Author: Moses Abukutsa

Pride of my heart, my little princes- what wrong have you done to deserve this? When you were a little girl you played with your doll and waited for me until I came home. You grabbed my hand and would drag me to the kitchen to see what your mama was cooking. You were such a joy in the house. When you grew ready to start school you immediately fell in love with books. You never gave us trouble even on the first day. Then you went to High school and loved the church. What a paragon of obedience and…

We are on a rough road that swirls past my dust stung eyes, torn shirt and receding hunger pangs. It’s the early hours of the morning sun when usually the road is teeming with petty traders but not today. I am trying to make out our position from what some hours ago was home so far behind in the reddish thick dust trailing us. All these feels like a drunken man trying to sober up. It could be a failed philosopher who is trying a treatise beneath the shade of some tree of foolishness in the sweltering heat of drunken…

Addis Ababa’s business has had to come to a temporary closure. It is election time. I had to send the children and her away when elections come we transmogrify into beasts. In a very dark night just after I have sent my family to the village, like Nicodemus in that famous night wrapped in mysteriousness emerges Agostino. He comes with a curious proposal a week after dispatching my wife and children. “Your credentials walk before you and we come to exhort you to piece a rag together.”  A man I have only up to now read in the News Time…

This is the year when not even the living room is safe. Outside; footsteps clunk on crisp twigs that crunch over hushed voices almost stifled by a mixture of fear and anxiety. One living room window rattles. A morbid rock smashes through it collapsing glass panes into obsolete smithereens. This is the true heart of darkness where souls of an innocent family are strangled into the imminent grip of cruel uncertainty. A peaceful night collapses. “Ng’aaaaaa aaa! Ng’aaaaaa aaa!” The riotous sound of hornbills during the day and in such a night their conspicuous silence. This is the time of…