Ethiopian women’s struggle strikingly told

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This article was published 07/03/2020 (2360 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Typically, the story of war has been a masculine story, Ethiopian-American author Maaza Mengiste tells us. “But this was not true for Ethiopia and it has never been that way in any form of struggle. Women have been there, we are here now.”

The Shadow King, Mengiste’s second book, is set in Ethiopia in 1935 during its war with fascist Italy. Inspired by her great-grandmother’s experience, Mengiste, who is a professor in the MFA programme at Queens College, New York, puts Ethiopian women in the midst of the struggle, fighting alongside the men.

It is a violent story, driven from page to page by rage, in a world where women are raped and beaten into submission by their men.

There are three women — Aster, Hirut, and the cook — who are central to much of the action. Aster is the wife of Kidane, an officer in the Ethiopian army. Hirut is a young peasant girl brought to live with Kidane and his wife after her parents die. The cook, much older, was stolen years ago from her own family.

Mengiste, who was born in Addis Ababa, transitions quickly from one emotionally charged scene to the next. Aster’s wedding night, for example, is essentially a matter of child rape, with Mengiste painting a painful picture of the young girl’s terror. The cook offers her pragmatic advice; since there is nothing to be done to prevent it, “Take whatever comes and wake up in the morning and live.”

Kidane and Aster fight over her desire to join the men in battle. She says she has earned the right, but the cook mutters on the sidelines: “What has she earned more than the rest of us… Who’s doing all the work?”

It is a hint of the class war going on in Ethiopia, where many have joined the invading Italian forces, and women walk away from Aster’s call to defend the country. “Who wants your king?… Let the Italians come.”

Sometimes the reader joins Haile Selassie, the besieged Ethiopian emperor, who is trying to understand the Italian mind by playing their music, particularly the opera Aida, the story of an Ethiopian princess abducted into Egypt. Eventually, he concludes the Italians have been “weaned on lies set to music.”

In Kidane’s army encampment one night, after Selassie has fled to England, Hirut notices the strong resemblance one of the peasant soldiers has to the emperor. He is groomed and dressed to look like the emperor, and Hirut and Aster are dressed as guards to accompany him. They bring to life an old legend of a shadow king, making appearances, from a distance, to rally peasant support by showing them their emperor is still standing with them.

The Italian forces are led by Carlo Fucelli, a notoriously cruel officer who is building a new prison. But his real goal with the prisoners is to throw them off a cliff to kill them. A young Italian soldier, Ettore Navarra, photographs deaths of the Ethiopians, and documents activity at the prison at Fucelli’s command: “Ettore points the lens toward the body’s head and chest, hoping to catch that faint threshold between what lives defiantly and what is waiting to die.”

In a letter home, almost a confession, Navarra tells of his torment. “They are going to fling men into the sky who have no wings. They are going to test the laws of gravity and terror and order me to photograph the ascent and fall.”

Mengiste serves up many subtle twists, multi-faceted characters and ironies to keep the reader alert, not once finding it necessary to resort to vulgarity despite the violence.

Set aside at least a couple of days to read this book — longer if you can only take your violence in small doses. It is a thoughtful, angry, presentation of the life of women at war.

Gordon Arnold is a Winnipeg writer.