Aida Edemariam - The Wife’s Tale - A Personal History

Are you hungry?

She took a spoonful of the freshly spiced butter and, mixing it with some berberé, poured it over a piece of injera, soaking it and tearing it into rich bite-size pieces. Here. It will make you grow.

The afternoon wore on. The sun seemed, if anything, hotter. Sounds receded. The corners of her daughter’s mouth glistened. She kept working.

The next time she looked over she was at her daughter’s side almost in the same motion. Hands like startled butterflies, loosening the neck of the child’s dress, feeling her face, which burned, a small dark sun. Cradling her, calling her name. Feeling it in every sliver of herself when Alemitu’s body snapped rigid as a hide left out to dry. Her chin flung back. White eyes stared at the sky. Oh Mary mother of God, what is it? What is it?

Bring her clothes! A shawl! But her husband had just returned from a trip to Addis Ababa, and everything was down at the river with the menservants, being beaten clean. There was only a thin muslin veil with which to cover her daughter and lift her into the cool of the house.

Go get her father.

When he came, he had a friend with him, and the two men exchanged fierce whispers over the child’s inert body. She must take holy water, said her husband. ‘Holy water won’t work.’ Only the devil could do something like this to her, look at her body, how stiff and contorted it is. She must be taken to holy water immediately. ‘It won’t work.’ Yes, it will.

Her husband prevailed.

A neighbour offered to help, and every morning, for two times seven days, the small group set off into the dawn, heading for the little old church of Teklè-Haimanot. For two times seven days they sat amongst all the other supplicants, waiting their turn. So much sadness in the world, she thought, looking at the array of bodies before her. So much care. The stripped flanks of farmers accustomed to sparing food and abundant labour. The much-suckled breasts hanging flat and soft. The warped and twisted young limbs. The torsos shining with wellbeing, their specific curses invisible. The underdresses sticking to bodies dripping, bodies drying, bodies inward-looking under the sun. And above them all the perfunctory deacons crouching, pouring the blessed water, and then, as midday approached, intoning – one eye on the takings and another on lunch – the acts of the saints and the Miracles of Mary.

On one of these days her neighbour invited her to stay overnight, so they could go to the church together in the morning. She was a member of an association that met once a month and it was her turn as host; Yetemegnu could sit and chat for a while if she wished, before she went to bed. She accepted, and made sure to prepare all the food her husband would need the next day.

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