At dawn, Barakat, the young woman who almost died in the Toyota, is freshly bathed and smiling, with her baby in her arms and a striking yellow cloth on her head that makes her look even younger, just a girl. A happy girl. In a few days she and the child will be transferred to a hospital specializing in closing obstetric fistulas.
“What are you going to name your child?” I ask.
“Birihani,” she replies.
“Birihani?”
“It means ‘light’ in Amharic,” someone translates.
I look at young Barakat, I look at tiny Birihani, and I could almost say I hear a certain lullaby by Pedro Salinas float through the air; it seems to roll over the earth very slowly, with just the amount of rocking needed for the baby girl to sleep...
We return to Addis Ababa on the day Zahra Bayda is to fly to Barcelona. Before heading to the airport, we take advantage of a few free hours to visit the city’s Lion Park, which houses the last Abyssinian lions, a black-and-gold mythological animal, a dethroned king who languishes in the torpor of his prison.
I’m the one who insisted on visiting the zoo, determined as I was to see a black-maned lioness; after writing so much about her, I had to see her in the flesh. Zahra Bayda was against it, saying zoos were the saddest places in the world. She also said there’s no such thing as a black-maned lioness, because only males of that species have manes. She warned that we wouldn’t have enough time, that she’d be late for her flight. And so forth. She was right about all of it.
We had to do it all against the clock, vexed at the sight of those magnificent creatures stuck in shabby cages, overwhelmed by the strong scent of ammonia.
Of course, there was no such thing as a black-maned lioness. Inthe taxi to the airport, I got the deservedI told you sofrom Zahra Bayda, Didn’t I tell you we’d be late? I’ll kill you, Bos Mutas, if I miss this plane! I’m going to miss my daughter’s graduation! To make things worse, she kept calling me by my whole name, I told you, Bos Mutas! When she loves me, she calls me Bos, and when she loves me a lot, she calls me Bosi. When she doesn’t love me, she accentuates aMutasthat sounds hurtful to me, something like, Be quiet, stay mute, don’t say anything more.
Despite all that, I’m glad to have gone to the zoo: It was like witnessing a wonder before it vanishes, because the Abyssinian lion is on the path to extinction. That marvelous Ethiopian sovereign. The wild creature of Addis Ababa. The supremeambessa, thePanthera leo massaica,the lion of Maasai. The lion of Judah, unequaled by any other, not even the lion of the Serengeti Plain, nor the lion of the Kalahari Desert. It’s worth adapting that famous short story: When he awoke, the Abyssinian lion was still there.
To think that in other times this carnivorous monster, with its black Rastafarian hair, roamed calmly through the streets like a sheep dressed up as a lion, feeding on leftovers offered to him freely and licking the hands of Emperor Selassie, last direct descendant of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba... and now, forgotten and caged, he still looks like a sheep disguised as a lion. As he stared at us with endless indifference, Zahra Bayda and I made him a solemn vow: The day of Armageddon, before everything succumbed to the nuclear mushroom cloud, we’d come and open his cage door so he could escape.
Unfortunately, Zahra Bayda was also right about the third and last of her warnings: It was hard for us to find a taxi, and despite the driver’s suicidal speed at the wheel, we arrived at the airport far behind schedule. And who was waiting for us at the entrance, mad as a marmoset? None other than Pau Cor d’Or. Gesturing and shouting about how they were about to miss their plane, that many flights were canceled due to the pandemic, that if they missed thisone, they’d be fucked, what had we been thinking? The truth was, I’d never seen Pau so upset.
“The thing is, we went to see lions,” Zayra Bayda tried to justify herself.
“To hell with the lions!” Pau said in Catalan. He grabbed Zahra Bayda’s hand and the two ran toward the terminal.
Hey! Someone explain what’s going on! I was left seeing sparks. What was Pau doing here? Somebody tell me something! But they were already far from me, leaving without a word and without saying goodbye, they didn’t even turn to wave. I understood nothing. Or almost nothing, as one thing was clear: Zahra Bayda was going to Barcelona with Pau. The two of them together on a trip, and me here on my own. Damn, nobody told me about those plans.
It must have been in that moment that I caught the disease; my defenses came down and I caught it, though I’d surely been carrying it before; the thing is, an hour later, when I arrived at the hotel, I already had a fever. Maybe there wasn’t any drama in their departure, it was possible that Pau decided at the last minute to attend the meeting in Barcelona, maybe it was just that, not a betrayal at all, but who knew. In any case, the fever was already giving me chills.
Bata Hotel, a three-star place in the center of Addis Ababa. At least two of those stars had been won in a raffle, because it was run-down. That’s where Zahra Bayda and I had agreed to meet a few days later, when she returned...ifshe returned. I was given one of the few rooms with a bathroom, it was narrow but I was grateful to have it, with its pink tiles, golden faucets, and dark water stains on the ceiling, a real stroke of good luck. Something bad must have happened in that room, weighed it down, something ominous, but what? It took me a while to understand that it was the sickness I myself carried inside. The next day, the fever had already risen so sharply I had hallucinations, objects shrank before my eyes until they became unbearably small and then grew to an exasperating size. Here and there, my temperature eased, but then it would rise again.Fever, fromfebris, fromfebruare, to purify. Purifying fever that lets you see God, like the epileptic aura? I only saw small things, much-too-small things, and made them grow with my gaze. I’d fix my stare on them until they swelled and exploded, and I exploded with them.
I felt exhausted, I had to sleep, but the city lost its electricity and everything went out, starting with the fan. My room became an oven, the walls reverberated, and I was sweating buckets, the fever turned merciless. Diarrhea took hold and I was rooted to the toilet like a potted plant.
Someone’s steps approached in the hall, but then passed, nobody knocked on my door, they must have known I was contagious. It’s the law of the desert that the leper must not approach the watering hole. I was a foreigner and I had the symptoms. I hadn’t eaten in days, the fever fed on my hunger. I drank the water from that golden faucet. I opened the window, but the heat was worse outside than in my room. I watched a man collapse in the middle of the street. In the sewers, the virus gorged on feces.
Fever and anemia. Exhaustion by day, boiling by night. Zahra Bayda hadn’t returned and I lost count of the days. A single bulb hung from a bare wire, buzzing like a wasp: tinnitus in my ear. I got tangled in hallucinations: What if the contagion moved from room to room across those wires? What if each toilet was a reeking little pit? If someone had at least painted those walls white, if the rain pummeling the zinc roof weren’t sounding like some nocturnal xylophone...
I felt terribly alone. They’d left forever, the three wives of Mirza Hussain, my grandfather, vendor of carpets and narrator of lost loves, Zaida, the one who smiled; Fatima, the one who sang; Zeliz, the one who danced,to them my thoughts went, that night in Safar.1 Fatima, the one who laughed; Zeliz, the one who danced; Zahra Bayda, the one who committed a betrayal. In that airport, Pau had embedded himself in my unease. Pau Cor d’Or, the meddler. Pau in Barcelona with Zahra Bayda. We’ll see, Bos Mutas, I said to myself,you’re in a tough situation. Maybe you’re blowing things out of proportion? Be careful with jealousy, it’s a kind of virus too.
The ambulances howled and lashed out their laughter, like Rimbaud’s hyenas in Harar. Patti Smith, who adored the adolescent poet, wanted to visit Harar to trace his footsteps, but didn’t do it for fear of the hyenas. I don’t blame her, I feared them too, I could feel them climbing the walls, invading streets, sniffing, crouching their heads down, tracing our steps. There had to be something good about that animal, some good in the hyena, that two-sexed diva, she too athing of God, as Miguel Hernández said of clouds, donkeys, apples. What are you doing here, things of God? Would Miguel have said it about hyenas too, if he’d seen the way they prowled Rimbaud’s ancient city?
From my window I saw that, below, squadrons marched, wrapped in plastic like astronauts in the unhealthy air. Were they transporting the sick, or corpses? It’s said that when death approaches, it brings a retelling of the life you’ve lived. Like a silent movie, it shows you images, but blurs out dialogue. In that hotel room I fell into confusion, vapors hounded me in a hungry pack.
I was drenched in a thick dampness that wouldn’t let me breathe: the sweat of a sick city. Stay calm, I told myself, be calm. If I hadn’t been so exhausted, I would have gone down to the street to look for medicine, something to relieve my symptoms, or at least my thirst. If Zahra Bayda were to come to help me... if she could at least know I wasn’t well... I was really ill, hopefully I could warn her, it would be better for her to know.
Steps in the hall, strong ones this time. Vigorous, fast. It was her.
“Come, Zahra Bayda, I’m not breathing well, everything hurts.”
She asks about my symptoms. Symptoms? Pyrogenic steam, a lot of heat, chills, a racing heartbeat, intense thirst, trembling, aching muscles, fatigue, a foggy mind, loss of smell and appetite, difficulty breathing. Get me out of this cage, Zahra Bayda.
She drives like a maniac—Is she trying to kill us? She speeds likethere’s no tomorrow. There is no tomorrow, Zahra Bayda, for me there will be no tomorrow. It’s all right, it’s all right, we can stop the frenzy. Mirza Hussain would say: What’s the point of all this coming and going, if not to find the same death a little sooner. Goodbye, Mirza Hussain, beloved grandpa, you’re shrinking in the distance. It’s so good that you’re here, Zahra Bayda, are you taking me home? Where is home?
“You caught the illness,” she tells me. “You let days pass without seeking help, the virus takes hold, the delirium intensifies.”
