Saba: Under the Hyena’s Foot

In the Walking Dream

Then, the old woman takes pity on Saba. The woman says she will get Saba’s brother. While Saba waits, she studies the shamma they placed on her shoulders. It’s light and delicate. When Mesfin arrives, Saba shows it to him. Mesfin walks all the way around her, making admiring clicks. What would Emama think?

They sit on polished wooden stools in front of an exquisite flat basket. Servants pour water for them to wash their hands, and they fill the basket with white injera. The servants bring in bowl after bowl of food. Saba counts ten different dishes, most of them she doesn’t recognize. Even just one of these dishes would have been sumptuous on a feast day with Emama and Ababba.

Saba asks Mesfin what kind of strange web it is for two humble spiders to dangle from. Will they meet the giants who built the houses? For once, Mesfin looks puzzled. He says he has a powerful feeling that he’s been here before. He doesn’t remember giants, but perhaps these castles were built by human beings.

Saba tears off a piece of injera. The rich oils make her tongue cry out. One by one she tries the different dishes. Mesfin asks Saba if she heard that their grandfather was a soldier for the emperor. As servants told him, their grandfather fought so bravely that a marriage was arranged for him with the Emperor’s youngest daughter. Saba says his ears must have deceived him. That would mean that their grandmother is the daughter of an emperor.

Mesfin explains the soldiers said that once upon a time there were four different kingdoms in Ethiopia. Their grandfather served His Majesty Tekle Giorgis II, the king over all other rulers—the King of Kings. Just then, Mesfin hears someone approaching.

The old woman comes in, and says that it is time for them to eat and grow strong. As they eat, Mesfin asks the old woman many things. The woman answers his questions, about where she’s lived, how long she’s been there, and about Gondar. But whenever Mesfin asks about what Saba is longing to hear about, the woman gently changes the subject. But for the first time in many days, Saba feels a flutter of joy. She now knows more about her grandfather.

That night, Saba can’t rest. The bed is too soft, and the questions in her mind are too puzzling. Finally she climbs out of bed and lays on a cloth in the middle of the room, where she eventually falls asleep.

Over the next few days, Saba learns many things. She discovers that as a member of the royal family, even she can ask questions. No one scolds her for being disrespectful. The castles in the compound house many different emperors. The huge house had been built first, about 200 years ago, to be home of the Emperor Fasiladas. They call the house Fasil Gemb. The beautiful castle where they are was built last, less than 100 years ago and is what is called the empress castle. Their castle sits with two others at the opposite end of the royal compound from Fasil Gemb. From her window, Saba can see its high egg-shaped towers and a small castle beside it.

As Saba gazes out the window, she hears a sudden roar. The girl Saba tried to give the shoes to runs in. She doesn’t speak unless she’s spoken to first. Saba asks her what’s going on, and the girl explains the servants are giving meat to the lions. The old woman had sent the others on errands. The old woman explained that if you treat a servant as an equal, you make him the ruler over you. She also told her that she and Mesfin should not go outside the castle until the time comes to present them to the King of Kings. So, they had many hours to try to untangle the knots of what everyone had told them.

Mesfin and Saba heard talk of powerful people. People spoke in hushed voices about someone named General Ali Alula, the Oromoo chief of the soldiers who was the highest noble in the land. Ababba had been a palace guard, as had her Oromoo grandfather in the compound long ago. When Saba asks Mesfin what else Emama kept from them, Mesfin’s jaw quivers. He says people mostly lower their voices or shake their heads when he asks questions. Many appear to be afraid.

They’d yet to make any progress in figuring out what had happened to their Oromoo grandfather and the princess he married. All Mesfin had learned was that Gondar had thirteen different emperors since their grandmother’s father sat on the throne. Apparently, the tree of people descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Saba had become very wide, and many men had laid claim to the throne as their descendants. Most of the ancient emperors had many children, and some had more than one family.

Kings from other branches of the great tree rule other Ethiopian kingdoms, too. Apparently, this brings frequent challenges to the King of Kings. There’s a lot of fighting. Saba is tired from trying to follow these tangled threads. All she cares about is knowing what happened to their father, mother, and grandparents.

As Mesfin talks, Saba’s heart begins to devise its own plan. If they’re so important, surely they can find a way to ask the King of Kings to bring Emama to Gondar. Until then, Saba must store everything in her heart so that Emama can be told of the many marvels.

Saba has never been this warm, well fed, and this dazzled by magnificence. A whole world parades under her window. Mules are determined, but worried workers. Horses dash and dance. Mesfin and Saba love watching them prance in their beautiful decorations. One of the servants tells them about an ancient emperor whose beautiful horse was captured and carried away to a distant land. In captivity, the horse did not eat or drink or let anyone ride. They called it the soulless horse because it was a shell without a soul in captivity. A royal Ethiopian, also a captive, offered to tame the horse. As soon as the prince leaped on the horse’s back, the horse and rider dashed away. The loyal horse didn’t stop until he had traveled across all the mountains of Ethiopia to Gondar, where he fell dead with exhaustion. After that, emperors and generals began to take their war horse’s names as part of their own. If a horse was named Suviel, the soldiers would call their leader Father of Suviel.

Saba discovered that the music makers they saw on the first day were called azmaris. They walk among the castles singing songs of love and war and playing an instrument called masinko. Sometimes they sing of a man’s greatness, but they can also mock and cut with their songs. They did not care who they scorned.

On the morning of the third day, the old servant wakes Saba. It is time to go to see Emperor Yohannes III, the King of Kings. The woman hurries Mesfin and Saba downstairs to the hall and makes them practice their parts again and again. She takes Mesfin’s shamma and shows him how to wrap it around his waist and cross it on his chest, with the ends up over his shoulders. He is to wear it this way only when he’s in the church and before the King of Kings.

On and on the woman keeps talking. It makes Saba more and more afraid. Head coverings have to be removed in the emperor’s presence. One should not turn their back on the emperor. If the emperor stands, only the empress and the patriarchs of the church can remain seated. No one can walk behind the emperor.

The woman rushes them out of the castle, reminding Saba of one of the chickens that squawks and dances around her chicks. The bright light dazzles Saba’s eyes. From a distance, she can hear the woman saying something of an umbrella to shield her from the sun.

Then, as if they flapped on a bird’s wings, they’re inside the coolness of another castle. Saba doesn’t remember the walk there. She’s vaguely aware of murmuring voices, and the smell of hot peppers and roasted meat in the air. Saba and Mesfin walk into a room at the end of the hall together, bending low as the old servant showed them. The woman instructs them to kiss the emperor’s hem.

The emperor is surprised to see them. He asks why they are before him, and a cold, powerful woman’s voice says that she ordered it. This must be Empress Menen. The woman explains these are the grandchildren of the emperor’s sister, who died while he was imprisoned on Amba Wehni. She explains she has not yet found their father, his sister’s son, but the soldiers are still searching for him.

Such buzzing fills Saba’s ears that she hears nothing more except her own breathing. Mesfin nudges her, and she glances upwards to see the woman addressing her. The woman says that Saba will stay in the empress castle, and learn the things that befit her rank. When the emperor asks about Mesfin, Empress Menen is silent. Slowly, she says that they will find a place for him, for the sake of their father. In her mouth, the words sound different altogether.