black foam

Author's name: Hajji Jaber

This Saturday could have seemed pretty ordinary in Addis Ababa.

Just like any other December day, the sky is gloomy, the weather tends to be cold, and the bars prepare early to receive the crowds who don't waste a weekend without pouring all their fatigue on the rest benches: Stella, Heineken, Guinness, Corona, Harar... and the bench of the hard-working: St. George's, which once bore its name to a football team, its popularity doubled before it achieved anything.

It would have been possible, but for what was happening at the same moment in one part of the city, which gives this time of year something of a uniqueness.

Five buses, flanked by two police cars, continued their march through a light rain from the assembly point at Meskel Square in central Addis towards the Bole suburb, where the airport is located. Curious, angry, and sad farewellers lined both sides of the muddy, six-kilometer-long asphalt road. Only the last group waved, seeing only their shattered reflections in the tinted windows of the buses.

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Haji Jaber, an Eritrean novelist born in the coastal city of Massawa, has published five novels and won the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity and the Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel. His works have been translated into English, Italian, Persian, and Hebrew.