CHAPTER 14

“HURRY UP, CESELI, WE’LL be late and Rutherford doesn’t like that.”

“Just a minute. Let me at least wash my face and change out of these jeans. I’ve been wearing them for a week. I’ll meet you on the verandah.”

Ceseli looked around the tukul. It seemed like ages since she left for Axum and yet it was only eight days. She pulled off her jeans and put on her linen skirt and a clean blouse and exchanged her boots for red leather sandals. As she walked up to the terrace ten minutes later, the two men were busy talking.

“What is the purpose of the obelisks?” Rutherford asked as she joined them and they walked into the dining room.

“I can answer that,” Standish said as they sat down at the table. “They’re grave markers.”

“I always thought they were giant phalluses. And you found the one for the Queen of Sheba?”

“She shouldn’t have had one, at least if what she told Solomon was true. She told him she was a sun worshipper, but that she meant to convert to his religion and intended to set up a Jewish state. So, if she kept her word, she must have worshipped Yahweh, not the sun.”

“What century are we talking about?”

“Solomon ruled from 970 BC for about forty years.”

“And he built a temple and had a lot of gold mines.”

“Um.”

Ceseli looked down the long polished mahogany table to where Hilina was taking the teff from a matching sideboard. “Can I have some more, please, Hilina?” The girl smiled and came back.

“When did Ethiopia become Christian?” Rutherford asked.

“In the fourth century AD,” Ceseli answered as she brought her attention back to the subject of Christianity.

“Ethiopia accepted Christianity before Rome did?”

“Quite a bit before.”

“What about the story of Constantine? The vision in the sky.”

“Constantine didn’t convert until he was on his deathbed in 337 AD. But the story that he converted the Roman Empire to Christianity is just untrue. He did no such thing. Did Standish tell you about the coins we found?”

“No, we were talking about the news of Mussolini.”

“What news is that?” she asked. “If you can tell me, that is.”

“Well, the Germans and the British have signed a naval treaty by which the German navy can build up to thirty-five percent of the British navy.”

“What’s news?”

“It allows Germany out of the arms restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I, and it was signed without consulting either Italy or France.”

“So Mussolini is angry, is that it?”

“That, my dear, is the understatement of the day,” Rutherford said, chuckling. “So why are these coins important?”

“Axum was the only state in Africa to mint its own coins over a three hundred year period. Those coins give us a complete chronology of the Axum rulers. Through the coins from the rein of Ezana, we can pinpoint the exact date of his conversion as 331 AD. Before that date, all his coins bore an image of the full moon. After 331 AD, they are stamped with a cross. These were the earliest coins to bear the Christian symbol. The ones we found . . .”

“You found, Ceseli!”

“Okay, the ones I found are all stamped with a cross.”

“Why did Ezana decide to become a Christian?” Rutherford asked.

“There were two Christian brothers at his father’s court. They were Phoenicians from Tyre in Palestine. They were shipwrecked off the coast of Ethiopia and brought to the court as slaves. The oldest was Frumentius and the king appointed him as his treasurer and secretary. He held him in very high regard. Then the king died abruptly leaving his son, Ezana, as an infant. The queen asked Frumentius to stay on and to become Ezana’s tutor. So of course he had a great deal of influence over the boy while he was growing up. During this time, Frumentius invited Christians to settle in Ethiopia to build their own churches and to worship in them, not in catacombs as they did in Rome. Somewhere along the line, Frumentius was appointed a bishop of the church in Alexandria and he succeeded in converting Ezana.”

“What are you going to do with the coins?”

“Standish asked me the same thing. I’m giving them to the emperor.”

“I’m sure he’ll like that,” both men said at the same time.

Three days later, Ceseli was asked to go to the palace and meet again with the emperor. Yifru told her that the emperor had already read her report and that he had expressed interest in having her do some work for him.

The following day, after speaking at some length with the emperor and giving him the coins she had found, Ceseli took possession of a small office near the library. Working for the emperor would give her the opportunity to look at historical papers and letters, many of which had not been catalogued.

“Can I stay on here with you?” she asked Rutherford.

“Of course you can. Your father would be very proud of you. But what about Geneva?”

“Geneva can wait. It’s not far from Rome. I’ll go over the Christmas break.”

“Just one thing. Please don’t let anything you hear here be repeated at the palace. We must follow very clean lines in our relationship with the emperor, and with Yifru.”

“I’ll be very careful.”

Ceseli was very pleased. The archives were meticulously arranged chronologically and a wonderful source of information. She had access to the library, to all the bound letters and correspondence of the former emperors, and to the books in the emperor’s extensive collection. Her task was to gather all the obelisk references together and while doing so she was free to use any of the content as she saw fit for her dissertation.

Down the hall in his own office, Yifru took Ceseli’s report and reread it. She reminded him of another young American girl he had known many years before in New York. Her name was Debra. It was the only time he had thought of defying his emperor.

It was the spring of 1917. Yifru was graduating from Columbia that June, and he would be returning to live and work in Ethiopia. That was the repayment for studying abroad.

Then he met Debra, and all his ideas of young American ladies changed. Standing in line outside the college on Broadway and 116 Street, Debra was picketing for a woman’s right to vote. She had masses of dark curly hair under a jaunty sailor’s hat and was waving an American flag. He stopped to look at the flag. It was cut diagonally from the top left tip of the stars to the bottom right of the stripes. Half of it was missing.

“Half of our people have no vote,” she shouted, waving it energetically in his face. “Women!”

She was a student at Barnard College, he learned, and wanted to be a doctor like her father, and her grandfather.

“You don’t like it here?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then why are you going back to black Africa?” she asked some days later while they shared a hot chocolate in one of the small coffee shops on Broadway.

“Because I made a promise to help my country.”

“Ask them to let you stay another bit.”

“I have no right to ask. I made a promise.”

She looked at him over the whipped cream. “Well that’s noble. When I’m a famous doctor, maybe I’ll start a hospital there like Dr. Schweitzer.”

“Dr. Schweitzer didn’t work in Ethiopia. It was in . . .”

“Yifru. The trouble with you is that you take everything so seriously,” she laughed, mischievously sticking out her tongue at him.

“I’m a serious person.”

“Oh I know. I know.”

It was the only time, ever, he had questioned Tafari. That one time he wanted to refuse his order and to remain with Debra. And he had for a month. He had fallen in love and it was excruciatingly painful for him. After he had been in Addis for several months, he was able to offer to pay for her ticket if she came to marry him. She declined.