Burning Down the House of Ethiopian Royalty
(Originally published in the Western People on 2024-07-02)
Haile Selassie in full dress (cropped - Wikipedia)
"This isn't a Christian thing to do!" he shouted, eyes wide in anger, his dark skin blending into the room's gloom. "You must give me more notice!". Part of my brain was still processing our conversation, which had rapidly escalated since I told my landlord I was moving out, just minutes earlier. However, another part—perhaps the ancient synapses responsible for spotting movement of predators in the undergrowth or the approach of a Fianna Fáil canvasser—was tugging my attention away. Something was wrong, as time seem to slow to a crawl. My landlord continued to harangue me, but his voice was strangely muted. I slowly looked away. Out of the corner of my eye, an orange light flickered into the darkness and the smell hit me. The curtains were on fire.
When I first moved to Los Angeles over a decade ago, I was lucky to stay with a very kind, distant cousin. His cozy home was really only meant for one person, and that person was anyone but me. In short, I was annoying. In a film such as A Quiet Place, I wouldn't have been immediately killed by the alien monsters but by the surviving humans for being a noisy eejit. Realising I needed my own place, but with limited resources, I focused on renting an affordable room in West Hollywood to be close to my acting classes and potential auditions, which were almost all in-person back then. I finally settled into a converted living room in an apartment off Pico and Robertson, for $800 a month, including all essential utilities such as sunlight and air.
I had never seen an ID for a prince before. Then again, I haven’t seen many American driver licenses either, but I bet few of them say "Prince" in the title. Prince Solomon H. Selassie, the great-grandson of the last emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, lived in the apartment with his elderly mother. His great-grandfather, worshipped as a god by Rastafarians, was overthrown and killed in a popular uprising in 1974. It was claimed he left a fortune of eleven billion dollars (New York Times, 1 Dec 1974). Whatever the truth of this, little of that fortune seemed to have reached his family in West Hollywood. To increase the earning potential of his modest two-bedroom apartment, my landlord had sectioned off the living room with flimsy 7ft high oriental screens, giving me a double bed, handbasin, and a balcony. The remaining space was dedicated to remembering, with black-and-white photos of palace visits by foreign dignitaries, celebrities and European royalty (including Queen Elizabeth II), nestled among antique furniture, knick-knacks and lamps lighting in various hues. We navigated this shrine-like atmosphere every time we needed to use the sole bathroom or wanted a cheese sandwich from the kitchen. Solomon's mother shuffled through this ethereal museum daily, her eyes betraying increasing disconnectedness with the outside world as she routinely emerged from their bedroom. She had faintly smiled when I noted her younger self in the fading monochrome images, but that was now a distant world away.
For the most part, my stay with the Selassies was cordial. I rarely remained in the apartment during the day and the other lodger also used her bedroom mainly for sleep, while the prince worked as a concierge in a local hotel, a cycle away. Occasionally, there were heated phone calls, apparently to his father in the Ethiopian government, which sometimes escaped into the nighttime silence. But aside from that, we got on uneventfully okay. After Christmas, we renegotiated my rent when I was upgraded to the vacated bedroom. This new agreement included a two months' notice provision scribbled on a half-page, and that clause was now the cause of my enraged landlord invoking Jesus and his apostles to witness my treachery as I told him I was moving out in four weeks and had asked that he return my deposit as a kindness.
The fire quickly ran up the curtain, which was draped over one of the innumerable lamps and spat into flame. My brain finally decided to act and I kicked the lamp and all attached to it into the next parish. Running to the sink, breaking through tackles worthy of any junior corner-back and with princes flying everywhere, I emptied the contents of cooking pots onto the flames. Solomon continued to berate my character, seemingly unable to accept his apartment was about to burn down. With all my republican ancestors looking down on me in approval, I roared instructions at Ethiopian royalty to fill more saucepans with water, interspersed with all the encouraging language learned from years of trying to milk obstinate cows on Billy Heffron's farm. Finally, after soaking the room (and my landlord) with tepid tap water, the flames were quenched. I threw open the entrance door to let out the awful smell of burned hair mixed with black smoke, which wafted through the debris of antiques I had knocked over in my efforts. For a moment, standing in the shaft of sunlight at the door, I felt like one of the junior military officers in the 1974 rebellion, who had come for the last emperor of Ethiopia and who was now staring at me disbelievingly from the ruins of his up-to-that-moment impregnable glory.
"You must have started it," Solomon slowly declared as he looked around his sodden room. Silence followed, broken only by the hissing of some electrical cables buried under the wet drapes. I tried to think rationally about what had just happened, the chances of getting my deposit back and what last pithy comment this hero should make to a prince and great-grandson of a Rastafarian god.
"Fuck off," I told him, turned and left.
(Months later, Solomon did kindly return my deposit, but no mention was made of the fire or its cause).
Los Angeles is one of those places. The high cost of rents and the large transient population of actors, writers, creative artists and all those chasing success in the entertainment industry mean landlords and roommates are often thrown together from a kaleidoscope of extremely different personalities and backgrounds. Thankfully, a decade later, my wife and I are now in more sedate accommodation in Glendale, although she does want to kill me sometimes for being an eejit. Thankfully, the most extreme event we experienced was a fire alarm at night, a week after we moved in. Apparently, someone broke into the gym locker room and burned something to set off the sprinklers. Of course, I was the one to locate the 'fire' and directed the fire department personnel there.
And no, I didn't start that one either.