“It’s not my fault,” he mumbled to himself.
He stepped out of the minibus and stood on the side of the road to wait for the bus that would take him back to Arat Kilo. The weyala looked at him and shrugged.
Translated by Cheryl Moskowitz
Of Buns and Howls
by Adam Reta
Addis Ababa West
The Bun
Under a wide-open window stood a square wooden table, dark with age and frequent use. At its center was an open blue cloth sack, inside of which was a dark golden bun wrapped in burned fake banana leaves. To the right of the bag was a knife, the sharp side covered with a corner of the cloth. Just beyond the sack was a sliced bun, grinning like a sandstone escarpment. A cold wind was flowing in through the window, and the room was filled with warmth and the intoxicating smell of spices. A flowered curtain shading the open window moved rhythmically.
Suddenly, like the sad temper of a dying day, from the deep dark throat of the Tabot Maderia neighborhood, the howl of a dog emerged. As if prompted by the sound, the bun rolled gently toward the empty plane of the table. After a suspenseful pause, the wrapping leaves crackled and the bun shot outside like some wild animal. It stopped midair, centimeters from the window.
A woman had entered the kitchen and witnessed this. Befuddled, she began shouting senselessly but eventually finding the words: “Fiqre! Fiqre!! The bun! The bun!!”
Leaves glinting, the bun lingered in midair a few seconds longer, and then propelled itself into the rainy August night.
After few minutes of navigation, it approached an open window where a couple was cuddling and kissing in the middle of a room. The bun continued its flight along a ravine. It stopped to look down on a badly lit condo, where a dreadlocked young man sat on a cot playing a saxophone, while a seminude young woman lay her head on his right shoulder. On a nearby table were two steaming glasses of tea and pieces of Buhe buns. The woman, feeling a presence, turned toward the window, but the bun had already dived into the narrow valley as if to avoid her gaze.
The bun moved gracefully over the skyline of Tabot Maderia. From the east, hundreds of migrating wheatears journeyed south. The bun ascended and, as if driven by an innate intelligence, joined the procession, at the tail end of the Oenanthe.
Fortuna and Fiqre
On the eve of Buhe, boys ran through the streets collecting gifts of buns and money, singing in cheerful high voices to the departing winter. This was also an opportune moment for Fortuna to recall how her son Geleta used to love Buhe.
Fortuna had been working hard in the back kitchen baking Buhe buns. She was a slim woman with a small bottom and big breasts, tiny of stature and with a walk like a defeated colonel. She was sitting on a love seat as usual, her dress speckled with dough. She was wrapped in the rich smell of yeast. This seat was her throne and a pulpit from which she criticized the world with impunity, spewing strange metaphors no poet could have imagined. Her recounting of the same fables, and an expanding and complicated lamentation about their lost, most likely deceased son Geleta, made Fiqre feel guilty. Fortuna talked as if her life was purgatory. She would trace new angles of perceiving the past, discover a different layer of pain, and accuse him of negligence or forgetting. Fiqre’s passive empathy for their common loss didn’t seem to work.
Fiqre was a tall, handsome man with thick lips, wide shoulders, and a husky voice. He felt that he was getting old faster than he wanted or was acceptable. That day he was wearing his expensive dark overcoat, khaki pants, and white Puma sneakers. He put his plastic comb back in his shirt pocket and wanted to tell her to shut up.
“Do you remember,” said Fortuna, “how Geleta loved Buhe? He would wake up early in the morning and call his friends over. He loved being the lead singer. I still remember his laughter, his beautiful dimple, and his hair that was always long and full of dandruff. Never did I think my son would leave me.”
Fiqre could not take it anymore. “I am tired of listening to this! In life, things happen. How many young men died this year from AIDS? They had mothers, fathers, and sisters. Unlike you, they cried their eyes out but kept quiet. From now on could you please—”
“This is Buhe,” she cut in. “Very few kids loved Buhe like he did.”
“Yes, he loved Buhe. So what? All boys love Buhe. Poor people especially like it. It is a pretext to get money and free buns.”
“Why do you say that? You are mad. I know you used to sing ‘Hoya Hoye’ when you were young too. Was that for the money?”
From where Fiqre stood, he could see her eyes glinting with anger. “So what? I am trying to forget things, please.”
“He’s your son, Fiqre!”
“Did I ever say he wasn’t? He could have stayed home like the other kids. But he wanted to be rich, so...”
“Rich? Oh, Medhaniealem, no. They were going to arrest him. How can you forget that?”
“Then why was he involved in things he did not understand? He was naive. Who was he to protest?”
“Do you really mean that? Is my son stupid? He was not involved in anything. Some bad people said he was. If you really mean that, then you must hate him.” To show her anger, she pretended to spit on the floor. “Even if he was demonstrating, he was just a kid running around. Running around and screaming words doesn’t hurt anybody.”
“He had better things to do. Just so you know that. No more talk about him. Let’s remember him quietly, not by crying like a child.”
“Can you tell me where he is? Eh? My intelligent husband?”
“I already feed and clothe you and your retarded daughter. I built this house. Every idiot around here is jealous of you. Let’s talk about other things.”
“Give me my son and I will live in a tree. He has a mother and, even if he’s selfish, a father. He has a sister and friends who love him. Senait misses him. She always asks me, Mama Fortuna, have you heard anything from Geleta? A very polite girl.”
“If you talk about Senait to people and Dr. Euyel hears about it, you’ll destroy her marriage.”
“I always go to Dr. Euyel when I am sick. He asks me about Geleta. It was Senait’s mother, so snobbish. She hurt him by calling him names. Geleta did not tell me, but I knew. Why are you pretending that you don’t know? It makes me sad. If we had money then, like we do now, maybe he wouldn’t have left.”
Fiqre wanted to interrupt her soliloquy, but could not.
“Maybe he’ll return one day. I always pray.”
Fortuna was trapped by the immensity of her loss. After Geleta left, she’d walked around the new house looking for any traces of him like she was hunting a ghost. The old house had been demolished and most of its contents were left behind. Yet there was still an empty room waiting for Geleta. His few clothes had been washed and ironed, and were hanging in the new closet. His old shoes were under the bed waiting for his feet. There was a big picture on the wall of Geleta laughing, a lone dimple on his left cheek. Fortuna was always delighted that he was the only boy in the neighborhood with a single dimple.
For more than five years, Fortuna did not turn on the radio to listen to music, news, or anything that was suffused with even a hint of pleasure. If Fiqre wanted to watch TV, he did it when Fortuna was out. He wasn’t scared of her, but the language Fortuna used made him feel undignified.