the point of arousing my attention. “Yacob, they are dead but your niece is alive. She stayed behind with me in the hideout. Yacob, you must shake yourself, get over it. For her. Every day Amarech used to say to me, ‘If something happens to me, I want my daughter to be raised by Yacob.”’

In the darkness I had not noticed that Alemtsehay was carrying a bundle on her back. The whimpering started up again. It came from the bundle. Alemtsehay undid it and handed it to me. Something in her face softened. “Here,” she said. “Let me introduce you to Rosa.”

I held the bundle tightly. Something moved against my chest. A tiny, warm body that was whimpering gently, a life just budding. My iciness began to melt. I felt something wet on my face. I was weeping. Tears as silent as the night rain. Alemtsehay stood up to bring the oil lamp closer. “Yacob, look at her,” she said. I moved her little body away from my chest and I opened up the blankets that were wrapped around her. A baby girl, an enchanted harmony that mixed the colors of the earth and of the sky, lifted her eyes to mine. At that very moment, any doubt or anger regarding that white man who had entered into and devastated our family vanished.

The sergeant came in with a plate in his hand. I told him to put down the plate and to come close. “Come, sergeant. Come here, close. Let me present Rosa to you. The daughter of your Daniel and my little Amarech.” The following day I went to his office, I turned in my Mauser rifle and I requested the Submission Paper. I did not want to run any risks. Not now that there was her. Not now that there was Rosa.

1. “How did you spend the night?” (a common greeting in Amharic upon waking in the morning).

2. A prayer in Ge’ez, the ancient Ethiopian language, that expresses a request for forgiveness.

3. “Little Black Face” (Faccetta nera) is the title of a very well-known Fascist marching song.