In April 1995, someone responded to my ad for a housemate. He came to my house in Maine, and he seemed intelligent, interesting, solvent and safe, so I said yes, he could live in the house with me. We agreed that he could move in on May 1, which was the Monday.

During the preceding April weekend, I had been in New York City visiting my mother. For the one and only time in my life, my mother said, "Let's have breakfast out and walk around the sculpture garden at the UN." I asked her "Why the UN?" She said it was planted with 1,000 tulips, so we went.

We were taking a break on a bench, when a breeze swept through the tulips, like ripples in water; it was magnificent. I looked up and noticed the UN building facing me, and was suddenly filled with the memory of my once boyfriend and old friend, Haille Selassie's grandson. Out of all my friends in New York, he was the only one who came to visit me in Maine, and then he went to Switzerland and I never saw him again.

Flashback to 1975, the day the coup in Ethiopia happened. I was on my way to NYC to have Thanksgiving with my mother, traveling with my then-boyfriend Doug. Doug and I had taken the bus to Boston, and then we would be taking the train to NYC, so we found out about the coup from the gigantic newspaper headlines in Boston. I freaked! Among other things, the newspapers reported that a grandson of Haille Selassie had been shot dead, but didn't say which one. Not that any grandson should be shot dead, but I was terrified it was my friend.

When we got to NY, I called a mutual friend with close ties to Ethiopia. He spoke to me in code over the phone and we agreed to meet that evening at a place no one would know except us.

When we got off the phone, I hit the ground running. I ran because I could outrun anything at that point, and had no time for a cab. I ran to Gerry's, a family friend whom I had known since I was four years old. He had been the lawyer for Bangladesh during the conflict with Pakistan, and I figured he might know how to find out if my friend was still alive and what we could do if he was.

By the time I got there, hysterical and hyperventilating, I could hardly speak. Gerry's partner greeted me at the door and said he was away in India. At this, I slid down the doorjamb to the floor, in tears. When I could finally tell him what I wanted to see Gerry for, he said, "My God have you come to the right place! He said, "Guess who's the lawyer for the new revolutionary government of Ethiopia; ­ME!" He told me the men who took over the country were thugs, dangerous gangsters. There was one good thing; they would do anything for money, in which case we could undoubtedly rescue my friend by just buying him out of there. He named a price they would probably accept, and I felt I could raise it.

That night, I went to the secret place with Doug to meet with my Ethiopian friend. I was hoping he would tell me how to get ahold of my friend's mother so I could ask for her help in raising the money. My friend was outraged at the thought. He accused my lawyer friend of being a racist and spouted a socialistic fantasy about what he believed was the true nature of Mingitsu and his thugs, and regardless, wanted imperialism to end because he was banned from Ethiopia. He was afraid that if we rescued my friend, he would rally a counterrevolution setting Ethiopia back all over again, and he'd never see his mother or native land again.

Nothing I said, not even about whom they killed, could convince him otherwise. He told me that my friend was alive but in maximum-security prison while other friends were machine-gunned to death by Mingitsu's men at the palace, including the one person who spoke out, who was the grandson they killed immediately. He also said my friend was Mingitsu's number-one political prisoner and my lawyer friend was crazy to think they would sell him out of prison. He also said my lawyer friend was a nut and a racist for thinking any of this, and all he would do is get himself and my friend killed, and maybe me too, because Ethiopia had agents who were black and NOT stupid and were probably watching us, right then.

At any rate, I was scared that he would rat us out and think he was doing a historical good deed for humanity. So I stopped the plan, went back to Maine, did not speak of it again to anyone, and just hoped that some day, if my friend managed to get out of there, I could at least offer him my obscurity. And that was that, for the next 20 years. In Maine, there was zero coverage in the news about any of this, so I had to resign myself to not knowing anything about what happened to him. I used to lie awake nights, wondering if he was still alive, until my mother took me to the UN in 1995.

When I saw the breeze go through the tulips, I flipped out all over again. I remembered how my friend used to have to go to the UN and shake people's hands and lobby for his province. I missed him all over again and was extremely concerned about what had happened to him. I yelled and screamed to my mother about it, and she had no idea what to do with me. So, when I got home, I wrote a long angry letter to Gerry to the effect that I had kept my mouth shut for 20 years and was sick and tired of it, and can't we do anything NOW, hasn't he had enough? Etc...

It was Sunday night when I wrote the letter and couldn't mail it until Monday. On Monday, my new housemate arrived and I got delayed helping him move in. Finally, we were finished getting his things into his room, and were taking a break in the kitchen, when I asked, "So where are you from?" because I could tell he wasn't from Maine. And he said, "That is a loaded question. The place where I was born and lived until I was 12 years old doesn't exist any more." Then he asked if I ever heard of Haille Selassie. I nodded, and he explained that his father used to be Haille Selassie's legal counsel until a coup happened, and went on with his story and how lost in the world he felt since then.

I was of course speechless. At some point I put my finger over my lips to silence him, and went and got the letter I just wrote. I put it in front of him. He asked if it might be too personal, I shook my head, he read it, and was of course in shock.

It turned out we knew all of the same people.­ They were my friends in NY and his friends when they were kids in the same school. He told me about the amnesty for all political prisoners after Eritrea took over, and that my friend's aunts, Haille Selassie's daughters, had been released and they were friends of his parents. He immediately picked
up the phone and tried to get hold of his parents, but they were away. He kept at it for another 30 days until he found out for sure that my friend was still alive and had been seen the week before. Someone knew someone who knew someone who knew where he was, and gave my housemate the address, and I wrote to him.

When he finally got the message and called, I screamed, and my housemate, who was upstairs, knew what just happened. After a long talk, we had a reunion, which was great. He was married for the three years since his release. When I got home from the reunion, his wife called me. Although our reunion was not sexual, I could tell that she was upset and wanted me to know. My friend and I have not been in contact since, which is unfortunate. But at least I know that he is alive and safe, which was the most important thing to me. The huge relief and sense of peace that came over me from knowing this was worth every minute of this wild coincidence, and perhaps, the reason for it.