missiles were falling on the town of Goris. The first of the post-Soviet wars was beginning—just as another was ending in the Horn of Africa. Mengistu’s military machine had been propped up for years by the Soviet Union, but now his brand of hard-line Leninism was out of fashion. The removal of Moscow’s support tipped the balance in the rebels’ favour. In that crumbling southern corner of the Soviet Union I crouched in the doorways of makeshift shelters listening to their progress on a short-wave radio. The TPLF and its allies were fighting along the shores of Lake Tana, at Bahir Dar. They were marching on Addis Ababa. Their tanks were entering Revolution Square. Then they were firing on the Ghibbi, the palace where the Derg was making a final stand. Mengistu had fled.
Twelve years passed. I was involved in other places, pursuing other ideas. But Ethiopia was where it all began—and it was unfinished business. At the age of forty-two, I went back.
The arch had gone. Above the entrance to Revolution Square there was no more LONG LIVE PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM! The hoarding of Marx, Lenin and Engels had been replaced by one which warned of the dangers of HIV/Aids. Stencilled on the plate-glass front of Wonderland Tours was the silhouette of a woman’s head and: LUCY UNI-SEX HAIR SALON. The door opened on a late-afternoon hubbub of coiffurerie. The air was steamy with hair-washing. Along one wall ran a line of space-helmet driers; two or three white-coated women were giving manicures. But yes, this was the place—there was the mezzanine where Dr Mengesha had had his office; and that was where his wife Almaz sat doing the accounts. The back room had been the equipment store, where Mengesha had handed Teklu and me the equipment for Lake Tana. Now it was the Gentleman Salon.
‘Sir, please. Haircut?’ a man in a barber’s coat asked.
‘Thank you, I’m just looking.’
Under the stairs, in half-darkness, was the cashier’s desk. A woman was sitting there. I could see her now more clearly. It was Almaz.
My heart was racing. ‘You won’t remember me, but I came here twenty-one years ago—when it was Wonderland Tours.’
She smiled. She didn’t have a clue who I was.
But we went through to the Gentleman Salon and sat on a two-seater sofa. Almaz was wearing a sky-blue jacket. She placed her long fingers against her cheek. Before she married Mengesha she’d been an air hostess; it had been her face that had gazed out from posters of Ethiopian Airlines. The years had done little to her beauty.
I asked about Dr Mengesha.
‘Mengesha? They came one night and took him.’
‘Did they give a reason?’
‘They did not need a reason.’ Her voice was detached, distant. ‘Just “against the revolution”—that was all they needed to say.’
A man brought us tea on a stainless steel tray.
Slowly Almaz sipped from her cup, then replaced it in the saucer. She eased into speaking. ‘After Mengesha was taken, our son became very agitated. His school said to me, He is daydreaming, he cannot concentrate. So I thought if we could just see his father, it would be better. I went to the kebelle. I told them, Please, let me see my husband, you must let me see my husband…’
Her voice drifted off. She looked out through the open door.
‘Did they let you?’
‘We went to see him.’
‘How was he?’
‘The same old Mengesha! Joking and laughing. He was telling me, Don’t worry, Almaz, they are going to let me out very soon! He was so optimistic, always optimistic.
‘After that my son was better. But I was still worrying. I was imagining all the time, what will happen to Mengesha? And I was becoming very afraid for my son. Most mothers are pleased when they see their sons growing. But I just thought, they will take him to the army or to prison. In the end, I had to send him away. I said he was my servant’s son. They allowed him to go to the United States. It was many years before I saw him again.’
‘What about Mengesha?’
‘They moved him to another prison outside Addis. It took a long time before I could find out where it was. I used to go there with food—but I was not allowed to see him.’
A fat man in a suit came in, followed by the barber. The man took off his jacket and hung it on the coat rack. Braces swelled over his bell-shaped belly. The barber flicked open the folds of a towel and tied it around the man’s neck. He leaned back in the chair and fell asleep.
‘Then someone told me he was dead. But someone else said no, he was alive. I couldn’t imagine Mengesha dead so I convinced myself he was coming back. When the house needed redecorating, I did it in the colours he liked. He loved his books, and I took each one of them and cleaned them. After the Derg went, they opened up the prisons. I waited at home for him to come.’
We could hear the scrape of the razor on the man’s cheek. He was still sleeping.
‘One day on television there was a list of names. They said they had found papers saying Dr Mengesha Gabre-Hiwot had been killed in prison. That was how I discovered, like that.’
She was silent for a moment. ‘He loved this country. He was so proud of Ethiopia. He just wanted people to see it—“wonderland”, that’s what he thought it was.’
Reminiscence had made her fluent. ‘When I think of Mengesha now, I think of him always as an optimist. It made me afraid sometimes. It didn’t matter under the emperor. But in the Derg time, well, it was dangerous. I told him, It’s changed now, Mengesha, you cannot do that, not now. He just said, You must not worry, Almaz! He was always such an open man, so generous…
‘You know, before we were married, and he was away in Europe or America, he would telephone me every day. I would tell him it was expensive—he should not telephone. All right, Almaz, he laughed—and then the next day he would telephone me again. That was how he was.’
‘I know. What he did for me—it changed my life.’
We stood. We made our way to the front of the shop. As we
said goodbye, she cocked her head. ‘I remember you now—you went on a bus, didn’t you?’
‘That’s right. To Lake Tana.’
‘Of course. No foreigners went on buses. I said to Mengesha, This is not safe. There will be trouble. He just told me not to worry!’
‘What about Teklu, Almaz?’
‘Teklu?’
‘Teklu Abraham.’
‘He escaped to Kenya,’ she said. ‘Walking.’
‘Is he still there?’
‘No, no. He went to America—I hear he has a liquor store in Denver, Colorado.’
Addis Ababa was always a dog city. You’d hear them at night, after curfew,
