Beneath the Lion's Gaze Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Part One

  Book One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part Two

  Book Two

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Book Three

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Book Four

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Author’s Note

  Bibliography

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Beneath the Lion’s Gaze opens in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1974, on the eve of a revolution. Yonas kneels in his mother’s prayer room, pleading to his god for an end to the violence that has wracked his family and country. His father, Hailu, a prominent doctor, has been ordered to report to jail after helping a victim of state-sanctioned torture to die. And Dawit, Hailu’s youngest son, has joined an underground resistance movement – a choice that will lead to more upheaval and bloodshed across a ravaged Ethiopia.

  Maaza Mengieste’s powerful debut tells a gripping story of family and of the bonds of love and friendship set in a time and place that has rarely been explored in fiction. It is a story about the lengths to which human beings will go in pursuit of freedom and the human price of a national revolution. Emotionally gripping, poetic and indelibly tragic, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze is a transcendent story that introduces a powerful new voice.

  About the Author

  Maaza Mengiste was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. A recent Pushcart Prize nominee, she was named ‘New Literary Idol’ by New York Magazine. Her work has appeared in The Baltimore Review, Ninth Letter and 420pus, has been translated and published into German and Romanian for Lettre International, and can be found in the Seal Press anthology Homelands: Women’s Journeys Across Race, Place and Time. She has received fellowships from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Yaddo. She currently lives in New York.

  For my grandparents,

  Abebe Haile Mariam and Maaza Wolde Hanna.

  And for my uncles, Mekonnen, Solomon, Seyoum,

  and all who died trying to find a better way.

  We are the humbled bones

  Bent in the thick of your silence.

  Ask of your father God who elected you

  Why he has forsaken us.

  —TSEGAYE GABRE-MEDHIN

  PART ONE

  BOOK ONE

  1.

  A THIN BLUE VEIN pulsed in the collecting pool of blood where a bullet had lodged deep in the boy’s back. Hailu was sweating under the heat from the bright operating room lights. There was pressure behind his eyes. He leaned his head to one side and a nurse’s ready hand wiped sweat from his brow. He looked back at his scalpel, the shimmering blood and torn tissues, and tried to imagine the fervor that had led this boy to believe he was stronger than Emperor Haile Selassie’s highly trained police.

  This boy had come in shivering and soaked in his own blood, in the latest American-style jeans with wide legs, and now he wasn’t moving. His mother’s screams hadn’t stopped. Hailu could still hear her just beyond those doors, standing in the hallway. More doors led outside to an ongoing struggle between students and police. Soon, more injured students would fill the emergency rooms and this work would begin all over again. How old was this boy?

  “Doctor?” a nurse said, her eyes searching his above her surgical mask.

  The heart monitor beeped steadily. All was normal, Hailu knew without looking, he could understand the body’s silent language without the help of machinery. Years of practice had taught him how to decipher what most patients couldn’t articulate. These days were teaching him more: that the frailty of our bodies stems from the heart and travels to the brain. That what the body feels and thinks determines the way it stumbles and falls.

  “How old is he?” he asked. Is he the same age as my Dawit, he thought, one of those trying to lead my youngest son into this chaos?

  His nurses drew back like startled birds. He never spoke during surgery, his focus on his patients so intense that it had become legendary. His head nurse, Almaz, shook her head to stop anyone from answering him.

  “He has a bullet in his back that must be taken out. His mother is waiting. He is losing blood.” Almaz spoke quickly, her eyes locked on his, professional and stern. She sponged blood away from the wound and checked the patient’s vital signs.

  The hole in the boy’s back was a punctured, burned blast of muscle and flesh. The run towards the bullet had been more graceful than his frightened sprint away. Hailu imagined him keeping pace with the throngs of other high school and college students, hands raised, voice loud. The thin, proud chest inflated, his soft face determined. A boy living his moment of manhood too early. How many shots had to be fired to turn this child back towards his home and anxious mother? Who had carried him to her once he’d fallen? Stones. Bullets. Fists. Sticks. So many ways to break a body, and none of these children seemed to believe in the frailty of their muscles and bones. Hailu cut around the wound and paused for one of his nurses to wipe the blood that flowed.

  The whine of police cars flashed past the hospital. The sirens hadn’t stopped all day. Police and soldiers were overwhelmed and racing through streets packed with frenzied protestors running in all directions. What if Dawit were there amidst those running, what if he were wheeled into his operating room? Hailu focused on the limp body in front of him, ignored his own hammering heart, and put thoughts of his son out of his mind.

  HAILU SAT IN HIS OFFICE under a pale light that threaded its way through open curtains. He stared at his hand lying palm open in his lap and felt the solitude and panic that had been eating into the edges of his days since his wife Selam had gone into the hospital. Seven days of confusion. And he’d just operated on a boy for a gunshot wound to the back. After years as a doctor, he knew the rotations and shifts of his staff, the scheduled surgeries in any given week, Prince Mekonnen Hospital’s daily capacity for new patients, but he could no
t account for his wife’s deteriorating condition and this relentless drive of students who demanded action to address the country’s poverty and lack of progress. They asked again and again when Ethiopia’s backward slide into the Middle Ages would stop. He had no answers, could do nothing but sit and gaze in helplessness at an empty hand that looked pale and thin in the afternoon sun. He feared for Dawit, his youngest son, who also wanted to enter the fray, who was not much older or bigger, nor more brave, than his permanently crippled patient today. His wife was leaving him to carry the burden of these days alone.

  There was a knock at his door. He looked at his watch, a gift given to him by Emperor Haile Selassie when he’d returned from medical school in England. The emperor’s piercing eyes, rumored to hold the power to break any man’s will, had bore into Hailu during the special palace ceremony to honor young graduates recently returned from abroad.

  “Do not waste your hours and minutes on foolish dreams,” the emperor had said, his voice cool and crisp. “Make Ethiopia proud.”

  The knock came again. “Dr. Hailu,” Almaz said.

  “Come in,” Hailu said, turning in his chair to face the door.

  “You’ve finished your shift.” She stood in the doorway. “You’re still here.” Almaz, in her usual custom, turned all her questions into declarations. She cleared her throat and adjusted the collar of her white nurse’s uniform. She matched him in height, very tall for a woman.

  “There was a teachers’ union strike,” he said. “The emperor’s forbid the police to shoot at anyone, but look what happened already.” He sighed tiredly. “I want to make sure no other emergencies come in. And I need to check on Selam soon.”

  Almaz raised a hand to stop him. “I already checked on her, she’s sleeping. There’s nothing for you to do here anymore,” she said. “You’ve already done your shift, go home.”

  “My sons have to see her,” Hailu said. “I’ll go and come back.”

  Almaz shook her head. “Your wife always complained about your stubbornness.” She took his coat from the hanger on the door and held it out for him. “You’ve been working too hard this week. You think I haven’t noticed.”

  Almaz was his most trusted colleague. They had been working together for nearly two decades. He could feel her searching his face.

  The rattle of a heavy falling object echoed in the corridor. It was coming from beyond the swinging doors, from the intensive care unit.

  “What was that?” Hailu asked. He stood up and walked over to get his coat. It was then he realized how tired he was. He hadn’t eaten since the night before in Selam’s room, and he’d spent the entire day operating.

  Almaz shook her head and led him out of his office. She closed the door gently behind them and motioned him towards the exit. “I’ll tell you later. Something with one of the prisoners.”

  In the last few weeks, the ICU ward, headed by another doctor, had become the designated location for some of the emperor’s officials, old men well past their prime who had been arrested without charges and had fallen ill while in prison because of preexisting ailments and lack of medical supervision. So far, the hospital had been able to function normally, no irregular activity to bring undue attention to their new, special patients.

  From the direction of the noise came an angry male voice, a sharp slap, then a soft whimper. “What’s going on?” he asked again, turning around.

  “They’ve got soldiers watching one of them,” Almaz said. She pushed him on, away from the ICU. “There’s nothing you can do about it, so don’t concern yourself.” The expression on her angular face, with its pointed jaw and thin mouth, was determined. “Go.” She walked away, into another patient’s room.

  Hailu looked down at the long hallway that stretched in front of him and sighed. There was a time when he could tell what went on beyond the hospital by what he heard from inside of it, when he could piece together the shouts and brake squeals and laughter and let logic carry him to a safe assumption. But these days of riots and demonstrations made everything indecipherable. And now, what was once beyond the walls had crept inside. He turned back and decided to leave through the swinging doors of the intensive care unit, a shortcut to the parking lot.

  In the corridor of the ICU, a smooth-faced soldier no older than Dawit sat in a chair outside a room cleaning his nails with the edge of a faded button on his shirt. An old gun, dull and scratched, leaned against the wall next to him. The soldier glanced up as Hailu walked by, then turned his attention back to his nails. He chewed on a finger, then spit bits of calloused skin on the floor.

  2.

  AS MUSIC PULSED from his father’s radio, Dawit danced, lost in the throaty breaths of a singer. He spun round and round, twisted and turned, shaking his broad shoulders like a bird preparing for flight. He leapt in the cramped space of his bedroom, a slender body hurling itself up, defying the pull of his own weight. He gripped an invisible spear, his heart galloped in his chest. The song had just begun but he was already spent. The first steps of his dance had started earlier, in the deadening silence that had descended on the house after his father’s phone call from the hospital saying he was coming home and they would all visit his mother that night. She was no better. Those last words had sent his older brother Yonas to the prayer room, and Dawit to his room.

  The day after his mother had been hospitalized, neighbors had arrived at their door to pray and visit with the family. His father had rejected their condolences. “She’s on the best medication,” his father said. “She’ll be home soon. And we’re praying for her.”

  “But you shouldn’t bear this alone. It’s not good for you or your family,” the neighbors had protested. “We love Selam, let us come in and pray with you.” They tried to walk through the door and Hailu had resisted, his sons watching in stunned silence from the living room.

  “Thank you,” his father said. “It isn’t necessary. We have each other.” He had shut the door softly and turned back to them, grief fresh in his face. He’d wanted to say something, Dawit sensed it in the way his eyes lingered on each of them, but he shook his head instead and sat down in his chair.

  It was the lost way his father looked at his hands that made Dawit reach across the small table and cover them with his own. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made such a gesture towards his father, but on that day, in that quiet living room, Dawit ached for a parent’s touch and he wanted that look out of his father’s eyes.

  “Abbaye,” Dawit said, his voice shaking, his loneliness so sharp it made his chest ache, “I miss her.”

  It was the first time he’d ever seen his father collapse from the weight of emotion. He took Dawit’s hand in both of his, cradled it to his face, and called Selam’s name again and again, speaking into Dawit’s palm. The display of sorrow had forced Yonas to turn away, then get up and leave the room.

  His mother had taught him to dance eskesta, had spent hours and days with him in front of a mirror making him practice the controlled shiver of shoulders and torso that made up the traditional Ethiopian dance. The body has to move when the heart doesn’t think it can, she’d said. She lifted his arm, clenched his fist around an imaginary weapon, and straightened his back. My father danced before going to battle; the heart follows the body. Dance with all your might, dance. She’d burst into laughter, clapping enthusiastically to Dawit’s awkward attempts to move as fast as she was. You’re like a butterfly, he told her, breathless from exertion. He’d reached out and laid a hand on her fluttering shoulders. He’d been eight years old and his adoration for her loving, gentle face smiling into his made him rush to her and hug her tightly.

  The dancing lessons had begun after Dawit flung himself at his older brother one day. He’d kicked the much bigger boy with such pointed vengeance that Yonas had stumbled back, dazed, then fallen over completely, his hands still at his side. Selam’s response had been swift and decisive. In two simple movements, she warded Hailu’s blow away from Dawit and dragged the screaming
boy up the stairs and into the master bedroom. She’d held his shaking body, letting Dawit’s tears soak into her dress as she patted his back and hummed his favorite lullaby. Then, without a word, she started clapping, her hands and feet moving to a silent rhythm that seeped into Dawit and soon enveloped them both. Like this, she commanded, bringing her hands to her hips and moving her shoulders up and down. Like this. Now faster. Don’t think, move the way your heart wants you to move, ignore the body. Let the muscles go. There is no room for anger in our dances, pretend you are water and flow over your own bones. His tears stopped, his attention focused on his movement.

  These days, Dawit was forced to stay in the confines of his father’s house each night. It was Hailu’s attempt to stop him from attending meetings where students planned their demonstrations against the palace. The tensions between them were drawn tighter lately. Only dancing seemed to ease his agitation. He felt trapped in his small bedroom, in his large house that spoke, if nothing else, of his father’s dominion over the family. There would be another rally tomorrow afternoon. He was determined to go, no matter his father’s orders, despite his promise to his mother to stay away from all political activity.

  Dawit could hear his father in the living room, walking towards the stairwell. He wondered if he only imagined footsteps hesitating in front of his bedroom door. He kept on dancing. He whirled, his arms flung wide, extended wings in search of a rhythm to send him up, away from the reality of a house without his mother.

  One day, Emaye, my mother, I will put water into my bones and dance until my heart obeys. Dawit spun, eyes wide open to take in the slowly darkening sun.

  A FAINT MELODY slid from Dawit’s room into the living room where Hailu was resting, and threw him back to the days of his youth, when his and Selam’s families had gathered inside his grandfather’s tukul and drunk honey wine in celebration of the new couple’s impending first child. His cousin’s washint had filled the small hut with tunes of love and patriotism, the hollow reed instrument needling a plaintive voice into the revelry. She had been seventeen; he, an arrogant twenty-eight- year-old with an awkwardness around this girl who sometimes looked at him with childish mockery. I am your husband, he’d told her, sitting on the steps of her father’s house, and I will remain faithful to you even while in medical school in England. She’d grown quiet, unimpressed by his chivalry.