As the days passed, Addis Ababa did not become more beautiful but it began to fascinate me for being a city of people with vivid personal stories, like Wubishet’s prison tale and Nebiy’s Gone with the Wind saga. There were so many others — for example, the story of Ali’s revenge.
I met Ali by chance. He had also done time in prison but it was a long horrible story, he said. I said I had plenty of time and was eager to hear it. Ali thought he might be able to help me get a lift to the Kenyan border, to Moyale anyway, with some traders he knew. Ali was a broker and general factotum, dealing in cars, horses, souvenirs, even ivory. ‘If you hide the ivory right you can get it into the US.’ He had been to the US many times, and held a multiple-entry visa, but had no desire to live there. America was too expensive, he didn’t like the routines, and anyway his whole family was here.
Ali had gray eyes and chipmunk cheeks and an air of circumspection about him that sometimes seemed like weariness and sometimes wiliness. He chain-smoked, rebuking himself each time he lit up. He had that special entrepreneurial sense that is able to single out a person in serious need. He saw that urgency in me — I was in need of a ride south. Of course he could supply it — he could supply anything — and the only question was how much would I be willing to pay and how much could he make on the deal?
Ali had time to kill and so did I.
‘These Kenyans!’ With the businessman’s disgust for bureaucracy and profitless delay he said, ‘They could just stamp the passport and take your money. But they make you wait.’
He discovered my liking for Ethiopian food — ‘national food,’ as everyone called it. And so, over three or four meals at Ethiopian restaurants in Addis — the most pleasant a ramshackle wooden villa called Finfine — he told me his prison story, which was different from any other I had heard and not political at all.
It had started with an innocent question from me. I had mentioned that on this long trip I missed my family, my wife and children, and feeling sentimental I asked about his family.
Ali winced and his face darkened, a memory passing over it, and then he shook his head and said nothing — an awkward moment. Stammering self-consciously, I tried to change the subject. But he interrupted and said, ‘I am divorced.’
That didn’t seem so bad, there was no stigma about divorce in Islam, at least for a man. In the Muslim world a woman’s life was over when she got dumped; there was no second act. A man just moved on, usually acquiring another wife.
‘The person I trusted most in my life, the only one I cared about, lied to me,’ Ali said. ‘I ended up in jail, but God saved me or else I would still be in jail today, or maybe dead.’
We had finished eating, we were drinking fragrant Ethiopian coffee under the arbor outside, in the Finfine’s garden. Perhaps it was because this was the fourth or fifth meal I’d had with Ali, and that he had found some traders who were going south — that we were on the verge of striking a deal — that made him trusting enough to tell me the story. But, as he said, it was the worst thing that had happened to him in his life, and so he told it almost without prodding from me.
‘The first time I heard about it I was confused,’ he went on. ‘There was a story that my wife had been seen with another man. I asked some questions. He was a colonel in the army. This was during the Derg, when the army was in power. They were very strong. A trader like me was nothing. Just hearing that her man was a soldier made me think, What? So I asked her directly.
‘She said, “There was nothing. I did nothing. Yes, I was with him — but he forced me. He was a soldier. What could I do?”
‘I have four children. I don’t want them to be upset and to know that their mother was in this position, so I said nothing. I wasn’t happy, though. I didn’t like the story. I lived for a while with my mind uneasy. Then, one day, I had to drive to Lalibela to buy some things for my business.’
A long way north by road, Lalibela was the remote location of the beautiful twelfth-century Coptic churches that had been carved in volcanic rock, the ones you saw all the time on the Visit Ethiopia posters. The town was in the Lasta Mountains, 300 miles or more from Addis. Just his saying Lalibela meant it was a serious trip of three or four days.
‘I set off,’ Ali said, ‘but when I called ahead I was told by my friend Kamal that the goods were not ready. Bad, eh? So I decided to turn around and go south instead, with Kamal, and pick up some things.
‘We were about forty-five kilometers from Addis, going through the town of Debre Zeyit when I slowed down for the goats and cars and heavy traffic and saw, off the road, my Peugeot car, a brown one, parked near a building. Why did I see it so clearly? I think God wanted it.
“ ‘That’s my car.”
‘ “That’s not your car,” Kamal said. “What would your car be doing here?”
‘The building was a hotel, not a very nice one, but with a fence around it and a caretaker man at the parking lot. I said to him, “Did you see a fat woman with this car?” ’
I made an effort not to smile at Ali’s description of his wife.
‘The caretaker man said, “No.” I gave him some money. He said, “Yes. They are in room nine.”
‘We go to the room, the three of us, me and Kamal and the caretaker. I knock on the door. I instruct the caretaker man what to say. He say, “Please open. It’s about your car.”
‘The door opens. I have my gun drawn — yes, I have a gun but I did not show it to the caretaker man before. We rush in, Kamal and me — they are naked. I punch my wife in the face, Kamal fights the soldier, and they are soon on the floor, the soldier is screaming and crying, “Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!” ’
Ali smiled for the first time, remembering a detail. He moved his upper lip, nervously twitching it in a rabbity way and said, ‘The soldier’s mustache is going like this.’ The soldier was trapped, begging for his life, his face jerking in fear. He was bollocky naked.
‘I say, “Stand up!” To my wife too. They have no clothes. Seeing my wife I feel a little sorry — her face bleeding from how I punched her and she try to cover her body. She is crying and pleading. I give her a dress to wrap around and then Kamal and I tie their hands like this.’
Ali stood up and demonstrated how he had tied his wife and her lover. He had faced them away from each other, and tied their wrists tightly, and then their arms. They were bound together, tightly, back to back. With her hands bound, Ali’s wife could not keep the dress wrapped around her, so she was as naked as the soldier now.
‘We pushed them out of the room to the car park and then down the street. It was hard for them to walk like that, so it was slow, and people saw them. They were laughing! I still had my gun pointed on them. Children were gathering around — many children, and a whole crowd of people.
‘Down the side of the road, a busy road — buses, taxis, cars, and many people — everyone looking at the naked ones. We keep pushing them until we come to a big stone, a flat one.
‘I say, “Sit there, don’t move. I am calling the police.” To the children and the people I say, “Don’t help them. They are bad. The police will come. If you help these two people you will have a problem.”
‘But they were laughing anyway, and I knew they wouldn’t help. I didn’t call the police. I went away, taking the man’s clothes with me. It was his uniform and his identification. Kamal drove the Peugeot. I went to the army base and asked to see the general. I gave the soldier’s clothes and everything to the general.
‘ “This is what your colonel did.”
‘He shook my hand! He thanked me. He said, “You did the right thing. The colonel deserved it.” ’