Even the gauntlet that I cast into the teeth of those Georgians—the worthless men and pustulant boys who were so brave as to call my granddaughter foul names from behind digital masks, who threw around threats of sexual assault and murder as if these things were not the ugliest depth to which a man may fall—even my fictitious software application was a cry of rage at Ethiopia, in a way. I was furious at the arrival in London of the vicious madnesses of leba shay and fatasha, the ancient and modern faces of the same coin that is in English called, so very benignly, stop and search. When Haile Selassie, long ago, took over a realm in which the buying and selling of persons was yet legal and mob execution commonplace, he brought in the first printing presses, the first modern machines for transport and construction, the first real sanitation, and the first banks. It took him, I’m afraid, until 1942 to outlaw slavery, which was an old and established tradition in the country, the auction block being a common fate for the very poor from the south and for prisoners of war. But leba shay—in which a young boy is drugged and made to run through his village guided by spirits, and supposedly picks out any thief who may be lurking there for summary justice—that he did away with, and good riddance.