His first funeral was for the only son of a couple who could not stop shaking their heads at the sight of their child’s grave. “Is this real, is this him, is this my son?” the mother moaned into the chest of the grieving father. Gideon cursed his voice, his throat, the air he breathed. He kept his mouth clamped shut until he felt the soldier’s rifle in his side. He started softly, a mournful song of longing and loss, but the soldiers raised their guns and pronounced the corpse an enemy and made him sing of Chairman Mengistu’s valor. Then the soldiers pointed their weapons at the mother and said, “Dance, Emama, we do not weep for those we hate.”
Every day for a week, Gideon went to Konjit’s bar and waited for the two ferenjoch. He’d put on his only suit from his days in the band. It was pin-striped with broad lapels and a blue handkerchief sewn into the jacket pocket. In his shirt pocket was Samson’s photo. He ordered one beer and sipped it slowly, sparingly. Then he waited, ignoring Konjit’s questioning look and her attempts to talk to him.
During the second week, one night near closing time, the man came in alone just as Konjit was trying to make Gideon go home. Gideon felt his mouth go dry, even though he’d just taken a drink of beer. He spun around, his mouth open, and for the first time in years, he regretted swallowing his voice and making it disappear.
The man had dark circles under his eyes. There was a fine sheen of dust covering him, and the weight of the camera slung over his shoulder seemed to tip him to one side. He didn’t look at Gideon or Konjit, lost instead in the Amharic letters on a beer bottle sitting on the bar. He breathed with his mouth open in soft gusts. Gideon couldn’t tell if he was near tears or simply at the point of exhaustion.
“Birra?” Konjit asked, holding out a fresh bottle to him. “You are tired?” She smiled, then let the smile fade when the man didn’t return her gaze. She set the beer in front of him and turned to stack clean glasses on a shelf.
Gideon felt for Samson’s photo. Its edges pressed against his shirt and burned into his bare skin. His heart hammered against the photo, beating his son’s name into his chest then up to his throat. His mouth opened and closed over silent words.
The man waved aside the beer and began to breathe normally. He laid his hands flat on the countertop and stared at them intensely. He began to unload his camera and his lips quivered as he took the roll of film and slid it into his shirt pocket. Then he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
Gideon slid Samson’s photo out of his pocket and laid it gently on the counter in front of the man. He tapped the man on the shoulder, keeping his hand there to comfort him, then he led the man’s gaze to the photo, then back to himself. He did it again: Samson, then him. Samson’s face, then his face.
Konjit shook her head with mournful eyes. The man turned away. He put both hands over his face as if to shield himself from a bright light.
“Please,” he said, one of the few English words Gideon could understand. “Please. No more.” He shook his head back and forth and said something quietly to Konjit, his eyes glued to the counter, focused on his hands gripping his beer as if the bottle were the only thing keeping him in place.
“Leave him alone,” Konjit said to Gideon, her concentration on the man’s mouth. “He is saying that too many families came today.”
Gideon shook his head and pushed the photo closer to the man. He tapped his shoulder and pointed to the picture again. Samson, he mouthed desperately. Samson. He faced the man and waited.
The man spoke in English to Konjit then nodded in his direction.
Konjit took a deep breath and spoke gently: “There are nothing but bones now, Gideon. There is no way to identify by a photo.”
But isn’t every bone different? Gideon wanted to ask. Isn’t the shape of my son’s face unlike any other? Look at his jaw, its strength and strong lines. Who else but my Samson has that? Look at him! Gideon wanted to shout. There is no other like him, even after all flesh has gone the way of dust, even after all has turned to ash. There is him.
III
Gideon has come every day for a week to watch us dig. He crouches beneath a tree and sits quietly, holding a photograph in front of his heart. He’s dressed in an old suit that’s neatly ironed. His shoes are polished to military standards and I notice even from this distance that one has a thicker heel than the other. Alfonso sits with him when the sun goes down and we’ve turned on our lights to continue to dig. They do not talk, but I see them sitting so close, one could be leaning on the other. He doesn’t leave until we pack our equipment and drive away. Alfonso stays until Gideon gets up to go home, helping him to his feet and saying words I can’t hear from where I crouch, documenting pieces of what were once whole men.
I’d refused Alfonso’s request to travel with us to Ethiopia. Added weight and cost, I’d said, trying to make my denial sound professional. Diego pulled me aside and whispered, Lara, don’t you remember him in the news? They kept him for years. The things they did to him. Let him come. Besides, he gave my family the last photo of my brother.
I don’t want to ask if he remembers my sister. I have no courage. Alicia ran away from the police the night they tried to arrest her. She was always the fastest in her school, she could outrun the boys. She ran out of Buenos Aires toward the sea then floated away to a new place. She’ll come back when we have finished with all these bones.
We are nearing the end. The bones have been dug up and laid on metal tables into the semblance of a human frame. We’ve packaged and labeled the clothes, jewelry, ID cards. All the bodies have been identified. Now the mourning can truly begin. Our job is done. Soon we leave for Argentina, until we are called back or called to another place full of unclaimed sorrow.
I have separated my information about Ethiopia between what we know and what we do not. Between fact and assumption. There is no room for the disappeared. There is no section in my report that will include the hopes of all who have heard of Lazarus and believed. All that we have is what we can dig out of the earth, hold up to the light, then return back to dirt.
This is what we know from this latest dig: forty adult male prisoners were taken to a wooded corner of the military base and strangled with a nylon rope. Some also suffered blunt force to the skull, nasal fractures, broken bones in their hands and feet. Each piece of rope was cut exactly 159 centimeters and the ends were heated to fuse frayed strands. The executioners (could just one have the strength to kill forty who want to live?) tied simple knots at each end to allow for a better grip. The killers then looped the cords around the necks of the prisoners.
This is what we can assume: some of the prisoners struggled, but not all. It was a futile fight. They all died from ligature strangulation. I wonder which of the prisoners lived the longest, and if every breath of life was worth the struggle.
They were buried under meters of heavy stones and lime. We found them under those stones, and ash. They were clothed. All but one had a blanket around him; the night was cold. All but that same one had the cinched nylon rope tied around his neck. That prisoner who died without a blanket, with his rope flung far from his body, what new story could he tell us about that night that his bones choose to hold secret? I ask myself this question as I copy data onto paper, record it so that the next time we must dig for bones, we have the stories of these to guide us forward.