“SO, MY CHILD, THAT’S THE END OF THE STORY OF ME and Signor Antonio. When you make use of it, let me know through the turtle lady. Well, my child! May God bless you for what you will do!”
And with that she went off.
I was stunned. Warriors, galloping horses, troops camped on the plains, groups of soldiers moving rapidly behind rock faces, lions, monkeys, Signor Antonio . . . the stories I had heard over those five days were beginning to run together, overlapping and blending like water on the crest of a wave. They were tossing me here and there, depriving me of my equilibrium. My mind, saturated with images, continuously spewed forth new ones, disjointed ones that faded, then blended again and suddenly resurfaced. Sharply defined and tangible. “Woi gud!” I exclaimed under my breath. “I’m going crazy.”
Fortunately, Abba Chereka arrived almost immediately, with that metal clanging of his. After a brief greeting, he sat down next to me. I didn’t give him time for his usual interval of silence. He was about to turn his gaze on the worshipers, with his customary serafic calm, when I began to speak. “There are rumors about me going around this courtyard,” I began.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” he commented, keeping his eyes fixed ahead of him.
“I’m not happy about them.”
“Oh, yes?” And what might these rumors be?” he asked, turning toward me.
“That I collect stories about the Italian occupation.”
“And are these rumors true?” he asked, his face completely expressionless.
I did not reply. Instead I said, “The turtle lady says that confirmation of these rumors has come from your own lips.”
“Child, no confirmation of such rumors has come from my lips. I only pointed out to the turtle lady the strange coincidence that so many people come to you to tell you stories about that time.”
I would have liked to point out to him that it was not by pure chance that some—no, the majority of them—had come to sit next to me. Two had been sent by the turtle lady and one was the turtle lady herself. Only two had happened to come to me by chance. But who knows? Maybe even they had not come by pure chance! I was about to open my mouth—in fact it was already open—but he raised his hand to silence me. He had guessed what I was going to say to him. “Our people do not like recounting stories about the Italian occupation, even when asked to do so. They toss out a few sentences and manage to talk without revealing anything. If they opened up to you, there must have been a reason.”
“Maybe there was,” I said, trying to end the conversation. I was irritated that I couldn’t come up with any rejoinder.
“Let’s pray,” he commanded. I closed my eyes and began to quietly recite the new prayer, but soon after I opened them again. That new prayer aroused in me an unpleasant feeling of agitation. Inside of me I could hear the stomping of nervous, fenced-in horses. I stopped reciting the prayer and Abba Chereka opened his eyes. “Well, that’s enough for today,” he said, looking at me, and he said nothing more. We stood up and we started going toward the main gate. It wasn’t far. Then, from behind a hedge, the turtle lady popped out. “Mahlet, before you go home, stop by Shi Selemon’s place to have some baklava. What you need is the honey and syrup of a piece of good baklava to dissipate the bitterness of our stories,” she advised. I thanked her for her suggestion.
At the gate Abba Chereka asked me for my usual offering. Taking it out of my bra, I gave him the usual ten birr and he repeated the by-now-familiar phrase: “You won’t regret it, my child.” We went our separate ways. He went back in and I entered into the chaos of the city.
I went down the ramp that led up to the church, my ears filling with the deafening noise of the car horns. I crossed the maze of cars in transit around the rotary and I headed down the avenue. Halfway down the avenue, just past some dress shops, was the pastry shop. When was the last time I had gone in? Alemitu, Mulu, and I used to go there often, around the time of the liberation. That pastry shop had existed forever. It had always stayed open. Even during the troubling period of transition from the Derg government to the present one. The entire city would go there to sweeten their palates, as a way of relieving the fear of that uncertain future. A piece of Shi Selemon’s baklava and everything seemed better.
I went in. It was just the same as the last time I had seen it: the same spacious room with its unadorned walls, the counter with the glass case full of pastries and the odd fly, the old cash register, the old espresso machine. In the center of the room, the round tables, their metal surfaces full of scratches. There were still booths around the sides of the room that, at that hour, were filled with groups of students. Even the waiters seemed the same, perhaps because of their outfits, the colors unchanged: bottle-green jackets and black pants.
I went to sit at one of the round tables and without delay, a waiter came up with a brisk step. He cleaned the table with a damp cloth and asked me what I wanted. “A piece of baklava and a glass of spiced tea,” I replied. He went off and, as quickly as he had arrived, he returned to the table. In the palm of his right hand, held up high, was a tray. He lowered his hand and I was able to see the tray and the glass of tea. It was half-full of sugar. Darn it! I had forgotten to ask for tea without sugar. It was another one of those habits I had picked up in Italy. Besides learning to close a car door without slamming it, I had learned to drink tea without sugar. “In your country, do you use a shovel to add sugar?” Claudio, my university friend, used to ask. “How can you taste the tea with all that sugar? Tea is for washing out the mouth, not to make it all gooey.” I had started out by reducing the amount of sugar in order to forestall his comments. In the end, I had stopped using it altogether, agreeing that he was right. It was much better in its natural form.
The waiter put down the plate with the baklava and the glass of tea on the table. “Shall I stir the sugar for you?” he asked me.
“No! No! Thanks!” I attacked the baklava with the teaspoon. The honey, mixed with syrup, was dripping from all sides, and with each mouthful it spread over my tongue. I didn’t recall its being so sweet. I took a sip of tea to wash out my mouth, but even that, in spite of my not having stirred it, was too sweet. The hot liquid had melted some of the sugar. I asked for a glass of water. The attentive waiter brought me one. I ate the baklava, diluting the excessive sweetness with the water, then I paid the bill, left a tip, and went on my way.
The sweetness of the baklava should have dissipated the bitterness of the stories, so the turtle lady had said. Instead it had done nothing. My mind continued to spew out unpleasant images that kept surfacing thanks to the many stories, too many stories. They tormented me as I walked all the way home.
Once I reached home, I sat down in the inner courtyard, in a corner off to one side. Wrapped up in my own world, I ate some injera with sigawot in silence. I was so lost in thought that not even the ongoing chatter of all the women gathered in that courtyard reached me. That evening I had dinner with everyone, to prevent that worried look from returning to my father’s eyes, but I was still immersed in my thoughts. Once dinner was over, my father and mother accompanied me to my room and we said good night at the door. I barely heard their words of blessing for the night, for dreams rich in portents for the future. I went into my room and without turning on the light, I closed the door behind me. Feeling my way, I reached the small table with the icon of the Virgin Mary, took out a candle from the box, lit it, and went to sit down on my bed. The dancing flame from the candle created shadows on the wall. Shadows that then recalled other shadows, of bodies twisted in battle, of night ambushes, of men on the march, of chance encounters for the exchange of messages. . . . It was becoming an obsession with me. I knelt in front of the icon of the Virgin Mary and begged her: “I did find the path to inner peace, but I immediately lost it. I beg you: remove or at least diminish these images that continue to pile up in my head.” Then I got up, I slipped into bed, and I began to repeat the new prayer. Immediately that disturbing inner turmoil returned and the images that I was trying to banish grew in intensity. I immediately stopped and began instead to recite some other prayers to the Virgin Mary. I finally fell asleep after having twisted and turned countless times.
At seven o’clock the following morning, my mother came to wake me up, carrying the usual genfo. I had dreamed again about Abba Yacob that night. The eloquent look in my mother’s eyes silently asked the question. I replied affirmatively by nodding my head.
“I told you so, my child! He came back. Just like I said!” she answered contentedly. I lowered my head, disheartened. Yet again the dream had been interrupted by an abrupt awakening in the middle of the night. I told her about it but it did not seem to bother her at all. “Describe the dream to me,” she continued, a serene look on her face.
“There was that same room. This time he was at the end of the corridor, seated on a chair, next to a green trunk with two locks. There was a strange wind, and this time the knickknacks piled up at the end of the corridor from the previous night’s dream were flying around in the air. That’s it. Then I woke up.” She laughed heartily and I got upset. “And what’s so funny?”
She immediately pulled herself together, and looking down at her hands in her lap, she tried to find an excuse. “What made me laugh was the image of the knickknacks flying around and Abba Yacob sitting at the end of the corridor.”
I took hold of her hands and shook her. “Mother, words exchanged years ago between Abba Yacob and me are holding me back from my future. He is trying to explain them to me in a dream, but I always wake up before he can speak to me! And you find this funny?”
“My daughter, you must remain calm, have patience! You mustn’t upset yourself like this.”
“What are you saying? Today is the third day. Abba Chereka gave me three days. I have not found any clue, any key to free myself. And you tell me to stay calm?”
Anger was mounting inside me and she, as calm as ever, said, “It’s seven o’clock—the day has just begun. You still have a lot of time ahead of you.”
My anger was increasing; I tried to hold it back, but a small part of it carried over into my voice. “What good are the daytime hours to me? When I am awake I cannot stop seeing the images from the time of the Italian occupation. With all those stories they have told me . . . the prayer that Abba Chereka taught me is of no use whatsoever. All it does is create a powerful tension inside of me, as if I were about to explode. And you tell me I have plenty of time ahead of me? I have no more time. It ended when I woke up this morning.”
She scolded me: “Mahlet, don’t speak to me like that. I told you that Abba Chereka is a great hermit. He knows what he’s talking about. He will help you to find your way, but you, for your part, must help him by having faith. Do you understand? Faith and patience! Now, that’s enough. Go and wash.” And then she left, almost slamming the door.
After I washed I went into the kitchen to look for my mother. “Please forgive me for speaking like that,” I said to her.
She hugged me. “It doesn’t matter, my child. I do understand your tension, but it’s out of line. You’ll see, today when you come home you will have your answer.”
“Maybe . . .”
“You’ll see,” she repeated. “Now let’s go to your room so you can eat and then go to St. George’s.”
Before I went out, together we lit a candle in front of the icon of the Virgin Mary. At the gate, she gave me a look of encouragement. I walked along the path. Once I reached the paved road I turned left toward the bridge. My body was as drenched in agitation as a soaked mop when it is pulled out of the water. At the bridge I boarded the first bus, only to find out that it was going in another direction. I got off at the first stop and then caught another, this time checking the destination that the ticket collector called out. All the way to St. George’s I sat with my fists tightly clenched. “St. George’s!” the ticket collector called out just before the rotary. I got off, crossed the rotary, went past the beggars on the outside ramp, and entered the churchyard. I did not make the sign of the cross. I did not walk around the courtyards. I did not kneel before the sacred images. I did not pray. I was too agitated.
I thought of going to sit on the stone slab under the tree and wait for Abba Chereka. That was all I was capable of doing: waiting. But then I was terrified that someone would come and offer me another story about the Italian occupation. No, I just couldn’t do it. I could not wait and I would not wait. I would look for Abba Chereka.
I began to look behind the bushes until I found the turtle lady. “Good morning, my child,” she exclaimed delightedly. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, Mother, thank God,” I replied, and instead of repeating the same question to her, I asked, “Where can I find Abba Chereka?”
“At this time,” she whispered, so that the worshipers nearby would not hear, “he’s behind the museum. Over there.” She pointed to a small building at the right edge of the garden.
He was behind the trees, behind the museum wall. He was reading his prayer book. “My child!” he exclaimed in surprise when he saw me.
Without even greeting him, I said to him, “Abba, I would like to speak to you!”
“Very good, my child, go and wait for me under the old tree. I’ll be right there.”
“If you wish to finish your prayers, please go ahead, but I shall wait here. I will stay next to you in silence.” He raised a perplexed eyebrow, looked at me for a while, then snapped his prayer book shut and began to walk off. I remained standing there, unsure of what to do next.
“Well, my child?” he said, turning around. “Didn’t you say you wanted to speak to me?” And, turning around again, he began walking in the direction of the courtyard. I followed him. He reached the old tree, sat down, and, patting his palm repeatedly on the slab, he invited me to follow suit. I accepted his invitation and then, in silence, we both turned our gaze on the slow passage of the worshipers moving around the courtyards.
Inside of me the volcano of restlessness was boiling up, just like the tension on the battlefield as everyone awaits the firing of the first shot. I stared in front of me, seeking a measure of tranquility, but that which, only a few days previously, had cast a spell on me, numbing my pain, now seemed unable to make even a dent in that unbearable tension. I was completely incapable of controlling my emotions by directing my gaze either outside of me or even inside of me. I was suspended, flying around on the wings of a strange, irritating wind.
Suddenly, almost brusquely, Abba Chereka turned to me. “Let’s pray,” he said, “the new prayer I taught you.” I had learned from an early age that there is a time and a way to speak, to listen, and to keep quiet. Certain situations exist in which it is permissible to cry, and in others it is not. Older people exist and they are to be respected and so are hermits like Abba Chereka who are sacred to men and to God. I had learned to dance the different steps: I knew when to wait and when to move forward. With a gentle and subtle firmness I had created within myself different spaces. But in that moment, none of that existed anymore, erased like footprints in the sand when the wind blows.
Without observing the customary manners, I turned toward him. “No! No! Not that one! I won’t say it. Your prayer doesn’t work. It doesn’t work at all,” I exploded.
Without showing any disapproval of my inappropriate tone of voice, he asked me, “And why, according to you, doesn’t it work?”
“Ever since I started reciting it that little bit of peace that I was able to find has been shattered. Entirely shattered. Like a glass broken into a thousand pieces.”
“What do you mean?” What did I mean? I wanted to scream, but I remained silent. “My child, if you want me to help you, you must explain to me how you feel,” he said.
We remained silent for a few minutes. Only a few seconds before, I had wanted to scream, and now I wanted to remain silent forever, but I spoke up. I had no choice if I wanted to get out of the hole that I was in. “At the beginning, on the first day, I felt a certain, almost pleasurable exhilaration, but then it became so strong as to be annoying, and finally it transformed itself into agitation. An agitation that doesn’t allow me to think and that shakes me like women when they slap down the milk in the goatskin bag to turn it into butter. It roams around my body like a rabid dog.”
Something flashed in his eyes, something almost amused, taunting. “Child, the prayer I taught you awakens in us the divine wind. That’s what is agitating you inside so much. It serves to get rid of the dusty sediment that conceals us from ourselves. Something in you is buried deep somewhere and that prayer is helping to make it resurface.”
“But nothing is resurfacing in me. I don’t even know if there is space for it to resurface,” I commented tersely.
“Child, either you trust me and explain everything to me, or we’re both wasting our time here. What do you mean?” he asked me brusquely.
“I mean that I cannot get all those stories out of my head, the stories about the Italians that were told to me.”
“Woi gud! Wait for me here. I’m coming right back,” he said, and he went off, only to return soon after with the turtle lady. They were talking quietly. “It’s hidden, embedded in some part of her or other,” he was saying to her. They stopped a few feet from me.
“What should I do?” she asked.
“Go and call him.”
Abba Chereka came and sat down next to me again, while the turtle lady disappeared behind a hedge. Soon after, she reappeared with a man. An old man with white hair, small and thin, wearing brand new, sparkling white clothes and holding an old masinko with signs of wear on the leather strap around his shoulder and on the side pocket that served to hold incense. The man came up and spoke to me: “If I were young, I would bow, but being old I shall greet you as best I can. Pleased to meet you, I am Aron the azmari.” I stood up to offer him my hand. “Sit, sit, my child,” he said to me while the turtle lady pulled up two chairs that she placed in front of me and Abba Chereka. She and Aron the azmari took their seats.
“Sing it to her the way I told you,” ordered Abba Chereka. The old azmari lifted up the violin and began to turn the piece of wood to which the violin string was attached. Every so often he moved the bow to check that it was in tune. When he seemed satisfied, he put the body of the violin between his legs, took hold of the bow with one hand, positioned the fingers of the other on the string, and began to play and recite verses:
Dinner is over
The table is cleared.
Now the grown-ups
Begin to talk.
“That’s enough, child,
Leave the room,”
They say over and over
To little Mahlet.
But pretending to have fallen asleep,
The little one of the household
Steals from every word
The soul of the stories.
Tella to wet the mouth,
Kolo to munch on.
The adults all together
With the elders of the household.
Of the days of his youth
And of his adulthood,
Of his fighting days
And of those that came after,
Mixing up the events
They tell of Abba Yacob.
And when sleep finally
Does overcome her,
Slipping into her dreams
What reveals itself to her
Is a message entrusted to her
By the elder of her heart.
“I’m counting on you, child.
Don’t lose the story.
Carry it to the final resting place
Of Saints Peter and Paul.”
The old azmari broke off. All three of them turned their eyes on me. “But it tells of me!” I commented in surprise.
“And so?” asked Abba Chereka.
“And so what?” I asked disconcertedly.
Abba Chereka turned to the old azmari. “We’re not there yet. Go on, but don’t drag it out. Go straight to the point.” The old azmari repositioned his masinko and began to play and recite verses once again:
One day from afar
We see a tank.
Hidden among the trees,
We prepare ourselves to set
The ambush as arbegna.
Oh Alemtsehay,
Brave warrior woman!
You are the one who creates the opening.
With deceit in your smile,
You are the one who stops the tank.
Behold, a nech sollato
Pops out of the tank:
I raised my Mauser
And I shot him!
But when I saw the head
Of the second one appear,
With my still-smoking Mauser
I shot that one too.
But still those soldiers
Did not all fall down dead!
From the tank again they appeared.
Their hands grasped their weapons,
Their eyes fixed in our direction,
Their feet steady. They are ready to shoot.
“Protect us, help us, God the Creator.”
So shout the people around us.
And behold, to our help comes the great Yacob!
He waves his sword and springs up onto them,
Swirling his weapon proudly in the air.
And then, lower down, he throws himself onto heads.
With my eyes, in these very eyes, I say,
I saw the reflection of two heads rolling down.
All together we run to the tank,
Full of weapons to the brim, so it seems to us.
There is great joy, as if a prayer had been answered.
The weapons are numerous and will suffice for many
of our warriors
Yet again Aron the azmari broke off. I was even more stunned. The song spoke of Abba Yacob, of the time when he was an arbegna. Yet again the three of them turned their eyes on me, but no words came out of my mouth. “So?” asked Abba Chereka.
I couldn’t understand what they expected of me. “So what?” I asked with a note of nervousness in my voice.
“It must be embedded very deeply,” he commented to the other two. “Start again, Aron. Sing the last part,” he ordered. The old azmari took up the masinko and began singing again:
All this occurred in those times of sadness,
And when, through fighting, we conquered the oppressor,
When the country was restored to our hands,
The arbegna walked in procession with the flag
That, high in the sky, had returned to sing of celebration.
And those who, in the times of the Resistance,
Had turned to the heavens—
“Free our land, O Lord!
And I shall not ask for bride,
or betrothed, or wife”—
Said goodbye to the world,
Goodbye to the desires of men on earth,
And in prayer were content to live
To the end of their days.
Among these great men
We only need to recall one name:
Haile Teklai, the leader from Holeta!
Dear child, thus ends my song.
Wherever you might go, do not forget
Your elders, who fought back then.
Like a star let them guide your pride
Now and forever till the end of the days to come.
The song had come to an end but I was just as devoid of ideas as I was at the beginning. They looked at me. I lowered my face. “I don’t understand, I just don’t understand,” I lamented.
“All right then,” said Abba Chereka. He slid a hand into the side pocket of his tunic and pulled out some money. “Here is sixty birr. All the money from your offerings.”
I trembled, thinking that he was returning the money to me because I was a lost cause. “Don’t you want it?”
“I never asked you for it for myself, you know. It was money that I was saving for you. Now you will need it and I’m giving it back to you.”
This man had the power to confuse me. “And what should I do with it?”
“Buy some notebooks and write. Mahlet, you must write down all the stories that you have heard over the course of these days, and not only those.”
There it was again, that fixation with using the stories from the Italian occupation. This time I was really going to get angry. “Listen, all of you, I’m not going to write down a thing.”
In reply, he slipped the other hand under his tunic, passing it through the opening at his neck, and took out a notebook with a rough, aquamarine cover. “Take this, it’s yours,” he said.
Something in me burst wide open. I knew that notebook. I took hold of it with a trembling hand. “The notebook of the battles,” I said in a tiny voice. “I had totally forgotten about it.” I slowly caressed the cover, all the way down to the lower edge, then I opened it. Inside, in tiny handwriting, were listed some names: Tekeze, Dembaguina, Enda Selassie, Tembien. . . . I began to weep, tears of liberation. “The promise. I had forgotten it. This is what I must do. Keep my promise.” On Abba Chereka’s solemn face, for a single instant, for the shortest of instants, flashed the vague hint of a smile.
“I have to go,” I suddenly said, clutching the aquamarine notebook tightly in my hand. The turtle lady laughed and, turning to Abba Chereka and to Aron the azmari, observed, “Boy, it was certainly very well concealed!”
I got up and went toward the exit. As I walked away I could hear Abba Chereka’s blessing—“May the light follow you”—and the turtle lady’s suggestion: “There’s a good stationery store at the corner. Just past Shi Selemon’s pastry shop.”
With wings on my feet, I reached the stationery store. “How many notebooks can I buy for sixty birr?” I asked. “The big notebooks.”
The shop assistant opened her eyes wide in amazement. “For sixty birr?”
“Yes, for sixty birr.”
“Many. Thirty,” she replied in surprise.
“Please let me have them.”
“Thirty?” she asked, again in surprise.
“Yes, thirty.”
“Let me go and get you a box,” she said, and disappeared in the back room, only to return with a box full of notebooks. I picked up the box, slipped in the aquamarine notebook, paid, and left.
A taxi pulled up alongside the curb. “Hi, sister! Can I take you home?” It was the taxi driver with the broken car door. I got in. “Don’t slam the door,” he said to me. “I’ve just had it repaired.” I began to laugh and so did he.
The taxi driver let me off right in front of the path to our house. I paid for the ride, got out, and went down the path. The front gate was closed. I knocked hard so they could hear. The box was heavy and I wanted to wait there as little as possible. My father came to open the gate for me, out of breath. “What are you doing here at home at this time of day?” I asked in surprise.
“Child, have you forgotten that today is Saturday? I don’t work on Saturdays.” His eyes fell on the box. “And you? What are you doing with that box of notebooks?” he asked in turn.
“I have to write,” I answered.
He didn’t give me time to add another word. “Sellas! Sellas! Come here fast!” he began to shout. “Come and see. She’s remembered! She’s remembered.”
I saw one of the doors of the house open and my mother came running out. She hugged me and began to laugh, her same laugh from that morning, and everything became clear.
“But you knew all along?” I asked.
“Sure,” replied my father proudly.
“And you let me stew all this time?” I asked, offended.
“Not here, daughter,” said my mother gently. “Come, let’s go and sit under the ancestors’ tree.”
I followed them, holding the box tightly in my hands, not wanting to give it to my father. “She has remembered everything,” he said to the women in the inner courtyard. Our neighbors got up. “You’ll have lots to do,” they said, and they all disappeared together.
We sat down in the shade of the ancestors’ tree. Aunt Fanus was there, Aunt Abeba, Mulu, Alemitu, Uncle Mesfin . . . all of them. My mother began to explain. “We knew the whole story, but we couldn’t tell you anything. You had to figure it out for yourself. That was what had been decided by Abba Chereka and Abba Yacob. They were sure that, because of the bond that existed between you and Abba Yacob, you would follow every clue that he would leave you. You could have remembered your promise at any point in time. If that had happened, the stories you had not heard would eventually be told to you. As you must have guessed, those people were all sent to you. But instead, you got to the very end without figuring it out!”
“If only you knew how concerned I was for you,” said my father, intervening in the conversation.
Aunt Fanus and my mother laughed. “Every evening,” continued my mother, “he wanted to come and tell you everything. I had to hold him back by force. Every evening I would say to him, ‘What kind of elders will we become if we don’t master the art of waiting? Wait and have faith.’”
Now I felt better, but I badly wanted to be hugged. My mother noticed it and put her arm around my shoulders. “Take heart! The biggest hurdle has been overcome. Now all you have to do is write.”
I savored the warmth of her hug for a few minutes, then I got up. “I’m going. I will start immediately.”
“Would you like me to bring you lunch and a thermos of tea to your room?” she asked. I nodded.
With the box of notebooks in my hands, I went through the house. Once I reached the veranda, I turned right and went on down to my room. I opened the door and went in. How strange. Apart from the addition of a desk on which I put down the box of notebooks, and a chair, I hadn’t noticed that the room was laid out exactly like old Yacob’s room in Debre Zeit, and yet my mother had told me it was so. In one corner there was a small table with the icon of the Virgin Mary, and behind it, half-hidden, other icons of the saints. The bed frame with the mattress, the shelves on the wall next to the bed, the spiders in the corners, and the green trunk with the locks. I went up to it, opened it, and put my hand inside. My fingers touched the soft material of a shemma. I ran them over the wavy folds, then I thrust my hand down into the next layer and I explored every inch. I went deeper—there was another shemma. Once again, wavy folds of cotton cloth woven by the Dorze people in Chencha. I went carefully through every layer, even of the second shemma, and then I moved on to the third. I continued, slipping my hand under the third shemma. I found a rougher material, cotton used for shirts. I fingered collars, pockets, buttons, the fine thread of the seams, and darned patches. I pushed my hand further down and found some pants, two with a belt, others without, and still more side pockets, back pockets with buttons, seams, darned patches . . . and under the pants in a corner was a small rectangular cardboard box. The candle box. I went back to the middle of the trunk and I began to finger the small shirt pockets until I found what I was looking for. I thrust my hand into a small pocket and took out a rolled-up envelope. I unrolled it. I opened it. Inside was that sheet full of stamps, the beginning of old Yacob’s story on that morning so many years before. I laid it out on the desk, next to the cardboard box. Tears of nostalgia and emotion were pricking my eyes.
At that moment my mother came in with a tray. She smiled when she saw my hand resting on the Submission Paper. An understanding smile. She put down the tray on the small table where the icon of the Virgin Mary was and came over to hug me. “That paper,” I said through my tears, “was the beginning of everything.”
“The paper for Rosa. Your Abba Yacob was a great man. A man capable of great love. He was like a giant sycamore tree in the yard of a farmer’s house. He gave shelter and shade to us all. Now, he is no more, and now it’s our turn, us, your father, me, your uncles and aunts, to begin our journey toward becoming wise elders. Who knows if we will live up to his memory.”
“True, a great man,” I repeated.
“Well, now I must be off. You have work to do.” We took our arms away from each other. She was about to leave the room when she remembered something. “There are still two things I have to tell you. The first is not important. This morning I was laughing because of the trunk in your dreams. I was surprised that you weren’t able to make the connection to this trunk at the foot of your bed. That promise of yours was really buried deep down! The second is important, though. Now that you know everything, have you asked yourself who Abba Chereka is?”
“Mama, I have had enough surprises for today. Don’t make me figure it out. Just tell me.”
“He’s Haile Teklai. Yacob’s commander during the Resistance, the one who became a monk after the liberation.”
I pushed her out the door. “Well, all I can say is that you really fooled me.” I took a candle out of the box, lit it, and put it in front of the icon of the Virgin Mary and went back to the desk. I placed the cardboard box on the floor. I took out the aquamarine notebook and a big notebook and I placed them next to the Submission Paper. I opened the window and sat down. In a corner of the desk there was a box full of pens. They had thought of absolutely everything. I took one, opened the big notebook, and began to write.