Buried beneath the news stories of armed conflict, genocide and revolution are the ongoing impacts of the violence on those who live it. News stories can capture moments of horror, and columnists put faces on the tragedy. But none of this journalism fully captures the ongoing, evolving impacts of unrest on the basic processes of living.
It’s the extended feeling of chaos and loss of understanding or control of a world turned inside out in a way that may never be righted that is at the heart of “Beneath the Lion’s Gaze.” Maaza Mengiste uses the 1974 Marxist revolution and overthrow of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as the backdrop for one family’s journey.
The novel opens as Hailu, a doctor, is digging a bullet out of a protester’s back. The situation brings to mind Hailu’s younger son, Dawit, a student protester. The young have little appreciation for mortality, and the doctor reflects, “Stones. Bullets. Fists. Sticks. So many ways to break a body, and none of these children seemed to believe in the frailty of their muscles and bones.”
Hailu’s world is anchored by tenuous threads. His wife, Selam, is dying of congestive heart failure. His older son, Yonas — a professor — responds to his mother’s illness with hours of prayer. Dawit is angry and out of control; unlike his more level-headed brother and father, he stands with his fellow students in the belief that the revolution cannot come too soon.
A drought of record proportion, rocketing oil prices and official corruption feed the unrest. Dawit’s best friend, Mickey, justifies their anger: “Our country exploits those who work the hardest to stay alive. Our emperor built the myth of this land on those who have been too tired to voice their own truths.”
Mengiste’s narrative unfolds in very short chapters, some no longer than a paragraph. The structure works like a photo and video montage, each one a short scene with its own resonance. There is a feeling that each moment, when taken on its own, is going to be survivable — for Hailu and his family, if not for the larger society. But when the large picture is stitched together, the breadth and depth of the horror becomes real — and unending.
Though Hailu’s extended family is at the center of the narrative, they cannot help but be touched by the experiences of their friends, co-workers and neighbors. Dawit and Mickey will fall out when Mickey becomes an influential part of the Derg, the military group behind the overthrow. Dawit will discover that horror at the hands of the Derg is worse than that under the emperor; his response, that of an impetuous youth, places his whole family at risk.
Hailu will be commanded to mend torture victims, but only enough to allow further questioning. It’s a situation that strains his Hippocratic oath, and one that puts him and his nurse in the sights of the Derg. His hospital in Addis Ababa had once been known as among the best in Africa. The revolution has rendered the institution hardly recognizable.
The novel takes its title from two sources. Selassie was known as the Lion of Judah, with a lineage traced back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. But also, at Yekatit 12 Martyrs Square in Addis Ababa sits an obelisk that holds the winged Lion of Judah. The monument commemorates the 1937 Italian massacre and is the scene of a pivotal confrontation in the novel.
One can also imagine it commemorating the extended civil massacre that began in 1974 that wasn’t curtailed until the Soviet-backed Derg fell in 1991.
What “Beneath the Lion’s Gaze” does with enviable grace is put faces to the terror of a genocidal reign and its resistance. It succeeds in the way fiction does, using the writer’s craft to mine the emotional truths in a way that is difficult, if not impossible, for nonfiction.
As the country is being torn apart, so is Hailu’s personal world. Neither journey can be avoided but, instead, is faced with unsuspected courage. Mengiste tells an unforgettable tale, and one that needed to be told.
Robin Vidimos is a freelance writer who lives in Centennial.
FICTION
Beneath the Lion’s Gaze
By Maaza Mengiste, $24.95
