Of Kings and Bandits

OF KINGS AND BANDITS

And Eritrea’s Child Warriors

Table of Contents

Title

Story Map

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Author

Copyright © 2010 Saleh Gadi Johar

Published by author at smashwords

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Disclaimer:

Though based on real and historical facts, this novel is a work of fiction and names and characters are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to living or dead persons is entirely coincidental. Neither the publisher nor the author bear any responsibility for comments by, or contents of, other parties regarding this work.

Of Kings and Bandits – And Eritrea’s Child Warriors

ISBN 978-0-578-06134-4

Cover design and drawing by Negaritmedia.com

Image rendering by Mahmoud Debrom

Published by Negarit Media

www.negaritmedia.com

Dedication

To my wife Almaz and my children Luam and Adal

Acknowledgement

I am indebted to my family, friends and colleagues for their advice, assistance and support in bringing this work to life. I am grateful to my late father who was my main inspiration in life, to my mother whose prayers keep me going and to my sister Leila and her husband Abdella Adem who have always been second parents for my children. But above all, I am indebted to my wife for being patient with my activist life and filling the role of a mother and a father for my children.

I am indebted to my friend Saleh Younis for the efforts he put behind this book, reading the draft and commenting on every stage of its development. I am also indebted to my friends Dr. Kahlid Beshir and Semere Habtemariam who diligently read and critiqued the manuscript and to my niece Huda, her brother Ayoub and my children Luam and Adal who gave me their invaluable feedback. I am equally indebted to Mahmoud Debrom who rendered the cover image and to Tes Meharenna and Nasser Ali for their continuous support and encouragement.

Special thanks goes to my friend Kassahun of Red Sea Press for taking my hand through the publishing process of this book, to Ahmad Meradji of Booklogix Publishing Services, Inc. for his professionalism and his kindness and to my editor Angela DeCaires for her keen eyes. To all my readers who over the years had nagged me to comeout with such a book, I am thankful for your encouragement and trust: without your inspiration, I wouldn’t have done it.

Story Map

Chapter 1

The Village Of Mehlab

A low flying military helicopter hovered above, the legs of the gunner sitting behind a machine gun dangled from the open door. Jemal, a ten-year old child, was terrified by the noise of the machine as he looked up and clearly saw the pilot’s dark glasses and white helmet behind the windshield. He was on an errand to pick a set of hinges for the kitchen door in his house. Jemal took the long way to the blacksmith’s workshop to avoid Ambess, the dog that scared him so much he avoided the alley where the dog spent his day. Jemal grew up practically banished from his neighborhood alley.

On the street, under the noise of the helicopter, a man pulled a camel loaded with two long upright-strapped bundles of firewood balanced on its sides. He shouted, "Echei, echei," advertising his products which seemed difficult to sell. He has to sell the pair of upright bundles together; otherwise, the load would lose balance. A woman with a shawl covering half her face had just bought the shqqel, the small load tied to the bigger bundles in front of the camel’s hump.

A shiny car leisurely approached. It was Mirqani driving his Peugeot, one of four cars that passed on that dirt street, three of which he owned. He is, so everyone said, a descendant of Prophet Mohammed and the chief of the Mirqani family, patrons of the Sufi order, to which the overwhelming majority of Eritrean Muslims belonged.

The camel panicked and almost threw off its load as the car approached. The wood seller restrained the camel, systematically pulling and releasing the leash as the animal struggled to escape from the car. It groaned, foam oozed from both sides of its wide-open mouth, and it seemed it would bite off the wood seller’s hand with its big yellowish teeth. Mirqani slowed his car and waited for the camel to calm down. A few people on the street took the opportunity to approach his car, and reach for his hand, which he stretched out through the window for the convenience of those who raced to kiss it. Jemal stood there and stared at him; Mirqani stared back with piercing eyes. He could have been wondering why the boy did not kiss his hand, he must have been unsure of how the future generation would carry the tradition.

Jemal knew better. His parents had always warned him not to kiss anybody’s hand with the exception of respectable elderly people, or those who would kiss his hands in return. Based on their demeanor and age, he made arbitrary judgments to determine if an elderly person was respectable or not. And here was Mirqani, his hand stretched out to bless those who kissed it, some of whom rolled cash bills into it. He didn’t kiss back anybody’s hand, and Jemal would not kiss that hand.

After staring at him for a while, feeling the discomfort of not kissing the hand of the man everybody raced to kiss, Jemal reluctantly tipped his head and passed a stiff smile. Mirqani returned a reserved smile.

The car passed and the wood seller, relieved, took the time to vent some residual anger—restraining a panicky camel is difficult. He cursed; Jemal couldn’t understand if the wood seller cursed the camel or the car and the driver. No doubt the wood seller didn’t know it was Mirqani behind the steering wheel. If he did, he surely would have raced to kiss the stretched hand, considering the encounter a blessing just like the rest of the people. Jemal didn’t care for such a blessing.

Wood sellers had to report to the wood market with their camels when they arrived in town. They left after paying taxes to a municipal officer, who carried a moneybag and a book of tax tickets. Had he found a buyer there, he would have delivered the load earlier, and he would have bought his needs and left on the dirt road back to his village. It was late, the market must have been slow—otherwise, he wouldn’t be roaming the streets and exposing himself to the heat of the sun for long hours, draining his energy.

Jemal passed the angry wood seller and continued his way to the blacksmith.

A little further, he saw young girls with shawls covering their heads, carrying empty baskets. They walked towards the market to buy food for their families; they were running late.

Suddenly, three menacing boys including Omer, who always pestered Jemal, appeared from the corner of a narrow street dragging a seven-year old boy to the Koran school, the Khelwa. The boy kicked, punched and screamed, but he couldn’t break free from the two boys, who carried him like a half-full sack of grain. They walked up towards the Khelwa following Omer, who appeared to be their leader. Jemal guessed Omer had guided the boys to the house of the victim. The sheikh had sent the bigger boys to drag the absent boy from his home and forcefully make him attend Khelwa, an act known as jerjera, dragging. Not even parents interfered to stop the dragging of their children. They had pledged to the sheikh when they enrolled their child: I own his bones, but his flesh is all yours. From then on, until the child finished studying, the sheikh had full authority to discipline the child and punish him in any manner he saw fit, including whipping, provided, as the initial verbal contract stipulated, he didn’t break a bone. Only in that case would the parents have the right to interfere.

Jemal’s father, Bakri, never made such a pledge—he didn’t like the idea of someone beating up his son, something he didn’t do himself. He didn't take his son to the Khelwa anyway; Jemal went on his own and stayed only for a few months. Now seeing the boy mercilessly dragged, Jemal felt happy it was not him. He continued on towards the bank of the Shfshfi River, to the blacksmith’s workshop, and found him sitting in a chair with a group of men huddled around a small table, talking in whispers. The blacksmith had his shirt on, not bareback as he usually worked pounding on the red-hot iron and sweating like a gladiator. Iron rods in the forge burned red hot but the place looked unusually calm. The anvil and hammer looked idle and cold—the blacksmith didn’t seem to have done any work that morning.

Clearing his throat, just to catch their attention, Jemal greeted them: "Asselam waalleikum."

The blacksmith turned his face, Jemal my son, tell your father the hinges will be ready tomorrow, and immediately turned his face back to the group. Jemal understood that to mean ‘go away.’

The blacksmith’s face was ashen; he looked sad and worried and talked to the men in a low voice. Jemal overheard a few words that grabbed his attention: Jebha, Commandos, Mehlab, words that aroused his curiosity. Jemal knew "Eritrea, Jebha, were good and Ethiopia, Janhoi, Commandos," were bad. He didn’t know what Mehlab meant. Jemal couldn't make an excuse to stay around longer, as the blacksmith’s sons were not there. Though eager to find out what they were talking about, aware of his awkward presence among the elders, he walked out and decided to go to his father’s shop.

On his way, he passed through the market, where stalls offered plenty of fresh vegetables and fruits. Donkeys loaded with guava fruit stood on the streets tethered to tree trunks or lampposts, but no one seemed to be interested in buying any of the fruits. That season, the rains had been excellent and the farmers had reaped a plentiful harvest, so they priced the abundant Guava in donkey-loads and not in kilos or basketfuls.

Across the street, men delivered freshly slaughtered goats to the butcher shops from an old van with open doors, its noisy engine running and its low exhaust pipe letting out fetid black smoke. Inside the van, a gruesome sight of skinned goats hanging from hooks on a horizontal pole, and blood seeped through the edges of the floor to the sides of the van. Workers, their aprons soaked and smudged with blood, moved back and forth carrying the pale goats.

A little further he encountered an unusual sight—the old grain market swarmed with soldiers brandishing Uzi submachine guns; they nervously looked left and right. Jemal tensed up when he saw Mokria, an Ethiopian soldier who liked to beat and harass people in the streets. Mokria seemed like he was itching to use the baton he held as he inspected the crowds.

A few weeks earlier, the municipality had demolished the pit of the old grain market. They planned to build a new market in its place. Construction had not started yet, and signs of the old demolished pits remained visible. Crowds quickly formed around the empty space and made it appear busy. Hours earlier, soldiers had gone house-to-house and ordered people to go to the old grain market, for an event they didn’t describe. Jemal had seen a few soldiers knocking at doors, but he thought they were on a routine house-to-house search.

Jemal walked to the middle of the intersection and stood by the side under the corrugated steel awning of a brick-walled tukul, a hut unique in both style and location. A man stood behind a counter inside the landmark tukul and sold tumbak, moist tobacco, and cigarettes to nervous customers.

An old grey municipal truck brought in workers who immediately began clearing debris from the space. A few minutes later, another truck arrived with a load of timber and lampposts that the workers unloaded. Taffere, the carpenter, had arrived there with a hammer in one hand and a saw in the other; he moved around nervously giving orders to the workers who held pickaxes and spades. He marked spots on the dirt with his feet and signaled to the workers, who dug holes in the ground where he had made the marks. He then measured and made pencil markings on the timber before he sawed it. He finished cutting the timber and started to build a ladder.

People forced to attend the occasion and other curious onlookers flooded the area from all sides, but apart from Aristo’s noisy grain mill on a corner, there was dead silence in the air. More heavily armed soldiers arrived and occupied the streets. They stood on every corner and watched everyone. The onlookers and the guests looked anxious—something grave had happened.

Jemal went to Bakri’s shop a short distance away and found him whispering with a group of his friends. They always whispered when they discussed the Jebha rebellion and related issues. Saad, a friend of his father raged and cursed Janhoi, the Ethiopian king, and his troops, while the others tried to calm him down, to no avail.

They finished them all, someone said.

It is their day but they will pay for it, blurted another, shaking his head left and right.

Thirty youth in one day! Saad wondered, still outraged.

Twenty-one, they say. Around that many, but we don’t know for sure. Yet, Saeed said.

Bakri noticed Jemal lurking by the desk and said, "Jemal, get us Berad Shaahi." Jemal ran to the teashop, passed the order for a kettle of tea and returned back quickly to avoid missing the discussion.

Shortly afterwards, Saleh the teashop owner arrived carrying a tray with two small kettles of tea and six small cups. He was silent. It was the only time that he came in undetected; he usually announced his arrival by muttering something loudly or humming a song. He laid the tray on the bench silently, lifted the kettle high and poured steaming hot tea into the cups, the tea coming out of the sprout as a fierce fountain. Finally, he spoke. What kind of news is this? he asked, to no one in particular. "Allah Kerim," he added, pleading to God and trying to break the silence.

The somber conversation continued for a while. Jemal was now aware that a horrible thing had happened, but the men kept saying that it was God’s will and that whoever was the culprit will have to pay for it eventually.

Who was their commander? wondered Saleh.

Shambel Hassen or Shambel Berhe, the two animals, replied Saad.

Jemal knew Shambel Berhe, a captain of the para-military commandos units. A short, stocky man, Captain Berhe always had his pistol on the hip; he never fastened its holster. He pulled it out at the slightest provocation to threaten people and returned it back only after he was sure they were humiliated enough. Jemal once saw him at Bar Senhit ordering two clients to leave a table, it is my favorite spot, he said. Besides, I have to sit close to the door in this bandit-infested town, he added. When the customers looked at him in defiance, he pulled his pistol and threatened to make them leave by force.

The bar owner intervened and asked the men to sit at another table, Your bill is on the house! They declined the offer and left the place visibly angry. Berhe had pulled a chair close to the door, and feeling victorious, he had ordered a beer.

Jemal sneaked out and left the men talking about Berhe. He followed Mack and Mercedes field trucks that blasted their horns as they wheeled towards the old grain market. He heard people talk about a fierce battle that waged in the village of Mehlab where the commandos forces decimated a Jebha unit. That must be what the blacksmith and his friends were talking about; he remembered hearing them mention Mehlab!

Energized by the success of several ambushes they laid for the commandos forces, the emboldened Eritrean Jebha rebels had begun to attack well-defended Ethiopian camps. They had targeted the Mehlab garrison, but likely tipped by a spy, the commandos forces had ambushed the Jebha platoon in a narrow gorge and obliterated it. The news spread and sadness engulfed the people. Now Jemal knew why everyone looked so gloomy.

Jubilant Ethiopian soldiers had burst into the streets. Military vehicles brought hordes of them. Some in civilian clothes, others in tattered dusty uniforms, jumped off the trucks in the streets to celebrate their victory. They rushed to the bars, for it had been a while since they last celebrated in such scale.

No one went home for lunch that day, all the shops stayed open and people moved from one place to another talking in whispers. The old grain market had more crowds than when grain was actually sold there.

The two trucks stopped in the middle of the open field, and suddenly the air carried an offensive stench. People held their noses or covered them with handkerchiefs. Jemal pulled the collar of his shirt, covered his nose and stepped closer to the crowd surrounding one of the trucks, and the stench got worse. He could not see what the trucks carried. He stood on his toes and stretched his neck to have a better look but he couldn’t stretch his head high enough to see into the truck beds. He returned to the veranda from where he could see clearly. The trucks carried heaps of bloodied clothes covering piles of bodies. He suddenly felt something moving inside his stomach, went to the corner, and threw up. He felt a burning sensation in his throat but he couldn’t swallow his saliva, it felt unusually acidic and bitter. The frequent spitting dried his mouth and he felt sick and scared. But he mustered enough courage to wait and see the whole thing; he knew he shouldn’t miss the momentous event.

Taffere the carpenter was busy erecting a structure resembling goal posts as the workers fastened a crossbar on the poles. They shoved stones in the holes around the poles for reinforcement. Every now and then, Taffere shook the poles to check if they were firm. Satisfied that he had built a rigid structure, he nodded his head and threw his hammer away—he had just finished building a sturdy ladder and a rigid structure. What is he doing? Jemal wondered and turned to the crowd, hoping to read an explanation in their faces. He could tell some understood the situation fully; others had no idea and looked at one another hoping someone would explain. Jemal faintly remembered seeing something similar a few years earlier on his way back from school, but he had been very young, too scared to watch, and had run away to his home.

A while later, three speeding Land Rovers arrived and stopped by Taffere’s structure, close to the trucks that carried the bodies. Officers in pressed ceremonial outfits, with chests displaying stripes of colored pins, came out of the cars. Shiny brass stars and crowns adorned their shoulders. The soldiers made room for the officers; they pushed the crowd away from the proximity of the trucks and asked everybody to stand in a circle that an officer drew in the dirt with his feet, just like what Taffere did earlier, around the structure. Jemal had a better view of the heaps of bodies on the bed of the trucks, but the crowd kept blocking his view and pushing him to the back. He struggled, squeezed his way to the front, and stood on a pile of bricks by the side, where he had a better view. Now he could see the bodies on the trucks more clearly, but the stench became unbearable. He smelled a strong odor of DDT that filled the air but Jemal couldn’t make the connection.

A man brought a load of nooses from one of the trucks and laid them under the poles. Then the workers started to push the bodies and drop them to the ground from the bed of the trucks. The bodies thudded like heavy sacks and landed in awkward positions. A few soldiers went to work and placed nooses and slipknots around the necks of the bodies. Once they looped the nooses, they carried the bodies one after the other, and standing on the rungs of the ladder, hanged them on the crossbar: twenty-one bodies dangled from it. The neck of a body with bloodied British gaiters was almost severed, so they passed the noose under the armpits, while the head seemed clipped to the back in an upside down position. All the bodies had chunks of dried blood blackened by the heat of the sun.

The United Nations had introduced the deadly DDT to eradicate malaria, a major cause of death in the country. People had discovered that the chemical eradicated lice and household pests as well, and not knowing the consequences, they lavishly sprayed their house with it. But the Ethiopian authorities found the strong smell very handy and used it to cover the stench of death; they sprayed it on the mutilated bodies whose limbs were hanging to the torso on small strands of flesh that survived the blasts. The DDT powder mixed with the blood, dried up, left a whitish stain and let out an awful odor. Covered in white DDT powder, the bodies looked like ghosts.

Twenty-one bodies dangled on Taffere’s crossbar. Jemal lowered himself to the ground. More acidic liquid forced itself out through his mouth, he had severe heartburn and the stench was becoming excruciating. Strangely, though, the stomachache didn’t last long: he must have gotten used to it, he became numb.

People watched with open mouths, bewildered and lost. They showed signs of disdain for the soldiers, their inner rage easily detectable. But Wendu celebrated and bragged about the victory of Janhoi’s gallant army, with arrogance and utter irreverence to the dead.

Wendu paced back and forth in front of the crowd. As usual in shorts, his enormous belly sagging over, he had his hands inserted between his back and belt, balancing his weight, a sort of a brake. He fumed with a mixture of anger and excitement, appalled at the rebels who dared to carry a gun against Janhoi, the Ethiopian king, expressing his happiness that they met a fate they deserved. He repeatedly pointed to the bodies hanging on the crossbar and declared, Anyone who challenges Janhoi will be displayed like dried meat in this market, take a lesson! Everyone heard his warning as his voice echoed through the air. The people trained their eyes on him and observed his arrogance. Jemal thought the man’s boasting surpassed the stench of DDT. He glanced at the powder-covered bodies and felt like crying but resisted, remembering what his father had always told him: Men do not cry!

The commandos had killed twenty-one Jebha combatants and displayed their bodies in public, and they made sure the crowd saw the Uzi guns that did the job. Every now and then they went, "Akhh, tuff, and spit a mouthful in disgust of the stench. The townspeople however, though they couldn’t stand the stench, wouldn’t spit, for that is disrespect. They are martyrs straight to heaven," an older man whispered. Another one standing close by squeezed his nervously trembling hand and in sotto voce advised him to be quiet, lest a spy overhear him.

Jemal searched for any distraction and found it in a bird crowing noisily. A cat had climbed the tree and threatened a nest. Fiercely and with stretched wings, the crow defended its nest. The crowing grew louder and disturbed the somber silence of the congregated people—only Wendu’s war cries and threats competed against the loud crowing of the bird.

A strong wind blew over the bodies and filled the area with DDT dust. Jemal felt a burning sensation, reached for his eyes, and started rubbing them. When he opened his eyes again, he caught a boy throwing a pebble at the cat that disturbed the bird’s nest, hitting it on the head. It let out a sharp meow and jumped to the roof nearby. The loud bang on the metal roof scared the soldiers who reached for their Uzis. Jamal wanted to laugh, but even at that age, he knew the event didn’t warrant any laughter. Yet, seeing the scared soldiers gave him an assurance that someday other children would throw pebbles and scare them off for good. Then, maybe, he would laugh louder.

The sun slowly descended behind the mountains, it was getting darker. Streaks of people began to leave silently as if they had just attended a funeral of a loved one. Who were the dead rebels? Did they have a relative among the crowd? But even if there were relatives, there was no way one would recognize a burned, bloodied, mutilated and smashed face protruding from a bloated body.

Only a small crowd remained when the municipal garbage truck arrived with fresh barrel of DDT. A man scooped the white powder from a barrel and sprinkled it lavishly on the bodies, enough to last for many hours—the bodies would stay there overnight. Jemal looked at the bodies again; they swelled bigger and bigger, as if some invisible thing was pumping air into them. He stared at one body and could see small red and blue insignia attached to the shoulders of the shirt. To his right, he saw an officer walking like a peacock with two brass stars and a crown on his shoulder. Jemal looked at the shoulders of the body and then at the officers’, He paid a last glance at the bodies and after hours of standing there, he joined the streaks of people leaving the place and headed home. He never looked around, keeping his eyes to the ground. Somehow, he knew where to turn right, where to turn left, and where to walk straight ahead. On the way, he passed bars and local beer houses filled with commandos soldiers in a festive mood—they killed twenty-one Jebha, they brought and displayed the bodies to show for it, and that justified their celebration.

Long before dinnertime, Jamal crept into his bed and stared at the white false ceiling that was made of cheap white painted Abu Jedid cloth. He had heard people say that they shroud the dead with nine-meters of Abu Jedid cloth for burial. He multiplied 21 times 9 in his head. They would need almost two-hundred meters of cloth to wrap the dead Jebha bodies, he calculated. He went to sleep and hallucinated for what felt like eternity.

When the roosters crowed, he sprang up from his bed with his eyes still swollen and red. He wanted to cry but again remembered Bakri sternly warning him, Men do not cry. He told himself, be a man. He believed, and he became. Jemal, a boy in the fifth grade, became a man.

It was only the next day that he discovered the municipality rolled the bodies on cheap straw mats and buried them in the Muslim graves. In an attempt to prevent Christians from joining it, Janhoi's government portrayed rebellion as a Muslim affair.

Chapter 2

The Village Of Wehni-Ber

Mokria, a young Ethiopian boy, glanced at the Wehni Mountain whose top was covered in thick fog that made it invisible. He felt the cold bite his skin through the blanket he had slept on, which was now wrapped around his body. He waited restlessly by the bush fence outside the family hut until his father finished drinking his morning coffee. The only family cow, all white except for a patch of black that covered half its head and a few black spots on its body, mooed loudly. Left tethered to the eucalyptus tree in the cold, it could have been complaining. Mokria looked at the coop beside the entrance to the fence; the chicken that his mother raised made a lot of noise. He glanced towards the west where a snakelike stream of fog floated over the gorge, tracing the course of the Nile River. For months, his father had complained of the little rain the region received. Mokria had wondered why they needed rain when the Nile flowed like a raging monster nearby, until his father explained: How could we bucket enough water for the vast land? He had told Mokria that a long time ago the Italians brought pipes and engines and pumped a little, but they couldn’t bring enough water for a fraction of the prince’s farmland!

Mokria’s grandfather sharecropped for a prince, his father sharecropped for the same prince’s son; and after his father dies, Mokria will sharecrop for the prince’s grandson who will inherit the land. Mokria knew that his rebellious younger brother, Gobezie, would certainly have problems serving any prince, father, son or grandson. Gobezie was unlike any of his other brothers—so rebellious that his father beat him up very often for refusing to work. Let the prince come and work on the muddy field himself, he would defiantly say to his father.

The previous night at dinner, Mokria had asked about the size of their landlord’s farm, the confines of the prince’s land. His father exclaimed, "Erre b’amlak! Oh God, it is a half-day’s travel on the back of a mule," he had explained to his children.

Ten villages toiled the land and delivered the harvest on pack animals to the prince’s stores in the nearby town after taking their cut of the harvest, ten percent. The prince lived in Addis Abeba, the capital city. He had inherited the land from his father, who received it as a grant from King Minelik when he defeated another prince who owned it before him. Mokria’s father never met the prince for whom he slaved. He is a royal prince, he can’t come to our dirty villages, and he couldn’t possibly be able to inspect the vast farmlands that he owns! Mokria’s father had said. Gobezie had a remark: And you do not own the land on which our hut stands!

His father had enough of Gobezie’s rebellion—he sent him off to a nearby village, to his brother who didn’t have children of his own. But living with his uncle made Gobezie more rebellious and further poisoned his thinking.

Neither Mokria nor his father or his grandfather considered the deal they had with the prince unfair, only Gobezie did. Ten villages and nearly a thousand people lived in the land; all of them busy producing for the prince who held a high position in Janhoi’s government.

Mokria, still sitting behind the bushy fence, looked at the top of the mountain again. The clouds were becoming thinner and the fog cleared out while he patiently waited for his father. He knew it would be another tough day in the fields before he returned in the afternoon to walk to the old monastery on the side of the Wehni Mountain. Farming and church was the mainstay of his life. Every afternoon after a brief relaxation, Mokria would go to the church to study under Mergheta Kndye, the old priest who taught him how to read and write. He had begun memorizing the Psalms of David. If Mergheta thought Mokria did well, he might expose him to the secrets of Kebre Neggest, Glory of the Kings, a revered Abyssinian book of knowledge. Mokria's father urged his son to learn the history of the great warrior kings of Abyssinia, whom he mentioned with admiration, so powerful they could own a land surrounding fifty villages.

Mokria would be in a bad mood before the beginning of the rainy seasons. His father and brothers would be busy for months preparing the land that they would sow with teff crop. Weeding the muddy furrows would be next, followed by weeks of warding off the birds with the noise of pebbles crackling inside empty cans. Next, they would harvest the crops, separate the tiny teff seeds from the stems, blow away the chaff, and finally, collect it in jute sacks before taking it to the prince’s stores. The tough job would only end by mid-Meskerem, September, when the four-month season of festivities and weddings would begin. Mokria would then linger around with not much work to do except feeding and milking the only family cow.

Mokria found the first few Sundays after the harvest season very enjoyable. The families would take turns holding parties, and consume lots of meat and tella beer. The chats that followed went well into the night. He would see less of Mergheta Kndye and more of his father and uncles, who would tell him stories of brave kings, princes who owned vast lands and hard working peasants who made their masters happy. He would listen and ask questions to the tipsy men who enjoyed passing to him their knowledge of ancient history.

Janhoi is left with only half of the country… he distributed vast lands to the princes… they deserve it, but... May God give him longevity, his father said, apparently torn apart, worried that the king’s vast land would be diminished by grants.

Mokria nodded in admiration of the king: Only a generous king would give such vast land as a gift!

He grew up believing the king to be just one level below God and infallible. He thought it natural for the king to own the land, God’s land. But God cannot come to earth and own it—the king, God’s viceroy, does that for Him. Unlike his brother Gobezie, it didn’t occur to him why his father or grandfather didn’t own the land.

"The troops of this prince’s father had fought in the East, and this land is his reward, Mokria’s uncle explained, They pillaged and enslaved many, an epic pillaging." He would never refer to the landlord as ‘our prince’ as Mokria’s father did.

Those Eastern people! You either defeat them or die in battle—if you are captured, a fate worse than death awaits you, Mokria’s father said.

They all laughed.

Why? Mokria asked.

If you fall in their hands, they cut your organs!

Organs?

Organs. Between your legs! His uncle replied, pointing to his crotch.

Mokria felt a shiver along his spine and he unconsciously reached for his crotch.

He learned why Abyssinian warriors, motivated by fear, fought with courage to kill or die; surrendering to the enemy or being captured in battle had terrifying consequences. They had to win to avoid the fate of having to return home without their manly tools, not able to produce children anymore.

His uncle had said, Our nobility didn’t value marriage highly, un-Christian promiscuity, unrestrained sexual appetite and moral decadence. He shook his head and squinted, They produced as many illegitimate children as they did in wedlock, the reason for the numerous claimants.

Mokria looked towards the Wehni Mountain, to the moon shining behind the tip. He imagined young princelings detained on top of the mountain remembering the history his father recounted proudly: princely brothers killed each other or slaughtered their fathers, the kings, to seize power, and created chaos that lasted for centuries. The power struggle, the intense never-ending infighting among claimants of the throne, made Abyssinians devise a system to quell the insatiable greed for power and divine titles. He marveled at the ferocity with which the princes and the nobility fought among each other. Yet, he didn’t approve of the way his uncle debased the royalty, and worried that Gobezie would be as Satanic as his uncle, since he lived with him.

Mokria had learned that the clergy and the nobility invented Wehni-Bet, a detention village on top of the Wehni Mountain, where all possible claimants to the throne were kept until they died. The clergy detained the princes to prevent them from posing a threat to a sitting king. If the clergy and the nobility decided to have one of the princes at Wehni crowned, they brought him down. No one else but the clergy and the sitting king had access to the mountaintop.

Mokria sat outside the hut, still waiting for his father, and looked at the narrow trail that meandered to the top of the mountain, to the Wehni jail.

His grandfather had worked as a guard on the Wehni gates until they abandoned the place. He had preferred to stay behind with a few other guards, deciding to call the place home. The landlord was more than happy to have more farm hands around and allotted a space for them to set a cluster of huts. Mokria’s grandfather built a hut where the old gates stood, brought his relatives and friends to live with him, and baptized the place Wehni-Ber, Wehni Gate—Mokria’s village. Mokria felt proud for being a descendant of the proud gatekeepers to the forbidden jail of Wehni-Ber. No wonder his father named him Mokria, Pride.

MOKRIA HAD DONE WELL. Mergheta Kndye promoted him to the next level; he would now study the Kebre Neggest, a book he absorbed with excitement together with a few other boys. Mergheta Kndye surrounded the Kebre Neggest with so much aura that Mokria considered it as important as the bible. The teacher didn’t show his students the difference—maybe he didn’t see any. Neither did Mokria discover any while reading the captivating stories of kings, stories over two-thousand years old, as Mergheta Kndye explained. His father was right. In the book, Mokria found the mythical origin of Janhoi, straight from the veins of King Solomon and Queen of Sheba. It was