The Chains of Heaven: An Ethiopian Romance. Philip Marsden

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СКАЧАТЬ just the sound of the running dogs. It was said they were the guard dogs and pedigree pets of the old nobility—those families whom the revolution had chased abroad or imprisoned or shot. It was also said that during the Red Terror they had developed a taste for human flesh.

      There were still stray dogs. But the years in between had levelled the pedigrees to a sort of uni-dog. The sounds of the night now were more varied—screeching cats, night traffic, and at dawn the sound of a dozen muezzin echoing through the city. The churches’ amplified prayers began a little later.

      One morning I revisited the Institute of Ethiopian Studies. I used to spend days up in the empty reading room, countering the fear and reticence of Addis with the enthusiasm of previous generations of travellers, historians and archaeologists. The institute was housed in the emperor’s first palace. Under the Derg, Haile Selassie’s private quarters were closed off, but now, at the end of a corridor behind the museum, I found myself in the empress’s bedroom. Across the hall were the emperor’s own rooms, and in his bathroom I met a man who for thirty years had worked as his valet.

      Our voices echoed off the marble surfaces. Through the window, students went to and fro beneath the date palms. Mammo Haile had chaotic teeth, a hangdog expression, and an undimmed devotion to his master.

      ‘Day and night His Majesty thought only about his people. He was always thinking how to develop them. I have such a deep emotion when I think of him.’ Mammo Haile looked away. ‘His Majesty had a special way with dogs. If we were travelling and he saw some stray dogs he would say, Mammo Haile, please round up those dogs! I want to give them breads. His Majesty’s favourite dog was Lulu.’

      I had seen a picture of Lulu sitting in the emperor’s lap while he stroked her with his small, feminine hands. She was a tiny, frog-eyed Chihuahua.

      ‘If there was a reception Lulu would go round among the legs of the officials. If one of them was holding a bad feeling about His Majesty, Lulu would touch the man’s foot and that was how His Majesty knew. One minister was very popular but Lulu touched his foot and after that no one trusted that man again. Lulu was a very brilliant dog.’

      ‘What happened to her?’

      ‘Paul killed her.’

      ‘Paul?’

      ‘Big palace dog. Like a big fighter, like a wrestling man. He took Lulu by the neck and shook her and shook her. She was only a tiny dog—and finito! Lulu finito. Such a tiny little dog.’ He looked down, toeing the ground with his shoe. I thought he would cry.

      ‘It was only a year or two after that when they took His Majesty away.’

      During that first week back in Addis someone gave me the name of Dejazmach Zewde Gabre-Selassie, who had been a minister under both the imperial regime and the Derg. He was the great-grandson of Emperor Yohannis IV, and was now living with a friend while he tried to get his own house back. ‘Wretched Derg confiscated it.’

      Dejazmach Zewde was a charming, egg-shaped man with a marcel wave in his hair and a patrician manner. He had spent years as an academic in Oxford—‘I think my happiest years’—but a few months before the revolution, Haile Selassie had called him back to be Minister of the Interior.

      ‘It was my job to deal with the Derg. At that time I have to say they were really pretty amateurish. Used to park a tank outside the ministry for meetings, that sort of thing. Once they came to me and demanded the release of political prisoners. I said to them, Do you mean a complete amnesty, or some sort of selective policy? And they said, We don’t know.’ The dejazmach laughed. ‘They didn’t know! Well, come back when you do, I told them, and they just sat there. Well? I said. We can’t go back to barracks empty-handed. So I decided to call their bluff. Why not demand constitutional reform? Two weeks later they came back and said, We demand constitutional reform! So we appointed another committee to look at reform. Thought it might check the Derg’s power. Trouble is, the Derg started to arrest that committee.’

      ‘Did you know Mengistu?’

      He nodded. ‘First time I met Mengistu was at a big meeting I called with the Derg. He was just a low officer then. Fifty members came and the senior ones were sitting and the rest were standing. One of those standing held up his hand. Minister, please, what do you think of socialism? he says. Well, I told him, there are different shades of socialism. In England there is Fabian socialism and then you have Swedish-style socialism and at the other end Albanian socialism. So if you mean policies aimed at achieving equality, I would say yes—but in general I am not for socialism.’

      ‘And that was Mengistu?’

      ‘That was him, yes.’

      ‘So what about the emperor?’ I asked. ‘Did you admire him?’

      The dejazmach did not answer at once. He gazed up at the ceiling with such trance-like neutrality that I thought he hadn’t heard.

      ‘Earlier on, he was an astonishing figure. Decisive, effective, punctual. His greatest weakness was that he could not share power. I think that was it…Yet right at the end he had an amazing calm. Everyone else was nervous and jumpy, but he was calm. Just before he fell, I went to see him. The Derg were pretty much in control by then. They’d shown the Jonathan Dimbleby film exposing the famine, and said on television that no one should go to the palace, none of the workers or retainers. I was really very upset by the film—on the emperor’s behalf. So I went to see him. He was alone. The palace was completely empty. Just the two of us. He wanted to talk about foreign matters. I had just been in Iran and he said: So tell me, how is the shah? Two days later they took him away. They asked me to be foreign minister. I still thought it would all turn out all right, so I accepted. But then came Black Saturday.’

      ‘What was that?’

      ‘Hauled sixty of those out of the cellar beneath the throne room and shot them. I was in New York when I heard. Resigned at once.’

      Two days later, through a coffee merchant, I was introduced to the emperor’s grandson. Prince Ba’eda Maryam Makonnen had a business importing coffee machines. He was an ordinary looking Ethiopian in a zip-up cardigan—but on his index finger he wore a signet ring with a gold relief of a lion and staff, the Conquering Lion of the King of Judah.

      Ba’eda was the son of Haile Selassie’s favourite child, the Duke of Harar, who had been killed in a car crash when Ba’eda was only fourteen days old. With his brothers and sisters he had then gone to live with his grandfather in the Jubilee Palace. Later he was one of those imprisoned in the Ghibbi, the Grand Palace.

      ‘When we were in prison Mengistu came to see us. He was always very polite. He called my grandfather Getay—master—and always made sure to salute him.’

      In the end Ba’eda was moved to the cellar beneath the throne room. He passed me on to another of its inmates. I went to see Teshome Gabre-Maryam on a warm, sunny afternoon. He had served in the emperor’s government and was now a prosperous lawyer. He worked in an office in the leafy compound of his home. When I arrived he was with another man, General Negussie Wolde-Mikhael.

      Thirty years of power shifts had seesawed the lives of these two men. They had both begun their careers under the emperor. They were both high-fliers: Teshome had helped draft the constitution, General Negussie was chief of police in Addis. But when the Derg came, it had imprisoned one and promoted the other. While Teshome counted off the months and years in the palace cellar, General Negussie was made Chief Justice of the Martial Court.

      ‘One СКАЧАТЬ