[b]Addis Ababa[/b] "The floor is now closed for debate. The vote will begin." Akanni announced, his voice filling the Senatorial chamber via the electronic aid of a microphone. There had been no debate. When it had been announced earlier that morning that the Tribal House had abandoned the city without pomp or a vote, the senate lost interest in debating the issue at hand. Prime Minister Akanni stood at the podium. He wore a black velvet, high-collared Kaftan robe trimmed with weaving patterns of red and white. The robe opened up below the waste to reveal supple black leather boots and European dress pants. On his breast he wore a white rose made from knitted cloth. There was something adversarial about the way the Senatorial chamber was built. It was round and tall, shaped like a stadium with its seating along its edges. It had rows of long, connected desks that rose in tiers as they came closer to the wall. The walls were covered with dark wood paneling, and there was an imposing Lion of Judah imbedded in back of the room. The Lion was painted in full color and towered above the seats of the Imperial Coalition. In the center of the room was the podium where the speaker on the floor would stand, and behind that was the Prime Minister's desk. It was the habit of the Imperial coalition to sit behind the Prime Minister, leaving the seats in front of him to their opponents. This made Akanni feel like a field commander at the head of an army as it faced off against its foes. There were taunts and debates, but they never came to blows in a violent way. Young pages wandered between the desks, collecting votes in stereotypical voting boxes. Conversation mumbled in a few places in the room, but all else was silent. Akanni felt his eyes wandering to James Lutalo, the leader of the Wakomunisti party and defacto leader of the far left in Ethiopian politics. He was a middle aged man, a dark-skinned Kenyan with mercenary personality. He carried himself with aggressive confidence, holding his chest forward and his back straight and looking people solidly in the eye when he spoke to them. He had been an adventurer of sorts during his youth, joining the colonial rebellions of the fifties and sixties for excitement as much as any other reason. Now Lutalo was a national nuisance. Wakomunisti meant Communist in Swahili. He wasn't a communist by the Spanish definition, where the word was used as a curse rather than a reference to political and economic theory. Lutalo was the real deal, and he had a habit of appealing to China from time to time requesting the deposition of the African monarchy. That had been an amusing habit at first. Akanni had always wondered what Chairman Hou thought of those letters. But this time had been different. They were at war now, and Chinese aid was crucial. Akanni shared the same fear that Yaqob's ministers expressed, that Lutalo's letter had complicated the situation in China. Though Akanni held no doubt that Hou would be supportive of the African cause, the Chairman ruled his nation with a light hand, and the related facts of his ailing body and the political scramble for his replacement had only lightened his hand further. He would have the help of Fulumirani, but Fulumirani was a cold fish and naturally designed to move with the currents of local politics. In many ways, Hou's support would be worth more than the Ambassadors presence. Hou's relationship with Yaqob was personal. Akanni has seen that when he had served as the first Ambassador to China, an appointment he had been given by Yaqob's father. Akanni thought of Hou as a polite and politic man, but Hou acted differently around Yaqob. Regret, Akanni had sensed. That, or nostalgia. Hou was a man who had dedicated himself to the task of steering his country away from the dangers of party politics by doing more of the work than left him time for living his own life. As far as Akanni knew, the old man had no wife or children. Yaqob, a prince from Africa with all the energy and excitement of youth and the heart of an academic, had somehow filled the void. But Hou was an outlier. China was a country with a cultural love of isolation. They had tried to isolate from Europe for most of their history, and their initial failure had burned them. This second attempt had saw them shun the world stage for a decade. That isolation had left a mark on their political system. They were naturally driven to be skeptical about the outside world, and the Wakomunisti letter had not helped. "The vote is in." he heard the spirited voice of a slim-faced young page say, facing him from the floor in front of the podium. He was wearing a beige button-up jacket with pleated pockets and a belt that caused the extra cloth below his waist to flair. There was a badge on the left breast pocket. It was a single loop of thin brass wire, with the bottom of it indented inward into the crude silhouette of an elephant. That badge had become popular with the youth of Addis Ababa as a symbol of the Pan-African nationalism that was now blossoming across the otherwise contradictory continent. The results of the count were given to Akanni, and he was not surprised. "Forty seven vote in favor, seven against. Forty six abstain due to absence." There were many absent, represented by empty seats is the chamber. Tomorrow, they would all be empty. "The motion to immediately move the Senate in emergency to Gondar for an undetermined time is passed." When his words passed his lips, the room began to buzz. Everyone knew this would be the answer. The Pan-African legislature was a Tricameral apparatus, in which three houses reigned with equal powers to introduce legislation or veto it. The three houses were thus: The Senate, a central elected body that served African delusions of democracy, The Tribal House, where representatives of recognized tribal or traditional bodies were given a say in what was an otherwise alien, western style of government, and the Imperial Deputies, who were men appointed by the crown to weigh the wants of their districts with the wishes of the Emperor. This was an inefficient mess of a government, where three spheres fretted to the point of incompetence. The Imperial Deputies were little more than puppets of Yaqob's government, ruining the democratic sentiments of the other two with their monarchical veto. The Tribes pulled the opposite way, making every move they could to turn the Pan-African government into little more than a funnel for occasional aid. In the middle of this all the Senate could do was try to make it work, but only when they did not get too caught up in their own fights. It was no matter now. The government had broken up well before the senate called their retreat. The Tribal House was no longer in session now that the local leaders were fleeing into the countryside, and the Imperial House was crippled by the Emperor's grief-inspired disappearance from public affairs. With the senate on the move, Addis Ababa was prepared to be a battlefield. The closing of the Senate was momentous despite having been predicted and inevitable. The roar of so many Senators hummed through the chamber like machine-gun reports. Men were standing up, stirring awkwardly behind desks. Now the vote was passed, they were anxious to make good on it and leave. Akanni picked up a gavel and clapped it down in quick, morse-like strokes. Senators stopped in their paths. The hum died to a murmur, giving the room the grim feeling of a tremoring volcano with portends to erupt all around him. "Before we go, I have something to say." Akanni said. "And I will say my peace." The room settled to listen to him. "I am not like our Emperor." he said. "I do not have his gift with speech, so I will keep this brief. All I want to say is this. Today is not the end. We are not done here. We are a continent of similar people, and our people have all faced the extraordinary odds of European invasion in the past. We are all here because our peoples overcame these problems, and we will overcome them again. Africa has gained the power of knowledge and fellowship. We have friends abroad. I have been told that foreigners from places abroad are traveling to fight on our continent. There are Armenians and Americans, Persians and Brazilians, organizing alongside our own soldiers to fight for the belief that all peoples on the earth should have the right to govern their own affairs. We will see frightening times soon, and there will be horrors before this war is done, but it when it ends we will return. And then we will continue our work. Be safe." There was a nervous applause. It was respectful, but it finished as soon as it could. They began to leave. The humiliating feeling of retreat hung heavy over Akanni's conscious. He felt the boy in him urging to resist the forces driving him to run, but it was not a meaningful feeling. He was no warrior, and he had no place in a warzone. The Prime Minister's place was behind the lines, ministering. His slow walk to the door felt like a sulk. He looked around, admiring the round room and the commanding lion at his back. Would he see it again? He wondered what what the Spanish would do if they got their hands on the African capital. "Prime Minister. Can I have some of your time?" he heard a familiar voice, gravelly and self-gratified. The Fitawrari Iregi approached him with a small number of uncomfortable senators in tow. Iregi had been a staunch modernist, in love with the republican forms of government in the west, and he had tried to make his dream a reality during the Civil War when he and a number of insurgents carved out a small government around Mogadishu. He had called himself 'Fitawrari', an old Ethiopian term given to distinguished nobles who commanded levies large enough to be considered respectable. This was not an official title in his case, but many still called him by it, and he had the gall to put it on his stationary. His gall annoyed Akanni all the more, as Iregi was the leader of the opposition. Akanni turned and smiled. "That was a beautiful speech." Iregi said. He was dark skinned man despite being an Ethiopian. He was from the Shanqella of the south, who the Abyssinians of the highlands had once drawn their slaves from. The southerners had been pagans and muslims before they were conquered by the christian Abyssinians, so when Iyasu tried to convert his country to Islam, the dark-skinned southerners had came to sudden prominence as loyal servants of the crown. "It did not have Yaqob's flair." he continued. "But still well worded." "I said it from the heart." Akanni said wearily. "This was a strange vote. It stirred up some feelings." "True, True." Iregi said flippantly. "Though the nation could use some words from its Emperor, if we only knew where he was." "At home." Akanni answered. "I have not heard of him leaving the city. He is in grief, you know." "This is true. It was a horrible tragedy, and all of Africa morns." Iregi sounded sympathetic, but Akanni couldn't help but remember when this very same man had been a suspect in the plot that killed Emperor Yohannes. "But we need our Emperor." he added. "Yes." Akanni replied. "I was planning to see him before I left the city. Or, at least, to try to see him. I hear his secretary and his new priest screen his visitors now." "You are the Prime Minister. Would they screen you?" "Well." Akanni hesitated. They probably would not, but Akanni wasn't sure. The Emperor had been secluded for days. Akanni was afraid what he might find. "I am planning to go over there at least. I should deliver the news about our move in person. I am his friend. He deserves that respect." "He deserves so many respects." Iregi said. "For he is the Emperor." "Yes. Yes. What are your plans, Iregi? Will you participate in this war." "Oh no, no. Not yet. If I chose to it will be circumstances that feel right to me. For now, I am fleeing with all of the rest of the government. I fear there will be a traffic of nice foreign cars all the way to Gondar." "I will see you then." Akanni replied. "But now I suppose I should visit a friend." -- Akanni climbed into the backseat of a Chinese-model sedan. Asian sensibility set the car apart from the European models. It was smaller than the limousines that westerners preferred, its lines plain and boxy with a dull grey-black paint job that reflected very little light so that it lacked the more desirable, flashy designs of the Maybach and Hispano-Suiza. The leftist values of Asia had driven Yaqob and the government that followed his fashionable sensibilities to adopt Chinese vehicles for government use, supplemented only by the hardier, but most often uglier, Polish trucks. "The Emperor's Residence." Akanni said to the driver, who had fetched the Prime Minister's vehicle from a protected place in the guts of the parking alcove. There was no reply, but no reply was needed. They rolled forward through the shadowed alcove under the west wing of the National Palace. The car smelled like fresh upholstery and filtered air. Akanni put his hand down to feel the coolness of the cloth covering the back seat, but instead he found the book he had been reading that morning during his commute across the city. It had a nauseous moss-green cover with the simple black outline of an ancient bireme, and the title '[i]Crusaders of Royal Adulis[/i]' was printed across it in bold Amharic text. It was a historical fiction about the Axumite King Kaleb and the crusade he personally led against the Jewish monarchs of Yemen. There were allusions to modern Ethiopian control of Hejaz, but the purpose of this book and those like that were their part in the larger Pan-African cultural movement. The threat of Europe and the rise of Ethiopia's Pan-Africa had given the people of the continent an enhanced sense of their own identity, and they were beginning to eschew western art for art that celebrated their people. Heroic stories of ancient African kings replaced the classical European myths and further enhanced the growing divide between white and black. Light suddenly filled the car. They left the grey-brown stone of the alcove and entered the National Plaza. It was surrounded on three sides by the National Palace, where the day to day affairs of African government were decided. The National Palace reflected western architecture, shadowing the neoclassical columns and thick, cut stone construction of the Reichstag of Germany, though the rounded eastern flair adopted from Arabic style gave it a more palatial feel. The building hugged the plaza, where a commanding statue of Menelik II watched over the stone roadways. Menelik wore the feathered crown of the old Empire, a round-shield in one hand and a lance in the other as his horse reared defiantly. It suddenly struck Akanni that this was the place their government had nearly ended only three years earlier. This was where Hassan had held off a murderous riot after news of Yaqob's near-death from an assassins bullet had spread. It had been a battle all across the city. Twenty good men had defended the hospital where Yaqob had lay in a coma, while violence spread into Embassy Row, where the rioters had threatened the Chinese ambassadors with death before the streets were finally clear. Lutalo and Iregi had been implicated in that ugly event, Akanni recalled. Their supporters had helped stir up the panic and fear gripping the city, and they had tried to turn it into revolution. Tried, but failed completely. The sedan left the plaza and descended the hill toward the city below them. Addis blanketed the rolling hills in the shadow of the rising Entoto mountains to the north. A pang of nostalgia grew in Akanni's heart. He felt empty, looking across a city he may never see again after today. He saw the lime-washed stone edifice of the hospital where Yaqob had spent his time recovering from the attempt on his life. It was nestled among the scattered canopy of palm trees and Australian eucalyptus's that hid the capital's more unassuming buildings. That was Negus Mikael General Hospital, and it was the only completely modern medical facility in the country. A disturbing thought intruded on the Prime Minister's mind just then; that hospital commanded a tactical view of the area around it from its tallest three-story tower. When the war came to the city, that hospital would become a choke-point. They climbed a modest hill in their economical Chinese vehicle, which seemed to lose some power when the road became steep. From the crest of the rise, he could see the high hill that dominated the northern edge of the city. That was Mount Entoto, a name it shared with the more impressive neighbors who's shadows stood like fading clouds on the distant horizon. Mount Entoto was where the city had been founded. It was there that Menelik II and his domineering wife had constructed a modest palace commanding the heights of the Oromian territories, a land the Ethiopians had acquired only decades earlier, and it was there in which that Emperor and his wife were buried. Before Entoto lie the city in its fullest. He could see the hospital in the corner of his eye. The sprawling campus of the University of Addis Ababa was recognizable by a flash of manicured grass in the distance, and beyond that was the tree-filled vale where the foreign embassies rested. In front of him was the core of the city. The main roads met here, bringing the business of a tentatively linked Africa to what had once been the location of a market bazaar, but which now hosted much more. There were no buildings in Addis Ababa that climbed above sixteen stories. The single sixteen-story rise was the Ras Hotel, a gawdy yellow structure who's sliver-thin crescent balconies and rounded European windows spoke of colonial tastes. He remembered it as a place where Safari-Trophies decorated the lobby and animal skins covered the seats. That had also been a favorite haunt of Sahle before his failed Imperial reign. In those days, the scandal of Yohannes' heir defined the Ras Hotel nearly as much as it's ridiculous design. There were other tall buildings near the center of the city, though they were so sparse that no two ever rose on the same block. There were apartment buildings and office complexes, but few of them were truly specialized. On the edge of all of this, the fortress-like neoclassical Abyssinian Front Museum gleamed as if it were an ancient monument. That was another defensible spot. The granite and limestone that made the crossed wings of the museum were stronger than the walls of Harar, though the building itself commanding no particular strategic view. Surrounded the city center were the miles of ramshackle homes that constituted the suburbs of Addis Ababa, where sunlight flashed on the tin roofs that had witnessed Sahle's ignoble attempt to escape and the failure that had officially ended his regime. Beyond those homes lay the scrub-land of Oromia, a land of yellow hills covered in lush trees. To the south, the land descended toward the Awash river and the lands of the black-skinned tribal peoples. To the north lay the highlands; the mountainous heart of Ethiopia, where most of its people lived and waited and prepared for war. As they crawled into the city, the day-to-day pedestrians began to be replaced by a disheartening sight: refugees. They had came to the city from the African coast, and they had found no other place to go but the heart of their national capital. Akanni saw them, and felt as if he had helplessly failed them. They were the robed Islamic people of Djibouti, the robe-clad Ethiopian, and the occasional American refugee from the ghettos of that same embattled port. Many wore the white or pale-colored tunics that were so popular amongst the Habesha, or the semi-arabic clothing of the Somali. There were half-naked tribesmen as well, representative of the very view who had abandoned the salt-deserts of the Afar. They carried their worldly goods with them in pathetically small cloth bags, and many were covered with the dirt of travel. When they saw the black government sedan cutting through the city, they stared. That made Akanni nervous. After seeing evidence of the carnage that preceding Hassan's entrance into the city, and after experiencing the riots of '77, Akanni was nervous when it came to unwashed mobs. He felt a certain pity for their lot, inevitable as it was, but pity did not blind him to the danger that was always posed when a group of people stood prepared to egg each others grievances into hatred. The people did an unexpected thing then. They began to cheer. It was not the cheer of an audience seeing the end of the opera. No, this was the sound of a warrior people. Their voices rose into an ear-stinging "LEE-LEE-LEE-LEE-LEE!" Men hopped and shook their fists, while women and children came close and touched the slow-moving car. Akanni was stunned. The behavior was too novel for him to completely accept, and he watched the jubilation with discomfiture. As they left the crowd, the Prime Minister had time to reflect on what he had just witnessed. He watched the Lion-Of-Judah statue at the center of the downtown roundabout as a man lead a mule through the grass beneath it. The feelings of the people puzzled him. Was that fear, or overconfidence, or did the people in the city truly have that much faith in their government? Where they rooting for the Prime Minister, or just the Emperor that he served? Or, in that brief moment, had Akanni served as a symbol of their entire continent? The car reached its destination -- Akanni's sedan came to a stop in the shade of the eucalyptus trees. The Imperial Residence was separated from the road by a long yard, giving the a sense of rural serenity. He was met in the drive by Mvulu, the captain of the Imperial Guard, who wobbled away from the doorway of the palace in order to meet the Prime Minister. Akanni opened his door and moved quickly in order to save Mvulu the walk. Mvulu was a central-African, as black as ink with short wiry hair clinging to his scalp. His face was covered in scars, the worst of which was hidden behind a gilded cream eye patch that matched the color of his uniform. His walk was a hobble because of the leg that he had lost during the Katanga crisis. In place of his lost leg was an ivory peg which with an elaborate engraving of gorillas in a mountain jungle. "Captain Mvulu" Akanni greeted with a smile. "You're guarding the door?" "The Emperor prefers me at the door." Mvulu replied. He shook Akanni's hand with a grip that was as firm as stone. "He is not a happy man now. He wants me to personally oversee who comes and who goes." "I would not expect him to be happy." Akanni's smile fell. "This has been a tragic month for us all, but much worse for our Emperor." "It has hit me hard as well, I confess." Mvulu said. His expression grew distant and disturbed. "I held Tewodros the day before... You know, I lived with the family too. Its a horrible thing, death. I have know many people who have died, and I have seen it happen too, but it is never easy." He paused, searching Akanni's face for a moment. "Do you know what it was that..." "The Chinese have confirmed, it was a Spanish aircraft. Something new." Akanni said. "The Chinese tried to intercept, but they only arrived in time to get revenge. They lost a man in that battle." "I respect them for that." Mvulu nodded. "Maybe there are good people in the world who are not African. That is something I have doubted for some time." Akanni changed the subject. "May I see him? I have news that he will need to know." "You were his friend." Mvulu said. "His secretary is away at a rally and the priest is gone on church business, so I will let you in." The Imperial Residence was a palatial estate built with all the charm of an Italian country villa. It had a shingled roof and beige stucco walls. Colonnades with arched columns surrounded much of the home, and lead between the buildings to a peaceful inner courtyard. Mvulu opened one of the tall wooden doors that constituted the entrance to the building and held it politely for the Prime Minister. Akanni entered and felt the cool air-conditioned atmosphere wash over him. "Are you going to tell his Imperial majesty to pull himself together?" Mvulu inquired. "Yes." Akanni confirmed. "The priest had been doing the same thing." Mvulu informed. "He tells the Emperor that he should go in the streets and help in the city. That is his advice." "That sounds like it would be more work for you." Akanni said. Mvulu chuckled. The residence carried the faint hint of pungent incense, but there were no other human scents. The first thing he saw was the thick granite map of Africa that hung from the wall opposite of the doorway. It was a massive slab, so heavy that Akanni could feel the weight just by looking at it. Visitors were known to avoid standing underneath it for fear that it might fall on them, but it was not the strangest thing in the Emperor's home. Yaqob had decorated his house with an eclectic taste that straddled the divide between museum and mad-man's hermitage. As Mvulu led him through the halls, he passed a Kenyan war mask, countless framed paintings from all across the world, a gilded suit of 15th century European armor, and a mummified cat resting on a wooden table next to a phone. These were only some of the things he took note of amongst the ridiculous collection. When he turned a corner to see an elongated Hunnic skull on a silver stand, it reminded him of the fossilized skeletons of two lovingly intertwined ape-people that Yaqob had placed in the press room of the residence. "He is in the Scroll room?" Akanni guessed as he saw where they were going. Mvulu nodded. "I'll leave you too him so I can get back to my post." Akanni finished his walk alone. The door to the scroll room was made to look like bamboo, but when he pressed against it he could feel the weight of the heavy wood at its core. When he entered the room, he felt the subtle change in temperature that accompanied the climate control. The light in here was dim as well, kept like the glow of an artificial dawn. Yaqob's Scroll Room was a repository for a set of Chinese artwork that had been given to the Emperor by Chairman Hou. The hand scrolls, some twenty feet in length, were works of art designed to tell a visual story scene by scene. The oldest ones were a millennia old, dating back to the Tang and Song dynasties. Those old scrolls had been printed on silk paper that had went brittle and yellow with age. The scenes they revealed were of medieval Chinese villages nestled amongst craggy mountains, dense forests hugging serene lakes where fishermen on bamboo rafts watched herons take flight, and ancient hermits in humble mountain temples giving lectures on Confucius using the nature around them as a source for examples. The sharpness of the detail was surprising, and the Chinese ink-work made it possible for these intricate scenes to blend seamlessly into the paper. There were modern scrolls too. They were much younger than the ancient examples, rarely dating from more than twenty years ago. Hou himself had commissioned those works as part of the cultural programs he had launched to fortify traditional Chinese identities in the tumultuous years following the revolution. They mimicked the ancient scrolls, using yellow silk paper and showing scenes that praised the natural world, but the villages and hermits had been replaced with regiments of flag-waving soldiers and dutiful workers operating modern equipment in the rice fields of progress. All of the scrolls were protected by glass cases that lined the walls. In the center of the room was a fountain made to look like a trickle of water running down a stone mountain. A red porcelain dragon wrapped around the top of the fountain. It was of the Asian variety: Long and serpentine, with colorful flame-like fins along its back and an expression of surprise so exaggerated that it looked as if somebody had goosed it. But where was Yaqob? Akanni took a step, and the bamboo floor creaked. "Who is there?" a weak voice spoke up. "Akanni." "Oh." Yaqob appeared from behind the fountain. The Emperor looked grey and drawn. His eyes were bloodshot, and he carried himself like an elderly man too frail to leave the hospital. He wore a wrinkled white bed tunic. There was a thin book in his hand with a title that read [i]'The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia'[/i]. Akanni had never heard of it before. "How are you doing?" Akanni asked tentatively. Yaqob sighed. "I have not been doing well. You heard the news?" he clicked his teeth and but down his book. "Yes. Of course you have." "I am grief stricken." Akanni replied. The silence that followed his words was so profound that the trickle of water seemed spiteful. "Yes." Yaqob said, the word caught in a rattling breath. "I know that grief." "I have to tell you what I have came to convey." Akanni stated. He did not know what else to say. "The Senate has voted to abandon the capital for Gondar. I feel that it would be best if you came with us." "I cannot leave Addis Ababa. It is all I have." the Emperor said. "The rest of you must go though. You must carry on this thing." "Your people need you alive." "I can't." there was a pause. Akanni saw how his friend was struggling. Yaqob was fighting to keep his composure, but he was not winning the fight. "God! I can't save this country! I cannot do anything! I..." He pulled himself back together for a moment. "Akanni, you know me. We have been friends since Beijing. You have to trust that I am no good now." "I can't believe that." Akanni replied. "You have suffered worse than any man I have known, but most of your suffering had been brought on by one thing." When he saw the change in Yaqob's eyes, he realized what he had let slip. There had been uncertainty at first, confusion about how Azima's plane had went down. There had been reports of rogue aircraft, but the initial guess was that the storm had brought down the Queen. The Chinese had brought them the truth though: It had been Spanish malice that had done this evil. "[i]They[/i] did this?" Yaqob said. "I thought it was true, but I did not know. It was the enemy?" Akanni swallowed. "I... yes. The IB at Pemba sent us a report. They encountered the Spanish fighter." "Did they bring it down?" Yaqob asked. His mood had changed quite suddenly. He was intense now, hanging on Akanni's words. "No." the Prime Minister answered. "They only damaged the enemy craft." Yaqob fell back onto a bench. Tears began to well on his eyes. "They hate me so much, that they would kill my wife... and my child?" he was crying now. Akanni sat beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "I wish there were better things to say." Akanni said softly. "Your Empire stands behind you. I saw the people in the streets today, and they were cheering your name." "An Empire is nothing." Yaqob sobbed. "I cannot hold it in my arms." "Your Empire is made of people, and they need you. If you cannot live for yourself, live for them, and remember that I am your friend and I will stand by you until you learn to live again." "I can only try." Yaqob said. "But I have been trying, and it has been no use yet. And now that I know how it happened? Leave me, Akanni. I want to forget that I was a person on this earth, just for a little time more."