I'm reading this novel set in Ethiopia titled "Beneath the Lion's Gaze." It takes place during and after the fall of Haille Selassie's monarch in 1974.
I want to share an example of what I consider excellent descriptive writing, where the writer awakens all your senses. A scene amongst beggars:
A SLENDER EUCALYPTUS LEAF spiraled to the ground and twirled gracefully in perfect circles. Sara saw the leaf land on an old beggar crouched on one row of steps surrounding the eight-sided church, his blind gray eyes roving in their sockets like hungry rats.
"Are you back again, my daughter?" he asked, pushing his nose into the air. (blind, he smelled her familiar scent)
"It's my last time." Sara fought the urge to turn away from the stench of rotting skin surrounding him.
Yes, the novel is a poetic smorgasbord of descriptive words giving readers visual nightmares. I like the short sections and how each new section carries over from earlier ones. Many characters get their say, adding so much color and conflict to the painting. The author is an artist, layering her canvas in all shapes and shades. Haille Selassie is one of those many shades in the midst of being discolored and dislodged by encroaching dark shadows.
Here, Ethiopia is going through a revolution and readers are shown the devastating effects on one family and their community of friends. "Beneath the Lion's Gaze" might be a title more befitting the hunger of power snatchers than the monarchy rule of Haille Selassie.
Under the new leadership of the Derg a type of communist feudal system took over Ethiopia. Russian and Cuban military support helped implement the Derg's socialist order. And North Korean supplied soldier uniforms. Nationalization, like in China, was replacing a democratic monarchy, now without its once revered Emperor. And it was the Derg who initiated attacks on the Eritrean cities of Asmara and Massawa.
So, this is how Ethiopian and Eritrean rebels came together to fight against a common enemy, the Derg.
Communism had couched itself comfortably in a country that once boasted of a Solomonic monarchy. pg.115
In the beginning, the Derg had promised the people a "bloodless coup," yet had done nothing but prove its own viciousness and murderous spirit. pg.117
So, Sad! Revolution shows no mercy!
Egypt, Israel, and Syria also had a hand in the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea in the 70's.
Reading "Beneath the Lion's Gaze" is a bit of a challenge until you familiarize yourself with the characters. It takes time to recognize its connective flow, where one incident leaks into and meshes with another. An impatient reader could easily miss the artistic beauty of this book. And scholarly historians would probably find themselves pulling out their hair due to fictionalized and/or the absence of some incidents.
But I have found myself addictively returning to its pages, cautiously journeying along with the family and their friends as they maneuver through a revolution. I suppose I relate to Hailu the father most. Dutiful to his work and family, still mourning loss and having to make ethical decisions that could endanger he and his family. The burden of being head of a household in the midst of a country's revolutionary changes. Nobody is safe, everybody is stressed, distrust and bloodshed are one's diet.
Now that I've read the brutal, torturous methods of the military police, likely taught by the Russians, I feel even more pity and anger over this young, innocent, frightened boy's abusive treatment from military men. Distrust is always a weapon during revolutionary times. But what does a young boy know. Nothing really. And a broken mother wilts and weeps.
The author really does a good job knitting together the quilt of this story. The pacing, while alternating between characters and their dilemmas, gives readers views of the story from different angles. It is as if the reader is a ghost in the story, unable to warn or comfort those who they've grown close to in this book. Danger is always lurking about.
This is as much a book you live, as it is one you read.
Again, Revolution shows no mercy.
"Ethiopia had become a country of watchers"
Finished. Excellent. Bravo!
Author's Note: Nega Mezlekias's "Notes from the Hyena's Belly" and the late Prime Minister Aklilu Habtewold's "Aklilu Remembers: Historical Recollections from a Prison Cell" were significant to my understanding of the political and personal costs of the revolution. I humbly express my gratitude to these writers for sharing their stories so the rest of us may know.
The Derg regime collapsed in 1991
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
