“He … said many things. He said he's taking the motorcycle. I said nothing.” She'd departed from the script we had rehearsed, but it seemed to be working.
“Why? What has happened? What happened to the motorcycle?” Shiva said in English, his deadpan expression revealing nothing. I was astonished at Shiva's nerve.
“Well, that's what I don't know,” the officer said. His English was excellent and his manner softened. “He wasn't supposed to take the motorcycle. The army wouldn't have let him keep it, anyway” He paused as if considering whether to say more. When he continued, it was to Ghosh and Hema that he directed his remarks. “He hasn't been seen since he came here. I'm posted in Dire Dawa, and I only found out he was AWOL two weeks ago. He told a woman he kept that he was going to pick up a motorcycle.” He turned to me and Shiva. “So you saw him drive away?”
“I heard the sound,” I said.
He nodded. “Doctor, do you mind if I take a quick look around …”
“By all means,” Ghosh said.
I felt the sky pressing down on me as the officer and his driver went to the back of the house, and then walked down the gravel driveway. Had we come this far, with Ghosh free, only to have the army man send us back to hell? Genet glared at me, while Rosina squatted, applying a eucalyptus stick to her teeth. The two men walked to the ledge, then turned in the direction of the roundabout and disappeared from view. If on their return they went to the toolshed, we were doomed. The motorcycle was well hidden, but not to one who was intent on finding it.
After an eternity they returned.
“Thank you, Doctor,” the officer said, extending his hand to Ghosh. “I fear the worst. The day the Emperor returned, some of our soldiers got their hands on a lot of money. My brother had something to do with that. It's perhaps a good thing he disappeared.”
Once the jeep was out of sight, Ghosh studied us for a moment. He sensed something amiss, but he didn't ask any questions. When Hema and Ghosh stepped back inside, I went to the corner of the house and I threw up. Genet and Shiva followed me. I waved them off. The gastrointestinal system has its own brain, its own conscience.
Inside the tent the folding chairs wobbled on the soft grass. Soon the tables sagged with beakers of tej and plates of food. The kitfo—coarsely ground raw meat mixed with kibe (a spiced and clarified butter)—was my favorite dish. We never served this at home, but from the time I was a baby, I'd eaten kitfo in Rosina's quarters, or in Gebrew's shack. On this day I had no appetite. The injera was stacked on the table like napkins. The gored-gored was the dish everyone went after: cubes of raw meat, which you dipped in a fiery red pepper sauce. The dishes kept coming: meatballs, meat curry, lentil curry, tongue, and kidney. What had been grazing under a tree that morning had, in short order, reached the table.
Ghosh sat on a dais in an armchair. One by one the nurses, nursing students, and the other Missing employees came to shake his hand and to praise the saints for allowing him to survive his ordeal.
Rosina didn't come out, but I found Genet in a corner of the tent. I sat by her. Dressed in black, pushing food around on her plate, she looked like a dour and distant cousin of the Genet I knew—shed hardly left the house since Zemui's death. When an orderly came and greeted her, kissed her on her cheeks, she barely acknowledged him.
“When will you go back to school?” I said. “When will you start eating with us again?”
“They killed my father. Did you forget? I don't care about school.” Then she hissed at me, “Tell the truth. You told Ghosh, didn't you?”
“I did not!”
“But you were thinking of telling him, weren't you? Tell the truth!”
She had me there. When I felt Ghosh's arms around me for the first time in that prison yard, a confession jumped to my lips. I had to suck it back and swallow.
“Since when did thinking become a crime? … Don't look at me that way,” I said.
She took her plate and sat far away from me. Even if I didn't have great faith in myself, I wanted her to have more faith in me. It hurt that she no longer saw me as the hero who shot the intruder.
BY THE LATE AFTERNOON the tent came down, and now visitors from outside Missing arrived as word spread that Ghosh was free. For Evangeline and Mrs. Reddy the moment was bittersweet because, though Ghosh was back, General Mebratu was gone forever. Evangeline kept saying, “So young. So young to be no more,” dabbing at her eyes, while Mrs. Reddy comforted her, pulling Evangeline's head into her considerable bosom. The two brought a giant pot of chicken biriyani and the fiery mango pickle that was Ghosh's favorite. “It's your second honey moon, sweetie,” Evangeline said to Ghosh. She winked at Hema. Adid, their old friend, came carrying three live chickens roped together by their feet, handing them over to Almaz. He brushed feathers off his spotless white polyester shirt, which he wore over a flowing, plaid ma'awis that extended to his sandals. Behind him came Babu, who was General Mebratu's usual bridge partner, bearing a bottle of Pinch, the General's favorite. By nightfall, there was talk of pulling out the cards for old time's sake. At any moment I expected Zemui to drive up with General Mebratu.
The house got stuffy. I opened windows back and front. At one point Ghosh retreated to the bedroom to shed his sweater and Hema went with him. I followed and stood in the doorway. He went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. It was as if he couldn't get over the novelty of running water. Hema stood outside the bathroom looking at his reflection in the vanity.
“I've been thinking …,” I heard Ghosh say. “We've had a good innings. Maybe we should leave … before the next coup.”
“What? Back to India?” Hema said.
“No … then the boys would have to learn Hindi or Tamil as a compulsory second language. It's too late for that. Don't forget why we left in the first place.”
They didn't know I was listening.
“Lots of Indian teachers have gone from here to Zambia,” Hema said.
“Or America? To the county of Cook?” he said and laughed.
“Persia? They say there are huge needs, just like this place. But they have tons of money to spend.”
Zambia? Persia? Were they joking? This was my country they were talking about, the land of my birth. True, its potential for violence and mayhem had been proved. But it was still home. How much worse would it be to be tortured in a land that wasn't your own?
We've had a good innings.
Ghosh's words felt like a kick to my solar plexus: this was my country, but I realized it wasn't Hema's or Ghosh's. They weren't born here. Was this for them a job only good for as long as it lasted? I slipped away.
I stepped out to the lawn. I remember the air that night, and how it was so brisk that it could revive the dead. The fragrance of eucalyptus stoking a home fire, the smell of wet grass, of dung fuel, of tobacco, of swamp air, and the perfume of hundreds of roses—this was the scent of Missing. No, it was the scent of a continent.
Call me unwanted, call my birth a disaster, call me the bastard child of a disgraced nun and a disappeared father, call me a cold-blooded killer who lies to the brother of the man I killed, but that loamy soil that nurtured Matron's roses was in my flesh. I said Ethyo-pya, like a native. Let those born in other lands speak of Eee-theee-op-eee-ya, as if it were a compound name like Sharm el Sheikh, or Dar es Salaam or Rio de Janeiro. The Entoto Mountains disappearing in darkness framed my horizon; if I left, those mountains would sink back to the ground, descend into nothingness; the mountains needed me to gaze at their tree-filled slopes, just as I needed them to be certain I was alive. The canopy of stars at night; that, too, was my birthright. A celestial gardener sowed meskel seeds so that when the rainy season ended, the daisies bloomed in welcome. Even the Drowning Soil, the foul-smelling quicksand behind Missing, which had swallowed a horse, a dog, a man, and God knows what else—I claimed that as well.