The piano lessons in Piazza, Addis Ababa

I learned how to play the Gymnopédies in Addis Ababa.

I broke the heart of a boy and got in the Land Cruiser

There were dark yellow hues around, sunset in Ethiopia

Scents of burning corn in the air of the busy African streets

There’s a line of old blue Ladas before us, 

Soviet cars in the old Italian square of the Horn of Africa,

And when I open the window, I smell their smoke,

A smoke too nostalgic for me to hate.

Merchants are on the streets, we move slowly through markets

I see people loudly arguing for the price of a pair of Chinese blue sandals,

Beautiful women wrapped in textiles, selling pots and pans,

Their faces are silent and non-pleading, grace in commerce

And the light; always the light in Addis Ababan streets

A golden yellow so bright and so warm

It submerges me in the divine sun’s goodbye

I can almost smell the sunset in this country

Those rays of blinding bright yellows must taste golden brown

Like the perfect crisp of a creme brûlée, smoked and sweet,

An aroma baked with a burning too tender, a fire too creamy

Perhaps notes of rich custard with a tobacco pipe

The charcoal’s smoke, the blinding yellows, the lively voices,

The busy streets, the colourful, irregular shanty houses, 

The curious eyes on the foreigner in her car reading music sheets

Parisian music sheets in Addis Ababan streets. 

We enter a muddy little street, turn right and find the old communist building

I get out and tell Abeselom to pick me up in an hour; he’ll go eat injera in the Piazza

I pack the old music sheets and shiver in the shadows of the evening

Now that there is no sun, Ethiopia’s alpine breeze menaces my bare arms

I climb up an eternity of stairs in this unkept communist block,

And on each floor that I climb, I see another family living

First floor, a young woman, curves under soft white textiles, 

Is cooking injera, sat down on the floor, and watches me climb

Second floor, two young children are crouched on their knees,

The door to their house open like everyone else, 

Playing a game with their little hands, 

Their huge eyes staring at my whiteness, screaming “Ferenji!”

Third floor, an old woman is simply sat, she stares at a wallUntil I arrive and become a transient silhouette,

A momentary painting in the wall, 

And she smiles and timidly says hello, her eyes getting smaller from shy pleasure

Fourth floor, my legs are burning and I cross the always open door of Valentina,

My piano teacher, from St. Petersburg, red hair that flows on her back, 

Hair that hasn’t been cut in years, she holds onto it like old books or letters, 

Maybe eighty years old of age, wrinkles from musical perfectionism

She frowns when I play a note of Debussy wrong, she gets older still, 

She closes her eyes in delight when I play Mozart right, she gets younger now, 

And when I practice at home, I make sure I make no mistakes

Mistakes that will take days away from my dear Professor Valentina’s life

We sit down and I listen to her stories, she urges me to start playing, 

And sometimes in between Bach and Mozart, I see her look far away.

Her hands and lips shake and quiver, slightly, in the elegance of old age,

And she silently whispers to herself, my fingers on the piano, immobile and alert

My fingers stop moving so I can listen to her instead of the piano,And she sometimes slowly, sometimes with great fervour,

Tells me about the white nights she used to live in Saint Petersburg,

Another life in a White Russia, under her fur hats and mink coats

Now she lives in Africa, and her Russian accent does not go with the burning sun, 

Her delicate, wrinkled fingers don’t go with the barely oxygenated air of Addis,

Yet she belongs here more than anyone I know, because with her strength of character,

She fell in love with an Ethiopian man and owned her new sunny land with pride when she arrived here from snowy Russia.

I love to play Erik Satie with her, the Gymnopédie’s long, hauntingly beautiful progression

Puts us both in a trance as we watch my fingers walk along her off-key piano

She thinks of her husband while I wonder what he was like, 

And I marvel at the softness and complexity of such simplicity

At the end of our lesson, she either hugs me

Or with a strict, loving passion, tells me to practice Debussy again, 

And I look at her enormous blue eyes, wonder again how they found themselves looking at me,

A Turkish girl from sunny Istanbul staring at an old Russian Babushka in Ethiopia.

Eda Alp