My city was making its way in the world, becoming for the first time in hundreds of years a de rigueur stop on the travels of the powerful and the scholarly. This was the nation that had fought off the Scramble for Africa; that had its roots in the line of Solomon and now saw its modernity rushing outwards to a time of spaceships and orbital colonies: the upwelling, rising, dawning Ethiopia of Haile Selassie. Our very existence, obtruding upon the consciousness of the U.S. of A., was changing the vexed discussion of race in that country, and if our footballers had not delivered in the Cup of Nations for a decade, well, we had promising youngsters, and their coach was the sublime Mengistu Worku. The future was bright, and it was ours for the taking.