The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu

Author:Dinaw Mengestu [Mengestu, Dinaw]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Washington (D.C.), Race Relations, Social Science, Ethiopians - United States, General, Literary, Sagas, Ethiopians, Fiction, Discrimination & Race Relations
ISBN: 9781594482854
Google: mcRAh7JgkosC
Amazon: B000X1P3WG
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2006-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

I’m covered in sweat when I reach the apartment complex. I catch my reflection in the building’s door. Sweat is streaming down the side of my face. I look exactly like what I am: a desperate man, on the verge of middle age, with only the money in his pocket to spare. I have dark rings under my eyes, a nose and forehead damp with sweat. My shirt collar has an old coffee stain on it, and the sides of my pant pockets have a streak of dirt running down the side. I take a second to tuck in my shirt, pat down the edges of my hair, and wipe the sweat off my brow with the edges of my sleeve. I pray that I don’t run into anyone I know.

There are twenty-eight floors to the building, and of those twenty-eight floors, at least twenty-six are occupied exclusively by other Ethiopians who, like my uncle, moved here sometime after the revolution and found to their surprise that they would never leave. Within this building there is an entire world made up of old lives and relationships transported perfectly intact from Ethiopia. To call the building insular is to miss the point entirely. Living here is as close to living back home as one can get, which is precisely why I moved out after two years and precisely why my uncle has never left. Hardly a word of English is spoken inside of these doors. The hallways on every floor smell of wat, coffee, and incense. The older women still travel from apartment to apartment dressed in slippers and white blankets that they keep wrapped around their heads, just as if they were still walking through the crowded streets of Addis. The children keep only the friendships sanctioned by their parents. There are a few families who occupy entire floors. They run them like minor villages with children, grandchildren, grandparents, and in-laws all living within shouting distance of one another. There is a beauty and a terror to those floors. Only once did I ever step onto one of them and see it firsthand. When I got off the elevator, I was met by a row of open apartment doors, each one guarded by a young woman who stepped into the doorway and stared at me with more apprehension and fear than I’ve ever been greeted by. I turned back to the elevator immediately, feeling as if I had intruded onto something sacred, something that I had no right to witness or speak of again.

My uncle stands out from the rest of the building. That he is only one man, with no wife, mother, or children, gives him an independence and peculiarity that no one here is comfortable with. He is respected because of the money and power he once had in Ethiopia, because his name was once associated with the cabinet members and princes of the old empire. He is also mocked now by some for exactly the same reason. Berhane Selassie.

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