Addis Ababa Diary: Encore Blue Eyes

When I arrive in Addis, still high from my adventures in the beautiful city of Harar, I receive a note from Blue Eyes at the hotel where we’d agreed to meet that day.

I am here, the note said. Where are you? I will wait for you.

His room is empty. I walk out into the street, searching the internet cafes nearby, shivering a bit from cold and rain. I return the note.

I am here. I am in the room next to yours.

When we finally hug hello, I am inexplicably shy. You’ve changed, he says, looking at my skin, now brown from the sun.
Something else has changed. Smiling and chirping nervously, I say, I missed you.

That night, with two Americans in tow, we have a spectacular dinner with traditional music, exquisite dancers, and waitresses who look like runway models. At the end of the evening, the two Americans retire early to prepare for their morning flight, and Blue Eyes and I hang out in my enormous room. The hotel looks like Jamaica Inn – creepy, faded grandeur, haunted staff, cavernous rooms filled with dusty furniture. We deposit ourselves on one of the couches and settle in, half expecting to hear a chilling scream from down the corridor.

Between the hours of 11:00pm and 5:00am, an elaborate mating ritual ensues - hours and hours of sniffing, scratching, and circling. An eternity of plotting and planning and waiting. And finally, the sky begins to lighten.

I’m so tired, I say. Come, let’s take a nap.

Two days of napping and laughing and listening to the rain pour onto our balcony. I make Blue Eyes speak French and in between naps, I discover another person – someone delightfully tender and surprising.

What do I do with this person who rides the back of trucks through dangerous countries? Who solves math proofs in his travel journal? Whose optimism and sense of adventure amaze me? What do I do with this odd French boy who says the most outrageous things?

Things like, Je t’aime, Perséphone.

It’s almost too much – too romantic, too impossibly lovely. I am skeptical. What is this, Before Sunrise? You don’t know me. If you knew how much I abuse commas and adjectives, you’d never love me. I live in New York, you’re moving to Vienna. It’s too complicated.

I just have a feeling about us, he says. I’m not going to let you go that easily.

On the day I leave Addis, we are both depressed. Blue Eyes gives me a picture of an Ethiopian angel to keep me safe from the terrible scrapes I get myself into, and inscribes a message in my guidebook. I have half a mind to turn heel and jump on the back of a truck with him. I have the feeling I should follow Blue Eyes wherever he goes.

But I don’t. I get on my plane and land in Khartoum, then Frankfurt. Everything is shockingly shiny and abundant.

I don’t want to be here, I think. I don’t want this. But I get on a plane that lands in New York and meet my parents at the gate.

How was your trip? They are eager for stories and details.

It was wonderful, is all I can say. It was magic.