circular tukuls, but a square brick building with an iron roof. His wife
and daughters had prepared a banquet in Tessay's honour, and all the
village notables, including the priests from the church, had been
invited. It was therefore after midnight before Tessay was able to
escape to the principal bedroom, which the headman and his wife had
vacated for her.
Just before Tessay fell asleep she heard the heavy raindrops rattling on
the corrugated iron roof over her head. It was a comforting sound, but
she thought briefly of the dam further downstream in the gorge, and
hoped that this shower was merely the harbinger and not the true onset
of the big rains.
When she started awake much later the rain had passed. Beyond her
uncurtained window the night was moonless and silent, except for the
howling of a pariahdog down in the village. She wondered what had woken
her, and was filled suddenly with a premonition of impending disaster, a
legacy from the Mengistu days, when any sound in the night might warn of
the arrival of the security police. So strong was this feeling that she
could not get to sleep again. Creeping quietly out of her bed, she began
dressing in the dark. She had decided to call her monks and start back
along the trail in the darkness. Only when she was at Mek Nimmur's side
once again would she feel secure.
She had just pulled on her jodhpurs and was searching beneath the bed
for her sandals when she heard the sound of a truck engine in the
distance. She went to the window and listened. The air had been cooled
by the rain and she felt the chill on her naked arms and chest.
The truck sounded as though it was approaching the village from the
south, up the track that followed the river bank. It was coming fast,
and her sense of unease sharpened. The villagers had spoken to the
monks, and it was now common knowledge that she was Mek Nimmur's woman.
Mek was a wanted man. Suddenly she felt very vulnerable and alone.
Quickly she pulled the woollen shamma over her head and thrust her feet
into her sandals. As she crept from the room she heard the headman
snoring in the front room where he and his wife had moved to make room
for her.
She turned down the short passage to the kitchen. The fir i I in the
hearth had burned down, but she could make out the shapes of the
sleeping monks on the mud floor. They lay With their shamnus pulled over
their heads, completer overed, like a row of bodies on mortuary
tables. She knelt beside the nearest of them and shook him, but
obviously he had enjoyed the tej at dinner because he was difficult to
rouse.
The sound of the approaching truck was much louder and closer by now,
and she felt her uneasiness take on a tinge of panic. Realizing that in
an emergency the monks would probably be of little real help to her, she
stood up and groped her way quickly towards the back door.
The truck was right outside the front of the house now. The headlights
flashed across the front windows and were briefly reflected down the
passageway. Abruptly the engine roar sank to a burble as the driver
decelerated, and she heard the squeal of brakes and the crunch of tyres
in the gravel outside. Then there was shouting and the trampling of many
feet as men jumped down from the back of the stationary truck.
Tessay froze halfway across the small kitchen, her head cocked to
listen. Suddenly there was a loud banging on the flimsy front door, and
chillingly familiar shouts of, "Open up here! Central Intelligence! Open
the door! Nobody leave the house!'
Tessay ran for the back door, but in the darkness she tripped over a low
table covered with dirty dishes from the previous evening's meal. She
fell heavily and the bowls -till and tei flasks crashed to the floor and
shattered. Instantly the men at the front door put their shoulders to
it, tearing it off its hinges. They burst into the house, shouting and
breaking furniture, torches flashing as they searched the front rooms.
There was a confused babble of alarm as the headman and his family
struggled awake, and then the sound of heavy blows with club and rifle
butt, followed by shrieks of pain and terror.
Tessay reached the back door and struggled to open it.
The sound of strange men rampaging through the house made her fingers
clumsy. She struggled with the lock. All the while she could hear other.
men outside running through the yard to surround the house completely.
At last she got the door open. It was dark and the area was unfamiliar
so she did not know in which direction to run, but she heard the river
close by in the night.
"If I can only reach the bank," she thought, and started across the
yard.
As she did so the beam of an electric torch blinded her, and a coarse
voice bellowed, "There she is!'
Any doubt that she was the prey was instantly dispelled, and she fled
like a startled hare in the beam of the light. They bayed behind her
like a pack of hounds. She reached the bank of the river and spun off to
the right, downstream. A pistol cracked out behind her and she ducked as
a shot fluted past her head.
"Don't shoot, you baboons!" a voice roared in commanding tones. "We want
her for questioning."
In the torch beam her white shamnw flashed like the wings of a moth
flitting around the candle flame.
"Stop her!" shouted the officer behind her. "Don't let her get away."
But she was fleet as a gazelle, and her lightly sandalled feet flew
across the rough terrain while the heavily equipped soldiers blundered
along behind her. Her spirits soared as she realized that she was
pulling away from them.
The sound of the pursuit dwindled behind her and she had reached the
limit of the effective range of the torch beam when she ran into a fence
of rusty barbed wire. Three wire strands whipped across her lower body,
at the level of her knees, her hips and her diaphragm. The top strand
drove the breath from her lungs, and the barbs tore through the wool of
her clothing and into her flesh. They snagged her like a fish in the
mesh of a net, and she hung there struggling helplessly. Rough hands
seized her and dragged her off the wire, and she sobbed with despair and
with the pain of the sharp wire spurs tearing her skin. One of the
soldiers grabbed her wrist and twisted it up between her
shoulder-blades, laughing with sadistic relish when she cried out at the
pain.
The officer came up panting over the rough ground.
He was overweight, and even in the cold night air he was sweating
heavily. It greased his fat cheeks and glistened in the light of the
torch.
"Do not hurt her, you oaf," he gasped. "She is not a criminal. She is a
high-bred lady. Bring her to the truck, but treat her with respect."
With a man on each arm they marched her to the truck, holding her so
that her feet barely touched the rough ground, and then shoved her up
into the cab on to the seat beside the uniformed driver. The plump
officer climbed in heavily after her, and she found herself wedged
in'firinly between the two men. The soldiers scrambled up into the rear
of the truck, and the driver revved the engine and let out the clutch.
Tessay was sobbing softly, and the officer glanced sideways at her. She