Beneath the Lion's Gaze Read Free Page B

lone voice climbed above the din and clamor, a prayer, and for a moment, a deep hush fell upon the scene and all that was heard were the churnings of engines.
    They were approaching Yekatit 12 Martyrs’ Square at Sidist Kilo, near Haile Selassie University where Yonas taught history and Dawit was studying in the law program. In the square was an obelisk monument that honored the victims of an Italian-era massacre. At the top of the obelisk, a stone lion gazed proudly across the city, defiant. Four imposing tanks rested at each corner of the intersection. Two soldiers paced, their gazes lifting from their shoes as Hailu drove by. They watched the Volkswagen pass, then turned their attention back to their boots.
    “They’re younger than some of the university students they’re supposed to be watching,” Yonas said. “Boys.” There was an overturned bus in the distance and a small crowd of street boys milling around with stones in their hands, kept at bay by soldiers’ kicks.
    Hailu knew if Dawit had been there, he would have said something, would have made a passionate declaration about the need for a new constitution and freedom of expression, for land reform that gave the farmer ownership of what he tilled, for the removal of an old, tired monarch. But he wasn’t, and there was nothing in the brief pause that followed Yonas’s words but the rumble and rattle of trucks and cars whizzing past them and out of sight. Hailu slowed to let a young boy and his sheep pass. He stared at his hands, age spots now dotting the skin above his wrist, and he thought back to the day he first saw Selam’s tattoos, inked into her hands a week before their wedding.
    “It’s God’s mark on me,” she’d said, blushing as he ran a thumb over a tattoo that was as green as a fresh leaf. “It keeps evil away.”
    His own mother had similar crosses gracing the lines of her jaw, but he’d wanted to goad the young girl into showing the temper her older brothers complained about. “What if I don’t want a wife with a cross carved into her skin?”
    “I’ll tell my father to find someone else for me. He’ll choose another man.”
    “And what if no one wants a rejected girl?” He had been a brash student, feeling very bold in front of this beautiful girl from his village.
    She stayed calm. “God doesn’t take without giving.” Even back then, her confidence had shaken his.
    “God doesn’t take without giving,” Hailu repeated now to himself, wishing he could summon up her certainty.
    “Did you say something, Abbaye?” Yonas asked.
    “Your mother’s tattoos, the crosses,” Hailu said. “I love them, I always have.” He shook his head, and drove the rest of the way in silence.
    YONAS HAD EXPECTED his father to disappear into his office and change into his white coat as soon as he entered the hospital, to perhaps tuck his prayer beads into the large pocket in front, then hide his anxiety behind a professional demeanor. Instead, Hailu took the beads out of his pocket the moment he stepped out of the car. He held them in plain sight. Then he headed for Selam’s room and became just another nervous husband on his way to see his wife, his steps so wide and fast that Yonas was left several paces behind him.
    In the hospital room, in a small bed tucked beneath a small window, Selam slept with an IV snaking out of her thin arm. She was dressed in a blue hospital gown. Her gold cross necklace rested on a chest that rose and sank with the help of an oxygen tank. Hailu stood by her feet, poring over her medical chart. Yonas reached for her hands. He kissed the tattoos on the back of her wrists, and he closed his eyes.
    I told your father these crosses needed their own space, his mother said to him long ago, holding up her wrists and angling the inked crosses into the sun. Yonas had been forced to squint against the light that seeped into the prayer room adjoining his parents’ master bedroom. I told him he must build me a room big