I come home weeping, no, bawling – No. It wasn’t that either. It stunned me, the extraordinary noise that was coming from me, a kind of high-pitched hiccupping. But despite my own amazement at the noise, I couldn’t stop it.
I suppose really it was the culmination of everything that’s gone wrong for me. But mostly it was the knowledge that as I stumbled home to safety at 3am, she was getting raped.
It’s a situation I don’t really understand, a friend of her brother. A nasty piece of work. I don’t really know where to begin.
But I wanted Mirim, and she wanted me.
She came into the local bar with John on Friday night. I had met John before. He worked in the barber shop in Rwanda Street, I’d chatted to him in the bar a few weeks before, he had asked me to go home with him. I’d said no. He had become a little angry, but the others at the bar had laughed and him, and he’d backed off.
Now I was sitting at the bar, and Mirim took the seat next to me, while John sat down on her other side. She was good looking, petite-ish, her hair piled chicly on the top of her head. I asked her if John was her boyfriend.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I know him from Nazret, it is my hometown, and it is his. One day I meet him in Addis, and I say, Oh! I know you!’
She tells me her brother lives in Switzerland. She has visited him there. She has also lived in Los Angeles. ‘I like Los Angeles. I lived in a freak house. I like freaky people.’ She smiled at me at brushed her leg against mine.
I smiled back. She was lovely.
She ordered us a round of drinks.
She studied business management at the University of Addis. She owns a small computer business. ‘Very small. I not living well. Just survive. You know?’ Her brother sends her money.
We talked and we talked, and she gave me signals. Under cover of the loud music, I decided to cut to the chase.
‘So,’ I asked, trying to make my voice sound natural, ‘Do you prefer boyfriends or girlfriends?’
‘I prefer girlfriends,’ she replied, looking at me intently. ‘But sometimes I don’t have a choice.’ She nodded toward John.
Oh, Christ.
The barman suddenly turned the music down low, signalling closing time. I asked him to turn it up again. ‘I like this song.’ I turned back to Mirim and said quickly, ‘You leave with John, get rid of him, and I’ll meet you on the corner of street number 1.’
She nodded assent. ‘Okay.’
The barman smiled at me. He knew.
John was getting up to go, touching Mirim’s shoulder.
‘See you later,’ I said.
Mirim nudged my knee, smiled conspirationally, and they left.
The streets were deserted. I waited on the corner of street #1 for three quarters of an hour, wondering what had happened to her. Then it started to rain, and, with a sigh, I started for home.
But I couldn’t let it go. I wanted her. I hated that night, hated the fact that I was alone in my bed. Eventually, much later, I slept.
The next day I decided that I had to contact her. I didn’t want to go and see John, but I had no choice. I wanted her phone number. And so I went down to the barber shop, with a story prepared about wanting to lend her some Swiss rock music.
John was there, in a garish striped shirt. He said hello. I attempted to make small talk, and was about to feed him my story, when he led me out of the shop and across the street.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Mirim,’ he replied simply.
He banged on a gate, and it was opened by a maid.
‘Mirim alleuh?’
The maid shrugged, and we were led through the rundown compound to one of the rooms. John knocked. No response.
‘Later,’ he said, as we left. ‘Come back later.’
I went out. I watched the Arsenal vs Man U FA Cup Final at a café. I went to school and chatted with a few people. Then I went down to the bar. Presently John arrived. I nodded to him, and went on chatting to Dumi, my Zimbabwean friend. John kept trying to catch my attention, gesturing to me, so eventually I went over to him.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘You go to Mirim. She come. Two minutes.’
‘What?’
‘Mirim home. You go Mirim home, take her here.’
‘Okay mate. I will soon.’ I sat down for a little while. I didn’t want to appear too keen. After a few minutes I went around there.
Mirim was, indeed, home. Her light was on, the TV was going, and her door was ajar. I rapped lightly on her window, and entered.
It was a small room with a double mattress on the floor, a computer, a TV and a small wardrobe. She was sitting on the mattress, smiling up at me. She’d had her hair done. She looked good.
I knelt in front of her and said, ‘Hello, freaky girl.’
She touched my face. ‘Hello.’
‘What’s the news?’ I asked, gesturing toward the TV which was flashing the usual election images of men jumping up and down, chanting, cheering.
‘Is boring,’ she said, pointing a remote at the TV and switching it off.
‘Yeah, boring,’ I agreed. ‘Come to the bar?’
‘Good,’ she said, getting up.
‘What happened to you last night, by the way?’
‘I had no money left, so no fun.’
This explanation made no sense, but I didn’t press her. If she didn’t want to tell me, she didn’t want to tell me. She grabbed her jacket and slipped on a pair of sandals, and we left.
We joined Dumi at the table and I introduced them to each other. We ignored John, apart from sending a beer over to him to keep him sweet. We talked crap. After an hour or so Dumi said he was going home. He did look tired. I told Mirim I was leaving too. Did she want to come?
Sure.
Your place or mine?
We bought some bottles of beer and a packet of cigarettes. I loved the fact that she smoked – very unusual for an Ethiopian woman. We went to her place.
She put Morcheeba on. We sat on her bed talking that nervous, meaningless kind of talk that always happens when you know what’s coming next. Suspense.
And then, abruptly, mid-sentence, I kissed her. We wrapped our arms around each other. God, she felt good. The release.
We kissed again, I kissed her neck, I took her top off. Her breasts were small round, her nipples a very dark livery colour. Her skin was gorgeously dark, chocolately. It’s true what they say. Black is beautiful. I kissed those beautiful nipples, stroked that gorgeously smooth skin....................................... Thank god she wasn’t circumcised...................................
Ten minutes later her moans of pleasure suddenly halted. Her ears pricked up, her body tensed. And then, some imperceptible sound confirmed her fears. She had just finished throwing on her clothes when there was a knock at the door.
It was John. He stomped into the room arrogantly. I sat perched on the edge of the bed, feeling nervous and irritated. John said something to Mirim in Ahmaric, and she replied. There was tension in the air, and anger in their voices. They argued. She tried to push him toward the door, instead he sat down huffily on the floor, refusing to budge.
‘Excuse me John,’ I said, ‘I think she wants you to leave.’
‘I stay.’
And he stayed. They argued, he helped himself to a beer. Mirim was next to me on the bed, her hand on my thigh. They argued some more.
I got up and opened the door.
‘John,’ I said, my voice shaking with anger, ‘It’s time for you to go.’
He got up, and tried to close the door. We struggled, but he was stronger, and he won. He took the keys, locked the door with them from the inside. Pocketed the keys.
I lunged at his pocket, tried to grab the keys. He wasn’t having any of it.
‘Open that fucking door!!!’
‘No.’ He was a man of few words, our John.
‘I’ve got a fucking good lawyer, you know. He’ll fucking have you. The police won’t take too kindly to false imprisonment of a firenje, you can be sure of that. You’re buggered mate. You’re fucking buggered.’
He began to look a little scared. He sat down again. I lunged again at his pocket. This time I caught him unawares, and managed to extract a set of keys. Unfortunately, they were the wrong keys. ‘Alright,’ I said, ‘I keep these keys until you give me the other ones.’ He looked undeterred. I pocketed his keys.
Then I spotted the Swiss army knife on the floor. I grabbed it, and flicked open the largest blade. I pointed it at him. ‘GIVE ME THOSE FUCKING KEYS.’
‘Shit!’ he said. And it suddenly dawned on me that it was probably not a good idea to take it this far. I closed the blade and he took the knife from me.
The stand-off dragged on. I looked at my watch; it was 2am. I was drunk. A lot of bad language had come from my mouth. I had called him every name under the sun, and a lot more besides. He argued with Mirim, they started struggling, I grabbed him and pulled him off her. ‘Don’t you fucking dare treat a woman like that.’ More stand-off. More arguing.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said to Mirim at one point. ‘I’ll make sure you’re OK.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said. ‘I’ll just do what I have to do.’
Finally, I said, ‘I’m going home. Let me out.’
And, miraculously, John opened the door. They followed me to the gate. I stepped out onto the street. I turned to face John one last time. I looked into his eyes with cold hatred. Then my hand clenched into a fist, I took aim, and punched him square in the face.
And then I ran.
I spend the day indoors, nursing a huge hangover, going over and over the events of last night. How could I have left her? And, why is it that Ethiopian men think they own woman? That’s a rhetorical question, but in fact, there’s a practical answer. In the countryside, men still buy wives for cattle. A wealthy farmer might have four or five. Women are things to be possessed.
And so you have women like Mirim, educated, urban dwelling, employed, young and single. Just like me. But because she is Ethiopian, any male friend of the family feels he has the right to run her life, to blackmail her,, to rape her in return for not giving away her secret and shaming her in the eyes of her family.
But it’s not just this that gets me. It’s the fact that an educated woman like Mirim will apparently just accept this, won’t shout out, will never cry for help, will never speak of it. This deep resignation. The whole thing is so ingrained and so very, very horrible.
I feel useless, impotent. I just don’t know how to help.
