The Girl in the Road Read online

  Say it was self-defense, I said. His pants are down. They’ll believe you.

  I walked out of the bedroom and stopped in the kitchen. I washed my hands. I used the spray fixture to make sure I got every spot until all the water ran clear down the drain. That’s when I noticed the orange rinds and the waterlogged garlic. She’d been preparing a meal. I thought of cleaning it up for her but then decided to leave it be. I stepped out of the flat and pulled the door shut behind me until it clicked. I picked up my backpack where I’d dropped it.

  I went back to my own apartment. I felt so relaxed, sweating, cool. I lay down on my couch. I pulled a blanket over myself. I could feel the buses rumbling on the street below. Ever since childhood, I could only sleep if there was a tremor underfoot, like the hum of our truck on the desert road. I fell into a deep sleep. In my dream, I was trading gursha with the man I’d just killed. He was still wearing the black-and-white checkered shirt. He held up a morsel of kitfo wrapped in injera, all of it soaked in red berbere sauce, and the bite was delicious, the spongy bread and the striations of lean beef muscle. I did the same for him. He was laughing, eyes sparkling, though his teeth were all red from the sauce.

  Medhane Alem

  Gabriel’s flat was in a high-rise on Medhane Alem. It was located just a block from the new 3-D multiplex and galleria, so before the listening party, I went to a café called New Sheba on the highest floor of the galleria, where I could look out the windows and down onto the roof of the cathedral. Women wrapped in white were strolling the grounds far below, small as ants to my eye. I ordered a mix juice and read a little about Kerala, putting aside my prejudices, for the moment, about India as a whole. I learned that Kerala was the only freely elected communist government in India, and had been for decades. That it was a green and wet country, even more so than Senegal or Cameroon. That everyone could read and write. That women made up over half of its local and state legislatures. That queer people were free and protected by the government. All of these things made me think well of Gabriel. I reminded myself again that my quarrel was not with Indian people, but the Indian government, and more immediately the Ethiopian government. I had no contest with Gabriel or his friends I was about to meet.

  I wanted to be on time to make it to Gabriel’s place. I didn’t know how Indians regarded time; I thought it safe to be punctual as per Western custom. His building was sleek and modern, with brown glass paneling and bronze beams, Africa Nouveau–style. There was a man in a garnet uniform guarding the front door. He greeted me in Amharic and called the elevator for me. He asked if I was a maid for a family in the building. I told him no, I was seeing a friend. Ishi, he said. He seemed to have drawn his own conclusions: that I was a maid who was lying about being a maid.

  I took the elevator to the twelfth floor. Gabriel’s flat was at the end of the hallway. When he opened the door, delicious warm aromas flooded out. He looked handsome in a white linen shirt and a blue dhoti tied around his hips. A woman’s voice called from the kitchen in Hindi, Is somebody here?

  Gabriel called back, It’s Mariama from the march!

  Oooh, Mariama! I want to meet her!

  A woman emerged from the kitchen. She was very tall, almost taller than Gabriel, queenly and curvy. She looked like a doll of a classical Hindu dancer. She wore dark-pink salwar kameez, the scarf fluttering behind her like two wings. When she offered her hand, a dozen gold bangles rang like chimes.

  Meena Mehta, she said. I’m pleased to meet you. Rama has told me a lot about you.

  I shook her hand and said, Rama?

  She calls me Ramachandran, even though it’s my father’s name, he said. But especially in Ethiopia I go by Gabriel, to blend in better.

  Oh yes you blend right in, I said.

  Meena laughed loudly and Gabriel’s golden skin darkened. I regretted the joke, thinking, Ethiopians have a morose sense of humor and maybe Indians don’t.

  Meena said, Please excuse me, the pakoras are frying. She turned and her long silky hair swished behind her, like a waterfall rippling.

  Gabriel asked if I would like a drink. I asked for water. He returned with a bottle of Nordi, expensive Norwegian water, and a filigree-etched glass filled with ice. He invited me to sit on piles of beautiful pillows, expensive embroidered ones that I could tell were all from the same stretch of the Women’s Market, Shamanade, north of Sidist Kilo. The poor fool must have been browbeaten by those women. I wondered how he’d gotten all those pillows home. Didn’t they bargain in India? Could he not say no to a woman? I decided that he must have a strong mother.

  He asked me how I was. I replied that I was well. He seemed anxious. He launched into a catalogue of things he’d been thinking about since our last meeting. He could barely formulate one thought before he was on to the next. Immediately we were on intimate terms. He wanted to know the name of the restaurant I’d taken him to; he believed it was enchanted, because it was the best meal he’d yet had in Ethiopia, and the tilapia we’d eaten had spoken to him in his dreams. He wanted to know whether I agreed with Worknesh Gebremariam, the ARAP deputy Speaker who believed that all foreigners, even students and other so-called goodwill ambassadors, should leave the country for the time being. He wanted to know why Ethiopia, like India, had had a particularly hard time dealing with religious and ethnic pluralism; or whether he was equating the situations of two countries that were actually very different. He said that India was called Karma Bhooma—the Land of Experience—because in India, everything that could happen under the sun had already happened. But he felt that Ethiopia was the true Karma Bhooma.

  Why? I asked.

  Because humanity began here, he said. Like you said, Dinkenesh walked this earth. You convinced me.

  He was passionate, even a little wild. He was drinking tej from a slim-stemmed glass.

  It’s the womb of the Earth, he continued. The Great Rift Valley is like the two legs of the mother goddess, opening.

  Upon hearing that, Meena admonished him from the kitchen. He looked into his wine.

  But I thought it was a lovely image. I smiled at him and asked if he had yet seen Dinkenesh.

  No, he said, sitting up and looking at me intensely. Will you take me?

  I said I would. See, Yemaya, I had already been to visit Dinkenesh many times. The first time I saw her, I was on a chaperoned trip with the other students who had won the national poetry contest. I was eleven years old. Our guide was named Elyas, who was a great storyteller. He jumped up and down and waved his arms and did different voices to make us laugh. When we entered the room where Dinkenesh was kept, I was at the back of the group. Elyas said that Dinkenesh had been found by a team of French, British, and American scientists. They had missed her burial place over and over again, and it was only a hunch of a hunch that led them to see an arm bone protruding from the earth. Elyas reenacted their amazement in French, British, and American accents that made us all giggle.

  MON DIEU!

  BLIMEY, OLD CHAP!

  WELL, I’LL BE DAMNED!

  Finally the group shuffled into the next gallery, and I lingered to get Dinkenesh all to myself. I remembered everything you’d told me about her, about her being our mother’s mother’s mother’s mother. I looked up into her skull holes. And they reminded me of something I hadn’t thought about in ages: the girl in the road, with black wings, whom I’d spoken to after I’d been thrown from the truck, who turned out to be just a dead body after all. I wondered whether that girl would one day be discovered too, millions of years from now, bones and cloth preserved, her skeleton reconstructed and placed in a glass box, her skull tilted to one side, just as it was when she questioned me, What is your name?

  Elyas noticed me lingering and called to me. Don’t stand there, he said, She’ll hypnotize you! You’ll go running out into the desert and never return!

  The other children laughed. I returned to the group, feeling embarrassed.

  But since then, I’d gone back to visit her many times. Whenever I vi
sited Addis for any reason—to minister with the nuns, to read one of my poems, or to interview at the university—I stopped by and said hello. I watched other tourists come in and comment on her. They were Chinese, Indian, and South African. There were even some Americans, who I could tell by their angular pronunciation of English, every morpheme at a right angle to the previous. They said things like:

  She’s smaller than I thought she’d be.

  Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

  Look at the way her wrists dangle.

  Just a blues brotha, walkin’ down the street.

  I listened to them until they noticed me in the corner, watching them with the eyes of the kreen. I made them nervous. They’d apologize and exit quickly.

  I was the first of Gabriel’s friends to arrive at the listening party. Then more guests began pushing the doorbell. There were only two other Ethiopians who came, both men, Dawit and Haile; the rest were Indian. We Ethiopians clumped together. We all spoke English, though I spoke it better than the other two, and they soon looked isolated and impatient as the Indians chattered on in English. English was the lingua franca for the Indians, who spoke dozens of languages, each with its own heritage and pride, such that no speaker of any one Indian language would accept another Indian language as the Indian lingua franca, so English it was.

  Meena placed seven steaming platters and a stack of ceramic plates on the table. I watched the Indians for clues on how to eat. They first spooned chaat onto their plates, then bent forward over it, engrossed in eating (much like Gabriel had behaved with the tilapia) or sat back against the pillows. I was relieved to see that they, too, ate with their right hands. They molded the food into bell shapes and then bent down to shorten the trip from hand to mouth.

  Meena saw that my bells were falling apart. She said, Make sure you have enough sauce to hold it together. A few of the other Indians lifted their heads to take note of my incompetence. I felt anger at being called out. But I made myself say thank you because I didn’t want to be a rude guest.

  One of Gabriel’s Indian friends admonished him to put on some music while we were eating. Gabriel said, Of course, and got up immediately, abandoning his plate, and went to the corner, where he crouched by the record player. I thought this marked him a good host, the sign of a good man. He straightened up from the record player and I recognized the voice of Bizunesh Bekele warbling from the speakers. He returned to his place slower than he had left it, already lost in the music. His eyes gazed inward and saw nothing. When he ate again, he ate slower.

  I watched him out of the corner of my eye. I noticed everything about him. I’m much older, now, Yemaya, and I know my folly; but when I was twenty years old, he was such a delicious mystery to me! I noticed the way his collarbone rose like a wave in his skin. How broad his shoulders were, and the round muscles of his calves. His feet were large. I could see his toes from where I sat on my pillows. Each toe was distinct and articulated. This was a man who had spent his life barefoot.

  In turn, Meena was watching me. As soon as I met her eye, she looked down at her food. There was something I disliked about her, something I mistrusted. She was a beautiful woman, arrogant and fierce and, I could tell, used to getting her way. She was wealthy, probably Brahmin. She had grown up doted upon by her father, fighting with her mother. She had never experienced any kind of hardship. She had never known anything like the kreen.

  The purpose of the listening party was not only to enjoy and appreciate Ethiopian music, but for the Indians to discuss their lives here. I could tell my opinion was valuable, and that Gabriel knew I would impress people with my laconic answers, after each of which Gabriel would smile at me as if I’d said the most brilliant thing in the world. His friends looked back and forth from him to me, and smirked.

  Meanwhile, Meena acted out. She announced strong opinions. She dropped a serving spoon with a loud clatter and didn’t apologize. I felt smug because I suspected she had feelings for Gabriel, whose attention was on me, instead.

  Forgive me, Yemaya, I didn’t know what I was doing.

  Meena

  Semena Werk

  I hear a shot and see an explosion on the surface of the water.

  I drop down. Then I hear a voice yelling from far away and my glotti barely picks it up.

  ENGLISH: Who are you?

  A woman’s voice, not friendly. “Durga,” I yell back.

  ENGLISH: What do you want?

  I default to the science-fiction classic. “I come in peace,” I yell back.

  ENGLISH: Stay where you are. Rahel, guard the other side.

  I keep my head tilted to the side to demonstrate docility. These people have firearms, Mohini. I don’t want to piss them off. I feel thumps on the scales until someone’s shadow crosses my body. The woman’s voice calls back to her companion,

  OROMIFA: She’s not the one we saw. She’s much bigger.

  If they ever lower their firearms, I’ll have to ask what she’s talking about.

  She addresses me again.

  ENGLISH: What do you speak?

  “I speak English,” I say, “Hindi, Malayalam, and some Marathi.”

  She switches to Hindi. “You can get up now,” she says. “Move slowly. Hands on your head.”

  I get to my feet and get a look at her. The first thing I notice is that she’s holding a dart gun. Probably loaded with sedative or something. How do I know that? Action movies. That’s what this is: I’ve walked onto the set of an action movie. This woman has a great costume. She’s dressed in tattered blue fatigues. Her hair is shaved close. Her skin is as dark as mine, but with yellow undertones instead of red.

  She’s doing the same racial assessment of me. “Indian?” she asks.

  I remember to nod instead of shake my head. Then I remember: Oromifa. It’s one of the languages of Ethiopia. Fuck.

  She gestures forward with her dart gun. “You first,” she says.

  Now I can see her companion, Rahel, twenty scales away, with short straightened hair, also dressed in blue fatigues, holding a rifle and slouched to one side. I’m surprised she didn’t also have a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. The costume department did a great job. They look like a pair of Phoolan Devis. They bring me up alongside their set, which looks like a dinghy moored to the Trail and rigged with an all-weather canopy. I hadn’t even seen it while walking. I must have been too much in my own head, talking to you, Mohini. I can see a console inside. And there’s an antenna six meters high poking up out of the canopy.

  “Drop your bag, please,” says Rahel.

  I do so. “Can you tell me what you’re going to do?”

  “No.”

  “Am I being robbed?”

  They don’t answer.

  I can feel the dart gun behind my back, like a finger pointing at my spine. I feel defiant and sassy in spite of, or maybe because of, the danger. This is all being filmed and so I need to play the part of the rogue hero.

  Finally Rahel looks up at her companion. “Nothing,” she says. “She’s just a backpacker.”

  “Is that what you are, a backpacker?” the other woman says.

  “Can you tell me who you are first?”

  “Fatima.”

  Classification of stratum complete: Ethiopian, Oromo, Muslim. “Okay, Fatima. Yes. I’m a backpacker.”

  “You come from where?”

  “Southern India.”

  “And you’re doing this for fun?”

  I want to tell them it’s because I’m on pilgrimage to visit the city where a fucking Ethiopian woman murdered my parents.

  “I wouldn’t call it fun.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Right now, honestly, a waste of time.”

  “What do you know about Ethiopia?”

  This seems like a trap. “That’s a big question.”

  “Ethiopian politics.”

  “I know ARAP got beat in the last election.”

  “Rigged. Like every single one sinc
e Haile Selassie,” says Fatima.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. And immediately I know it’s the wrong thing to say. Rahel and Fatima exchange looks and roll their eyes. But I’m tired of holding my hands on my head and so I say my next line and hope it lands well. “My parents lived in Ethiopia,” I say. “That’s where I was born.”

  “What did your parents do? Farm to feed Indian mouths?”

  “They were doctors,” I say. “They worked at a clinic near Meganagna.”

  Whatever that name is, it seems to touch them. Their shoulders drop. I’m glad I retained it from the articles.

  Rahel says to Fatima,

  OROMIFA: Our Lady of Entoto Hospital.

  After a few moments Fatima says, “You can put down your hands.”

  “Thank you,” I say, though I don’t mean it.

  The two women are awkward now. Neither of their guns is pointed at me anymore. They’re both looking toward the dinghy. Now the first source of tension in this scene is dissipated and so I have to create the next one. The director will be pleased with my improvisation.

  “What’s in there?” I ask.

  Rahel looks to Fatima, who seems to be in charge of information dissemination.

  “Semena Werk,” she says, and my glotti says:

  AMHARIC: Golden meaning

  The heroine knows that phrase, of course, but never knew its meaning.

  “I don’t understand,” I say.

  “It’s the name of our radio program. We broadcast from here.”

  So Semena Werk in India has a pirate radio station on the high seas, Mohini! What a good subject for film. “Why?”

  “Banned in Ethiopia. Unwelcome in India.”

  “Why do you care about India?”

  “There are not a few of our countrypeople in India now,” says Rahel.

  Fatima sits on the edge of the dinghy. “Indo-Ethiopians get their news from us.”

  “Where do you get your news?”

  “Our contacts on the ground. You’ve heard of Semena Werk, I imagine?”