swim and forget all about this.”
He gave us each a final hug. “If I find Mekonnen, then he'll be here with his taxi the usual time. If I don't find him, I'll be here myself at four.” When I was about to enter my classroom, I turned back to look. Ghosh was still standing there, waving.
Loomis Town & Country was abuzz. I heard boasts of what the other kids had seen and done. I felt no desire to contribute or listen.
THAT DAY, while we were in school, four men in a jeep came to visit Ghosh. They took him away as if he were a common criminal, his hands jacked up behind his back. They slapped him when he tried to protest. Hema learned this from W. W. Gonad, who told the men they were surely mistaken in taking away Missing's surgeon. For his impertinence W.W. got a boot in his stomach.
Hema refused to believe Ghosh was gone. She ran home, certain that she'd find him sunk into his armchair, his sockless feet up on the stool, reading a book. In anticipation of seeing him, in the certainty that he would be there, she was already furious with him.
She burst through the front door of our bungalow. “Do you see how dangerous it is for us to associate with the General? What have I been telling you? You could get us all killed!” Whenever she came at him like that, all her cylinders firing, it was Ghosh's habit to flourish an imaginary cape like a matador facing a charging bull. We found it funny, even if Hema never did.
But the house was quiet. No matador. She went from room to room, the jingle of her anklets echoing in the hallways. She imagined Ghosh with his arm twisted behind his back, being punched in the face, kicked in the genitals … She ran to the commode as her lunch came up. Later she lit incense, rang the bell, and vowed that she'd make pilgrimages to the shrines at Tirupati and Velankani if they released Ghosh alive.
Hema picked up the phone to tell Matron. But the line was dead. The phones had stopped working when the bombs fell, and ever since, they had only worked sporadically. She stood looking out of the kitchen window.
Ghosh's car was at the hospital. But even if she got in the car, where was she supposed to go? Where had they taken him? And if she went and they arrested her as well, then her sons would be left alone … It took a monumental effort of will for her to decide to wait for us.
Hema could hear a sobbing monologue from the servant's quarters— the voice was Rosina's, though it was hoarse and sounded nothing like her. It was addressed to Zemui, or to God, or to the men who killed her husband. It had begun that morning, and it had not reached its zenith.
Hema saw Genet emerge, red-eyed but composed, leading a wobbly Rosina. They were heading for the outhouse. They had no one to mourn with them other than Almaz and Gebrew, who at that moment were elsewhere. Hema felt that Genet had aged suddenly, that a hardness had crept into the little girl's face, and the sugar and spice and everything nice had died.
Hema splashed water on her cheeks. She took a deep breath. It was crucial that she stay calm for our sakes, she told herself.
She drank a glass of water that had passed through the purifier. She had just put the glass down when Almaz came running in. “Madam, don't drink the water. They are saying the rebels poisoned the water supply.”
But it was too late because Hema felt her face burning and then came the worst belly cramps of her life.
26. The Face of Suffering
WHEN GEBREW MET US at the gate and said men had come and snatched Ghosh from Missing, my childhood ended.
I was twelve years old, too old to cry, but I cried for the second time that day because it was all I knew to do.
I was not yet man enough to sweep into the house of whoever had taken Ghosh away and rescue him. The only skill I had was to keep going.
Shiva was ashen, silent. For a brief moment I felt immensely sad for him, my handsome brother who had the reached the height of a teenager without shedding the rounded shoulders of boyhood. His eyes reflected my pain, and for that instant we were one organism, with no separation of flesh or consciousness. And we ran as one being, The Twins, up the hill, frantic to get home.
WE FOUND HEMAon the sofa, pale, sweaty, wet strands of hair sticking to her forehead. Almaz, her cheeks tear-stained, and looking nothing like the stoic Almaz we knew, was by Hema's side, holding a bucket.
“She drank the water,” Almaz said before we could ask. “Don't drink the water.”
“I'm all right,” Hema said, but her words were hollow.
It wasn't all right. How could she say it was? My worst nightmare had come true: Ghosh gone, and now Hema mortally ill.
I buried my face in the darkness of her sari, my nostrils filled with her scent. I felt responsible for it all. The General's ill-fated rebellion, Zemui's death, the arrest of a man who was more father to me than any man can be, and, yes, even the poison in the water …
Just then the front door flew open, and Matron and Dr. Bachelli ran in. Bachelli carried his well-worn leather bag, his chest heaving. Matron, also gasping for breath, said, “Hema! There's nothing wrong with the water. It was just a rumor. It's all right.”
Hema looked confused. “But … I've had cramps, nausea. I threw up.”
“I drank it myself,” Bachelli said. “There's nothing wrong with it. You will feel better in a few minutes.”
Shiva looked at me.
A glimmer of hope.
Hema rose then, testing her limbs, her head. Later we found out that similar scenes were playing out all over the city. It was an early lesson in medicine. Sometimes, if you think you're sick, you will be.
If there was a God, he had just given us a huge reprieve. I wanted another. “Ma, what about Ghosh? Why did they take him? Will they hang him? What did he do? Is he hurt? Where did they take him?”
Matron sat us down on the sofa. Her bright handkerchief came out. “There, there, little loves. We'll sort this out. We all need to be strong, for Ghosh's sake. Panic does not serve us.”
Almaz, silent till then, watching with her hands on her hips, interrupted to say in Amharic, “What are we waiting for? We have to go at once to Kerchele Prison. Let me get the food ready. And we need blankets. Clothes. Soap. Come on!”
THE VOLKSWAGEN FELT like a strange machine with Hema driving. Bachelli sat up front, and Almaz and Matron were in the backseat with us on their laps. We made our jerky way through the city.
I saw Addis Ababa anew. I had always thought it a beautiful city with broad avenues in its heart, and many squares with monuments and fenced gardens around which traffic had to circle: Mexico Square, Patriot's Square, Menelik Square … Foreigners, whose only image of Ethiopia was that of starving people sitting in blinding dust, were disbelieving when they landed in the mist and chill of Addis Ababa at night and saw the boulevards and the tram-track lights of Churchill Road. They wondered if the plane had turned around in the night and they were in Brussels or Amsterdam.
But in the aftermath of the coup, in the light of Ghosh's arrest, the city looked different to me. The squares which commemorated the bloodshed of Adowa and the liberation from the Italians were now fitting places for a mob to conduct a lynching. As for the villas I had once admired—pink, mauve, tan, and hidden by bougainvillea—it was in these houses that men like the General or his counterparts in the army and police plotted the revolution and its betrayal. There was treachery in the streets, treachery in the villas. I could smell it. Perhaps it had always been there.
SOON WE WERE AT the green gates of the prison everyone called Kerchele, a corruption of the Italian word
