Free Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste Page A

footsteps echoing like a volley of gunfire.
    A perfect triangle of light crawled from under his library door and the emperor stepped into its path and out of the shadows as he entered his last day as the King of Kings. In his library, two groups of noblemen and soldiers, pressed into their chairs like windblown birds, rose and bowed deeply as he sat down at his desk.
    A trembling police officer dressed in shabby trousers stumbled in his haste to stand at attention. Sweat dripped freely from his temple into the neck of his ill-fitting shirt. The tallest of the five men shoved a document in his chest and instructed him to read. The officer took the paper, gripping it so hard it doubled into sloppy folds in his shaking hands. Another soldier held the policeman’s wrists to keep them still so the frightened man could read.
    “Recognizing that the present system is undemocratic; that Parliament has been serving not the people but its members and the ruling and aristocratic classes; and that its existence is contrary to the motto ‘Ethiopia
Tikdem
,’ Ethiopia First; Haile Selassie I is hereby deposed as of today, September 12, 1974.”
    The emperor felt the heat of a thousand eyes fall on him, and he looked from one minister to another, from one nobleman and relative to the next, and he folded his hands in front of him, index fingers and thumbs touching, an unbroken trinity. He remained seated, refusing to believe the end would be so undignified and without ceremony, announced by a man who carried traces of dirt under his fingernails. He said, “We have raised you up. Have you forgotten?”
    From the back of the room seeped the sound of tears breaking into uneven sobs.
    One of the noblemen walked to him and tenderly kissed his cheek. “Go,” he whispered. “Don’t make this more difficult.” He led him to the door, that simple gesture releasing chair scrapes and whispers, sending the noises crashing against the emperor, who found himself spiraling in the deafening cacophony.
    Dazed, the emperor trailed the five men outside and waited for his Mercedes. One of them motioned him to the back of a blue Volkswagen, and Emperor Haile Selassie needed no words to convey his contempt for the order, for the officers, for the treasonous plot. The shortest of the men, his movements spare and tightly coiled, pointed towards the car and swung the back door wider, his skittish eyes the only evidence of his impatience. Under a rising sun furiously beating its way through clouds , the five stood, neatly ordered and stiff, sweating, waiting, then waiting some more until the old man finally slumped, defeated, and squeezed into the back of the small car.
    Despite the onlookers who cheered as the Volkswagen drove past, despite the ringing in his head and the chorus of shouts that greeted him through the thick glass, despite the deep thud of drumbeats from hands as fast as wings, nothing could have convinced the emperor that heaven had not fallen into a sudden hush at this betrayal of his kingdom, and he knew that it would be in this absence of sound that God would hear the prayers of his Chosen One and heed his call.
    Overhead, the first crack of thunder rolled through the Ethiopian sky and then the rain. The emperor watched his beloved city blur and grow dim, and then everywhere, the quiet.

13.
    “WE’LL HAVE A hard time getting home,” Hailu said to Sara as he opened the windows in Selam’s hospital room for fresh air. The thick smell of smoke and petrol drifted in. “Tanks are blocking most of the roads.” He stared outside for a moment, at the unusually congested roads and the gray haze that stretched across the hills like a stubborn stain. “Did they really arrest the emperor?”
    “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?” Sara felt Selam’s temperature. “She’s sleeping more,” she said, frowning. “Yesterday, she told me she’s been having strange dreams.”
    “It’s the medicines,” Hailu said. “She’s stable.”