Book 14: Ethiopia (English): Beneath the Lion’s Gaze (Maaza MENGISTE)

“A thin blue vein pulsed in the collecting pool of blood where a bullet had lodged deep in the boy’s back. Hailu was sweating under the heat from the bright operating room lights. There was pressure behind his eyes. He leaned his head to one side and a nurse’s ready hand wiped sweat from his brow. He looked back at his scalpel, the shimmering blood and torn tissues, and tried to imagine the fervor that had led this boy to believe he was stronger than Emperor Haile Selassie’s highly trained police.”

 

So begins this fiery tale set at the time of the overthrow of the regime of Ethiopia’s last king. The central character, the surgeon Hailu, is dragged unwillingly into it despite his best efforts to keep out, while his sons split, one of them attracted to the resistance that was to become the socialist Derg dictatorship. The descriptions of inhumanity, violence and torture perpetuated in its name are quite confronting. The characters, especially Hailu, are torn between loyalties and courses of action. At the outset he is forced to make a wrenching decision for what he hopes is the best interest of his patient, the victim of terrible torture. There are no apologies for the hated old emperor (yes, the one revered by Rastafarians), but the new dictatorship is worse. Perhaps we should have learnt by now that we can’t expect a bloody revolution to be better than what it replaces. Since we haven’t, this stunning book about what may seem old history is fully relevant today.

 

MENGISTE, Maaza (1974 – ), Beneath the lion’s gaze: a novel, Norton, New York/London, 2010, ISBN 978-0-393-33888-1