Word: menelik
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...strokes. "I am not happy," Wingate confides to a subordinate. "But then, I have been thinking, no great man ever was really happy." And the author is an excellent guide through the winding complexities of Ethiopian culture, its ancient Coptic Christian religion and its legendary past (the first Emperor, Menelik I, was purported to be the son of the biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba...
...flavor particular to a continent whose political map is riddled with straight lines depicting borders established with pencil and ruler in distant capitals during the colonial era. The Ethiopia-Eritrea border dates back to a 1902 treaty between Italy, which had colonized Eritrea, and Ethiopia's King Menelik II, which for the most part used rivers to separate their respective territories, but drew a straight line in the vicinity of Badme to connect two rivers. That straight line disappeared from many maps after 1962 when Eritrea was incorporated into Ethiopia, but reemerged with the amicable secession of Eritrea...
...many civil servants will stay on to advise the new government. There will be a gradual reduction, probably by two-thirds, of the permanent military force of 6,000-including 1,500 crew-cut (and mostly German) members of the 13th Demibrigade of the famed Foreign Legion. Shopkeepers in Menelik Square hope the legionnaires will stay on. "They raise hell in drunken brawls and bust up a bar now and then," says one, "but at least they spend what they make here. Most of it is for drinking or whoring, but they spend it." One scar-faced Legion major seems...
...restrict movement by foot. Next day the government-controlled papers announced that 'one anarchist' had been killed-although hundreds of weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition had been confiscated. Local hospitals had been forbidden to give out body counts, but an orderly at Menelik whispered to me in Amharic, 'Bizualee' (There are many). The best guess: 80 to 100 dead...
...years later, when she died mysteriously, he became Emperor. It was then that he took the name Haile Selassie, which in Amharic means Power of the Holy Trinity. According to Ethiopian legend, he was 225th in a line of Emperors that extends back almost 3,000 years to Menelik I, son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba...