Ethiopia. The slight server, with her hair in a ponytail and her shirt buttoned at the cuffs, makes her way across the terrace, a tray of Gazel beers in hand, at the Ras Hotel in Addis Ababa, the capital. At the bar, with its wood and mirrors, half-empty bottles and tie-clad waiters, time seems to have stopped in the era when the hotel hosted guests like Nelson Mandela. “Soon after the Emperor was deposed, I met with Teferra in my room in the Hotel Ras,” Ryszard Kapuscinski wrote in his book The Emperor (1974), in which he tells how, every night, he listened to people who had known the Hailse Selassie’s court. Here, the Polish journalist tells how Lulu, the emperor’s dog, “during various ceremonies, would run away from…
