Outskirts Press, INC.

Stories from Ethiopia where the reality is more astonishing than fiction

"The Case of the Criminal Walk and Other Stories" presents a collection of short stories by Ethiopian writer Hama Tuma. As one reviewer put it, the stories of Hama Tuma ' give a voice to the plight of the ordinary people, tackling the themes of the tragedy of the Ethiopian people as a whole, including corruption and poverty, contrasted with the strength of the human spirit'. These are tales of a City on the one hand and that of a nation and a people on the other. As the famous Kenyan writer, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, put it in a review of Hama Tuma's earlier book, "The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and other Stories", Hama Tuma continues to "brilliantly capture the contradictions that make up the real Ethiopia of the twentieth century". In Ethiopia, the tragedy continues despite change of government and Hama Tuma delves into the tormented souls of his compatriots to highlight not only the suffering but also the hope and optimism that makes the living, however hard the struggle, tolerable and worthy.

Captain Berhanu was just one of the children of the City. His was a life dedicated to serving others, "in my own way" as he often qualified it. Others in the City also lived what they were dealt out as life to the best they could. The wealthy patrons of the Sheraton Hotel who debated on the tastes of Beluga caviar and Pate de foie gras imported from France and the hungry many who slept on the dirty streets huddled together for warmth, the thieves and muggers, the teachers and civil servants, the priests and monks, the sheikhs and muftis, the con artists and the whores, the child prostitutes and the drug pushers, the soldiers and the police, the displaced multitudes with empty stomachs and tattered cloths, of all ages and backgrounds and mother tongues-- they all called the City home. It was indeed the melting pot, the continuing symbol of people speaking different mother tongues and yet talked the same language and is one people. As people say, if one calls it a life, sleeping in a cemetery can be comfortable. The City dwellers were adept now at avoiding great expectations. There was much generosity in the City but it was also a man eat man world in there and therefore the motto was "have no goat and no tiger will stalk you". Yet, the poor knew that no one left them alone because they had little or nothing. They knew they still had their eyes, their memories and always posed as potential dangers to those in power, with the ill-gotten wealth. Aren't a people with memory and grievances like a sharpened knife kept inside its sheath, waiting for its time?
To each his own life and as one chronicler of the City's life wrote "who can say these days that the people live better than the stray dogs and overworked donkeys?" Maybe no one can, but one can attempt to write about the people and their lives shaped by despair and death as well as hope and optimism. The stories in this collection are such tales of the City and its people. It is proper also that the first story should be that involving Captain Berhanu, son of the City he called home.