Notes from the Hyena's Belly : An Ethiopian Boyhood

by Mezlekia, Nega

• ISBN13: 9780312269883
• ISBN10: 0312269889
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-01-06
• Publisher: Picador

Summary

In this powerful memoir, Nega Mezlekia recalls in vivid detail his boyhood in the arid city of Jijiga, Ethiopia, and his bold journey to manhood during the 1970s and 1980s, his country's most turbulent period. In a narrative that sparkles with wit, Mezlekia traces his personal evolution from child to soldier. We meet Wondwossen, his best friend and collaborator in mischief; Mr. Alula, their embattled teacher; Mr. Tadesse, full-time school director and part-time poacher; Ms. Yetaferu, the Orthodox Christian boarder who manages to find a saint to worship each day of the year and thus to avoid gainful employment; and Yeneta, the local priest who is privy to the languages of heaven and hell. Mezlekia describes the hardships that consumed Ethiopia after the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie and the rise to power of the communist junta, whose merciless Red Terror slaughtered 100,000 Ethiopian youths.Mezlekia himself was forced, at the age of eighteen, to join a guerilla army, and had several brushes with death at the hands of reactionary exorcists, but he somehow survived the bloodbath. Notes from the Hyena's Belly teems with the smells, sights and sounds of life in the Horn of Africa-its violent, ingenious humans and its underworld of screeching monkeys, lions and hyenas.Part autobiography and part social history, this is an unforgettable portrait of a world where the boundaries of credulity are challenged daily.Out of this rich, sundrenched land where modern corruption rides ancient custom like a predator, Mezlekia crafts a world elegant in its aridity, extreme in its absurdity and vast in its ironies. AUTHORBIO: Nega Mezlekia left Ethiopia in 1983 with little more than the clothes he was wearing.A professional engineer with degrees from Addis Ababa University, University of Wageningen, the Netherlands, University of Waterloo and McGill University, he now lives in Toronto, where he is working on a novel.

Author Biography

Nega Mezlekia left Ethiopia in 1983 with little more than the clothes he was wearing. An engineer with degrees from Addis Ababa University and McGill University, he now lives in Toronto, where he is working on a novel.

Table of Contents

BOOK ONE: SUNRISE
Saints and Sinners	3	(14)
The Language of the Angels	17	(8)
Memories of Memerae's Shed	25	(18)
Alula's Morality	43	(46)
BOOK TWO: CLOUDS
Fekadu's World	89	(12)
The Devil-Tamers	101	(16)
The Exorcists	117	(12)
Early to Fall	129	(8)
Early to Rise	137	(8)
Growing Passions	145	(8)
Thrusting Brass	153	(10)
A Reluctant Guerrilla	163	(30)
BOOK THREE: STORM
Window on History	193	(6)
The Power Brokers	199	(8)
Jijiga Besieged	207	(6)
A Moving Tale	213	(4)
The Exodus	217	(22)
Retiring Saints	239	(32)
An Alien Adbar	271	(12)
Seven Months of Darkness	283	(20)
A Mournful Ghost	303	(6)
An Enfeebled Sun	309	(18)
Eclipse of the Star	327	(10)
The Hyena's Tail	337	(8)
A Brief Epilogue	345	(8)
Acknowledgments	353	(2)
Map	355