Sleeping Alone

Outside the high front windows, moonflower trees lived their night gifts; giant white trumpets opened under the moon, filling the house and garden with a perfume both mystical and compelling. They became the African night for me, their flowers, rich and untouchable, strange, yet symbolic of all that promises to blossom at night. In the evening, the busy city of Addis Ababa emptied itself into silence and darkness. No lights broke that vow, except an occasional car or taxi creeping through black velvet. Houses had shutters, and behind the shutters people were closed in upon themselves. After Ian left me, I slept alone in the house; the guard and maid were in apartments separate from mine. I too shuttered myself in; my rooms became a vault to hold me safe against everything - except myself. One night I woke to find a a cat roaming the house, a wild cat - I saw it sharp against the hall light left on all night. When I woke with a start, I could not believe my eyes, a cat's tail was weaving across the dim air and silence near me. I rose and searched for it, checking the entire house, following it until I found the back door open. Snarling at me, the cat vanished outdoors and I, trembling, shot the bolt across the door. How could it happen, all the windows shuttered, but a door left wide open? It frightened me, that willful act against myself. Alone in Africa, I became afraid. I could not submit to what Addis Ababa said, to the new reality it forced upon a foreigner. "Forengie, forengie," little children called after me. Forengie meant stranger, foreigner. They mocked us not because we were white or different, but because we contained ourselves. We'd learned to live half secretly, shuttered away behind our faces, hidden behind our shoes and clothes and hair, our minds locked into other dreaming realities, strangers sometimes to ourselves. Now, in Calgary, I haven't been afraid once. There's nothing to be afraid of - not in this neighborhood, an old, settled, quiet, almost boring corner of a busy city - a sanity that is familiar and comforting. I thought I'd be glad to be back in Canada, back to safety, thought once I left the dust and confusions of Ethiopia, of a failed marriage,and of people who didn't know me, I'd be happy. But I'm not. I'm more lost than ever. ............................................................................................................. Later, weeks later, I've remembered that dark church behind the stone wall, behind the moonflower trees. Men and women were singing hymns. They sang at night. Ian had paid no attention to them, so at first I didn't either, but once he was gone, I grew to take comfort from their sound. The language was Amharic, but many of the hymns I recognized from my childhood. How secret were their meetings? If the church was evangelical, then night may been the safest time for them to meet. They sang hour after hour, slipping from one hymn to another, or to a song of praise of their own making. No one preached; no one sang solo. It was the sound of people together in a humble building without windows, behind my stone wall, but also the moonflowers trees. No windows, yet they sang as though they could see the heavens. The stars were very close in Addis Ababa at night; the city was at 9,000 feet. The sound of their music mingled with the scent of the flowers and, as I leaned out my upstairs open window to listen, I imagined them in darkness or soft candle light, imagined them sensing the presence of God, which somehow I could share. It's a memory I find comforting now.