Aida Edemariam

The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History


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to divide influence over his country (they drew up another a year later). Italy, surely, should have known better: had it really forgotten Adwa, where, only thirty-three years ago, Menelik II and his empress Taitu had routed the Italian army? No, no one had forgotten that; some sitting here had even fought in that war. The Italians had had to content themselves with retreating to their colony in Eritrea, and with fantasies of revenge.

      All the more important, then, that the foreigners should see this show of pomp and power. And that they should be well acquainted with this new leader, who had so steadily extinguished all internal opposition: in war, as had happened with Ras Gugsa; around the council table; by sheer attrition: Empress Zewditu, for all her supposedly final word, and for all her manifest reluctance to promote her busy regent to negus, had eventually found she had no other choice, for he worked as tirelessly and invisibly and patiently as the weather. And then she had died, suddenly.

      Now Negus Tafari bowed low, touched his forehead to the stone of the cathedral, kissed it, bowed, kissed, stood. ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.’ A clear, controlled voice, with a hint of a rasp. ‘My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.’ Archbishop Kyrillos moved to the table to begin the coronation proper. ‘Now, according to God’s will and goodness I am going to crown him, and anoint him king of kings, so he will work with all his body and soul to spread religion and increase education, and Ethiopia will rise in wisdom and in knowledge, and her flag will be laid down from border to border. And we charge that you will be ruled by him and help him in this good work.’ When the reply came, in a rumble from all around, from the chairs, from under the trees, from among the graves, ‘May God help our emperor do as you say. Amen,’ he placed his hands on the Bible and turned to the king. ‘Will you, in your authority and power, and in all your works, watch over the people of Ethiopia with patience and compassion, and keep their wellbeing in mind always, according to the law?’ ‘These words shall lead to good works, so, insofar as I am able, yes, I will.’

      And so the service, in which each accoutrement – sceptre, orb, spear, ring, crown – was blessed by the archbishop and by a scholar of the north, of the south, of the east and of the west, a service interspersed by the voices of ten deacons handing their chants back and forth, back and forth, unspooled with the solemnity and intimacy of a wedding. (Though no weddings would have been accompanied, as midday approached, by a vast roaring in the sky as Tafari’s beloved aeroplanes swooped and looped in fealty.) As in a teklil wedding the vows were followed by a mass; as in a wedding the ceremony included communion, for which Tafari and his wife were required to return to the sanctuary and replace their rich robes with something simpler. As in a wedding the service was brought to a close by qiné after rich dense qiné, one of which was delivered by Aleqa Tsega. And then Emperor Hailè Selassie I, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, King of Kings of Ethiopia, elect of God, climbed into a horse-drawn carriage and was driven away.

      When at last Aleqa Tsega returned to Gondar his coming was heralded by a warning: you are the wife of a great man now. The emperor has tied a circlet of gold about his head. When most of the foreigners had departed and the daily banquets and firework displays were tapering off Aleqa Tsega had answered a summons to the palace, where he joined whispering huddles of clerics and lords, all wondering why they were there. Promotion, it transpired: Emperor Hailè Selassie, who knew well how favour, generously bestowed, tightened the reins of loyalty and obligation (especially in those of humble birth), was parcelling out authority over sections of his realm. Aleqa Tsega returned a liqè-kahinat, chief of the learned, of all of Semien and Begemdir. But at the time she understood only that she would have been happier if he had not come back at all.

       BOOK II

      1931–1941

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      The landscape around Gonderoch Mariam. Photograph by the author.

       HIDAR

      THE THIRD MONTH

      Ripening of later cereal grains, sunny, occasional mists. Harvest, especially of early teff. Boys take cattle from sun-scorched uplands to green valleys. Flirting season.

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      Mariam Mariam Mariam Mariam Mariam, dirèshilin.

      O Lady Lady Lady Lady Lady, come to our aid.

      Her next labour went quickly, and twelve ililta rang out before dawn. A boy.

      She basked in congratulations. Her husband basked in congratulations.

      On the third day a family friend came to visit, ululating. This friend knew how the first birth had gone; that Yetemegnu had not been able to sit for months. That they had kept trying to feed her barley gruel sweetened with honey, and when that failed honey with water, but she didn’t like honey, and again and again she had closed her lips tight and turned away.

      This time they brought her wheat porridge full of fortifying butter, and this she had accepted.

      She smiled at their friend. The boy has not yet been washed – would you do the honours? His skin is darker on one side than the other, don’t be surprised.

      ‘Of course.’ And their friend had fetched Lux and water and rearranged her shawl, freeing her arms to work.

      ‘Oh!’

      What is it?

      ‘She’s a girl, not a boy!’

      No. No – can I see?

      The child’s umbilicus had been cut long, and an attendant, glancing cursorily, taken at her mistaken word.

      Oh no! The father was so pleased to have a boy! I was so pleased to have a boy!

      And then, desperate, How do I tell him?

      Their friend considered her. ‘Take your time, and do it carefully.’ She smiled. ‘Wait until he’s had his lunch, at least.’

      Preparations for the christening party were nearly complete when, just under three months later, the girl died, under a light shawl Yetemegnu had placed over her to protect her as she slept.

      They had left the house near Ba’ata because there was no water. No pipes serving it, no springs save the holy springs, no well. Only the Qeha river, close enough as the kite flies but down and then, carrying the big-bellied madigas on their backs, back up such steep paths that the slaves she sent were exhausted for the rest of the day. Sometimes she took pity on them and went to the water-sellers instead. Then they heard that a man who owned a plot of land on the edge of the Saturday market had committed a murder and fled. They were all pleased when her husband paid a messenger twenty pieces of raw silver to track the murderer down and make him an offer. Sixty silver thalers for the land, then; and a hundred to sink a well.

      Her husband built a house of hewn stone, held together with trampled mud and straw, with stairs at each end and in front a round hall in which to receive visitors. A little building off to the side for grinding grain, and on the ground floor of the main structure rooms to keep it in; rooms for fermenting beer, for storing mead, and above them a private living room and their bedroom, with low wooden chests and their clothes hanging on hooks on the wall. The windows on this floor faced sunset and sunrise, and when she was alone she could stare out the west window, over the roofs and into the valley, where in the dry season the Qeha crawled sluggish with algae, and in the wet season rushed wild, a muddy and perilous torrent. If she turned a little, toward the north, she could see a darker circle of high old trees, which always meant, here is consecrated ground.

      If her second daughter really had been a boy, he would already have been baptised, and named, at forty days; girls, however, were baptised at eighty,