THE EMPEROR - RYSZARD KAPUŚCIŃSKI

Haile Selassie is one of those historical figures it’s really hard to get a handle on through the haze of associations and cultural assumptions that have accumulated on him since his relatively recent death. I was just speaking with my gf who spend some years in Ethiopia as a child to try to get some handle on how Ethiopian feel about him now. On top of that you have to add in Selassie’s status as an icon of black dignity and Afrikan glory. The 100% black school I worked at on Chicago’s beautiful Westside had posters of him up around the school, in an inspirational context. And obviously this sort of remembrance reaches its most extreme form, in the Rasta movement, who literally consider Selassie a god. This book doesn’t really add to our understanding of Selassie as such. It’s a collection of first person accounts, an oral history if you will, of the people around his majesty. Kapuscinski has a great ear for the absurd, there’s a great long section with the guy who brings in the footstole or the guy whose only job is to open a door who goes on and on in very self-serious manner about the importance of timing the door so as to not in any way diminish royal dignity. All the historical stuff, the rebellions and plots and military movements and whatnot, is glanced only in the background or referred to semi-obliquely. I applaud this approach. Kapunscinski isn’t Ethiopian or an expert in Ethiopia, I don’t need a history from him. He does have a wonderful ear for governmental absurdity and bureaucratic waste and the ways those in power are oblivious, and he leans on these themes. It’s pretty easy to read this as refracted criticism of his own communist Poland, which I’m sure also seemed to be run by people more interested in palace intrigue and minor bureaucratic power-games. A great example about how to write about a forgien nation without coming off as white-splaining (tho, I’m not sure a communist Slav is “White” per se). Also, this book implies that the Peace Corps played a minor role in the revolution by putting on student events at the university that transformed into riots and rebellions. Always good to hear from the Peace Corps. Finally, this book makes reference to an Ethipian cultural practice I’d never heard off called “Lebasha” which involved drugging a small boy, getting him dizzy then allowing spirits to take control of him and, under their direction, he would identify thieves. Selassie apparently put a stop to the practice. Anyway, now I want to visit Ethiopia. 74 Lions of Judah.