Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [189]
WITHOUT A WORD TO ANYONE, I slipped out of the back of the Ethio-Swedish Pediatric Hospital, leaving my car parked in its spot. I took a taxi home. I couldn't believe this was happening. What had Genet accomplished? Hijacking an Ethiopian Airlines plane was all about publicity. Yes, BBC would pay attention. It would further embarrass the Sergeant-President, but he was doing a fine job of that without any outside help. Even if Genet's act hadn't put me in danger, I'd have resented the hijack. Ethiopian Airlines was a symbol of our national pride. Foreigners raved about EA's wonderful service, its skilled pilots. Jet flights from Rome, London, Frankfurt, Nairobi, Cairo, and Bombay to Addis made it easy for tourists to visit. Then EA's regional service of DC-3s flew a daily looping, hopscotch route so that you could leave the Hilton Addis Ababa in the morning, see the castles in Gondar, the ancient obelisks in Axum, the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, and be back in the Hilton lounge in Addis just when the good-time girls were drifting in trailing perfume, and the Velvet Ashantis were playing their theme song, a version of “Walk—Don't Run” by the Ventures.
Ethiopian Airlines had for years been a target for the Eritrean People's Liberation Front. But even in the Emperor's time, crack security men on board disguised as passengers ensured a near-perfect safety record until Genet's flight. On one occasion, seven Eritrean hijackers stood up and announced their intentions. The two security men picked off five of the hijackers as easily as if they were shooting tin cans off a fence at ten paces. They overpowered the sixth. The seventh locked herself up in the bathroom and exploded a grenade. The pilot landed the crippled, rudderless plane despite a gaping hole in the tail section. On another occasion, the security force overpowered a hijacker and strapped him into a first-class seat. Instead of shooting him, they bibbed him with towels and slit his throat.
That January afternoon, Genet and her pals seized the plane without a fight. Word was they had help on the inside. The security men may have turned.
As my taxi drove through the Merkato, I took in the familiar sights. Could this be the last time I passed this way, the last time I smelled the hops from the St. George's brewery on this road? A woman with her hair in cornrows, Eritrean style, flagged my taxi down. “Lideta, please,” she said, naming her destination.
“Lideta, is it?” the driver said. “Why don't you take a plane, sweetheart?” Her face fell, then turned hard. She didn't bother to argue. She just turned away.
“Those bastards better lay low tonight,” the driver said to me, since I clearly wasn't one of them. “Look,” he said, waving his hand at the pedestrians on both sides. “They're everywhere.” There were thousands of Eritreans in Addis Ababa—people like the Staff Probationer, like Genet. They were administrators, teachers, university faculty, students, government workers, and officers in the armed forces, executives in telecommunications, waterworks, and public health, and legions of others who were just common folk. “They drink our milk and eat our bread. But in their homes tonight, you know they're butchering a sheep.”
Since the military took power, many Eritreans I knew, including some physicians and medical students, had gone underground to join the Eritrean People's Liberation Front.
The news in the capital was that the situation in the north of Ethio pia around Asmara had turned against the Sergeant-President. The Eritrean guerrillas ambushed military convoys at night and disappeared in daylight. I'd seen grainy photos of these fighters. Dressed in their trademark sandals, khaki shorts and shirts, they had the daring, the conviction, and the passion of patriots fighting their occupiers. The conscripted Ethiopian soldiers in their jeeps and tanks, weighted down with helmets, combat boots, jackets, and weaponry, were confined to the main roads. How could they find an enemy they couldn't see, in a countryside where they didn't speak the