When Fascist troops under Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia and Emperor Haile Selassie was forced into exile in May 1936, what were the experiences of young and adult Ethiopians? How did they cope with the profound disruption, adapt to life under Italian rule, and endure the hardships of the occupation?
Beyond the written records produced by Italian authorities and other European observers, what were the Ethiopian perspectives of the time? In a series of articles, Ethiopia Observer will feature firsthand accounts drawn from the memoirs of Ethiopian youths who lived through these events, offering a perspective on the anguish, quiet resistance, and daily realities of life in occupied towns of the country.

One such witness was Mengistu Lemma (1924–1988), who was a young boy during the Italian occupation. He would later become a prominent poet, dramatist, theatre teacher, and diplomat. In his Amharic memoir, Demamu Biʾiregna (The Genial Writer), published posthumously in 1996, Mengistu looked back on and chronicled those turbulent years from the perspective of someone who had lived through them, albeit at a young age.
Mengistu’s memoir offers a vivid description of the atmosphere in Harar before the arrival of the Italians. He recalls how Dejazmatch Nesibu Zeamanuel would gather crowds in front of the Holy Trinity Church to deliver lengthy public speeches, encouraging the people in the face of the impending invasion. The church was of particular significance to Mengistu, as his father, Aleka Lemma, served as its head priest. During his tenure, Aleka Lemma participated in the translation of New Testament into Amharic.
Dejazmatch Nesibu Zeamanuel (1893–1936), whom Mengistu refers to in his memoir, was an influential Ethiopian statesman who became a wartime commander. Historian Bahru Zewde describes him as “among the most colourful of the first-generation intellectuals.” Educated in the Catholic tradition, he served as Consul in Asmara before becoming Mayor of Addis Ababa (1922–1932). With the outbreak of the Italian invasion, he was appointed commander of the southeastern front and entrusted with the defence of Harar and the Ogaden against the advancing Italian forces.
As the threat of war approached, Mengistu recalls that he, his siblings, and his friends absorbed what they heard and saw, transforming their games into soldiers’ parades and mock battles. They formed opposing groups, with Mengistu and his brother Merha acting as war leaders. In their imagination, one side represented Ethiopian soldiers, while the other represented Italian troops. The mock battle lasted for a week, and eventually his brother’s side emerged victorious. “The adults would ask us every day, and when they heard that our side had lost, they were greatly dismayed,” Mengistu wrote. Word of the children’s games eventually reached his father, and the two brothers were summoned. “I don’t want to hear again that you play such kinds of games,” his father warned. “If you do, I will beat you with stinging nettles.”

“My brother and I were afraid and stopped playing, because we knew what nettles felt like,” Mengistu recalled.

Toy cars inspired by Alfa Romeo

Mengistu also also remembers how he and his brother constructed toy cars out of mud, shaping them by hand and using thread as improvised parts to pull the makeshift vehicles along during play. According to Mengistu, this game was inspired by the Italian consul, who drove an Alfa Romeo.”He would start the engine with a deafening roar,” Mengistu writes, “sitting alone with the roof wide open as he drove along the dusty road at Adere Tiko. “Then he would return, raising clouds of dust. His house stood above ours, near the house of Lij Iyasu.”

“At first, the roar of the car startled the town. This was the period of the Walwal Incident and some residents believed that the consul did it deliberately to display the Italy’s power and intimidate the local population.”

The Walwal incident of 5 December 1934 was often described as a mere frontier dispute. In reality, however, Walwal lay some one hundred miles inside Ethiopian territory. Italian colonial forces advancing from Somaliland had established a fort there, provoking a bloody clash with Ethiopian troops. Although the Anglo-Ethiopian Boundary Commission placed responsibility for the incident squarely on Italy, Mussolini exploited the confrontation as the pretext for launching the invasion of the country.

Mengistu recalls that, as children, he and his friends were initially afraid of the Italian consul and his impressive automobile. Unlike the adults, whose fear gradually turned into resentment and hostility toward the Italian presence, the children’s feelings were transformed into curiosity and admiration for the unfamiliar technology and spectacle they witnessed.

The imminent arrival of the Italians became a source of growing anxiety for many families in Harar. As the threat of occupation drew closer, uncertainty and fear spread throughout the city. Mengistu recalls that his own family was obliged to leave their house in Adere Tiko, reflecting the wider disruption and displacement experienced by many residents. For three months, a group of Italian soldiers and their tanks occupied their house. Only after the soldiers departed was the family able to return and reclaim their home.

Entering the Balilla school

“The Italians arrived. Before the town was captured, our family fled to Kero village, which was under the administration of Fitawrari Ali Yimamu. After the killing and looting subsided, we returned to Harar. The Italians opened separate schools for Europeans and for Habesha. At first, many parents were reluctant to send their children to schools established by the Italian authorities. My father was one of them. But the Italians used their Carabinieri (military police) to compel both children and adults to attend school. My father could no longer prevent us from going. So my older brother, Merha, and I enrolled at Balila School.“

Mengistu does not explain the meaning of the term Balilla School, but it can be understood from other sources as a school established by the Italian colonial administration and named after the Opera Nazionale Balilla, the Fascist youth organization founded in 1926 to educate and indoctrinate children in Fascist ideals. The name “Balilla” was widely used throughout Fascist Italy and its colonies for youth organizations, schools, and recreational institutions.

In Mengistu’s recollection, the Balilla School reveals how Italian colonial education used songs, uniforms, and rituals to introduce Fascist ideology to children.

“We wore khaki shirts, short trousers, and khaki caps. Around our necks, we wore blue scarves, like handkerchiefs. We learned the alphabet—A, B, C, D—and sang Faccetta Nera'” (‘Pretty black face’ or ‘Little black face’) . We studied Duce , Duce , chi non saprà morir, patriotic hymn: Roma revendica l’Impero (Rome would ‘ reclaim its Empire). We liked the rhythm of the songs but we did not understand the meaning.

At the Balilla School, we studied mathematics, handwriting, and reading. We also learned drawing. “We had crayons, and we had plenty of paper,” Mengistu recalled. He noted in passing that the illustrations in the textbooks depicted children and adults with Muslim names. Although he mentioned this only briefly, it is a significant observation, as it reflects the Italian colonial policy of cultivating relations with Muslim communities in Harar while exploiting existing ethnic and religious tensions. This approach resonated with some Harari, who had long-standing grievances connected to the dominance of Amhara Christian rulers in the region.

The education lasted only a year and a half, and the children were then awarded large certificates known as Bajila.

Mengistu also recalled that the Italian authorities prohibited parents from punishing their children. This restriction weakened the parents’ ability to discipline their children at home and was part of the broader effort by the colonial administration to regulate children’s behavior and bring them under the influence of the Italian school system.

Mengistu recalled that if a child complained to the Carabinieri that his father had beaten him, the Italian military police would punish the father. This created tensions within families: fathers, feeling undermined by the colonial authorities, would sometimes curse their children or even drive them out of the house. As a result, some children became vulnerable and ended up working as domestic servants for Italians. Those who were a little older found employment as awtanti (assistants to Italian lorry drivers), particularly those who drove the Trenta Quattro, a Fiat truck model. Others became waiters in the newly opened Italian restaurants, where they encountered new foods and customs, including the serving of pork, against religious prohibitions. Such incidents became increasingly common during the period of Italian occupation.

Mengistu also recalls the story of his neighbour, Fesseha Bayu, who disappeared from his home after after his father had subjected him to physical punishment with a stick. Fesseha later became a cameriere (waiter) at one of the newly opened Italian restaurants. There he came to relish foods that were unfamiliar to most Ethiopians at the time, including pasta and minestrone, dishes introduced during the occupation. Well fed and smartly dressed, he soon became noticeably healthier and more handsome. According to Mengistu, the sight of Fesseha in a white shirt and trousers, serving Italian customers and enjoying these unfamiliar foods, filled the neighbourhood children with envy.

Fesseha’s father, however, was deeply unhappy that his son was working in an Italian-run restaurant and eating pork. Determined to bring him home, he went to the restaurant and demanded that Fesseha return. The young man refused. Mengistu recalls Fesseha telling his father that he was earning more money than him and that, if necessary, he could even support the family himself.

The confrontation soon turned physical. As father and son struggled, the Italian restaurant owner intervened and brutally kicked Fesseha’s father. The incident quickly became the talk of the town. For many residents, it symbolized the profound shift in authority brought about by the occupation: not only were traditional family hierarchies being challenged, but Italian employers now felt entitled to use violence against Ethiopian parents. Such incidents deepened local resentment and reinforced the sense that colonial rule was disrupting the social and moral fabric of everyday life.

Mengistu’s father, like many parents of his generation, believed that physical punishment was a necessary means of disciplining children. He therefore resented the Italian authorities for forbidding parents to punish their children and for undermining their authority within the family.

The appeal of fascist modernity

The period also created divisions within the family. Mengistu’s older brother, Merha, became fascinated by the Italians and gradually began to challenge their father’s views. “Italian civilization is far more advanced than ours,” he would tell Mengistu. “Our country is backward.” To him, the evidence was unmistakable: the tanks, the airplanes, the trucks, the trenta quattro military lorries, and the marches of the Fascist soldiers all seemed to demonstrate the technological and organizational superiority of the occupiers.

In Merha’s eyes, everything associated with Ethiopian tradition was backward. Zema, qene, zimmare, tirguame, Wudase Maryam—all the pillars of the traditional ecclesiastical education that their father cherished—were, in his view, relics of the past, unsuited to the demands of the modern age.

According to Merha, what Ethiopia needed was not the traditional learning of the past but the knowledge of the ferenj (Europeans): their languages, their educational system, practical crafts, automobile repair, and skills such as car bodywork and sheet-metal fabrication.

Merha began his education at a zema school but did not continue with qene studies, despite his father’s insistence. Instead, he became an awtanti (an assistant) to a Trenta Quattro truck driver and eventually went to Dire Dawa. His father was deeply saddened by this choice but could do little to prevent it. “In the past, he could have sent his servants, guards to track him down wherever he was hiding and force him to return,” Mengistu recalled, “but those days were gone. The power was now in the hands of the carabinieri.” “He could no longer simply go to Dire Dawa and drag him home by the hand, as the Italian administration had extended legal protections even to minors.”

During the occupation, the Trinity Church of Adere Tiko, where Mengistu’s father served as head priest, was destroyed, and the church community was relocated to Aboker, a hilltop settlement about two hours’ walk from Harar, where it was given a smaller compound. The new settlement was renamed Addis Ketema, meaning “New Town.”

The area of Adere Tiko itself was also transformed under Italian rule. Existing houses were demolished, and the local inhabitants—whom the Italians classified as indigeni (“natives”)—were displaced. In their place, new houses were built for Italian settlers as part of the colonial restructuring and segregation of the town.

Mengistu’s hidden life as a domestic worker

During the occupation, everyone was looking for any opportunity to earn a living. The disruption caused by the war and the new colonial order had transformed everyday life, and many families depended on whatever employment opportunities became available. Mengistu’s older brother, Gebre Kirstos, found work at a printing house established by the Italians in their neighborhood, in a house formerly owned by Fitawrari Asfaw. He earned 170 lire a month and used part of his wages to help support the family.

Mengistu himself also began working for an Italian. He recalled:”Without my father, mother, or brothers knowing, I took up a daytime job as a domestic servant in the home of an Italian civil servant. I tidied up the house, made the beds, and filled the gourdes (koda) with water. I earned 15 lire a month and kept the job a secret.”

“The man for whom I worked was tall and thin, and he wore borge trousers. He was calm and quiet, unlike the soldati I had seen. I did not know exactly what his occupation was, but I knew that he was not a soldier. He always asked me to bring him water only from the tap, not from the river. At first, I fetched water from the tap inside our family compound, but I feared this would arouse suspicion, so I began going instead to the place where women usually collected water. Since the people there did not know who I was, it did not attract attention. This continued until one day, when an acquaintance saw me. She was saddened and said, “You too have become a koda (water carrier).” She then told others that I was the son of Aleka Lemma.”

From that day onward, he stopped going there to fetch water. Instead, without telling his employer, he began bringing water from stagnant water sources. Shortly afterward, the Italian became ill and was admitted to Monsieur Antoin’s hospital. Mengistu visited him at the hospital, even though the facility was forbidden to indigeni. He insisted on seeing him, and eventually the guards relented. He felt sorry for the man, who looked ghastly—very pale, weak, and exhausted. When he learned that the man had died a few weeks later, Mengistu did not feel a deep sense of sorrow, as he admitted that he had not yet become attached to him. What troubled him most was that he would no longer receive his monthly wages.

The rejection of Enrico Cerulli’s nomination

Mengistu’s childhood memories of Harar shaped his lifelong opposition to Italian fascism. This became evident in 1966, when a subcommittee of the Haile Selassie Prize Trust nominated the Italian ethnographer and explorer Enrico Cerulli for the prize. Mengistu, together with Aklilu Habte, chairman of the Haile Selassie Prize Trust, successfully opposed the nomination, arguing that despite Cerulli’s scholarly achievements, his record as a senior official in Italy’s fascist colonial administration, including as Governer of Harar, made him an inappropriate recipient of an Ethiopian honor.

A play inspired by the Fascist occupation

Mengistu’s childhood experiences in occupied Harar continued to shape his literary imagination long after the end of Italian rule. Decades later, he drew on those memories in his melodramatic play Tsere Colonialist (Anti-Colonialist), first staged in 1978. An eight-act drama set during the early years of the Italian occupation, the play sought to preserve the memory of resistance while exploring the moral and social dilemmas created by foreign occupation. In his introduction, Mengistu explains that the play was inspired by events he witnessed as a child, by people he personally knew, and by incidents recounted to him shortly after they occurred.

The play transports the audience to the first months of Italian rule, focusing on the personal tragedies and moral choices faced by ordinary Ethiopians as their world is transformed by conquest. At its centre is Wuhib, a tragic hero and traditional church scholar whose intellectual curiosity places him at odds with convention. As the occupation unfolds, Wuhib survives—and ultimately prevails—not through military force but by drawing upon knowledge that had long been forbidden within the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The story opens three months after the arrival of the Italians, during the rainy season, when the initial shock of conquest has given way to the complex realities of everyday life under colonial rule.

The opening scene captures the overwhelming presence of the new colonial order. An untrained hand rings the church bell repeatedly, producing a harsh, ear-piercing sound. At the same time, Fascist soldiers march past, their boots striking the ground in unison as they sing Roma rivendica l’Impero (“Rome reclaims the Empire”), a Fascist marching song invoking the restoration of the glory of ancient Rome. Nearby, the roar of a Trentaquattro Fiat lorry cuts through the air.

The play also illustrates the Fascist administration’s disregard for the cultural values and religious beliefs of the Ethiopian people. One memorable episode features an Italian officer named Pojo, who orders the bell of a church to be used as a signal for labourers to begin their daily work. By appropriating a sacred object for a secular colonial purpose, the officer demonstrates the occupiers’ indifference to the religious significance of the church and its rituals.

Image: From the Italian colonial publication. With a caption, “On 21 April 1938 in Harar: The Parade of the Fascist Forces of Harar.” Ethiopia: Illustrated Review of the Empire, September–October 1938