Ferengi Lady
I ponder an illusive part of my brain called memory and decide it is rather like TV reception in the fifties. Sometimes you have to go up on the roof, fiddle with the antenna, eliminate the ghosts to bring in the picture a little clearer. Other times the picture is perfect.
In the late sixties, I joined the Peace Corps and ended up an English teacher at Prince Makonnen Secondary School in Asmara, Eritrea, at that time, a province of Ethiopia.
Looking back, I can't imagine how I adjusted to that crazy, wonderful monarchy boasting thirteen months of sunshine and posing some very serious problems for a city kid who had never seen a cow up close, let alone a wild animal. But somehow I persevered, and as Irish luck would have it, I grew to love the place.
In the fall of 1972, I moved to the capital city, Addis Ababa, where I signed on with the Ministry of Education for a fourth and final year of overseas teaching.
I was an only child, and my mother and I were always close, so I asked her to join me in Africa for the last few months of the school year. In July, we planned to travel together to East Africa and then on to Europe before returning to the states.
I remember Mother's first day, her lime green dress billowing in the dusty heat as she stepped down from the Ethiopian Airlines jet, her hair recently died a reddish-blond.
I see her standing at customs, smiling to airport officials while I tried to explain, in my best pigeon Amharic -- which usually impressed foreigners and fractured locals -- that this was my mother come to visit, all the way from California.
Waiting for her luggage, Mother opened her purse and pulled out a knife, fork, and spoon, a stainless steel setting embossed with the Ethiopian Airline's logo, a lion about to pounce on an unsuspecting victim. She smiled then dropped the silverware into the pocket of her tote. "Amazing what you can carry in these."
In the taxi, on our way to my apartment, she put her arms around my shoulder, and, in her typical way of underlining the obvious, said, "It's different here, isn't it?"
I nodded and began to bite my nails, a habit I thought I'd outgrown in grade school. What was the saying? Forever the child in the eyes of a parent.
"I mean the sky," she said, "it's unreal. No clouds, just a deep blue you can get lost in. No wonder you wanted me to see this."
As the Fiat rattled away from Bole International Airport, entered the roundabout at Maskal Square, and headed toward the city's center, I told her Addis Ababa meant "new flower."
From the taxi window, and through a pair of very large, very mod, white-rimmed sunglasses, Mother peered at the merry mélange that was the capital city. She seemed eager to take it all in: the pot-holed streets, the hovels with tin roofs lining unpaved side streets, the ferengi (foreign) shops closed and locked for siesta. The children near the Mercato, dressed in rags chanted, "Ciao bambino. Como esta? Gimme money, ferengi lady," as we drove by, and a man by the roadside, his back to oncoming traffic, urinated into an open sewer.
Mother raised an eyebrow then laughed. "New flower. But who can tell, right?" She pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at the sweat running down her cheek, the scent of Emeraude, her favorite cologne, waging a losing battle against the strong street odor of sweat mixed with urine and cooking spices.
Near the university, I paid the driver, gathered up her luggage, and with an "It's not far, something you should see," I led her down a path to a lush garden, and at its center, a spiral staircase with a stone lion perched at the top, a symbol of the reigning monarch, His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie I.
As we approached the stairs, I motioned for her to follow.
"Why would I want to climb that, a stairway going nowhere?" She yawned, tried to disguise it with a little laugh. "This day has nap written all over it," she said then went over to a marble bench, shaded by high ferns, and plopped down.
I sat next to her, a bit disappointed. The garden, one of my favorite places in the city, seemed to have little effect on her. We waited a while.
"Just till I get my second wind," she told me, then I took her arm, walked her back up the path to the street and hailed another taxi.
I remember thinking she must be exhausted from the series of connecting flights, not to mention her age. I was twenty-five and Mother was well into her fifties. I wondered if it was wrong to have invited her. It took me months, almost a year to adjust to Ethiopia, to learn its ways and customs, and yet I still felt a foreigner, a ferenge. How could I ever expect Mother to adapt in such a short time?
My apartment was far from the comforts of home, just one of many separate dwellings arranged in an uneven U, snaking down one side of the compound and up the other, with nine doors, and in between, two medium-sized windows without much of a view, other than one's neighbors across the way. Metal shutters were a necessity, and I'd learned to close them early in the evening, less for privacy than to keep out the chill. It could get very cold at 8,000 feet.
Though the change was gradual, Mother did adjust. I saw it in her eyes that second day in-country, when she opened the shutters on a eucalyptus-scented morning. It had rained in the night, and the sun filtered its rays through a light mist. "So this is Africa," she said, and it was then I knew she'd be fine.
The rest of my memories are bits and pieces.
The image of His Royal Majesty Haile Selassie was everywhere, his face gracing large posters in shop windows, on stamps and aerogrammes, even on beer coasters. I can hear Mother's laughter as she flipped over my shaving mirror one morning and, on the other side, came face to face with a cartoonish Lion of Judah in full military regalia, the eyes set deep in coffee-colored skin, sitting erect, his delicate hands folded, resting in his lap while tiny cherubs fluttered overhead.
I remember a three-day holiday to Bahar Dar and the Blue Nile Falls. I still get nauseous thinking of the narrow road twisting through the mountains, the steep cliffs promising thousand-meter drops to the gorge below. I see a young boy in the fields keeping watch over a herd of sheep, waving his walking stick at our rented VW, and I hear Mother shout, "Ciao, bambino."
As for our daily routine, I recall the afternoon bus trips to pick up our mail at the Post Office and for a little window shopping in the Piazza. People in the bus huddled together in the narrow aisle and held onto each other for support as the driver zigzagged in and out of heavy traffic, while outside, a group of donkeys, laden with flour sacks and bundles of firewood from the Mercato, shared lanes with fancy, embassy limousines; their tiny flags, unrecognizable in the haze and exhaust, waved from radio antennae.
And I remember our last day. I'd piled most of the luggage, full of clothes and souvenirs, into the taxi's front seat. Mother and I had crammed ourselves into the back, her large suitcase wedged between us, the carry-ons resting heavily on our laps.
As we neared the university's main entrance, Mother asked the driver to stop. "Come on," she said. "Something I want you to see. Perfect for the departing tourist." And so I followed her down the familiar walk to the middle of the Emperor's Garden. "Déjà vu," I told her.
"Not quite," she said and took my hand, and we began the climb.
As we twisted around the cement steps, traffic sounds drifted upward. Horns blared and brakes screeched as cars and busses entered a nearby roundabout.
Mother paused on the landing to get her breath, patted the lion's head, then looked down into the small rose garden. "Ciao, new flower. I feel as though I've just climbed Kilimanjaro. Not bad for an old broad."
"Not bad at all," I said.
On a distant hill, the eucalyptus stood like silent sentinels, keeping watch over the sleeping city. They swayed gently in the wind against the blue clarity of a cloudless sky.
"Igziabher Yestilign, Paul."
"You're welcome, ferengi lady."
Memories filled her eyes, memories she would hold inside, cherish for the rest of her life. There was a light shining in them. It reminded me of the stained glass windows I loved at Africa Hall. They danced with intricate colors and shades, reflecting the craftsman's artistry, the one-of-a-kind quality that made them special.
Yes, that is how I remember it.
"Ferengi Lady" first appeared in Mocha Memoirs
Copyright by Paul Alan Fahey
