Book Review: IF ONLY MEAZA HAD READ KONJIT!

By Hilena Bayeh

BENEATH THE LION’S GAZE

BY MAAZA MENGISTE

PUBLISHED BY JONATHAN CAPE, LONDON, 2010,

301 PAGES

Intro

The fact that more and more Ethiopians are putting ink to paper or typing away on the keyboards of their laptops and computers to produce books is turning out to be both good and bad. Good because our literature (in Ethiopian languages) and also in English can develop, our stories can be told, a heritage left for the coming generation. And bad because writers have become scribes like olden times, scribbling the praises of the power that be, spreading official lies as truth and retelling or recycling travesties of history. The absence of critical editors has made the slush pile as they say in the publishing circles non existent—any book is published and thanks to commercial printing and online publishing anyone can be a writer with a book or even a translator. Astute business men gauge the trend of the time, determine the selling subjects and plunge right on to write” a book on the subject—it is very commercial. Ethiopia does not recognize international copyright laws and as such translators not only translate books without permission (many times badly) but they even change the persons to whom the writer had made a dedication and substitute their own dedication. . It is a wild and confusing world out there. That is why we find books nowadays explain to us the history of this event or organization without ever really taking part in any one of them or without ever having made a research.

All this aside, it is, in my opinion, quite good to see Ethiopians writing in English. The new generation of writers like Dinaw Mengistu and Maaza Mengiste cannot help but write in English as they grew up abroad (in America in their case) and it is also commendable that their stories have not forgotten or ignored the Ethiopian reality (true more for Maaza than for Dinaw). I do not fully agree with the Wole Soyinka definition of the critic’s responsibilities “not merely to review an existing piece of work but also to create an atmosphere of appreciation and tolerance...” but I still say the critic has to take the writer’s reality into account to convey a fitting appraisal. In this respect, I concur with David Cook (African Literature: A Critical View. Longman 1977)) who wrote:

“All forms of the written word contribute to a major force of persuasion. All writings which argue important issues, reach a large public, and possess the literary qualities that are likely to make them more than merely ephemeral, not only deserve, but invite and demand critical analysis. The means by which a thoughtful public is convinced one way or another on crucial questions of real significance to a country or a continent”. (xi)

Still one yearns for the old categorization of “pulp” literature, unworthy of critical concern but fulfilling the public’s tabloid hunger. Quite a number of books in Amharic and English could thus have been relegated to the sidelines though we as a people are still far away from saturation in the literary field. The books eulogizing Meles and Seyoum Mesfin, rewriting the history of the notorious TPLF, whitewashing the crimes and criminals of the Red Terror, attempting a Mein Kampf in a local language, biographies that are lies, memoirs that are fiction, etc contribute little of any literary or historical worth. Fortunately though, there are books like that of Konjit Berhane’s MIRKOGNA that appear out of the blue and fulfill our expectations by combining historical truth with fiction narration and giving us a readable, enjoyable book. I have my reasons for Saying ‘If Only Maaza had read Konjit!”.

The Young Writers

While my focus here is the book of Maaza Mengiste I would like to mention in passing The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (titled in England, heaven knows why, as Children of the Revolution) written by Dinaw Mengistu which, tangentially dealing with the Ethiopian Revolution of February 1974 (Maaza’s central subject or back ground) exhibits a careless approach to the historical truth of the period and Ethiopia. Dinaw, in my opinion, has also failed to mine the treasure trove of the Ethiopian émigré community in Washington Dc. Worse still, as he left Ethiopia when he was one year old, he has not lived or grown up to understand the conflict that defined that time. In one passage he writes that the Mengistu regime that launched the Red Terror nailed placards on the foreheads of its victims which proclaimed “I was a Communist!” when in actual fact Mengistu and his regime considered themselves Communists and labeled their opponents anarchists or CIA agents. Or is all this enveloped within what Maaza on her part states as “taking liberty with the reality”? If so what do we make of Lewis Nkosi’s famous assertion (in Home and Exile) cited here below on the place of the writer:

“If we assume that any competent artist who retains a minimum of objectivity in using his materials should and must reflect his society, then writers are even more important in countries undergoing revolutionary changes, where the temptations are greater to suppress any but the desirable truths”?

I am not, by any stretch of imagination, calling for a socialist realism approach to fiction--that is another subject for discussion. However, taking liberty cannot mean representing falsehood especially when the narration concerns a historical truth or a memoir. Nega Mezlekia’s sister for example has denounced him for presenting a false memoir and many Ethiopians know that an Amhara joining the sectarian and separatist Somali front (WSLF) is pure fiction. And thus the primary question as regards Maaza’s book: has she taken too much liberty with the truth that the Ethiopian reader finds herself/himself in a lurch because Maaza has boldly taken up the February 1974 Revolution as the centerpiece of her book of fiction.

Maaza’s book

Maaza is apparently burdened by the fact that she has dared to use a single family to encapsulate the momentous and bloody period. This demanded from her to create characters that are whole and represent the various trends and cleavages that convulsed families and the whole society at that period. The story of Beneath the Lion’ s Gaze revolves around a foreign educated medical doctor, Hailu, who had been awarded a watch by Emperor Haile Sellasie, his two sons-the elder Yonas conservative and inclined to praying, the youngest Dawit taken up by the underground movement of the period the EPRP though Maaza treads carefully and creates a non existent organization. The travails of the family, the doctor’s agreement to help a tortured revolutionary girl die, his arrest and torture and the increasing radicalization of the youngest son Dawit serve for Maaza to illustrate the tragedy of the Red Terror period. Of course  the corpses of the victims were not thrown on the streets for the hyenas to feast on (it was actually to terrorize the living and their families), there were no placard nailed to the victims which said I deserved to die dear mother and no EPRP activist defying curfew and collecting the corpses at night . I assume Maaza has taken liberties here, no matter.

Maaza writes well and in a style, as a graduate with an MFA from New York University, that would surely please her western readers—of snorting hyenas, of deep brown fields, a lush patchwork of green and browns, and of a blue haze drifting down from eucalyptus trees dotting the hillsides, of clouds of dust and smoke and early morning fog. I do not agree with one reviewer who said Maaza over explains. On the contrary, some of her passages get the reader into the atmosphere of the place in the story as the following illustrates:

“Intermittent car horns melted into a long, sustained blare. Buses and trucks dodged the boys. Irritated pedestrians brushed against blue-and-white taxicabs. Everything was noisy. Sound traveled from car to pedestrian to pack animal, rising and falling over the hilly street, Aged trees dotted the roadside and drank in the cacophony. Ethiopia would remain, despite all outside influences, a mix of ancient and modern, progress and ritual sitting as uncomfortably next to each other as Communist ideals and Coptic beliefs”. (p. 116)

Except for the fact that the ideals were Soviet/ real socialism (the ideological nuance does matter) and the mix included Islamic and animist beliefs.

Maaza left the country when she was only four years old but she has evidently gone back to soak up the atmosphere though I do not know if she went back after the present vermin took over power (1991) and the city changed or before during the time of the Derg. It should be of no significance really except for the fact that she did not live that period (unlike Konjit for example) and her references (see her note and bibliography at the end) indicate not such a good choice. Maaza states, alas, that she learnt the personal and political costs of the revolution by reading Nega Mezlekia’s Notes from the Hyena’s Belly, a book of memoir that has been exposed as totally fiction by Nega’s own sister and all others who knew him (and even his authorship has been contested but that is another story). As a former EPRP leader Kiflu Tadesse’s book would rightfully be informative on the organization at that time as would be the book by Markakis and Nega Ayele while Fred Halliday, who was a Derg apologist, wrote a horrible book. Paul Henze, the former CIA and the present apologist of the Meles regime cannot be credible reference on Ethiopia of that period ( or on Ethiopia of any period for that matter) and Marina Ottaway missed the whole essence of the Revolution when she concluded so wrongly that the whole thing involved the elites and not the people. The Ottaways (Marina and David) sought to give historical and popular legitimacy to the military regime, stated the Empire was held together by the divine rule of the Emperor, denigrated the workers’ general strike that brought down the Endlakatchew government as insignificant, and Marina Ottaway, in her “Social Classes and Corporate Interests in the Ethiopian Revolution, went as far as labeling the Ethiopian workers as a labor aristocracy or an “elite privileged by the modern system.” ¹

Bad References

In short Maaza did not have the best reference at all. Imagine someone writing on that period and failing to read the books on the Red Terror like Babile Tola’s “ To Kill A Generation: The Red Terror in Ethiopia”! This could very well explain why Maaza’s character appear cardboard and unconvincing characters to the end. Maaza has tried to remember her uncles by giving Dawit and another character the names of her uncles, Mekonnen and Solomon, but for those who knew the Revolution and the battle in the cities Dawit and Solomon appear as caricatures all the way through. For me, here is where Maaza has failed, her inability to let her characters flesh out, portray the feelings and failings of the period and its protagonists. The change of stand in Hailu and the others is not explained in a credible way. The incident at the end of the book between the main characters and the brutal soldiers is very unbelievable. Compare her characters and actions with Frehiwot and others in the Mirkogna book and the Maaza characters become, in the word of one critic, just “props”. The torture sequences are also mild though some foreign critics found them shocking and brutal. Emperor Haile Sellasie in Maaza’s book is not of course the Haile Sellasie we knew and the symbolism of the Lion, attractive as it may appear to foreigners and Ras Tafarians, is unconvincing and out of place.

Strange Coincidence?

For a writer who does not mention anywhere (neither in the Notes. bibliography or interviews) that she has previously read Hama Tuma’s much commented upon short stories collection (The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories, Heinemann, London 1993) the reader is surprised to find eerie similarities in Maaza’s novel and at least one Hama Tuma story. It could be coincidence of course but strange nonetheless. In the Case of the Prison Monger Hama’s accused person is called Major Guddu—Maaza calls Mengistu Haile Mariam Major Guddu. There was of course a Guddu Kassa in another famous book. This aside, Maaza’s story opens in a hospital (Prince Makonen—now Tikur Anbesa) with a wounded boy and then with a tortured girl whom a nurse (Almaz) and the main character Doctor Hailu give ger cyanide and help her die to escape further torture. Back in 1993 Hama Tuma's one short story (Madman, Killer, Saint, You…) deals with a doctor in the same hospital who is mobilized by a male nurse and also helps his own tortured brother to die. Same hospital, almost the same scenario—strange coincidence? The world is too small. Hama wrote his story in 1993 and Maaza in 2010—how come they are almost identical except for some changes including names and gender? A troubling question indeed.

After all is said, Maaza’s book is an interesting read. She is a promising writer and we hope the next book will show more commitment to the craft, better character building and believable dialogue and plot, less similarity to other books and plots and a better grasp of the central theme she tries to tackle. She should read MIKOGNA of Konjit Berhane to begin with. Maaza can surely be one of the writers to make us proud so long as she realizes that the pressing social problems and experiences demand that the writer becomes relevant in more ways than one.

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1 This part of the critic comes from Mulugeta Osman’s Review of Books on Post 1974 Ethiopia, EMR, no 1, August 1980, London