Como Os “Rastafáris” Receberam Esse Nome

 

Rastas and Ethiopia by Jack Kruse

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Kruse's Keys: Read "Shadow King" to Discover a Forgotten Part in Ethiopia's History

Following the conclusion of World War II, Mussoloni (as the Ethiopians derisively referred to him) concocted a plan to give himself a slice of the colonial pie while simultaneously avenging his country’s late 19th century embarrassment at the Battle of Adua.

Kidane, the military leader in “The Shadow King” remarks to his men that the Italians “have come to rewrite history, to alter memory, to resurrect their dead and refashion them as heroes.”

At exiled Emperor Haile Selassie’s behest, Kidane assembles a local militia to fight against the invading forces. His wife Aster leads the women who trail the fighters, supplying them with food, bullets, and equipment. As Kidane’s forces suffer battlefield losses, Aster eventually convinces him to let her women fight. A character equal parts cruel and inspirational, Aster implores her fellow women to take their place in history and fight. Her servant, and narrator, Hirut describes Aster’s fervor: “She is one woman. She is many women. She is all the sound that exists in the world.”

And so the women fight and author Mengiste brings to light a forgotten and ignored piece of Ethiopia’s famed resistance against Italy. “I see you. I will always see you” the author remarks in the novel’s acknowledgements to the women of Ethiopia who would not let themselves be forgotten. The novel does not shirk away from the violence of not only war but of the Ethiopian society for women. Early on in the story, Kidane’s father notes that “somewhere, a woman is always weeping” because no matter who the victor is in a conflict, the mothers, daughters, and sisters bear the brunt of loss, injury, and death.

As the story unfolds, the Ethiopians fighters notice that one of their own bears a striking resemblance to the Emperor and decide to dress him as a “shadow king” in order to inspire the surrounding towns to mobilize and actively fight against the invaders. With periodic chapters imagining the helpless emperor in England, it quickly becomes apparent that he is less a king than his countrywomen fighting back in Abyssinia. Later in life, having survived not only a cruel stint as a prisoner of war but the war itself, Hirut realizes that “we were the Shadow King. We were those who stepped into a country left dark by an invading plague and gave new hope to Ethiopia’s people.”  "Plague" is an apt description for the Italian invaders as Mengiste lays bears the range of horrifying atrocities committed from searing mustard gas attacks to the ritual tossing of women and children prisoners off of a cliff.  These acts are all captured and framed through the eyes of Italian photographer/reluctant solider Ettore.  While his commander Fucelli orders him to document these horrors, Ettore readily acknowledges his guilt as he recalls the words of his father: "we must all suffer our consequences."

Finally, I can’t end this review without remarking on the talent of author Maaza Mengiste. I first read her debut novel “Beneath the Lion’s Gaze” last year and was struck by her writing’s beauty. Her talent has continued to grow and it’s evident as she pens stunning lines like:

“The sun highlights the hints of henna in Aster’s braided hair. It splashes a glow across her cheeks. Her eyes are liquid in the bright light.”

“[Selassie] stands beneath a soft drizzle that feels like a weeping sky.”

“But she cannot know that grief cradles at the beast of cruelty, and it hungers for more, and she is for the taking.”

*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.
**See our 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

Read my review of Mengiste's other novel: "Beneath the Lion's Gaze"  
"Prevail" is a comprehensive history of Ethiopia's fight against Italy, my review of it is here.

Key Quotes:

23-4 “What’s lost is gone, my child, what is lost makes room for something else.” Berhe to Hirut as she mourns her rifle’s loss.

34 “Hirut recognizes for the first time that some memories should be barricaded by others, that those strong enough must hold the others at bay.”

89 “They have come to rewrite history, to alter memory, to resurrect their dead and  refashion them as heroes.” Kidane on Italian motives as they seek to avenge their loss at Adua in 1896.

93 “He stares as if he wants to charge, as if he understands the camera’s weakness. As if he already knows the difference between what one sees and what is true. He is the only one whose mouth turns up on one side in both a smile and in mockery.” Aklilu, lover of Hirut in one of the pictures.

101 “The sun highlights the hints of henna in Aster’s braided hair. It splashes a glow across her cheeks. Her eyes are liquid in the bright light.”

112 “She is one woman. She is many women. She is all the sound that exists in the world.” Aster as she implores the women to rally to support the their soldiers.

114 “We’re more than this...we’re more than this...we’re more than this...we’re more than this.” Aster’s words to her fellow women as she implores them to realize their destiny to rise above their station and society’s expectation to them.

116 “Who remembers what it means to be more than what this world believes of us?” Aster’s final words in speech to her fellow women.

119 “And so somewhere, a woman is always weeping.” Kidane’s father on the cost of war and death.

133 “There is nothing that can come from this but blood and more blood.” Ettore

139 “But she cannot know that grief cradles at the beast of cruelty, and it hungers for more, and she is for the taking.” Chorus as Hirut is discovered in camp with her stolen rifle.

168 “That the dead are stronger. That they know no physical boundaries. They reside in the corners of every memory and rise up, again and again, to resist all our efforts to leave them behind and let them rest.” Hirut considers death in war.

173 “Yibeqal. We’ve had enough.” Mussolini’s words that Selassie that repeats to himself as he resolves to fight.

191 “She once believed she belonged to herself.” Hirut after Kidane rapes her and Aklilu finds her unable to move.

214 “As soon as a country builds an empire, he says, it has to decide who is who.” Fucelli on Italy’s descent into nazism.

237 “All you have to do is sit on the horse, Hirut says to him. She has to stop herself from patting his arm. We will all stand in the shadow of your light, she adds, repeating what Aster told her: To be in the presence of our emperor is to stand before the sun

272 “To kill: to make dead, to extinguish life, to murder. Ghostly apparitions have been trudging past him since the night before, motioning him back to Ethiopia: Haile Selassie, Jan Hoy, Teferi, we’re waiting. Where have you gone? Teferi, Haile Selassie, come home.” Imagined thoughts of the Emperor as he sits in England and hears of the Italian atrocities against women and children.

297-98 “We must all suffer our consequences.” Ettore’s father tells his mother as a baby.

298 “It is the land the carries our suffering when we die. It is the land that remains the same, no matter what we call ourselves. And what he meant, Lev would later learn, was this: that only soil will remember who we are, nothing but earth is strong enough to withstand the burden of memory.” Ettore’s grandfather’s advice to his son as they flee Odessa for Italy.

317 “She lets herself disappear until all that remains on that bloodstained bed is a girl remolding herself out of a rage.” Aster described after her wedding night but also speaking to the role of women in the society writ large.

318 “He stands beneath a soft drizzle that feels like a weeping sky.” Selassi described in England.

351 “Knowing only he will ever see the way hatred sways so easily between shame and fear.” Ettore as he watches the eyes of Hirut as Fucelli beats her.

402 “Every sun creates a shadow and not all are blest to stand in the light.” Minim, the shadow king as he returns to normal life following his service in the war.

423 “We were the Shadow King. We were those who stepped into a country left dark by an invading plague and gave new hope to Ethiopia’s people.” Hirut thinks as she hands Ettore the letter from his father.

428 “I see you. I will always see you.” the author in her acknowledgements to the women of Ethiopia who would not let themselves be erased.

Key Takeaways

6 Dead must be heard and known--that is the primordial call that Mengiste answers in this novel.

28 The memory of war and taking lives irrevocably changes one.

99 Aster mimics courage in order to foster it in her self.

119 The true cost of war is always born by women--no matter the victor--mothers, wives, sisters, lovers.

132 Ethiopians would purposely mispronounce Mussolini’s last name as: Mussoloni

180 Emperor’s command from abroad to Kidane to risk everything

190/226 In an awful rape scene (Kidane raping Hirut) shows further demarcation of class, power, worth, male dominance. His intrusion--his rape of her--forces her to vacate her own body. We later see her victory through indifference--through her detachment from the brutal act he tries to perpetrate upon her.

191 Aklilu’s love after the rape helps to restore her dignity as he feeds her.

219 More an observation: the sharp intake of air when Ethiopians speak

232 The notion of a shadow kings and shadow queens is rooted in Ethiopian and broader mythology and provides an arc of hope in the novel

241 Names of the emperor: Jan Hoy, Negus Nagast, Abbatachin, Haile Selassie, Ras Teferi Mekkonen, King of Kings--these names flow through the head of Hirut as she emerges of the bodygrad of the Shadow King

272 Italian horrors against women and children reach Emperor in England, where he is surviving in the shadows. In this case, the actual Emperor is perhaps the actual shadow king referred to in the book’s title for he is only the shadow of a ruler, impotent and powerless.

292 Jewish racism just provokes further descent into depravity as Ettore is left with what he deems to be little choice. This also shows that the evils are racism are a spectrum that eventually consumes everyone.

293 Even as the Italians toss Ethiopian children off the cliff to their death, they maintain their honor in the pronouncement of their names. They have a name!.

315 Wow, balance of societal order is ingrained in Hirut’s understanding of the world as she is appalled that brutality can reach the body of Aster (reminiscent of Coates’ notion of “the body” in “Between the world and me.”

410 The costs of war--Ettore’s life is eternally and irrevocably damaged and ruined.

Key References for Further Study

104 Astenagir--touted as better than khat for strength: https://botanicaethiopia.com/herbs/
Datura stramonium
https://www.ethiomedia.com/1000parts/7403.html


313 Fucelli, the Butcher of Benghazi

Rape of Hirut parallel to Italy’s incursion into Ethiopia

Notion of memory

http://www.project3541.com/
https://bookpage.com/interviews/24444-maaza-mengiste-fiction#.XfXixagvPnE
https://bookpage.com/reviews/24403-maaza-mengiste-shadow-king-fiction#.XfXjiqgvPnE

Kruse's Keys: Read "Prevail " to Learn How Ethiopia Resisted Against All Odds (Ethiopia)

LMVFAS (Let Me Vent For A Sec): It didn’t help that I listened (on Audible) to this 24.5 hour exhaustive (and at times exhausting) tome during my 60 minute commute home every day from DC over the course of what felt like two long months. I felt every slogging 15 minute rabbithole, every non-germane detail to the core of my aching lower back...this book could easily have been a bracing 10 hour ride without any of its power debased. My grand takeaway being that this is a better book to read vs. listen to since reading would give you better opportunity to skim the less important parts.

All that said, I can’t imagine there’s a more well-researched book out there on Ethiopia’s decades long resistance and eventual defeat of an overeager, over confident, overreaching wanna-be colonial power (i.e., Italy). Canadian author Jeff Pearce’s work is strongest as he brings to life the myriad actors, antagonists, and heroes of the saga. It’s worth noting that Pearce is a bit of a Selassie apologist but given the complicated history of Ras Tafari (yup that’s where that term came from) Makkonen’s reign, I imagine this can fall either way.

I won’t provide any further extensive notes on this book. One of my biggest criticisms of Audible is the lack of utility with regard to the its bookmark/clip Create Linkfunction. I had hundreds of 30 second bookmark clips for this 24 hour audiobook. As you can see below I tried to start going back through them, listening to each one and typing up the bookmarked quote. This became an exercise in ludicrousness (is that really a word)--who’s got time for this? I mean we landed a man on the moon like 100 years ago but there’s not a way to export the Audible bookmarks into a text file? Yes, I know there’s kind of a way to do this for Kindle purchases that you also buy the whispersync functionality for, but that’s not what I am talking about for.

*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.
See our 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.
Related writing on the Italian invasion is Maaza Mengiste's masterful novel: "The Shadow King"--my review is here.
My review of Mengiste's debut novel about a family during Ethiopia's Derg rule is here.

Key References (For Further Study):


Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste.
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste.
The Man Called Brown Condor by Thomas E. Simmons
The best books on Ethiopia: start your reading here (The Guardian)
Notes from the Hyena’s Belly by Nega Mezlekia
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat by Ryszard Kapuscinski
The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat



Afevork Ghevre Jesus: One of ethiopia’s first novelists, and Emperor Selassie’s representative in Rome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afevork_Ghevre_Jesus

Wrote “A Heart-born Story”
https://www.selamtamagazine.com/stories/the-legacy-of-the-brown-condor
https://et.usembassy.gov/u-s-embassy-honors-the-legacy-of-colonel-john-c-robinson/


Chapter 4

Description of the first time an Black african nation had beaten a developed one in a war (1895-6). In addition the Ethiopians mutilated and amputated the captured Eritrean Askari that had fought for the Italians.
The climax of this was the Battle of Adwa.

Chapter 5

38:45 Robinson pilot opened the door for further airmen to get pilot training at Chicago’s Curtiss Wright School of Aviation by first working there as a janitor when they wouldn’t admit him--eventually an instructor got him a training slot. He later opened the John Robinson School of Aviation since in Robins, Illinois since other airfields wouldn’t let black pilots fly there.

Kruse's Keys: Read "The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears" To Better Understand the Immigrant Experience (Ethiopia)

Before Adichie was regaling the world with her story of a relatively privileged immigrant experience in her brilliant 2013 novel “Americanah” (my notes and highlights on it are here), Ethiopian author Dinaw Mengestu was pulling back the curtain on a much bleaker immigrant experience in his 2007 “The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears.” I came across his debut novel after reading his masterful “All Our Names”, a story that I dubbed the “Great African Novel” (you can read my review here).

It’s telling that Mengestu chooses to frame his brave, funny, and sad story under the auspices of a key line from Dante’s Inferno. In particular, the title comes from the closing lines of Dante’s Inferno, as Dante and Virgil emerge from their voyage through the 9 circles of hell on Easter morning. With a journey through purgatory and paradise still ahead, the travelers look up to the star-soaked heavens:

“Through a round aperture I saw appear/Some of the beautiful things that heaven bears/Where we came forth and once more saw the stars.”

It is this experience of capturing beauty following unspeakable evil and adversity that Mengestu likens to the immigrant experience for so many (Africans in the book’s case). In the case of the narrator Sepha and his friends, they have escaped the violence in their own country and arrived in America, “seeing the stars.” Only they soon discover that while their new life in the United States may not be hell, it will likely be much more like the penance of purgatory than that of paradiso. Sepha emphasizes the direction of this journey a la purgatory as he notes: “As it was, I did not come to America to find a better life. I came here running and screaming with the ghosts of an old one firmly attached to my back.” (41)

While Sepha shares some of the experience of living in and then fleeing Ethiopia at the time of Emperor Salassie, some of the book’s best lines and conversations come from his Congolese friend Joseph. As Joseph shares a childhood experience from when his village was “freed” by rebel forces, he notes that “we didn’t even know we were oppressed.” With wry humor he goes on to explain that “we gave the rebels all the money we had to thank them.” In pulling back the veil on the inner sanctum of immigrant conversations, Mengestu encourages readers not to take so much of the headlines spit out about conflict on the African continent at face value but to delve deeper and search for the nuance--for the human experience.

“The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears” is ultimately about the intersection of expectations, dreams, and reality for many immigrants in the United States. More often than not, Mengestu wants the reader to know, this intersection is a harsh one where dreams easily wither in the face of the drive to just exist between two worlds.


*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.
See our 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

Car connoisseur Salassie is deposed from power in a VW Beetle 

Key Quotes:

• “As it was, I did not come to America to find a better life. I came here running and screaming with the ghosts of an old one firmly attached to my back.” (41)
• “Nobody understands chess like an African.” Joseph from Congo shares this tidbit, noting that in a world of government repression, it’s the one area where their decisions mattered. (63)
• “Through a round aperture I saw appear/Some of the beautiful things that heaven bears/Where we came forth and once more saw the stars” Joseph’s favorite lines of poetry (from Dante’s Inferno) as he says only Africans can truly relate to the sense of being in hell with only occasional periods of relief. (100)
• “I am one of those people for whom nothing is left of their home country.” Sepha’s Uncle in a letter to President Carter. (124)
• “We have come this far, to find we have even further to go/The last traces of a permanent twilight have faded and/given way/To what we hope is nothing short of a permanent dawn.” Joseph trying to capture what it was like at the birth of Congolese independence. (169)
• “Let us stop. Let us begin again./Let us clean the blood from the rubber fields/And do what we promised to do.” Different independence lines from Joseph. (170)
• “Patrice./Are we ready?” (170) Joseph’s spares lines in his ‘Life of Congo’ poem.
• “All the best dictators are colonels.” (184) Joseph, Kenneth and Sepha during one of their rehashes of various coups across the continent.
• “We didn’t even know we were oppressed.” (220) Great line from Joseph that gets at the complexity of so much of the wars and rebellions across Africa. In this case Joseph is describing being violently ‘liberated’ by rebels. With wry humor he goes on to say that “we gave the rebels all the money we had to thank them.”

Key Takeaways:

• Sepha notes the power of small gestures of sympathy at opportune times in a conversation with Naomi, Judith’s precocious daughter. (26)
• Remittances mentioned. In Sepha’s case, his family didn’t really need the money but it was kind of the price one paid for not enduring life back home. (41)
• In life, sometime you hold onto things that are cheap or meaningless with the hope that the meaning will emerge later. (50)
• Ethiopian emperor leaves power in beat up VW Beetle (92)
• Emperor buried under a toilet (94)
• At 16, Sepha didn’t yet believe in consequences...to the detriment of his father who was killed after Sepha passed out revolutionary flyers (126)
• Disappointment close to hatred (father couldn’t act as he was taken away by soldiers) (130)
• A handshake with Judith breaks Sepha’s heart. Sepha never feels himself worthy. (137)
• Author notes similarities between Addis and DC. (173)
• Immigrants and the idea of “going back home” is explored. Mengestu opines that the phrase denotes an understanding that what you return to can never be the same as what you left. (174)
• The power of his father’s absence frames everything in Sepha’s life. When his father died, so did Sepha’s life in Ethiopia (Absent father wound). (177)
• Immigrants can’t take Christmas off--they are expected to work in the 7-11s and mini-marts. (178)
• Someone is always on the run near you (194)
• Expectations of dead things is that they stay dead. That is, what happens when memories live on like a wound that will never heal. (209)
• We all want to shape our own destiny--we want to control what we can in our own limited spheres (211)
• The theme of an immigrant life is that idea of being stuck between two worlds. “A man stuck between two worlds lives and dies alone.” In between idea (228)

Key References (for further study):

• Could just as easily wrote a review that centered on the triangle between Sepha, Judith and her daughter.
• Ethiopia: Enigma and Dilemma (article by Joe Guido)
• Mengistu Mariam (218)
• NPR: Dinaw Mengestu Captures Immigrant Life
• NEA Big Reads Summary
• Book Browse Interview with Mengestu
• 2011 Economist Interview with Mengestu
• 2010 New Yorker Interview
• From Addis Ababa to Paris, via Peoria: Dinaw Mengestu
• "An Honest Exit" short story in New Yorker
• "Returning to Ethiopia" non-fiction piece by Mengestu
• UCF interview with Mengestu
• "My Personal Greek Myth" by Mengestu
• NYT: What to Read Before Heading to Ethiopia
• Short Reddit with Mengestu
• "All Our Names" is the Great African Novel
• NPR Dinaw Mengestu Embraces The Vastness Of Love And War (includes podcast)