The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History

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Aida Edemariam. The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

CONTENTS

MAP

PAGUMÉ

1916–1930

MESKEREM

TIQIMT

1931–1941

HIDAR

1942–1953

TAHSAS

1953–c.1958

TIRR

1959–1989

YEKATIT

MEGABIT

MIYAZIA

GINBOT

SENÉ

HAMLÉ

NEHASSÉ

PAGUMÉ

CHRONOLOGY

GLOSSARY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

Отрывок из книги

Title Page

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And this particular woman, with her tight-braided hair and neck so long it could take seven rings of tattoos – the zar doctor liked this particular woman. And the more Setechign fought him, the more she hated him, the more he liked her. She hated him so much that when she became pregnant with his child she tried to kill it, standing for hours under a waterfall in the hope of dislodging the growing thing. But it would not leave before it was ready and when it was born she called the boy ‘imbi alè’, or ‘he said no’. Not until he went away to school was his name changed, to Gebrè-Selassie.

Only Setechign’s third union, to a rich trader, gave her a measure of calm. The home she made with him was a place of dancing and honey wine, where an animal was slaughtered nearly every week, and parties included the neighbourhood poor, invited to eat their fill. Of warmth and love, where special meals were cooked for a shy daughter who basked in the unaccustomed glow of feeling singular, precious; who had gently to be encouraged to eat and was seldom allowed to stay. Yetemegnu made little protest, but every time she was taken away the grief curled deeper into her heart.

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