Dar es Salaam, TanganyikaTaytu watched the tide come in, tropical turquoise waters licking at the white beach below. She was in the garden of a laid back estate on the edge of Dar es Salaam. It was a tranquil place, with pearl white adobe walls, a red clay tile roof, arches that spoke of Islamic influence, and pampered gardens where lush plants and fruit trees grew. It was perfect as a travel brochure - a showcase of everything the Europeans had wanted Africa to be. Paradise. But not for Taytu. She was still a dismal prisoner of the Tanganyikan state.
She sipped on mango juice and created grim stories in her mind for the ships that passed by the bay. She imagined the thin-sailed fishing boats were pirates off to pillage the Spanish navy. They would board the battleships with grappling hooks and shotguns, and they would take the soldiers - men that had slaughtered her mother in the sky above Socotra - and toss them into the sea. Perhaps too, the cargo freighters that occasionally passed were carrying the means of war. Chinese armies and weapons arriving from the east to wrap up the war in a few neat battles, and Tanganyikan soldiers shipping out to the Red Sea.
But as her imagination went down darker paths, she convinced herself that the opposite would become true. The more she thought, the more inevitable it seemed that she would soon see Spanish battleships appearing on the horizon. They would come and put Tanganyika down, because the leaders of this nation were too spineless to fight.
Four times she spoke to the council appointed to question her, and each time she berated them. The urgency of the situation drove her to speak angry words. Her brother was under siege. Her country was under siege. She saw the continent coming back under the hateful whip of colonialism, and she hated to think that it would happen while she held the office of Foreign Affairs Adviser. After all of her arguing with them, the Tanganyikans found a new way to throw her off balance. She was invited by the Prime Minister to be a guest in his home, to trade the confined hotel room for polite neglect in a room with a beach-side view. As nice as it sounded, it wasn't a choice she could make. They ordered her around like a disgraceful pet.
Her days went nowhere. She spent them reading newspapers and dreaming of the sea. The war for Ethiopia had moved into the Danakil, where the Spanish advance had been slowed by the efforts of Hassan's army, raids by the tribal Afar, and the persistent struggle to keep their men and equipment supplied with water. How had they liked their first contest with the African climate? She hoped they choked on every inch of dirt. Bastards. She couldn't measure the hate she felt for Spain.
She did her best to keep track of world affairs as well. The Tanganyikan media reported the South African war with the same gravity they gave to Ethiopia. Nineteen British civilians had been found in some bloody scene in Cape Town. Another trumped up story. It was like Stanley reporting the naked natives throwing spears and shooting off arrows at his boats, forgetting the part where the Europeans had been gunning them down with their Maxims for entertainment. Below the Africans headlines were a few stories that caught her brief attention. The President of Russia was stolen from his own office. That was curious. Something that only happened in novels. It would have interested her more if it weren't for her own circumstances. The Americans were still mistreating their black-skinned citizens. Europe and her children followed the same pattern. It was an inescapable cycle.
"Princess Taytu" a servant greeted her with a cold nasal twang. "The Prime Minister invites you to lunch on the veranda. He wishes you to attend him now."
No choice. The circumstances seemed perfectly polite. A servant, starched clothes, a sunny day in a garden. But it felt no different to her than if she had been thrown in the oubliette.
Obedient and frustrated, she went. The servant led her by the fountains and past a lemon orchard, by bright tropical flowers and decorative shrubs. They reached the outward stair; a wide granite construct like those found in front of state house. It was guarded by men in colonial Askari uniform. Lifting the skirt of her dress past her ankles, she shuffled up the stairs. She found the Prime Minister waiting for her at the top.
Prime Minister Hubertus Majogo of Tanganyika was an old man. He had been born on the same day as Prince Hubertus of the Prussian royal family, seventy one years ago. Age had not stooped him. Only a few curly white hairs still clung to his leathery scalp. His skin hung loose, but his eyes were lively and piercing.
"Please." he bowed stiffly, aged bones struggling. "Princess Taytu. Eat with me."
"I'm your guest." Taytu replied. She looked hard at his eyes. Let him see the fire of the Solomonic line burning within her. She would be no timid prisoner. She sat down first, and the Minister followed.
Lunch was grilled fish over pilaf, with a coconut sauce drizzled across. They drank coffee; a cruel touch, she though, with a smell that reminded her of home and her mother. It strengthened her resolve.
"I must apologize again for the circumstances." Majogo started.
"You apologize well." she replied. The rapiers of verbal combat were out. He tapped hers, she parried.
"That is good to know." Majogo replied dryly.
Though she ate, she didn't notice the flavor of the fish. It was irrelevant. She watched the old man out of the corner of her eye, and she knew he was doing the same. They were playing politics of the nervous kind. Not the bored niceties that the laymen see when they imagine diplomats talking. This was two people who stood for the fate of their nations, speaking words that would serve as the scaffolding for the history of their time.
"I have a proposal for you, and I hope you will hear it in good conscious." Majogo spoke grandfatherly, but she saw through it.
"Speak your peace." she said.
"We want no trouble with your government. I respect Emperor Yaqob. I think he is a good man. But I cannot consciously bring my country into a war with Spain. We do not wish to keep you as a prisoner..."
"Well good." she smiled. "Let me go."
Majogo chuckled. "That is fair. That is fair. I should have predicted that. But you know, Princess Taytu, that it would be unhealthy for us to do so without saving face. We wish to smooth over your release, and this is what I mean to propose. First, you will appear in a television broadcast announcing changes to the ACE agreement between the Pan-African Empire and the Confederacy of Tanganyika and Mozambique. Second, you will use your legal power to amend those agreements. After this, we will be able to discuss what method we will use to release you."
She scoffed. "That is absurd! Even if I agreed to all of that, an agreement made under duress isn't in good faith. It wouldn't be legally binding. When I go back to Ethiopia, I will not spare a minute telling my brother what happened here."
"Under duress?" Majogo chuckled. "Does this look like duress?"
"Slavery then."
"Slavery? Do not be melodramatic, Princess Taytu. It does not suit you."
"You can pick your word, it does not matter. What you are doing here is not legal. You cannot ignore that. If you want to save face, then apologize the truest way you can. Honor our agreement. Declare war on Spain."
"That is not on the table anymore. I would have hoped you would be aware of that already. I cannot put my nation in that place, to lose a war we had no reason to fight. If I can protect my people from suffering, I will do everything in my power to do so."
"You cannot protect yourself from this. Ask the South Africans. What is happening is bigger than Sotelo's invented feud with my brother. This thing will come for your people in the end, and you will have no chance to defend yourself once you have sold out all of your friends."
"You offer no evidence." Majogo had stopped eating. He looked at Taytu as if she were a disagreeable grandchild. "I cannot believe that the government of Spain is as rapaciously evil as you would say. Do not conflate your personal enemies with the enemies of the world."
"No evidence? Use common sense, Mr. Majogo. This has happened before."
"The Europe of now is not the Europe of one hundred years ago. They came out of the war humbled. Time has changed them."
Taytu laughed in his face. "When in the history of humanity on earth have the powerful learned their lesson? Don't expect sainthood from them. That is not good policy for your country."
The Prime Minister was indignant now. Her rancor had offended him. "Princess Taytu, I have lived longer than you. I was dealing with Europeans before your brother decided to be our savior. Your enemies are people, not demons. They make decisions rational to their cause. The same is true for your and your brother. You beg us to fight for you. You talk to me as if I am your thrall. I do not blame you for that, because that is what is rational for your nations interest. But remember, Princess, that I am not a thrall to Ethiopia. I stand for Tanganyika. I will do what must be done for this country. If you think it ignoble, so be it. If the history books call me a coward, I will still have peace in my grave. But if I am going to lay down in my bed and close my eyes every night until I die, it must be knowing that I did what was good for my country."
She felt respect for the man then, and a little guilt "You lied for your country. Broke treaties."
"So be it."
"Don't think there will be no repercussions." she parried again. This was going nowhere.
"I can only deal with the problems of today."
"Today has an inescapable effect on the future."
"I can only do what is right for my people in the present." He had cooled down now. His eyes focused on her and made her feel small in her seat.
"Then fight Spain. Ask yourself, if you think they are innocent, why would they launch this invasion of theirs? What has my brother's government done?"
"I hear he is a communist. Is he not a good friend of Chairman Hou, the archenemy of Spain? I know he allows Chinese agents to work from a base on Pemba."
"A communist." she snickered. "He's a King. How can a King be a communist? That my brother likes to think of himself as some sort of humble peoples monarch I will not deny. But let us be serious, the most leftist thing he has ever enforced in our nation is his agricultural policies, and nobody outside of Ethiopia proper pays attention to those anyway."
"Economics isn't what capitalism or communism is about." Majogo retorted. Taytu looked at him, unsure how he could have said something like that. He saw her bewilderment and continued. "Oh sure, in theory that is all either is about, but in practice? Economics in the hands of the world-powerful is a smart sounding smoke screen used to hide whatever squeezing they want to do. I don't care if you hide your taxes under the name of tithes, or military necessity, or the proletariat. If you were a business you'd call it overhead costs. Taking money is taking money, it's how things work everywhere, and will always work for all time. Sotelo doesn't care about that. What he sees is Yaqob turning his back on Europe and shaking hands with the east. That's what a communist is to him."
She didn't skip a beat. "That happened when my father was still Emperor. What Sotelo sees is property. Taking money is taking money? Property works the same way. That is what Sotelo sees when he sees Africa, and his vision doesn't end at Lake Victoria."
Majogo chuckled. "I believe you could continue this duel of words until the moon falls into the sea."
"I'm right." Taytu said. "You know it."
"There is no completing this debate tonight." Majogo sighed. "You know what I am asking. Sleep on it."
--
Perhaps she would have liked her room if she had chose it. It had an old four poster bed, of the medieval style with posts carved like giraffe necks reaching toward the ceiling; mahogany furniture set in a garish Jugendstil style; and a window view out to the sea, where the vale of twilight was ascending in the east. There was also a book shelf with decent variety. This place recalled something of the old Germany, the one that suffered the war and was fading away by the time she arrived in Europe for school. But freedom of movement, when taken away from those who knew nothing else, leaves an indignant hole in the mind. She was restless, and could not appreciate even the nostaligic aspects of the room. It was too early to sleep. But there were the books, and when she found a history on the Great War, she felt an opportunity to be devious. Her captors would try to keep her from her work, but they had offered her the opportunity to study. She flipped through the book to try and get an idea on what it was about.
It is often asserted that the war truly ended in 1919, and that the
events which took place after that unhealthy year hardly constituted
a true war at all. 'It was a cavalcade of cruelty and revolution'
asserts Glaise-Horstenau, who before writing his history served on the
General Staff of the Austrian military. The web of revolutionary movements
and their constantly shifting relationships to the spirit of war makes it
difficult to create a clear picture of the last years of that conflict.
What can be said for certain is that a state of war existed between the
military faction in France and the military faction in Germany until the
year 1925, when the faction in France finally and totally ceased to exist.
What happened in Britain, in Austria, and in Italy would amount to devastation,
while what happened in Russia, in Spain, in Turkeyand in Africa would ultimately
mark the design of the modern geopolitical landscape as we know it today.
Useless. She flipped through the pages. Impatience was a symptom of captivity.
It can be said that the fall of France came with its first taste of real triumph. Pushing
into the Rhineland in '25, the French thought they would bring about the end to the war.
Instead, The found themselves engulfed in the problems of their enemy. France itself was
in a state of tumult, but the violence in Germany had evolved beyond mere factionalization.
Communist Spartacists, aided by Bolsheviks fleeing the Tsar, grabbed patches of territory
throughout the country. Bonn was one such Communist stronghold. The French, desperate to end
the war and return home to quell their own people, moved on the city of Aachen perhaps too quickly.
The Spartacists, though Communist, feared a partition of Germany from the outside. The French did not
expect their intervention. Perhaps the entrenched armies of the early war would have had nothing to fear
from political partisans, but the desperate bloodletting of the late war had reduced the armies to
a hungry shadow of their former glory. When the Spartacists assaulted the rear of the French far flank,
in what would become known as the "Battle of Hasselbach Forest", the French Army lost it's momentum.
It is true that the Spartacists themselves suffered much in the fight, prominent communist Leo Jogiches
dying in those woods alongside the creme of the Spartacist paramilitary, but the losses they dealt to
France hastened the end of the war, and indeed the French Third Republic itself.
Useless. Everything she did was useless. She wasn't a war hero, she couldn't just break out. If she was going to be anything but helpless, it would be her mind that saved her. But how? This book wasn't going to cut it. At least, she couldn't focus on it enough to find whatever secrets she was looking for.
So was that it? Would she simply fail to do anything for herself? Had she allowed her mind to go to mush under the pressure? The night was not being kind to her. She put the book down on the table and laid herself out on the bed, but the downy feel of the mattress on her skin made her emotions paradoxically worse. All she could do was stare at the ceiling and hate the fates for placing her here.
The trees rapped at the wall outside her door. She thought she heard the floor settle. The sound of imperfect quiet. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine home. When she conjured the faces of her family, she worked to hold them in her mind and keep them there in spite of everything around her.
But sleep wouldn't come. She heard the footsteps of servants somewhere far down the hall. No matter. Perhaps focusing on nothing at all would be better, to make her mind like a murky pond. She thought she might go to sleep then, but the house whined, and she was up again.
She rose up her head. The moment her eyes opened, everything seemed to happen at once.
The door slammed open. Three men dressed in black rushed through with pistols in their hands. She jumped up. There was no time to think. Before she could even scream, the first man spoke.
"Come quick. The Emperor sent us." He said it in clear Amharic, in an accent that came from her homeland. Could it be true? She didn't question. She vaulted from her bed and went.
They flew through the halls, too swift to be quiet. Somebody was bound to hear. Corner after corner went by, between whitewashed walls that seemed to close in on them. Was this a maze? She hadn't remembered it like this.
They turned a bend and found an ugly surprise when the man in front tumbled into a Tanganyikan guard. She thought they would be captured now. But in rapid movements, the lead-man smashed his fist into the guard's stomach, forced his head down, and drove a knife into just below his skull. The guard collapsed to the floor with blood leaking freely from the back of his brain.
A trained killing move. These men were Walinzi. She felt elated, already saved.
They got clear of the house and scrambled outside. Gunfire range out across the garden. In the light of the full moon, everything around was enveloped in a blue glow. She thought she saw smoke. Another bullet rustled a nearby potted plant. The Walinzi ducked behind a decorative stone wall, and pushed her down so hard that her head nearly hit the ground. An instinct, like a small voice in her head, told her she should be offended at their insolence. A foolish instinct. She closed her eyes, and gunfire reigned over her senses.
The Walinzi fired back. The blast of their guns hurt her ears and made them ring. Tanganyikan responses hit the wall above her and dusted her with plaster particles.
"How many?" one of the Walinzi asked his comrades between shots.
"Too many. We need to get her to the boat. I'll cover." another replied. A boat. She hadn't processed that idea before they grabbed her and had her running again. The consistency of the gunfire was making all other sound seem like whispering.
They stuck to what cover they could find. It was all going so fast. Flower peddles spewed up in the garden where bullets struck low. She heard shouting across the field. German, the language of the Tanganyikans. "Don't shoot her." they were saying, "Don't shoot the woman."
They dashed through a lemon orchard. The gunfire was no longer on them. She was out. Oh how the Tanganyikan government was going to regret this. The offense to her person, the arrogance they showed her. The very laws of international etiquette pronounced them evil.
Once out of the trees, she saw the boat. A simple fishing trawler; rusted, ugly. Brilliant disguise. They crossed the beach. Pearl-white sand shifted underneath her feet.
"Where's Three?" one of the men shouted.
"He knew what would happen." the other replied. They clamored on board. "Kick the engine. We need to leave!"
Taytu fell to the deck. She was out of breath, and scared that the shooting would start again. She looked out toward the mansion and it's grounds. It showed no signs of violence. After all that had happened, it looked peaceful. At that moment she realized that she didn't hear any gunfire at all. Everything had went quiet except for the waves lapping at the boat. She felt bad for the agent they left behind. The cold click of the hammer being pulled back on a pistol caused her to look back at the men. She froze.
Five Tanganyikan police stepped out of the cabin, holding one of the Walinzi at gun point. The second Walinzi froze.
"It's over" the man with the pistol said. "Drop your weapon and surrender." They all stood still for a moment, eyeing each other. The only movement came from the rocking of the boat. She felt all her hopes melt away. She'd been so close to escape. Close enough that she could almost smell home. That was over now.
The Tanganyikans backed the Walinzi against the side of the boat with their hands behind their heads. They didn't seem to see her. She didn't expect it when the Gunman pulled the trigger. Two shots rang out in the cool air, and the Walinzi agents crumpled to the ground. She knew she had screamed when it happened, but she couldn't remember what that had sounded like. Her body went numb.
They dragged her to the beach, her arms tied behind her back. Her skin was wet from sweat and the sea, and damp sand clung to her clothes. She sobbed. The sea crashed hatefully behind her, as if it were coming to yank her away. They dragged the bodies of the three Walinzi agents, two with their faces burst open from their execution, and the other with a bleeding hole in his neck. All dead. She tried to look away, but there faces were there and unavoidable. She was afraid what would come next. Would they kill her and blame it on the Walinzi? She was afraid to die. More than that, she was afraid to die right now on this beach. And her brother, what would this do to him, to loose so much before the war had even began? What would this entire farce mean for her country?
The Prime Minister came to the beach in his bathrobe. The look her gave her was one of slight disdain, as if she were a child caught drinking out of the liquor cabinet.
"Taytu. What a fool thing your brother has done." he said, looking down at her. She said nothing, so he continued to speak. "Four of my men are dead from this, and so are three of yours. Was it worth it? I suppose I should have expected something like this. Now it is over. You know what happens now?"
She looked at him. What her eyes were telling him she couldn't say. How absolutely frightened she must look on the outside. Inwardly, she was trying to crawl away.
"We will work out the details once my people have time enough to talk about this. From now on, you will sign what we tell you to sign. You will say what we tell you to say. Do you agree?"
Yes. Yes she agreed. After what she had seen, that deal sounded like a blessing. She nodded. Anything to live.
Wilted Rose
