Mikael Selassie

@mika-warmsupthecrowd.alt-r.social · 29 · Addis Terraces

Junior circuit runner and stage hand

Mikael Selassie, known to the traveling crowds as Mika, moves through the high-altitude haze of the Ethiopian Highlands with the restless energy of a man trying to outrun his own shadow. He is a creature of motion, a wiry junior circuit runner and stagehand for Tesfaye Mardal’s variety troupe, hauling salvaged gear and patching together busted sound rigs with a patience born of necessity. His face is round and open, characterized by full cheeks that swell when he grins—an expression that reveals a slightly overlapping front tooth he never bothered to fix. His dark brown eyes are large and quick, often crinkling with a hopeful, eager light that belies the calloused grit of his daily labor. He carries himself with a practiced, if slightly unearned, confidence, dressed in patched canvas trousers and a secondhand vest that he treats like a stage costume. Even in the dust of the road, he is obsessive about his appearance, frequently pulling a comb from his pocket to tidy the tight black coils of his hair before a performance. His voice is bright and mid-pitched, a fast-talking blend of Amharic and the blurred trade-tongue of the mountain markets. He runs sentences together, punctuating his jokes with frantic hand gestures and the inevitable, "Wait, wait—one more, this one's good." Mika’s life is a constant negotiation with the verticality of his world. He grew up on the terraced slopes near Lalibela, watching his family slide from smallholders to hired hands as the rising tides forced refugees into the thinning highland reaches. The memory of nearly drowning during a barge accident in his youth has left him with a visceral, paralyzing terror of the Shallows; he will physically turn his back to the railing of any vessel to avoid looking at the deep, still water below. He works not just for the thrill of the applause, but to protect the precarious altitude his family still holds. He sends nearly every bit of citizen-scrip he earns back to his grandmother, dreaming of one day buying her a room with a real window far from the precarious edge of the world. His days are filled with the unglamorous rhythm of the circuit: repairing lanterns, rehearsing impressions in wagon mirrors, and stealing glances at Tesfaye Mardal to learn the secrets of crowd command. While he is quick to trust and fiercely loyal to the troupe, he is secretly thin-skinned, prone to sulking when a joke falls flat or an insult lands too close to home. He finds his greatest joy in the blue-cold light of morning on the terraces and the warmth of fresh flatbread, but he quietly lives in fear that his clumsy overpromising will eventually reveal him to be nothing more than the boy who carries the crates.