In the corner of the black and red ceramic tiled berenda, on a large birCHooma sits the once beautiful Emama Irgoyé, wrapped in a gabi and clutching her prayer book and beads.

This silence, so close to dawn is still a stranger to her and out of habit she strains to hear the once familiar sound of birds. But there are no trees, so there are no birds. Long gone the beautiful bahir zaf, grar and shola trees that surrounded the house. Gone too is the music of Memiray Awgicho’s morning classes; the duets and medleys of Qéss temirt bet: “Ha - (Ha!), Hoo - (Hoo!), Hee - (Hee!), Haa - (Haa!)…

No sound of the deff-deff t’rimss rushing of legions of servants at dawn, preparing massive breakfasts and lunches, setting out mats of berberé, misir and ater to catch the morning sun, all sound-tracked and choreographed to the slow, steady pounding that marks the first of the many rounds on the mooQeCHa; the mewQeT peppered with the sound of the morale boosting “S’kss, S’kss S’kss”.

No cows mooing, no chickens clucking, no b’gs bleating, and old Mechal, the dog, so vicious in his day, now cannot tell friend from foe. Blind, with no bark or bite, he dozes at her feet.

And so they sit in silence, one old dog and an old weather-beaten widow, breathing in the last mooTiCHa of memories, savoring, in silence, the rich residues of bitter-sweet tizita that laces the cold crisp morning air of Addis Abeba. Warm in the gabi, but warmer still in her blanket of recollections, she looks at the past, peering through the gaps of her dilapidated gates, the spaces created by greedy hands grabbing free firewood from what was formerly known as the fearsome Fitawrari’s fence.

She recalls her husband now, with his long delicate fingers that strummed the beghena during filseta Tsom and pleased her during fisik. That fateful day, Fitawrari’s fingers were frozen, rock solid and practically soldered to the huge dial of his trusted Grundig radio with the gold mesh speakers. Deep in rigor mortis when he was found, the doctor said he died from a heart attack, suffered while listening to the Land Proclamation Act.

How long has it been? 25 years! She mused over her husband’s untimely death, remembering the equally unexpected passing of her husband’s father 25 years before that. Like father like son! She shakes her head, remembering how, in the late 50s, her father-in-law had also died from a heart attack triggered by heated discussions in parliament of the first ever draft bill for land reform. Fitawrari’s father would talk in his sleep, grind his teeth and awaken from nightmares in which Minister Belete Gebre-Tsadik would announce the passing and ratification of the proposed bill. One day, it was Gabriel, she can remember it clearly, he simply did not wake up from this recurring nightmare. Both he and the proposed bill were dead and buried in the same week. Weché good, ai good...ke meret, wede meret, le meret. For land, whether freehold, nationalized or leased, in the end, it’s all burial ground, all dust to dust, she reflects, all of it a huge hulum kentu.

Emama Irgoyé forces herself back to the present and concentrates on what she can see through the gaps in her gate. It is General Wingate School. This view brings back memories of another more amusing day. It was that day that the motley crew of victorious troops had entered the city, laying siege outside the houses of all military officers of the former regime. That day, surrounding the houses of Generals, they would wait for surrender, suicide or the order to attack. They waited for General Wingate to come out. And she had watched them from this very porch, through these very gaps as they waited, tense and intense young boys and short men in uniform, waiting for General Wingate to either suddenly appear or start shooting.

Good, good Goodikonew! Emama Irgoyé now laughs to herself, recalling the first time change had come to Addis, bringing with it the amusing sides of atrocious situations and laughter that kept one from going insane. During the dark days, which started with roadblocks and searches, she herself had been stopped in her Volkswagen and an innocuous event had turned into high anxiety hell and then a laughable farce. A young new appointee, eager to fulfil his role as a fledgling disciple of the revolution, had refused to accept that the engine at the back of the Volkswagen was not a bomb, in exactly the same way that it was unacceptable that General Wingate could not be captured. Wey gizé, wey gizé!

And now, she thinks to herself, here we are, a New Year, a new time, and still the comedy of errors continues. Why, only yesterday her best friend, Woizero Tenfelesh was trying to convince her that something she told her was true. “I swear, it is true, Abayé,” she had insisted. “I swear by the 42 Tabots!” Emama Irgoyé had tried to correct her with, “Don’t you mean the 44 Tabots?” “Anchi demo,” Tenfelesh had replied, “Haven’t you heard? Two of the Tabots were Eritrean and have been deported!!!” But Woizero Tenfelesh was always a joker. Even in their childhood days, growing up in the village, she was full of stories and riddles. “Lets say you are married off to a sly old man,” she would start, “and he has to go out, but wants to make sure your wushima does not visit you in his absence. So he makes you cover the ground in the house with flour, to mark footprints, concentrating especially on the bedroom floor. So, what do you do when your lover knocks on the back window and door, Abayé?” Emama smiles, remembering how she dipped her head and covered her mouth with her hand to hide the grin and stifle the laugh at the answer she could not find. “Anchi demo, you carry him in and carry him out, of course!” said Tenfelesh. Ayii Woizero Tenfelesh, still crazy, after all these years. Only , she is not a minority.

Emama looks out at the human traffic passing by her gate, the day has begun and so, too, the craziness. Every morning, she sits here and catches snippets of conversations that all prove the prevailing insanity. A young man greets an old man: “TenastiliN Fazzer. Mazzer dehna nachew?” Someone else inquires about the availability of cooking gas and cylinders: “Qoi, Qoi,” comes the reply, “FINDOUT adrigé, TELL adergishalehu!” An older brother walking by with his younger brother advises him about his “Futirity”. Obviously, another one of those “TINKERS.” Even the signs on the streets reflect this madness: “ZE S’REE BRAZZERS” it says in fidel; or “EET EEZ ZE BEST- SHAI BET”, also in fidel.

Emama had tried to discuss this phenomenon of mixing English and Amharic with Woizero Tenfelesh. “Anchi Demo,” she said, telling her about a priest, (the Patriarch, in fact), being interviewed on radio about his habit of mixing English and Amharic. He repeated the question, incredulous at being asked. “Ma? Inné? Ingilizina inna Amaringa MeQelaQel? Inné? Inné? NYEVER!!!”

Suddenly, through the gaps, she can see Lij Awlachew hurrying towards her house for his morning coffee and breakfast. To Emama, to see him alive, everyday, each day, is a miracle that makes her heart beat with a mixture of fear of losing him, joy at having him and praise to God for letting him be, and letting her celebrate his living. For truly Awlachew is a special human being. According to Woizero Tenfelesh his sefer nickname is Landcruiser because he has been everywhere, but Emama doesn’t need a nickname to know how many miles Awlachew has travelled to get out and away from Ethiopia. Wasn’t she the one who packed his sinQ every time and welcomed him home with his newly acquired habits and stories from each leg of his various journeys?

After coming back from Djibouti, which he had reached by a boat fleeing Somalia’s civil war, he had told her of his homelessness and sleeping under street lamps on tarmacs for safety. He would sleep on the street itself, the sidewalk his pillow and his legs stretched out on the French tarmac road. This explained, he said, his strange habit of curling up his legs in his sleep every time he heard a car pass by or honk its horn.

Then he was off again, through Gonder to Sudan where he told the inquisitive immigration officer who stopped him one night in Khartoum. Awlachew told the officer he had left his passport at home. “Kem Kilo Ya passport?” had asked the official before sending Awlachew home. “How many kilos does your passport weigh?” and Awlachew had brought the phrase back with him to Addis. Next, it was Kenya via Moyale, Uganda by train, Tanzania by bus and all the way down to South Africa by truck, but still a legal way out of the continent could not be found.

From Addis, again he tried, a job in Saudi Arabia, only to be deported after failing to give up his habit of crossing himself constantly, despite having taken on the name Naji Selah Mohamed. The deportation bug caught him then and after brief but separate sojourns to both Italy and Greece, he was deported right back to Churchill Godana. There, on the steep road by Lyceé Francais, a friend of his who had seen him off at the airport on more than one occasion stopped him and said, “Please, tell me that I am in Greece or Italy and that you are not back here again!” Alas, it was so.

His final attempt was an unbelievable entry into London where, as a rejected asylum seeker, he lived and worked illegally as an underground taxi driver. All seemed well for a while and he gave the credit to a plastic bag full of imnet from Qulubi Gebriel that he always kept on his dashboard. Horror of horrors then, when during a routine check for drivers under the influence of alcohol, the policeman spotted the bag of imnet and became convinced that it was drugs, hauling Awlachew in to the station until it was checked out. The drug test came back negative, but so did the check on Awlachew’s papers and here he was again, back in Addis, dodging puddles and mud on the road, walking to his grandmother’s house.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried the proper channels. He had tried to process his application for resettlement in the US in various ways. First, he had shaved his beard and scrubbed his skin raw in an effort to appear underage. The resettlement immigration officer at the Embassy had rejected him outright. “You are not 17 years old,” she said, staring at him with cold blue eyes. Awlachew stared right back, asking, “Have you eaten something when I was born?” As if she would know that genfo is served to guests when babies are born. Others were luckier with the same immigration officer. His friend, Sisai, for example, had faced her with incredible success, after paying a total stranger; a guy called Girma to claim him as his brother during the interview. Sisai had practiced Girma’s family tree all night, a family tree that did not include an older brother. Sisai had an older brother in real life. Family interviews were conducted by questioning the members separately at first, then bringing joint applicants together to recheck their stories. Any lying meant both candidates were disqualified so although a large payment had been made, there was an element of risk and penalty to the recipient of the cash. A lot was riding on the interview. Sisai, despite his all-night shimdeda, forgot the family tree in his interview and in his private interview claimed that he had an older brother in Addis. In the next room, Girma assured the officials he didn’t have any brothers in Addis. The immigration official raised the discrepancy when both were brought together for the joint interview. Immediately, Sisai realized his mistake and started to cry. Girma, in shock, turned to the woman immigration officer, also in tears, and said, “We had an older brother, but he died recently and because they were so close we never told him about the death.” Both Girma and Sisai proceeded to dissolve into tears, wailing loudly, holding their heads and beating their chests while pacing up and down in the small cramped interview room. “Wai, Wai!! Weyné wendimen weyné wendimen!” for a brother that had never existed. The shocked immigration officer joined them in their grief, shedding real tears and immediately suspending the interview. She personally booked them both on the earliest possible flight out to the USA, apologizing profusely for the trauma caused by her intrusive probing and feeling guilty ever after.

But Awlachew had no such luck.

In the depths of financial ruin, he had decided to sell his passport to strangers who subsequently resold it for use in a drug run to Pakistan. Caught at Islamabad Airport, the passport-buyer had escaped from custody in Pakistan prompting InterPol to forward the name on the passport to countries concerned. Picked up and rigorously questioned, Awlachew was lucky that someone in power finally took mercy and accepted that his passport had been stolen, the photograph forged and so on and Awlachew was released with advice to never let his stolen passport go unreported. Such was Awlachew’s luck. Emama Irgoyé however believed he brought good luck to her and so did Woizero Tenfelesh, who would be joining them for breakfast after stopping off at the post office to collect all their mail.

Awlachew opened the gate. “Dehana aderu, Mazzer,” he joked, knowing how much it irritated her. “Wussup, wussup, wussup?” he bowed repeatedly, still joking. “Atarfim? iref, benatih please, iref,” she joked back kissing him before he went to get another birchooma and wipe the mud from his shoes. “BeQumih, Mariam taQumih,” said Emama Irgoyé before Awlachew sat down, “Go and tell Tirunesh to start breakfast as Woizero Tenfelsh will be here soon.”

Emama Irogoyé had long since given up ordering maids to hurry up. It simply wasn’t done anymore. She still smarted from the memory of the first lessons in new domestic-service etiquette that she received, shortly after suffering the indignity of the insults and rude departure of her army of lolés. The final injury delivered by Kadré Kebebush, born and raised in her house, who told her “Now, you better accept it, Emama, you and I are the same. I am at last like you.” Emama Irgoyé didn’t know better then, and had retorted, “My dear child, while it is true that with the loss of my land and rent money, and the death of my husband, I may indeed become like you, you will never be like me.”

The comment had cost her. It led to summons and a great deal of trouble from the local Qebelé office. But that, too, had passed and Kebebush now drops by often for visits. Mayalf neger yelem.

Awlachew returned from the kitchen, followed by Tirunesh who served them the abol coffee. They sat in the sun that finally warmed the berenda and Awlachew removed his jacket and the gabi from Emama Irgoyés shoulders. From the corner of her eye, Emama noticed his worry. “Ayzoh lijay, hulum yalfal,” she reassured him.

Just then, from a distance, they heard the loud voice of Woizero Tenfelesh, no doubt, her beefy, neTela-covered hand planted firmly on the hip of her Tng-dirib kemiss, arguing with someone who may only have simply looked at her the wrong way. She eventually stormed up to the gate, swaying her huge expanse back and forth in preparation for her uncomfortable entrance through the narrow door of Emama Irgoyés gate that always wailed, groaned and threatened to collapse at the strain of her every entrance.

“Betoch…!” Folding her umbrella which protected her Ambi-covered skin from the sun, she entered the gate to their smiles and “Dejoch. Gosh gosh”. She called out to Awlachew, “I have a letter for you.” She passed it to him, before the ritual kissing and hugging with Emama Irgoyé. Tirunesh rushed in with the tables for breakfast, anxious not to unleash the wrath of Woizero Tenfelesh’s famous unbridled tongue.

Unlike Emama Irgoyé, Tenfelesh had never attended any Qebelé niQat programs, preferring imprisonment instead. Quite at home in the Qebelé prison, primarily because the Qebelé house was in fact her own home, she used her time inside to lecture all and sundry about impending doom and unforgivable sins until they couldn’t stand it anymore and sent her away in disgust.

Awlachew opened his letter and stood up straight in shock, knocking over the breakfast tables in his sudden move of complete surprise. His hand on his forehead he read and reread the letter in disbelief. It was his lottery green card. Finally, he was, after all, going HOME.

Ililililililili screamed Woizero Tenfelesh, dancing around Awlachew, flying her neTela in the air like a kite; her uncovered head thrown back in joy, exposing the niQissat she was now too modern to reveal, her gold teeth catching the morning sun. She illil-ed and iskista-ed in a spontaneous combustion of sheer delight. Emama Irgoyé picked up her leather bound bible, worn thin from years of use, and kissed it repeatedly.

Tirunesh sneaked past the happy trio to the crowd of curious neighbors gathering at the gate, rushing to be the first to tell them the news, thus ensuring that everyone would know the good news in minutes.

“You know what this means,” Awlachew said, dragging Woizero Tenfelesh back to their seats on the verandah. “We will all go soon. I will bring you both as soon as I can,” he promised, looking up to God to mark his words. He did not notice Woizero Tenfelesh and Emama Irgoyé exchange knowing glances. Glances that carried the stories of grannies trapped in high rise apartments with grandkids they could not talk to in Amharic, old women disgracefully evicted by jealous daughters-in-law, and lonely old husbands left behind in Addis waiting for dollars from the USA.

“What are you saying Awlachew?” said Woizero Tenfelsh . “Me? Leave my husband with my maid? Nyever!” she assured him. Emama Irgoyé looked out again through the gaps in her gate, her eyes following the rocky pot-holed road that leads to the neighborhood Gabriel church. “Temesgen Getayé,” she prayed. “Please God bring my boy back again. Qidus Gebriel, Tseloten sima. Please bring my boy back again, to see me before I am gone. Will he see me before I am gone? Please God, let him see me, see Ethiopia, before we are gone.”

(As the curtain falls, rising crescendo of the new Garage-mega-mix track of tew simaN hagere, lomi tera tera and ityoPiya hagere... Ma? Inné? Get over leaving Ethiopia and “get a life” outside her holy boundaries? Ma? Inné...? NYEVER!)