That Generation at Saitan Bet

 BY TEKLEBIRHAN GEBREMICHAEL

Two very long queues snaked from Saitan Bet. One stretched way down to Lycee Gebremariam and the other way up to Enrico Pastry shop. Passersby wondered what on earth was going on and watched the fidgeting lines of humanity in utter astonishment. Many joined the queues at the tail ends. One onlooker asked: “What’s all the fuss about?”

“It is the new film, ‘that Generation’,” answered one youngster standing in one of the queues.

“What do they mean by it?” the passerby queried.

“That’s what I am trying to find out, but I doubt whether I am going to get a ticket,” the youngster replied.

Saitan Bet (literally Satan’s House) was an ill- reputed café and dancehall put up in the 1920’s and later on converted into a theater and cinema. It is now called Mega Amphitheater and located opposite Teodros Square on Colson Street.

Tickets were flying off the box-office like crazy and stampedes threatened to break out as word passed through the queues that they were fast dwindling. Soon the box-office closed and guards struggled to push back the brewing crush at the main entrance of the cinema. The mayhem outside contrasted with the awe-struck hushed silence inside. Already, an eerie-looking and extraordinary spectacle had started unfolding in front and around the bewitched audience inside.

It was a grand show of holograms floating around in the almost completely dark cinema hall. The cast included icons and scoundrels of “that generation” such as Berhanmeskal Redda, Gebru Gebrewold, Yohannes Sebhatu, Kiflu Taddesse, Walelegne Mekonnen, Tilahun Gizaw, Gebeyehu Ferrissa, Baro Tumsa, Meles Zenawi, Essayas Affework, Haile Fidda, Getachew Debessaye, Mekonnen Bishaw and Eshetu Chole.

The eloquent orator Mekonnen Bishaw was the first to speak. He said:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, have I not walked the streets of Paris and London…wait a minute. What the hell am I talking about? I mean I beat Tilahun Gizaw in the election for President of the Union of Students of the University of Addis Ababa because I am a rational person who takes everything in moderation including alcohol. I am an admirer of Tilahun Gizaw, particularly his commitment to radicalism, socialism–cum-communism. What I don’t like is his over –commitment which is an indication of excess, condemned by all the great philosophers of Ancient Greece including Socrates, Aristotle and Plato.” The holograms of students packed into Christmas Hall unleashed a deafening applause.

Then the hologram of an angry Berhanemeskel Redda popped up in the vast darkness of the cinema hall and said:

“I am sick and tired of this reactionary word moderation. How can you be moderate about the fact that 2and 2 make 4? We are here to discuss the unassailable veracity of scientific socialism- cum- communism constructed and propounded by the greatest genius, dead or alive that ever walked the face of this earth. Who else but the great Karl Marx! How can you possibly refute the unassailable fact that profit is equal to the surplus value appropriated by the capitalist in the form of unpaid labour.”

Mekonnen Bishaw was restless because the audience seemed inclined to believe the so-called “rabid firebrand” who could easily incite the student body to some sort of a Marxist rebellion. So, he took advantage of his presidency to speak again out of turn.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, it is these kinds of spurious, pseudo- scientific and self –serving assertions that tend to agitate students and cause them to be irrational big mouths. What more can the capitalist pay the worker than the free-market wage rate, assuming a situation of perfect competition and full employment?”

“Full employment be damned!” shouted Gebru Gebrewold, a confirmed Marxist who nevertheless had fallen in love with Schopenhauer’s aphorism, ‘the world is my idea’.” Gebru Gebrewold continued: “How can there be a market wage rate when a reserve army of unemployed people is deliberately created to keep wages constantly low?”

“You claim to be a materialist. How can you propagate a thought that reduces all the material in the universe to a figment of the imagination? That is why you have been denied membership in Crocodile”, said Walelegne Mekonnen who notoriously described Ethiopia as being a massive prison of ethnicities.

“You confused scatterbrain, when are you going to attempt a jailbreak and found the socialist republic of Lakomelza?” Gebru Gebrewold barked back in an obvious temper tantrum.

Wallelegne looked daggers at Gebru Gebrewold, who never gave a damn about anybody. He was notorious for once facing down none other than his Majesty’s Police Commissioner, General Yilma Shibeshi

All of a sudden the massive figure of Baro Tumssa, over two meters or seven feet tall, appeared in the cloud of holograms. Baro Tumssa as well as his elder brother Pastor Gudina Tumusa, was a controversial figure. He was reputed to have pioneered the “land to the tiller” popular movement but he was also said to have been one of the founding members of the sectarian OLF. He was most of the time taciturn on major political issues although many considered him to be the ultimate schemer. He, gently but significantly, said: “All we want is political and economic power commensurate with our demographic and physical stature” and added:

“Lilliputians like Gebru Gebrewold are punching above their weight, why shouldn’t we claim our rightful share of the political and economic pie.”

Gebru Gebrewold was getting ready to vehemently counter what was just said when the whole holographic frame changed to a scene of an assembly called by the student union of the UCAA (i.e. University College of Addis Ababa). Berhanemeskel Redda and Gebru Mersha were locked in a mortal power struggle. As usual, the pretext was a difference of opinion on some Marxist ideological niceties, but the fracas was dangerously escalating towards a tipping point when Gebru Mersha drew a gun and his close friends pacified and convinced him to leave the assembly hall (actually the Dining Hall of UCAA).

After the chaotic interlude was calmed, Eshetu Chole took the floor and spoke passionately and in fluent English. His message was quite clear. He said in rhetoric worthy of Cicero:“My fellow Ethiopians, sisters and brothers, are we not the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve ! Why then do we quarrel with one another, wish to slash one another’s throats. As ethno–nationalists have the temerity to say, Ethiopia is not a figment of the imagination but a solid, concrete product of a long and protracted process of historical development.

Amharic is not a lingua franca imposed by anybody but rather a common medium of communication, which developed historically of its own accord to serve Ethiopians as a common language. What is more moronic and crazy than to try to reverse the course of the wheel of history? What good can be derived from turning the wheel of history to the long – forgotten eras of savagery and barbarism? Thank You.”

The applause that ensued from the assembly was deafening and Eshetu acknowledged it with grace and humility before returning to his seat in the front row. Yohannes Sebhatu, considered by all and sundry, to be the most intelligent of “That Generation” uttered a sacrilege abut Eshetu’s “idealistic reference” to Adam and Eve and rose to speak. Surprisingly, Yohannes Sebehatu, a super –genius though he was, never scored high on oratory and verbal intelligence. So, somewhat nervously he mumbled stammeringly: “There is no salvation, I mean victory, without bloodshed. The ruling class must be completely decimated and the vanguard of the proletariat must seize power by force. Remember, in Marxist revolutions ideology may be the driving force but in the realm of practical action the sword is mightier than the pen!”

The message appeared to be well-taken by the audience, but the ensuing applause was not as deafening as that accorded to the speech by the eloquent Eshetu Chole. It was now time for the President of the Student Union, the one and only Tilahun Gizaw, to speak. His holographic image appeared in the eerie darkness of Saitan Bet. He started speaking immediately and forcefully:

“This government is shook, shock and shaken to its foundation.” The assembled students burst into laughter over his difficulty with the past tense and past participle of the irregular verb “shake”. But Tilhaun’s commitment and honesty stood him in good stead and the laughter died away within minutes and the President continued what later proved to be his ill- fated public speech thus:

“Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, please excuse my

 grammatical errors, but I am sure you know what I am getting at. It is this Imperial order that is rotten to the core. By the way, my sister princess Shara had tried to enroll me in Sandford International School here in Addis, but I refused the offer because it was too bourgeois. At any rate, a revolution in Ethiopia is imminent and we must all be prepared for it.”

Plainclothesmen who were secretly attending the meeting informed on Tilahun and on the assembly in general. A few days later Tilahun was gunned down by government security agents.

The revolution he struggled for materialized through a creeping military coup led by Mengistu Hailemariam. Soon the Derg, as the military coup leaders were collectively called, was labelled as a renegade fascist group by EPRP, which tried to punch above its weight and was decimated by the “Red Terror” unleashed by Mengistu and Legesse Asfaw. Berehanmeskel was executed by Mengistu. Tesfaye Debessaye jumped to his death from Kidane Beyen Building. The Derg did not even spare Haile Fida, a giant of “That Generation,” (Ya Tweled) who tried to collaborate with it. The holographic movie in Saitan Bet thus came to a horrific end and the dazed audience almost forgot to stand and leave.

The Ethiopian Herald January  9 /2021