CHAPTER 14
He brought back into the petty triumphs of the age
the one element that it completely lacked: the tragic
sense of life: the sense that the highest human flight
is sustained over an unconquered and perhaps
unconquerable abyss.
LEWIS MUMFORD, Herman Melville
It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black,
which means it’s too strong. What do you do? You integrate
it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much
cream in it, you won’t even know you ever had coffee.
MALCOLM X,“Message to the Grass Roots”
1. Denial
Going down to Abyssinia.
In his father’s line of thinking, one could not go down any
farther. From the comfort of his airplane window he watched time
roll back as they slid across the thick skin of Mother Africa. And what
a mother she was: the heart of humanity, vast, unforgiving and
terribly old. Always older than you.
The plane was filled almost entirely with Africans coming back
home through the Addis Ababa gateway. Ethiopian Airlines was the
biggest airline in Africa and Addis was therefore one of its principal
transport hubs.
Roy peered around the craft and examined the incredible variety
of faces, of bodies, of colors. It was an old white conceit that all blacks
look the same, but that was hardly the case in this aircraft.
Enormously fat Ghanians mingled with slender, coal-skinned
Sudanese. Fine-featured Ethiopians laughed through the movie with
moon-faced Ugandans, while diminutive Kenyans tried their best to
sleep through the ruckus. Other than the odd brazen tunic or turban,
their mode of dress was distressingly similar. Everyone was outfitted
in the cutting-edge of fashion, only that edge had not been sharpened
since 1973. If Africa ever did unite, as many hoped it would, its flag
would be fashioned from brown polyester.
But keeping up with fashion was a peripheral concern for those
ABYSSINIA
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