When her daughter was born months later, Tigist again called Almaz. “She came early,” Tigist said simply, looking down at the child whose eyes already mirrored her own.
The baby had not been due for another four weeks, but Almaz smiled when she got the call in the late-night hours of September 11. “Meskerem ahnd, ende!” she’d laughed. “Ye Meskerem lij naht,” she mused before the line disconnected. “Ye Meskerem lij.”
Exhausted and alone, Tigist resolved then that she’d never tell this dangerous miracle of a child about her father. Girls are already born into a world of heartbreak, Tigist reflected. It’s best not to saddle this new life, this new year, with details of the pain that runs through her blood.
Meskerem was a brilliant, preternaturally insightful child. As a result of her mother’s sacrifices and her great-aunt’s blessings, she grew up with the two women raising her from opposite sides of the Atlantic. Their love buoyed her through childhood and adolescence, their faith in her a guiding light.
Meskerem didn’t learn that her great-aunt shared her birthday until her sophomore year of college. Tasked with writing about a woman who inspired her, Tigist’s only child chose to call Almaz, the woman who had carried them both. Almaz comforted Meskerem when the girl asked why God had let her mother die alone in a car accident while she had been away taking classes earlier that year. Almaz told Meskerem story after story of Tigist’s engineering brilliance and the family’s hopes for her education. Their calls lasted hours, each one longer than the last. Meskerem delighted in learning more about her family, even if her great-aunt had no answers about the death of her father. It was the only balm she had, the only time she didn’t feel alone.
Talking to Almaz made things make sense for the first time in Meskerem’s life. The quiet, sullen young woman smiled a little easier. She walked into class feeling more excited than bored. Still, when all her classmates spoke passionately about their aspirations to embody the spirits of women like Eleanor Roosevelt and Susan B. Anthony, Meskerem suppressed the urge to laugh. She had learned of bravery and brilliance that made these women pale in comparison, and she couldn’t wait to overshadow their foolhardy presentations.
Standing in the front of the lecture hall wearing only black, except for the yellow Meskel flower pin attached to her combat boots, Meskerem presented the details of her research: a woman named Almaz Gessesse had been born into a poor family in Addis Ababa and became a prominent literature professor; a woman named Almaz Gessesse had found a way for Meskerem’s mother to come to America after her husband had died mysteriously (in the war?); a woman named Almaz Gessesse had come all the way to America to hold her after her mother died in a car accident; a woman named Almaz Gessesse had named her after the month in which they were both born.
Meskerem was working on her doctoral thesis when the news came of Almaz’s death several years later. Exhausted and angry, she’d yelled at her boyfriend for waking her from a much-needed nap just to answer a phone call.
She saw the +251 pop up on her Viber app and immediately sat up in bed, her whole body an electrical current. Why would someone whose number she didn’t have be calling from Ethiopia? She hadn’t been back in years — she only spoke to Almaz.
A solemn voice asked for Meskerem Negash, then said simply, “Almaz is gone.”
The last time Meskerem had been in Addis Ababa, she’d stayed with Almaz the whole summer. She was young then, a voracious reader about to start high school. She spent weeks cooped up in Almaz’s small apartment near Addis Ababa University, reading Baldwin and Fitzgerald and the Brontës. She’d accompanied Almaz to campus and sat in the back of the classroom while the professor taught, eagerly absorbing new phrases in Amharic. After class, Meskerem would beg Almaz to quiz her on the material she’d learned.
The two of them walked through Shiro Meda together for hours, buying whatever they pleased. It had been their first destination the morning after Meskerem’s first night in Almaz’s apartment, when the visiting child had woken up shivering. Almaz had laughed at the American girl for being so cold in such light kremt. “Isn’t it freezing in your country?” she’d joked before suggesting the two take a trip to the market to grab another gabi. Meskerem had never been so excited to shop.
The chaos of Shiro Meda calmed Meskerem in a way she couldn’t explain, even to Almaz. She wanted to lose herself in its alleyways, let herself become anonymous amid a sea of people focused on anything but her. The road felt endless to her, the paths themselves as plentiful as the bounty sold there.
Yet during this trip, Shiro Meda felt like a cage. Even as the sun shone on her shoulders, Meskerem felt cold. She’d walked from Almaz’s apartment all the way to Shiro Meda in search of a distraction from the upcoming funeral processions, headphones in her ears. This place wasn’t home without Almaz. When she finally reached the market, she was horrified. Where was the charm she’d romanticized all these years? Before she’d seen freedom and excitement, whereas now she saw only the bleak repetition of commerce. Vendors seemed sinister, shoppers selfish to the point of revulsion.
Meskerem walked toward the first seller whose makeshift booth held a selection of gabis. Dust and sun in her face, she tried to force a smile on her face when she made eye contact with the vendor. He stared back at her with a mixture of pity and irritation.
“What do you want?” he asked roughly as she stood silent in front of his display. She walked away, unsure if he’d even been asking about merchandise.
With Almaz’s favorite songs blaring in her headphones, Meskerem was the last person to notice the general approaching. Shiro Meda had slowed from its usual frenetic pace, shopkeepers and tourists alike pausing to marvel at the tall man with the stunning smile.
“General Girma!” a child squeaked as he raised his hand in salute, running into the middle of the road. His mother scooped him out of the way moments later, and the general looked straight through them both.
General Robel Girma had not been to Shiro Meda in years. Shiro Meda was for poor tourists and even poorer locals, he’d told his son Elias. But today was different. Today he had learned of Almaz Gessesse’s death. Today he was thinking of Tigist. Eyes fighting back tears behind his reflective aviators, the general walked down the road with determination.
When all 6’1” of him barreled into a young woman and sent her careening onto the ground, the general didn’t apologize. He was not a man who apologized. He simply adjusted his sunglasses and kept walking.
But the girl caught up to him a moment later, pushing his shoulder from behind. The shock prompted him to remove his sunglasses as he spun around to face her, forgetting for a moment that his eyes betrayed the very anguish that had brought him to Shiro Meda that day.
Meskerem opened her mouth to chastise the gruff man who’d knocked into her. She didn’t care that he was in uniform. She did not owe some soldier her loyalty; she certainly did not owe him the skin on her knees. He turned to face her, and she was certain in the split second between her push and his pivot that he would hit her.
Robel did not hit the girl who’d pushed him. He grabbed her face with his calloused hand, rings imprinting themselves into her cheek, the second he saw her eyes. They were warm, sad. They went on for days.
They looked so familiar.