(This is the first installment in a three-part series looking at the memoir written by the Ethiopian intellectual, freedom fighter and opposition politician, Andargachew Tsige.)

Andargachew Tsigie and Meles Zenawi became friends- or more precisely, card-playing partners – one Christmas break during their university days in the early 1970s. While most students went home, the two young men and others who stayed at the university spent most of their time playing cards for money. «Both Meles and I made alliances and conspired to fleece others. The cocky Meles would not put money unless he was sure he would win,» writes Andargachew.

Later, the two also used to swap books. At the time, it was kind of hard to find foreign-language books but Andargachew was furnished with plenty of them by family members, some of it that he lent to Meles and other friends, according to Andargachew. At one point, Meles set eyes on Mario Puzo’s The Godfather that Andargachew was in the middle of reading. But because he insisted, Andargachew had to tear the book in half and give it to him, he says.

The partnership and friendship would not last long. Meles would abandon his studies in 1974 to join the insurgents in the mountains of Shire districts of Tigray, who formed the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Andargachew joined a pan-Ethiopian resistance organization that emerged from the student movement of the university called the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (E.P.R.P.) At first, he served the party by chauffering the EPRP bigwigs in a secretive and clandestine operation, navigating the twisting streets of Addis Ababa. He would later go underground with his brother and other comrades, living in safe houses, eluding the security forces of the military council (Derg) led by Mengistu Haile Mariam. His younger brother was later captured and killed as the revolution would lead to the carnage and ideological confusion of the period that climaxed in the “Red Terror” of 1977-78. After the first spell in prison, where torture was routine, Andargachew escaped to Sudan, living as a refugee in Khartoum then obtained political asylum in the UK in 1979. He studied at the University of Greenwich where he stayed on and eventually obtained full UK citizenship.

After Derg was finally overthrown in 1991 and Meles Zenawi became president in a transitional government, Andargachew returned to Addis Ababa and became Deputy Mayor of Addis Ababa, a post that he held for almost four years. He would resign on account of the difference of opinion existing between him and his colleagues on different points. He moved back to the UK in the early 1990s where he became active in opposition politics, becoming Meles’s rival.

The two men’s relationship descended a further notch when Andargachew returned home in 2005, to support the opposition party Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD). He took part in that year’s election and was briefly imprisoned at Ziway camp. After being freed, he founded a new political movement, Ginbot 7, from his exile in London. A political opposition party that called for democracy, free elections, and civil rights.

Andargachew’s memoir, the first installment of two-part records focus not on recent times, his opposition activism and involvement that helped him garner sympathetic local and press coverage but rather the earlier periods of Addis Ababa, starting from the city’s foundation to its transformation. Through the eyes of the author and that of his parents–we watch Addis Ababa grow from a tiny settlement surrounded by hills to the thriving geographical center of the country. Among the titles incorporated “A Place where my grandfather’s calves were kept”, “Addis Ababa from garrison to the city”, “Moving like a tortoise towards a metropolitan city” “A city of few”, “Culture in the modern city.”

The book covers in detail the author’s childhood in Addis Ababa as the old feudal order was giving way to the even crueler totalitarian rule. How he became an active participant in the student movement, keenly followed and remained abreast of student politics, often placing himself at the very epicenter of political activity.

Book penned in prison

The 664-page feat was written while Andargachew Tsige was in solitary confinement and on death row between July 2014 and July 2015. He was given rare permission to write after offering to produce a piece describing the political condition of the country, that could prove useful for the administration. He submitted the request to a higher intelligence official who held his case and who consequently might have communicated and even made a bid on his part to Getachew Asefa, the then head of the National Intelligence and Security Service, according to the author. Once he was provided with a personal laptop, he finished and delivered the promised piece on time, and even asked the official if he could use the laptop « to write something else ». The official told him he could and he even went to extra lengths to bring him a list of books that he requested. Andargachew knew the risks he might be running with his words, which in a way forced him to focus on more distant times than the recent ones. But when he moved to Kaliti prison a year later, both the draft of the book and the laptop were taken from him. He thought it was over and he would never see the draft again. « But the unexpected happened and I was released, » he wrote. Out of prison, he was reunited with his transcript with the help of the intelligence official and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, he says.

The author reminds us that he did not set out to write as a way to occupy himself and to fill the tedious hours in prison. “I could have read books for that purpose”, he says. “But rather, it was a deep desire to set the record straight with regard to certain aspects of the country’s history and communicate some of the pivotal events that I participated during the student movement and the EPRP years, something that I could not do in the past for lack of time.”

The book faults the Ethiopian historiography for its focus on the achievements of the ruling elite, omitting facts or whitewashing events that concern the contribution of social groups traditionally regarded outside the pale of the mainstream. The author cited the example of historical writings about the Ethiopian Muslims who have been loyal to their country, fighting side by side with their Christian compatriots against invading Italian aggression. Instead, rulers did not extend to them the same treatment they deserved as worthy citizens. It took a foreign historian to enlighten us on the great injustice done at the battle of Adwa when an attempt had been made to bury Ethiopian soldiers in a massive grave at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Adwa while it was not applied to the Muslim dead, the author writes. «On the battlefield itself, Wylde noted that the Ethiopians had not bothered to bury their Muslim dead: “Not a single body of the Mahommedan Gallas had been touched…. », at was revealed Raymond Jonas’s  2011 book, the Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire.