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Source text - Portuguese The wind sprayed mist through the open door. The whitewashed brick room seemed to dip and sway as if we rode a houseboat whipped by dark waves. The mummified dowager at my side slowly gained ground, as her long cotton shawls began to unwind.
It had taken me a few weeks to get the hang of this. On the long afternoons when the air fattens to water in Addis Ababa, the city’s animal life—goats, sheep, donkeys, stray dogs, woodpeckers, catbirds, swallows—fall asleep standing up in crevices and bowers, or with their heads bowed in the deluge. That is when I long to trudge up the stairs to my room in the tidy Yilma Hotel, peel off my muddy shoes and socks, drink from a liter of bottled water, fall across the bed with Bahru Zewde’s History of Modern Ethiopia, and sleep while the tall, sheer curtains drift into the room full of the scent and weight of rain.
But I was stuffed into a love seat in Haregewoin’s common room and there was no getting out of it. The group inertia overwhelmed me. “Now?” everyone stirred and asked in bewilderment. “You want to go somewhere now, in this weather?” Some were thinking, I’m sure, “The ferange [white] has to go somewhere now?” My friend and driver, Selamneh Techane (Se-lam-nuh Te-tchen-ay), who was rolled forward with his head resting on his hands, sat up and looked at me with bleary confusion. Every time I tried to stand up, the mater familias beside me sloughed off another layer of shawls.
Translation - English O vento trazia a garoa pela porta aberta. O quarto de tijolos caiados parecia despencar e sacolejar como se estivéssemos a bordo de uma casa-barco açoitada por ondas na escuridão. Ao meu lado, a nobre senhora imersa em seu sono profundo, aos poucos, ia se revelando, à medida que seu xale de algodão começava a se desenrolar.
Levara algumas semanas pra pegar o jeito. Nas longas tardes em que a alta umidade do ar se condensa em chuva, a vida animal da cidade de Adis Abeda – cabras, ovelhas, burros, cães de rua, pica-paus, andorinhas e outros pássaros – adormece em fendas e caramanchões, ou curvam suas cabeças no dilúvio. É quando anseio subir as escadas para meu confortável quarto no Yilma Hotel, arrancar meus sapatos e meias enlameados, beber um litro de água, cair na cama com a História Moderna da Etiópia, de Bahru Zewde e dormir, enquanto as longas cortinas transparentes esvoaçam pelo quarto tomado pela essência e peso da chuva.
Porém, eu estava enfiada em um pequeno sofá na sala de Haregewoin e não havia como sair dali. A inércia do grupo me surpreendeu. “Agora?” todos se voltaram a mim e perguntaram com espanto. “Você quer sair agora, com esse tempo?” Tenho certeza que alguns chegaram a pensar, “Onde a ferange [branca] tem que ir logo agora?” Meu amigo motorista, Selamneh Techane, que estava sentado com a cabeça apoiada nas mãos, se ajeitou e olhou confuso pra mim. Toda vez que eu tentava me levantar, a matrona ao meu lado cedia mais uma camada de xale.
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Years of experience: 15. Registered at ProZ.com: Mar 2013.
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