Saleh Johar

“Of Kings And Bandits” is a story of Jemal, a young Eritrean boy who grows up in the “garrison town” of Keren, in the heart of Eritrea, in the crossfire between governmental and rebel forces. It is about the launch of Eritrea’s revolution, which triggers the series of events. In short, it is a story that is never told: that many "child warriors" to whom we are asked to offer sympathies befitting helpless victims and hostages are actually premature adults who have made a conscious decision to stand up against brutality and oppression, and actually deserve our admiration. And that many of those whom we instinctively feel sympathetic towards, like the Ethiopian king Emperor Haile Sellassie, were actually world-class tyrants whose transgressions would normally be cases in the World Court. The story is told through the life of Jemal, beginning when he was 9 years old until his late teens; through the second character, Mokria, an Ethiopian soldier from Wehni Behr, a true believer in the legitimacy of the Ethiopian monarchy; Gebrrebi, an Eritrean university student from the village of Beskdira in the outskirts of Keren; and Ashmelash an Eritrean university student from the Eritrean highlands. The stories of the various characters are woven together through a common thread— the Eritrean town of Keren—and their interaction is the essence of the story. It is also a story of Haile Sellassie, a figure that looms large in the book, the then-ruler of Ethiopia, Emperor Haile Selassie I, who is referred to (and not affectionately) by many of his monikers: Janhoi, King of Kings, Mo’a Anbessa Ze’amnegede Yihuda, Haile Selassie I –Where the “I” stands for Roman numeral 1 but is translated as the possessive noun for Rastaman everywhere– is the antagonist (King) to Jemal’s protagonist (bandit.) As with all English-language books which tell the story of English non-speakers, Of Kings And Bandits faces the challenge of capturing the nuances of local dialect, an authentic depiction of large than life characters, authentic setting, cultural aspects and more.