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THE LETTER FROM ASMARA A Story from Ethiopia Chapter 7: The Song (2) Yonas was leaning against his taxi at the stand near Meskel Square, drinking tea from a small glass, when Dawit walked up. For a moment, Yonas did not recognise him—the man approaching was thinner, dustier, and older in the eyes than the friend who had left three weeks earlier. Then his face broke open, and he crossed the distance in three strides and pulled Dawit into a hard embrace. "Where have you been?" he demanded, holding him at arm's length. "No taxi, no phone, no word. I thought they had taken you somewhere and buried you." Dawit told him. Not everything, but enough—the truck, the crossing, Selam, the house, the lemon tree, the letters. Yonas listened without interrupting, which was rare for him, and when Dawit finished, he shook his head slowly and said nothing for a long time. They sat on the kerb beside the taxi stand, sharing a glass of tea, watching the city move around them. The afternoon traffic honked and crawled. Vendors called out their prices. Somewhere behind them, a radio was playing—an old Ethiopian song, slow and mournful, one Dawit had not heard in years. He stopped mid-sentence. The melody was familiar in a way that reached past memory and into his body. Tesfaye used to hum it while he worked—at the table, in the yard, under the lemon tree. Dawit had forgotten it until this moment. Now it came back to him whole: the rise of the chorus, the break in the middle, the way his brother would tap the rhythm on his knee when he thought no one was watching. He sat very still and listened to the whole song from beginning to end. When it finished, Yonas looked at him and saw that his eyes were wet, and he did not make a joke of it. He simply refilled the glass of tea and set it in Dawit's hands. "Your sister has been calling," Yonas said quietly. "Hanna. From Bahir Dar. She heard nothing from you for three weeks. She is angry. But she is also frightened." Dawit nodded slowly, still hearing the song in his head. He had not thought of Hanna in weeks—his younger sister, married, settled, with her own life and her own opinions. He had not told her about the letter. He had not told her anything. "I will go to her," he said. "Tomorrow. She should not hear this from anyone but me." Continued in the next post