Tonight I am at the launch of Shemelis Desta’s photographic exhibition From Emperor to Dictator at The Photographers Gallery in Soho just a minute from Leicester square tube station.   My  very cool friend Nkechi Abili who works in Mayfair  scoots around the city on her v. chic vespa and parks right outside the gallery.  We catch up a little and then enter the milieu.

There are many people, mainly Ethiopian,  whom I say hello to that I haven’t seen for over ten years.  A woman who knows my family is here and someone  whispers to me that one gentlemen looking at the pictures  is the grandson of the Emperor himself.

The gallery
is packed and the free alcohol  is
flowing. I haven’t had a drink for about three months now and have decided
never to have a drink again.  I would hope
that Mark Sealy is here, our paths keep crossing. Mark Sealy runs Autograph  the base for the association of black
photographers (ABP). 

From the
other side of the room I see Nkechi, she is waving at me to come look at a
picture. It is a picture of  Julies Nyerere  the then president of Tanzania
talking with the Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie.  Of the seven hundred pictures available for
this exhibition of approximately fifty,  
this one!  “He used to come to my
house” she whispers “ when I was a child.  He was a friend of my father!”.

I am
reminded of how long it is since my close friend saw her father. And then I am
reminded of what has happened to many of these Ethiopians. These pictures are
memories.  Corrupting earthquakes and
revolutions have split Ethiopian families across the world. The exile could
easily be  imprisoned within memory and
here they are memories, displayed on the walls, lauded by us all. But somewhere
here in this room right now someone is absolutely sobbing  inside.  It is bad that people are forced into exile, but to exile their ideas, their hopes, their dreams, their future their children, their arts…. 

….back at my home there is an invite to the Embassy for the Netherlands at  The  launch for Poetry Review….