Preface
A complete character list and cultural terms and their definitions are provided at the end of the book for your convenience. Please refer to these pages whenever the need arises, so you can understand and fully enjoy the story.
Although Ethiopia is located north of the equator, the seasons are the exact reverse of those found in most western countries. Hence, you may need to adjust your perceptions when you read passages that describe thunder clouds or lush green fields in July or a carpet of wild flowers adorning the mountainsides in September.
The Ethiopian calendar takes some getting used to as well. Firstly, there are twelve 30-day months and one mini-month of five or six days (depending on whether or not it’s a leap year). Secondly, the Ethiopian New Year comes on September 11 in normal years and on the 12th of the month during a leap year. The calendar lags from Gregorian (western) calendar by eight years—from September to December and seven years—from January to September. This difference stems from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church not agreeing on the date of Jesus’ annunciation.
Being near the equator, most of Ethiopia receives nearly equal hours of sunlight and darkness. However, this fact may not always hold true for folks who live in isolated, mountainous valleys, such as where Desta’s story takes place. In such locations, the sun often rises and sets half an hour later or early, respectively.
Although the story is fiction, the setting, natural features and events, and the culture and customs presented in this book are true to life.
This tale is probably unlike any you have read before. I hope you have a fun ride to Desta’s far-off world!
GTA
ONE
January 1956
Abraham Beshaw had no intention of revisiting the painful memories of his childhood when he woke that glorious morning, January 6, 1956. Those memories, in compliance with his mother’s wishes, had been stowed away in the far reaches of his mind for nearly forty years. His mother had been dead for some time, and he would have been free to talk about the events of his bygone days, but Abraham had no reason or opportunity to do so. That morning, however, the rite-of-passage ceremony he had planned to hold later that day for his youngest son, Desta, somehow brought those events of his childhood to the forefront of his mind.
These events were of things that deprived Abraham of a family treasure, paternal love and guidance and denied him his formal inauguration into manhood. These were the same things that caused his mother to gather up her belongings, cattle, and four children and abandon her seven hundred acre farmland estate to come to settle in a valley that the locals simply referred to as Gedel—The Hole. This place was two hundred and fifty miles northwest of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.
All his life Abraham had been haunted by memories of his father and an ancient, precious family coin that went missing when he was barely seven years old. These incidents had made Abraham who he was as a man, a husband, a parent, and even a warfront fighter.
It was in Kuakura, a place one hundred miles north of where he currently lived, in the district of Agew Mider, on Wednesday—January 5, 1916, four days before his own seventh birthday—when the events that shaped his life began. That evening, Abraham was standing in the front courtyard, several yards away from the sycamore tree—now host to two vultures—waiting for his father to return from Dangila where he reportedly had gone to buy his son a birthday gift.
It was then that he saw, some fifty miles away, the sky above the western horizon awash in blood—poured, it seemed to him, by the setting sun. But where the sky met the earth Abraham noticed a larger-than-life man who lay prone, his mouth open, his knees bent, hands raised as if shielding his horror-stricken face. On either side of this giant figure, stood two grotesque men of the same size as the man. These men appeared to be horror-stricken as they watched the sun descend into the man’s cavernous mouth. After a lingering look, Abraham determined that the blood that bathed the sky had actually flowed out of the man who had swallowed the sun.
Soon the sun vanished, leaving behind it a crescent amber afterglow at the horizon. The two vultures rose and flew west, making Abraham wonder if they were going to eat the dead man’s body; the sun, a palate cleanser, capping the meal.
Past the sycamore tree and a row of thorn bushes, the Kilty River flowed silently beneath a horse-mane of verdant grass along its banks. Beyond the river, cattle and sheepherders drove their animals home across the vast fields and pedestrians scurried along footpaths before darkness fell. All were oblivious to the crime committed moments before on the horizon beneath the western sky.
To the boy, the scene was like a dream. After the evening haze had cleared and just before the filmy light from the mountaintop faded, Abraham realized that his eyes had deceived him. What he earlier saw as a vanquished man at the horizon turned out to be the profile of the mountain peaks, the hands and bent knees actually trees on the ridges, and the two standing men to be hanging dark clouds. Nonetheless the imagery made an indelible mark on Abraham’s consciousness. As he turned to go inside, Abraham wondered when his father would return with his gift.
But Abraham’s father did not come home that night.
Having given up waiting for the father’s return, the family of five sat down for their dinner. It was at that moment, the too-familiar but unexpected call of an owl from the sycamore sent shivers down the mother’s spine. “She died, so she got buried,” the bird hooted repeatedly in its plaintive, human-like tone.
But there is nobody sick in the family the mother said to herself, knowing that the doomsayer usually makes that awful call when someone is about to die. To the children, the owl’s call proved amusing. They mimicked the bird and giggled right up until they fell asleep. The mother went out twice and threw stones at it, and Kooli, their dog, barked insistently, but the bird was unrelenting. Feeling powerless as an infant, the mother contracted a sickening sensation in her stomach.
The father didn’t come home on the second or the third day, which was the family’s Coptic Christmas. In those two days, the mother was too preoccupied by the mystery of her husband’s absence to do anything. Her hands moved mechanically, touching objects without feeling them. She ate her meals without tasting the flavor or smelling the aroma of the food. She walked through the house and outside into the grounds without feeling the floor or ground beneath her feet. Her eyes saw things yet didn’t register them. Her mind took her to places she had never been. Had her husband been tricked by a harlot and kept in her dominion?
She reprimanded herself for her thoughts. Her husband was a God-fearing, Bible-reading man who wouldn’t allow himself to fall into debauchery. The perverted thoughts came after she had ruled out more conventional possibilities: sickness, robbers, delays to help relatives in town. And then there was that damn bird’s premonition that had chanted ceaselessly in her ears.
She spent much of Christmas day sitting misty-eyed on a bench in the courtyard, her three girls huddled around her. Abraham repeatedly ran to the gate to see if there could be a figure that resembled his father walking the twisted path to their home. The family’s world had cracked but they couldn’t know who or what had broken it.
By the fourth day, news had spread through word of mouth about the missing father and people came out in great numbers. Some were sent to search in Dangila; others combed the woods, fields, rivers and creeks nearby, but their searches turned up nothing.
On the morning of the fifth day, which was Abraham’s seventh birthday, his mother was determined not to allow the misfortune that had befallen her family to interfere with the celebration of her son’s birthday and rite of passage. On this important day, the mother also wanted to acknowledge Abraham as recipient of the family’s ancient coin of magic and fortune, as his father had intended.
She prepared food and drinks for the family of five. Then she retrieved the ancient sandalwood box that housed the coin. When she opened the box, she discovered the coin that had been handed down through several hundred generations, the family’s symbol of pride and identity, their emblem of fortune and prosperity—was gone! Her hands shook and terror gripped her brown face and eyes. She gasped, trying to cry out with stricken vocal cords, but no sound came. Abraham and the three girls watched their mother in stark horror. Her hands still clutching the ancient box, she staggered and came crashing down on her husband’s bench in the living room. One hand anchored behind her on the edge of the bench, the other now cradling the box on her lap, she gazed at the fireplace and shook her head slowly, trying to fathom the mystery dealt to her family.
Several minutes later she recovered. Together with the children, they ransacked the house, but the coin was nowhere to be found. The family’s world now felt as if it were shattering in a million pieces. It became clear to the mother: their missing coin was a poignant clue to her missing husband. Whoever had stolen the precious relic might have harmed the father. And it was not difficult to guess the culprits: her neighbors—those two, good-for-nothing, green-eyed brothers who had known that the family’s wealth was linked to the coin.
The mother couldn’t go forward with her son’s birthday ceremonies. There was no gift, and now there was no coin. The shock of the lost treasure blotted out their appetites. To Abraham, the missing coin and uncelebrated birthday were the apex of the long and painful wait, and his mounting anxiety over the father who hadn’t returned with a gift. He felt abandoned, unloved, and robbed of the excitement that he had looked forward to.
Noticing her son’s distraught face, the mother was compelled to say something to ease his grief. “Only God knows what became of your father and the coin, son,” said the mother, holding Abraham by the hand. “For now, all we can do is pray for his safe return. As soon as he comes home, we’ll celebrate your birthday and hold your coming-of-age ceremony.”
The boy was too disappointed to adequately register his mother’s consoling words. He broke free from her hold and went outside, wishing to deal with his problems on his own.
In the following days and weeks, relatives and friends searched for the father but found nothing, not a murder weapon, body, skeleton, or witness. A theory took form: the father had probably been given medicine by the evil brothers that caused him to go mad and abandon his family. That was a consolation to the grieving family, because it meant that he could still be alive.
For Abraham, time had stopped moving. No longer did he stroll the springy, green Guendri fields with his father on sunny afternoons, with his dog Kooli trailing behind them. He no longer sat next to his father and listened as he read the Bible, or watched him paint trees, animals, and people. No longer could he look forward to his father’s coming home with stories of the people he had met and the places he had visited. He would no longer have someone at home to call Baba.
Abraham would never accompany his mother, as he had been told he would do after he turned seven, to watch his father compete in the horse races at the yearly Ba’tha Mariam Church festival. There were so many ways he would miss his father. Abraham felt a deep void in his heart. To fill it, he vowed to avenge his missing father and coin once he got old enough and could afford a gun.
The mother, afraid more misfortune could befall them if they stayed, decided to abandon her estate and move to the valley where her beloved cousins, Adamu and Kindé, lived near her younger brother and an uncle. She thought that the mountains would serve as barriers to her past, and that she and her children would be with relatives who would protect them.
To this end, they walked the hundred miles, driving their animals and carrying their possessions on their backs and heads. And it was during this journey, when they rested under the seamless shadow of the gottem tree that the mother gathered the children around her and said, “You promise me that as long as I am alive, you will never share with strangers we meet in the new place what has happened to your father.” She looked into the eyes of each child and waited until each answered with her or his verbal oath of “Yes, Mama.” Only Abraham had to be cajoled and begged before he complied with his mother’s request.
They settled in the hills of Avinevra, east of the Davola River, on a property owned by their relatives.
THE BRILLIANT RED AND GOLDEN yellow rays of the sun that greeted Abraham’s eyes this morning were reminiscent of that childhood day so many years ago, when nothing was more important than the thoughts of what his birthday gift would be.
For a brief moment, Abraham even allowed himself a smile, as he reached for the bowl of face water his daughter, Hibist, had left him. He felt the cold, rough rim of the pottery and was uneasy about dipping his fingers into its contents. Abraham clenched his teeth and splashed the water on his face and dab-dried it with edge of his gabi. Afterwards, he gazed down at the leftover liquid, using it as a mirror. His father’s eyes gazed back at him and the splendid joys of a short-lived childhood dripped down his face and fell into the folds of his gabi.
The cold fact that Abraham had lost his father before he was seven years old gripped at his heart yet again. The possibilities of his life were forever to be unknown. He would never be able to pass along to his own children the love and possessions he had never received from his father. Abraham buried his face in the soft white fabric of his gabi, making sure there was no trace of that which unmasked the burden of his soul.
He uncovered his face and thought. Just as his mother died without knowing what had exactly happened to her beloved husband, so Abraham feared that he, too, might pass away without discovering what had become of his father and the precious family heirloom. For Abraham, this was a greater shame than the gossip mill his mother had dreaded—that their father had taken the coin and abandoned them! His own wife and children!
As the now older Abraham grappled with these distant childhood memories, a tantalizing notion rushed into his mind. If he had had the good fortune to receive the coin, as his mother had promised, he would have passed it on to Desta, his son, the fragile, precocious boy who was treated as an outcast by his family, because of the circumstances of his birth. Abraham felt closer to Desta than his other children, because of experiences that linked them together. Giving Desta the precious coin for his birthday would have made him feel wonderful, and he would have been happy to give it to him.
Abraham was tempted to even give Desta the empty coin box, which he had placed next to him on the bench. In recent years, he used it to store a gold pocket watch he had collected from an Italian soldier he had killed in the war. Ironically, the watch, too, had been missing for two years. The box had been a symbol of his own fatherless childhood, and he had grown to treasure it over the years. He picked it up and studied the many mystic illustrations of birds, plants, serpents, people, and cryptic writings carved on its exterior and the magical cross on its lid.
It was from the birds he studied on this box as a boy that Abraham had developed an interest in their language. He had hoped that some day one of the birds would open its beak and tell him—either in dream or wakefulness—the story of the coin.
Abraham soon abandoned the idea of giving the empty box to Desta. Surely it would have no value, and would only evoke interminable questions from the boy and the rest of the family. None of the relatives had any knowledge of their grandfather’s fate, or of the ancient coin.
All of these sentiments and contemplations were only fancies of his mind. What the family had lost so long ago would hardly turn up suddenly at their door, or fall from heaven in response to Abraham’s longings. Abraham brought his thoughts back down to reality. He had to prepare Desta for the things he must do in the months and years ahead, and engage him with Deb’tera Tayé—the Sorcerer—to solve the family’s present problem. They must find out why Saba, Abraham’s daughter from his first marriage, had suffered a string of miscarriages.
TWO
On the eve of Desta’s seventh birthday, which coincided with the day when his Coptic Christian family celebrated the birth of the Christ child, Abraham perched on a brown cowhide that his wife, Ayénat, had brought and placed outside their home. He waited for Desta to return from the creek, where the boy’s sister, Hibist, had taken him to bathe. Abraham was planning to hold a rite-of-passage ceremony for Desta that evening.
Above his home, the tall and expansive mountain had eclipsed the setting sun and draped the foothills with its shadow. In the nearby bushes, finches, weavers, and sparrows chirped and twittered excitedly, welcoming dusk.
Fingers interlocked around his bent knees and his eyes on the mountain’s shadow beneath his home, Abraham leaned back and thought about the things he would tell his son when he came to sit with him. In the front of his mind, though, were his daughter’s problems with losing her babies, which Abraham hoped Desta would help solve.
For nearly two years, Abraham and Saba’s husband, Yihoon, had taken Saba to some of the famous churches and had her drink blessed water, dabbed her belly with it, and passed the church’s crosses and the Bible over her. She had applied the recommended herbs and roots to her belly and taken them internally. The family had pledged money to angels and saints of various churches if they would help solve Saba’s problems. Finally, they had taken her on a two-day journey to a missionary clinic in Dangila. Unfortunately, the nurses there didn’t have an answer to her problems, and shortly after they returned home, she lost another baby. After each failure, it was another heartache and more misery for Saba and her family, as well as a profound disappointment for Abraham.
Abraham shuddered at these thoughts. He unlocked his hands, folded and crossed his legs and let his arm and hands gather in the space between his legs. He looked out again to the shadow of the mountain which now had passed the lower fence of his property.
After all the known or proven methods of cure for such problems had failed, Abraham and Yihoon were poised to try something new; consulting with the spirits of the valley. Deb’tera Taye, the sorcerer, had convinced them that the spirits might be the causes of Saba’s problems, including their dying animals and poorly growing crops.
Abraham knew that he would be turning his back on God and putting his own reputation on the line by engaging in witchcraft. Ayénat had vehemently opposed the idea, fearing Desta could end up being possessed by the spirits.
He had to give this last proposition a try. For Abraham, what his daughter and family were going through was akin to the mystery of his long lost father and the missing coin. He was determined to do anything to try to unravel this mystery.
A conversation from the side of the hill to his right took Abraham’s eyes from the shadow and thoughts from his daughter’s problems.
He turned and looked.
Desta and Hibist emerged, trailed by Kooli the dog. Desta wore his brand new white cotton gabi, which Ayénat had bought him for this important ceremony.
“There’s Baba,” said Hibist, pointing the moment she saw their father.
Desta looked up.
“You should go and sit with him,” said Hibist. “There are important things he wants to share with you.”
Desta’s mind raced. This was the first time his Baba had invited him to sit together with him in such a formal setting—a privilege usually reserved for guests and older family members. Kooli, as if he were an extra appendage to the boy, limped behind Desta.
“Good, you are finally here, Desta,” said Abraham the moment his son arrived.
Desta exuded the spring-fresh scent of Lux soap.
“You must feel wonderful after your bath. Sit here,” said Abraham, pointing to the portion of the cowhide to his right.
Desta hesitated, then sat down. The soft, silky hair of the hide felt good on the soles of his feet.
Kooli, too, sat, but near Desta, on the grass just outside the skin. Desta studied the rich brown color of the hide. He thought if he went by the similarity of their color, he would be hard pressed not to think that the long dead cow was a blood relative of Kooli.
“The reason I invited you here this evening, son” Abraham said, looking at Desta, “is because you will turn seven tomorrow, and I want to share with you the things that will be expected of you. This meeting is your rite of passage to adulthood.”
“What things am I expected to do, Baba?” asked Desta, looking up to his father.
“As a Christian boy, you should start to fast on Wednesday and Friday and before the major holidays like Christmas and Easter. Soon after your birthday you will be trained as a sheep and cow herder to replace your brother, Damtew, who will graduate into the farm work in May,” said Abraham.
The idea of tending the animals excited Desta. This meant he would learn how to crack a whip, a device he would use to herd and drive the animals. This opportunity would also allow him to meet and play field hockey with the shepherds he had seen playing across the Davola River. But Desta didn’t like the fasting idea. Not only it was hard for him to go past midmorning without food, but he did not want to feel guilty every time he didn’t stay fasting until noon. He had seen the guilt and remorse on Hibist’s face every time she cheated and ate before the prescribed time.
“In addition,” said, Abraham, “You will be expected to bring firewood, take lunch to the farm workers, and protect the grain fields against baboons, vervet monkeys and birds.”
Although Abraham’s mentioning of the vervet monkeys pleased Desta, he didn’t like the other things he had to do. Besides Kooli, the vervets were his only other animal friends. When he thought about all the other things he would need to do, Desta’s brow knotted and his stomach lurched in fear. He began to caress the cowhide as if its soft and lustrous hair might ease his nerves.
When he noticed the frown on the boy’s face, Abraham continued, “Furthermore, Desta,” he said in a low, consoling voice, “During harvest time, you will help with the cutting of the grain stalks, and gathering and transporting of bundled sheaves to the threshing floor.”
“How do you expect me to do all these things if I am going to be herding the animals?” Desta asked, disturbed by the list of things he must do once he left his childhood.
“We won’t expect you to do all these things at the same time,” said Abraham. “The extra things you will do only when we need additional hands.”
Still, Desta couldn’t believe his ears. The work his father itemized was overwhelming enough, but this was hardly what he had wanted, or what his mother had promised he would do after reaching his seventh birthday. He gazed into the shadow of the mountain, which had crossed the Davola River and was pushing the evening light up the flanks of the eastern hills, slowly measuring time and distance.
“This was not what mother said I would do after I turned seven,” muttered the boy without turning.
“What did your mother say you would do after your seventh birthday?” asked Abraham, lifting his thoughtful gaze from Kooli to Desta.
“You know I have always wanted to climb the top of these mountains so that I can see the sky up close and touch it and feel the clouds with my hands,” Desta replied.
“I know you have, son. It’s admirable that you’re still determined to go to the place of your dreams. But you need to wait until you are a little stronger before you go up there.”
Desta had wanted to make the trip to the mountaintop since he was two. He remembered a summer evening when his mother, Ayénat, had held him in her arms and leaned against the fence while they watched the gargantuan moon rise over the eastern mountains. He had stretched out his little arms and waved his dainty fingers, warbling furiously, wanting to be taken to the mountaintop so that he could touch the moon. As he grew older, it was not merely the moon he wanted to touch, but the sky and the clouds.
“And there is one critical task we’ll need your help with, Desta, once you become seven years old,” Abraham said, pensively looking at his son. “But this would not be a part of your daily work.”
“What would that be?” asked Desta, fixing his eyes on his father’s big brown orbs.
“You know your sister, Saba, has had problems with her babies dying. I understand that you can possibly help us solve this mystery.”
Desta knew Saba and Yihoon’s problems and all the failed attempts to solve them. Now, the idea that somehow he could solve their problems sounded ridiculous to him.
“This is getting strange, Baba—Are you that desperate?”
“We believe that Saba and her family’s problems may be caused by spirits who are angry with them for living on their roaming grounds,” Abraham said. “We need to contact these spirits to find out why they are unhappy and if they will give us the solutions. These creatures reveal themselves only to young people with the help of the conjurer Deb’tera Tayé. We need you and your niece, Astair to contact these creatures and find out why. . . . We plan to hold a session with them next Saturday.”
That spirits would solve human problems was a curious notion to Desta. He had thought spirits caused problems to humans by possessing them and causing them to do all kinds of crazy things. A year ago, he had seen a visiting woman engage in a wild act of eating fire while she coiled and uncoiled on the floor. Hibist told him that the woman was possessed by spirits. That he could be talking to the spirits directly both excited and frightened him.
“That was the day I had hoped you or ma could take me to the mountaintop.”
“It cannot be on that day and I don’t know when we could, either,” the father said, caressing his goatee. After looking away for a few seconds, Abraham turned to Desta and said, “May I share with you a secret?”
Desta nodded.
“I also hope to travel to a distant place, but I cannot go just yet. We can make our separate journeys—you and I—when the time is right.” Abraham had hoped sharing his own personal dreams of going to look for his father could lessen the boy’s yearning.
When he looked up, Desta caught his father gazing at the dog once again. To Desta, Kooli always seemed more important to his father than he was. As usual, he felt like an outsider.
As Desta was about to ask Abraham where he planned to go, he saw his mother and Hibist coming toward them, wearing their long beautiful white gowns which they kept off the ground with multiple rounds of colorful cotton girdles, their tufts cascading down the fronts of the gowns.
Ayénat cradled a covered basket in one arm and swung the other as if it were a device she needed to move her body through space. She appeared pleased about something. Desta thought if there was still sunlight on their side of the valley, he would have seen the glint in his mother’s patches of white hair to match her beneficent smile.
Hibist walked behind her mother carrying horn goblets, one in each hand and keeping an eye on one of them, as if worrying its contents might spill.
“I had a premonition last night as I prepared to make you something special for this meeting,” said Ayénat, as she lowered the basket and placed it before Abraham and Desta.
Hibist gingerly placed the goblets in the grass near the edge of the cowhide and secured them with rocks.
“What do you have in here?” asked Abraham, pointing to the basket, as if he needed a verbal acknowledgement of what his nose had already noted.
Ayénat lifted the lid off the basket, revealing a steaming, redolent, circular loaf roughly seven inches in diameter.
Both Abraham and Desta peered into the basket.
Hibist sat down next to Desta and peered into the basket as well. She was as much trying to see her father’s reaction to the loaf as to study the intricate relief on its surface.
Ayénat sat next to her husband and gazed at the faces of the onlookers, the way a magician would gaze at people whom he had put under his spell.
“This is an interesting dabo—loaf you have made. Thanks for bringing it,” said Abraham, turning to his wife. “Why is its top so intricate? You had never made one like this before.”
Desta’s mouth watered, his stomach turned as the rich aroma of the freshly baked bread filled his nose and traveled to his brain.
“I know it’s interesting-looking bread but does it remind you of anything?” Ayénat asked, studying her husband’s face.
“No. Like I said, it’s an interesting creation and I am glad you brought it to us because I was getting hungry.”
Desta and Hibist’s eyes shuttled from the loaf to their parents’ faces.
“I know you have never seen the object this loaf represents, but I thought some of the details you see on it could remind you of it. . . . This bread is a recreation of your family’s coin of magic and fortune!”
“Era—how . . . who showed you how to make this?” said Abraham, after it finally dawned on him. His heart leaped as if he were looking at the actual coin itself.
“Like I said, it all started with this strange premonition last night, but I must say it was from divine instruction how I actually created the design this afternoon. I don’t know anything about the coin other than the pieces of information I remember from your mother’s account. I started with the few details I recollected. With the rest of the work, a pair of invisible hands took over,” bragged Ayénat.
Abraham looked at her in awe.
“Don’t look surprised. The Good Lord, who knows about your wishes and listened to my prayers, made all this possible,” said Ayénat, glowing. “This is what I have been trying to tell you with this thing you’re fixed to do on behalf of Saba. We need to pray to God, not consult with the spirits,” said Ayénat. “It disturbs me that you involve my boy. I fear for him.”
There she goes, thought Abraham. When Ayénat was on the subject of her God, nothing of what he said mattered and he rarely challenged her. He needed to change the subject quickly.
“What do you have in those two cups?” he asked as if he wanted to hear in words, what his nose had already detected—tej—the sweet and pleasant-smelling honey wine.
“Those cups of tej, too, came by divine suggestion,” said Ayénat. “Otherwise I would have brought the usual tella—homebrewed beer.”
Abraham shook his head.
“Tell me, are we supposed to eat and drink these things?” asked Abraham, turning to the mother. The aroma of the loaf and the tej had triggered his desire for food and drink.
“Yes, of course,” replied Ayénat. “Here, I have already cut the dabo, too.” She pulled a slice out and gave it to him.
“Thank you! I have never dreamt our long-lost coin would appear in the form a loaf,” said Abraham with a smile.
“Maybe this loaf will cure of your hankering for the real thing and of your father,” said Ayénat with a smile. “You know, forty years is a long time to be thinking about an item and a person who have been lost.” She looked at Abraham, like a father who was reprimanding his son.
“It’s not a small matter to our family. It’s something very old and very precious. I cannot die without finding what exactly had happened to both my father and the coin. Thank you for this bread. It’s sweet and thoughtful. Its symbolism alone is great! I hope your premonition and whoever guided you to create it could help us solve the mystery of the lost treasure and of my father.”
“I am glad I could do it on such a very important day. I know you have said you’d have liked Desta to be the inheritor of the coin. Talk about symbolism, why don’t you take one of these slices and hand it to him first, as you had intended with the coin.”
Ayénat picked up the basket and held it before Abraham. He put his own piece to the side, took another slice from the basket, and gave it to Desta. He handed a second slice to Hibist. He picked another slice and gave to Ayénat saying, “Thank you for making this meeting more meaningful.”
Abraham’s hand dove into the basket again and re-emerged with another slice. “This piece is for Kooli, the last but not the least member of our family,” he said, placing the loaf near the dog. Kooli, who had been watching the activities of Abraham’s hand, happily grabbed his share and began to eat.
Abraham then picked up his own piece and began to eat. The assembled family members ate quietly and thoughtfully. In the intervening moments, Abraham thought about the problems of his daughter and the impending meeting with the spirits.
The evening was getting on. The shadow of the mountain had climbed up the eastern mountains, having reached the crest of the ridges. The birds chirped and rustled in the bushes less and less, and the cicadas and the crickets which were barely audible earlier had begun to make their presence known more and more. The home-bound cattle from the field below had begun to moo.
“Don’t forget the drinks,” said, Ayénat, handing Abraham the full goblet.
He took the wine from his wife’s hand after thanking her for reminding him. He swallowed his last bite of the coin-bread and cleared his throat. He then raised the goblet and said “Desta, may you become a reliable and responsible shepherd, and a good and obedient young man who brings no hardship or strife to your parents’ hearts. And may you have the industry of the bee, the wisdom and foresight of your ancestors, and the courage and fortitude of all those in our family line who defended and protected our coin of magic and fortune.
“We have two cups containing honey wine. One full, the other half full. The full cup is what we all hope to achieve in life. The half represents what life is. The important thing is to remember that life is often half full and we strive to make it full. Our world used to be full when we had our coin of magic and fortune, but now it is half full.” Abraham stopped and held his chest. He coughed, cleared his throat and continued.
“Always look at life as half full not half empty, no matter how difficult it may be. It’s this belief that sustained my mother, sisters and me after we came and settled in this hole of a place. And that is why I am still hopeful that we can someday—in my lifetime—find that coin and discover what really happened to my father.” Abraham’s voice cracked.
Ayénat came to his rescue. “We need to go. The animals will start arriving soon.”
Desta listened to his father attentively, but his eyes were on the half-filled goblet before him. He noticed that this cup was almost the exact shape as the gap in the mountain high up in the eastern ridges—the same pass through which the sun rises in the morning.
His father’s association of the half cup to life and individual efforts made Desta wonder about the sun, which he watched just about every morning as it rose through the cup-like gap in the eastern peaks.
“Does this mean the sun’s life is half full too?” asked Desta, turning to his father.
“What do you mean?” inquired Abraham.
“In December the sun comes out near the bottom of that gap in the mountain,” said Desta pointing toward the peaks. “It rises at different places along the slope as the months advance. In June it comes out at the halfway point in the rising slope and then it reverses its course from June to December. It’s almost as if it could not go to the full height of the cup.”
“I don’t know, Desta. I didn’t know it was even trying?” said Abraham.
“Yes, I watched her for the whole year and was disappointed for her not to have made it to the top,” said Desta. Suddenly his eyes filled; scared the same could happen to him when he finally went up there.
“I am sure someday it will clear the top so long as it keeps trying,” said Abraham, smiling.
Ayénat tapped Abraham’s arm. “We need to go.”
“Let’s share this wine first,” said Abraham, taking a sip. Then he passed it to Ayénat. She took a sip and passed to Hibist, who in turn took a sip and passed to Desta. The strong, suffocating aroma was enough for the boy. After just a whiff of it, he passed it back to Abraham to finish the rest of the wine.
“The half cup of wine?” asked Desta.
“This wine, we will take and pour in the river tomorrow morning,” replied Abraham.
That evening Abraham walked home happy and lightheaded, both by the effects of the honey wine and the vision of his family’s ancient coin of magic and fortune on Ayénat’s loaf. In some ways he felt he received his birthday gift forty years late. Abraham’s birthday was on Monday, two days after his Orthodox Christians Christmas and Desta’s birthday. But the last thing he thought as he crossed the doorsill of his home was the problem that had plagued his daughter and family, the one which he hoped Desta and the spirits would solve when they held the meeting in a week.
Ayénat didn’t think about anything. She merely floated home buoyed by her preternatural association with God as she was creating the image of the family’s treasure on her dabo.
Hibist was thinking about the number of cows she and Damtew would have to milk and animals they would have to put away before the evening was over.
The sparrows, the finches and the weavers retreated into their nests while the cicadas and crickets came in full force to reclaim the night.
As he walked home, Desta once more let his eyes climb the mountain. Now, only a thin ghost of light sputtered at the summit. He stood watching it, transfixed. As the last traces of light vanished, bidding him and his world farewell, Desta realized that he, too, had bidden farewell to his childhood.
THREE
In this nameless valley, Desta’s paternal grandmother had come forty years earlier to hide from her shame and assuage her fears, here, where the air was thin and clear like a pane of glass, where the wind streamed out from the eye of a needle lodged between two boulders near the sky, where the sun rose late and set early and never got hot, where life came in colors of the rainbow, where people had so little materially yet were contented as if they had everything in the world, where God reigned supreme and his believers pretended to be his devout followers but still did ungodly things in their hearts—as in promising things to children they never mean to fulfill.
It was here in the pitch-black of the night the stars above gleamed like diamonds that would at any moment tumble down and blanket the mountainsides and valley floor, where life hummed and exuded scents that one could suck up all in one breath during the day to stow in one’s lungs and nourish him while asleep. It was in this place that innocence was pure and abundant like the highland breeze, and all one could ask for to complement all this beauty and bounty was a little more love and kindness. This was Desta’s world. With the mountains for walls and the sky for roof, it was his universe.
The east was separated from the west by the Davola River that sliced the valley floor as it snaked south to north, being fed along the way by rivulets of creeks that came down from the sides of the mountains. The west was wild, and at first, Desta’s family was the only homestead. The rugged terrain was enveloped with a dense forest that ran for twenty-five miles along the mountain façade. In the north and in parts of the east, low-lying plateaus and rolling hills pegged against the mountains dominated the view. A hamlet of villages and a quilt of farmland adorned the flatter terrain, the sides of the mountains, and the sloping hills. Trees and bushes lined the meandering creeks and property boundaries. Two churches, one to the north, another to the south, were enveloped by their groves of tsed—juniper trees—that rose from the sides of the mountains like bumps on a tree trunk.
DESTA WAS A FOUR-FOOT, five-inch tall, dark olive-skinned boy. He lived with his parents, a brother and sister—the fourth and sixth youngest of his six siblings—along with three horses, three mookit goats, a dozen chickens, a dog and a cat, all in a single circular structure made of wood and earth and topped by a conical roof of bamboo and grass.
The living quarters were apportioned as follows: as one entered the home, the horses’ stall was on the right, followed by the goats’ cubicle and a larder that was used to store food and pots and pans, house three granaries and serve as a brewery. Continuing to circumnavigate the interior of the home, a closet containing two large wooden boxes and two round-bellied baskets was used to hold the family’s spare clothes and jewelry. Next came a built-in bedding area approximately three feet high by seven feet long by twelve feet wide, partitioned in the middle by a four-foot wall. Each half of the bedding area could comfortably sleep three adults or four children. The last was the mill room, with two sets of grinding stones abutting the opposite walls.
The center of the house was divided by a two-foot by four-foot parapet on either side of a round, roof-bearing center post. The living room was on one side of the parapet, the kitchen on the other. There was a fireplace in each, with three tapering stones roughly six inches tall used to support cookware.
Above the animal stalls were two lofts. One was used to store firewood and as a roosting place for the chickens at night, the other as a sleeping quarter for Desta’s brother Damtew.
The only pieces of furniture in the house were a two-foot by four-foot bench and a round, concave stool. The bench, made from a solid piece of wood, belonged to Abraham. The stool, often found in the kitchen, was used by Ayénat or any other woman who was cooking.
It was what he saw, heard and experienced in this home which molded and shaped Desta the boy and the adult he was to become.
LOOKING BACK, it would be exactly seven years earlier, on a frosty Friday morning, just after the first guttural calls of the colobus monkeys from the nearby forest, before the first fleeting rays of the sun landed on the peak above their home, that Desta pushed on his mother’s uteral portal. It was as if he had timed his exit with the arrival of sunlight that was soon to come filtering through the cracks in the walls at the bottom of his parents’ high earthen bed. At this time of the year, the sun rose near the lowest point but on the right slope of the cup-shaped gap in the eastern mountains.
Ayénat, who had been in labor since midnight, had expected the worst. So did Abraham and the rest of the family. The new baby’s arrival had not been expected for another two months. Preparing for the worst but hoping for the best, Abraham had gone when dawn barely broke and returned with a root of a secret plant to promote the baby’s fast delivery. The efficacy of the plant as a delivery aid was by association rather than by the direct contact with the patient. So Abraham had placed it in the exterior wall opening through which the horses’ manure is removed from their stall, located to the right of the entrance. Abraham was now sitting next to his wife, not far from the fireplace in the center of their living quarters. Some of the family sat by the fire with their heads down, as if sad that their Christmas was about to be marred. Others hovered around the mother, encou
As fortune would have it, not long after their father placed the baby-delivering aid, there arrived a fist-sized squirming baby, much to the glee of the family.
The baby wished someone would quickly free him from the slippery cord that bound him to his mother. He had long waited for this moment, to be extricated from his mother and her problems. It had been a rough life inside the womb, and a tough journey to the exit. To everyone’s surprise and fear, the boy didn’t cry, as if wishing to preserve his tears for much-needed times down the road. He didn’t open his eyes, as if afraid to see his brother, Damtew, who momentarily sat by their mother, quiet and gloomy, gazing at him.
Although the odds favored survival for a seven-month premature birth to a six or even an eight-month term, why the baby came so early without any attributable causes was a mystery to those who were now congregated around the mother and gazing down on the skinny baby who appeared to have shriveled by the morning chill. But there were causes. They just didn’t know, except perhaps Ayénat.
IT WAS IN EARLY JUNE, at the time of the year when the sun rose nearly as high as it could go on the right slope of the cup-shaped gap in the eastern mountains, when Ayénat had conceived Desta. That was the beginning of the rainy season and a frantic time for farm workers. For Ayénat, besides the domestic exertion of grinding grains, preparing food, fetching water from the creek, washing clothes, part of her day; the other part—when she had respite from her domestic chores—she had to go help out on the farm for an hour or two. When her mind was so preoccupied in her work, she often forgot to feed herself and the baby inside her. When she did remember to eat, she nibbled on skimpy injera—flat, spongy bread—with pea sauce. Injera almost exclusively made from teff—a grain a quarter the size of a rice berry—which, along with pea or bean sauce, was the staple food of the family for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The other grains, barley and rye, were used to make dabo or tella.
These foods, together with teff, were the only foods consumed daily in one form or another. There were no vegetables to speak of, except for the potatoes and gomen—collard green—that appeared on the family’s meal platter during the rainy season. In those wet months, they had plenty of collard green that was chopped, cooked and served after being mixed with a spiced butter and sometimes ground flax seeds.
This was the only color in their meals, and the only food that kept its color after it went through their bodies. If one or two spoonfuls of cheese made a cameo appearance next to the subdued green and the muted brown injera and pea sauce, it was more for variety than its substantive benefit to the body.
Fruits never grew in The Hole. Nobody had ever heard of lemons, oranges, and bananas and people wouldn’t have known what to do with them if they were given any. Berries and figs grew plentifully in the forest, but only during the dry season and even then, only used as snacks for children.
Although there were sufficient eggs and milk in the home, they were never part of the family’s diet. “Milk is for babies,” they’d say, “because babies don’t have teeth yet to tear and chew the spongy injera.” Eggs were to make chicks, which if they were spared from hawks by day and foxes by night, grew to become chickens that had one purpose—to produce more chicks and repeat the cycle. The family rarely killed a chicken to consume its meat as an everyday meal. They only did so when a very important guest came to visit, or sometimes as supplemental meat during the holidays. In the rainy season, no guests came, so Ayénat would forego killing a chicken for a meal. Lamb, goat and beef were consumed only during the holidays—Christmas, Easter, the New Year or at weddings and other major events.
Ayénat didn’t eat until two or three in the afternoon on Wednesday and Friday—the two fast days of the week. For Filseta—the first two weeks of August—she fasted until four or five every day. Although as a pregnant woman she had the option not to fast, Ayénat would indeed fast. She would rather risk the life of the baby that was inside her than offend her God.
And then, too, with every emotional and physical stress Ayénat experienced, the baby became the recipient through the lifeline that linked the two. He heard, felt, saw, tasted and experienced what his mother heard, felt, saw, tasted and experienced.
Two of her assistants—a young man and a girl—vanished without a trace at the end of September. Abraham had brought the two people from a faraway land when they were just teenagers to help his wife before he went off to fight in the Italian war. They disappeared, possibly running off together, leaving Ayénat with not just part of the domestic work, but all of it.
Asse’ged, the second oldest son, was old enough to handle the farming. Teferra, the oldest son, worked for Abraham’s mother across the Davola River, up on the plateau of Avinevera. Tamirat, the third oldest boy, studied at church school miles away. Damtew, the fourth male child, herded the animals.
Abraham was always gone on business trips, leaving the farm work to the family. As days added to weeks and weeks to months, miraculously, the baby continued to grow like an extra appendage Ayénat didn’t need or want. She hated Abraham for impregnating her, especially since she had already given him six children and the two had so little love for one another. Not only was Abraham often gone, but when he managed to be home, he showed little affection for Ayénat.
Unloved, unwanted and malnourished by the mother and father, by the end of the harvest season, it seemed, the baby could no longer endure his hardships. He decided to exit two months earlier than planned that morning on January 7, 1949 and take his chances for a better life in the outside world. He no longer wished to stay in that dark, famished and trouble-filled world of his mother’s womb.
LEAVING THE MOTHER and baby to rest, the family congregated around the fireplace. Enat, the baby’s fifth youngest sibling had sprinkled the floors with kettema—long, pulpy grass—and had placed goat and antelope skins over them. These were sitting mats for the Christmas guests. That day Abraham killed a lamb in honor of the Christ child. The meat was made into a sauce and served to the guests.
Throughout the day, the new family member lay peacefully with just the company of his mother’s breathing. He was cherishing the much-needed rest. The family got busy with the preparations for the celebration of the birth of Christ. Nobody came to check on the baby, other than Ayénat’s hands and eyes that hovered over his chest and face to see that he was still breathing. Even with the rest of his family present, the baby felt unwelcomed and abandoned.
AFTER DINNER, the family discussed a name they should give to the new baby. Ayénat spoke up and said, “Let’s call him Amanuel, to signify the day of the Christ child.” Other family members proposed different names: Habtamu, Adissu and Mullat. Abraham quietly thought about an appropriate name, while the others were rattling off their choices for the baby’s name. “Desta—happiness—would be a fitting name,” he said with finality.
When Ayénat bridled at this, he said, “I think it would be appropriate because—” he began reciting his reasons and pulling up a finger for each as he did so—“One, this is a very happy time for our country. The Italians are long gone, and your father has won medals for warfront deeds against the invaders and our Negus, God bless him, is ruling the country peacefully.”
He held up his second finger and continued. “Two, here at home everything is good with us. Our crops are growing abundantly, our animals are thriving, and we have all this land to prosper and flourish.”
Abraham then pointed to the infant and added, “This boy is the first to be born here in this place. You know, after I returned from the Italian war I had an epiphany. I looked at you all—four boys and two girls—and I saw that some of you boys had grown to be strapping men since the last visit from the warfront. Then I studied the vast forested flanks of the western mountains. Knowing that I would soon need more land for my growing family, I crossed the Davola River and claimed a total of seven hundred acres of virgin land separated by deep running creeks.
“That is a wonderful story and those are wonderful reasons to call our son Desta, but I’m not so sure I like that name,” said the mother.
“Ahh, but there is more.” He held up a third finger. “The boy arrived on Christmas day, the day when we all are here happily gathered to celebrate the event. What is more, we had feared a miscarriage last night when Ayénat went into labor. Instead, we have a small, but healthy-looking, baby. So we all should be happy. So, Desta will be his name!”
Nobody would challenge Abraham once he spoke in that tone of voice. Ayénat whimpered a protest, but it was to no avail.
THE NEXT SEVEN YEARS of Desta’s life were not an improvement over his life in his mother’s womb, especially when it came to quality nourishment. But in this new world, which to Desta still felt like a womb, he had freedom. He no longer was the bearer of his mother’s daily trials and tribulations, and he could move freely in the open space.
In Ayénat’s mind, the question that had not been answered was why Desta turned out a boy instead of a girl.
To balance out the four boys that were born in a row, all Ayénat wanted was more girls. She already had two and hoped for two more if Providence was good to her. Was this what Damtew meant when he used to call him a mistake, that nature somehow mistakenly assigned a male organ to Desta instead of a female’s? Neither the boy nor anyone else would have the answer to this question. He was happy, for better or worse, that he was a boy and not a girl.
DESTA WOKE on his seventh birthday, Saturday, January seventh, more confused and frustrated than when he had gone to bed the night before. In his dream, while standing in the middle of the cattle field below his home at high noon, when his own shadow circled his feet, mirroring the celestial orb above his head, a strange old man with cotton-white hands had appeared and given him a circular yellow metallic disk, one tenth the size of his own shadow. The man said that the disk was his birthday present. Desta was thrilled that somebody had loved him and thought of him as special—and not a mistake, and deserving of a gift unlike anything he had ever seen before.