Growing up Royalty

Princess Esther Selassie Antohin, great-granddaughter of Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie, ilvedas a royal and, as a teenager, went through the takeover, was put under house arrest, and later escaped. Now she is living, happily ever after, in Fairbanks,

by IRENE WOOD

GREAT ALASKA JOURNAL

Next time you're dining out at McDonald's, look twice at your server. She just may be the child of royalty.

Born Astar Fikre-Selassie, a great-granddaughter of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, she is now called Esther Antohin.

Esther, now 39, was born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a country about four-fifths the size of the state of Alaska. Welcomed into an extended household compound of some 30 family members, relatives and helpers, she was the fourth of six children, born on April 30, 1960.

Esther's great-grandfather, Ras Tafari Makonnen, of the Ruling House of Shoa, was coronated Emperor of Ethiopia on Nov. 2, 1930, following the death from pneumonia of the Empress Zauditu Menilek. Empress Zauditu was the first woman to rule Ethiopia since the legendary Maqueda, Queen of Sheba, who abdicated in favor of her son, Menilek I -- whom legend says was fathered by the Biblical King Solomon.

Ras Tafari took the throne name Haile Selassie, meaning "Power of the Trinity."

Esther's grandparents were the Crown Prince Asfa Wossen and his first wife, the Lady Walata Isreal, of the Ruling House of Tigre. The Lady Walat5a bore the Crown Prince one child, the Princess Ejjagayehu--who became Esther's mother.

Esther's early childhood was one of privilege but not indulgence. Children of the monarchial line were allowed and expected to fully participate in Ethiopian society and culture. Astar, as she was known to her peers, attended public schools with her three brothers and two sisters. In addition to speaking their native, Hamito-Semitic language of Amharic, the children learned English during their formative years. (Star Trek fans will instantly recognize one word of Amharic: ferengi, or foreigner)

Despite being royals, Esther's family didn't live lavishly. However, the family was on top of the social ladder and were respected and revered throughout the land. "It was a small society and everyone recognized me but we lived at what would be a middle class lifestyle," she said. Although they attended public school, she would see her friends outside the royal courtyard and they wouuldn't enter. "It was very contrasted," she said.

Esther remembers her great-grandfather, the Emperor, with fondness. "I had to come to terms with who he was. We weren't allowed to run to him or sit on his lap. He was very warm and always wanted to know what we thought and took personal interest in our lives. He would warmly tease us," she remembered.

Growing up with a great-grandfather as emperor could be contradictory. There was the man and then there was the emperor, Esther said. Strict protocol came into play and forbid such things as turning back to him.

All children of Ethiopia,including his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, called him Jan Hoy, a fond name used to get his attention. "Somehow it just reserved for children," Esther said.

The royal residence, Jubilee palace, housed not only the emperor and some 100 servants, but, later, the children of his murdered son. It was a weekly event for all the grandchildren and great grandchildren to visit the Emperor.

Ethiopia enjoyed a decade relative political stability during the 1960s after loyal troops thwarted an unsucessful coup attempted while the Emperor was visiting Brazil in 1960. Order, however, was not restored in time to save Esther's grandfather, Ras Seyum, from death by machine gun fire while hostage in the Green Salon of the Little Ghebi, or royal residence.

At the age of 10, Esther and her older siblings, ages 11,12,and 13, traveled to England to attend boarding school.

By the early 1970s, while Esther was in England, Haile Sellassie's authority was beginning to unravel. Drought desiccated the northern province of Wollo, and the famine deaths accrued. Student unrest became unruly demonstrations, followed by a by a general transportation strike. In early 1974, a secret, dissident army faction emerged, demanding better pay and conditions. By April, the Provisional Military Administrative Council, or Dergue in Amharic, had arrested most of the cabinet members, while still claiming loyalty to the Emperor.

During this time, Esther's parents were governing a province in Western Ethiopia. Perhaps unaware of the extent of the insurrection in Addis Ababa, they sent for their older children. But by then the military had gained the upper hand. Two weeks after they returned home from England, their names appeared on an official black list, and they found themselves unable to leave the country.

In September, the "creeping coup" burst into action and the Dergue,made up of about 120 junior officers and enlisted men, overthrew the Emperor and seized power. Haile Selassie was placed under house arrest.

In January of 1975, Esther's father was recalled to Addis Ababa and placed under house arrest. The monarchy was formally abolished by the Dergue on March 21, 1975. In April, her mother was also brought back to the capital and placed in detainment with the other women of the family, separate from the men.

On August 27, 1975, announcement was made of the Emperor's demise from"circulatory failure". Ethiopia's last monarch, who had given his country its first constitution, was buried with no services in an unmarked grave. He was 84 years old.

Within a week, immediate family memebers were moved into maximum security, minimum amenity prisons. They were not charged with any crime-and despite continued promises that there would be a trial"sometime soon", they were given no chance to apppear before a court of law.

During this time, Esther and her brothers and sisters stayed with their maternal grandmother. A princess by both birth and marriage, the Lady Walata Isrealhad long since divorced her second husband (the Crown Prince Asfa Wossen) and renounced her lineage, preferring to live as an ascetic.

In January of 1977, Esther's mother underwent surguery, under primitive conditions, for intestinal ailments. Esther, who had been allowed to meet with her mother just once since she had been imprisoned, visited her in the prison hospital. The Princess Ejjagayehu, emaciated and disoriented, did not recoghize her daughter She died on February 2. Esther's father remained in jail.

Her public' schooling and the fact she was taught to be resourceful and independent was a true blessing during this time when everything was taken away, Esther said.

The children were rescued by a Mr. Collins, a christian missionary who sent his wife and family to safety but remained behind himself. One morning in early August of 1977 they were told to get ready for a day at the beach resort. Instead, he drove them to a field , where he said, "Get out and run!" Brief panic ensued--could he be a double agent? -- but since there was nothing else to do they slogged quickly through the muddy field, still carrying their beach towels.

A small plane, followed by another, buzzed the field, then landed on the hard-packed road. Hurriedly, Mr. Collins loaded Esther's family onto the planes, which bounced down the rutted "runway" and lifted into the air Esther's plane, low on fuel, landed on the Kenya-Tanzania border while the other plane went on to Nairobi before returning for them.

In Nairobi, they spent two weeks hiding in a hotel while paperwork was prepared for them. Then it was on to Germany and Sweden and,finally, through diplomatic channels, the United States,arriving in Virginia in mid-October. They were taken in by Esther's half-uncle-her mother's older brother, son of Gebre Selassie and Walata Israel, who saw his family suddenly grow from three children to nine.

Esther, at 17, had missed three years of schooling due to the unrest in Ethiopia. She enrolled in the 10th grade at the local high school. The following year, she attended the Emma Willard prep school in upstate New York, from which she graduated.

From 1980 through 1984, she studied at New York University in the heart of New York City. Since Ethiopia was now under Soviet control, she declared a major in Russian language and history, reasoning that, with a knowledge of Russian, she could return, incognito, to somehow help her people. Fate, however, had another path mapped out for her.

Part of her studies included taking intensive Russian courses offered at the University of Vermont. While there, Esther felt drawn to an intense playwright who had defected from Russia in 1980 and was directing plays at the University. Boldly, she volunteered to do the theater production lighting, and although her unorthodox diagrams perplexed the director, he was impressed with her ability to improvise.\

Romance followed, and in 1983 Esther Selassie and Anatoly Antohin were quietly wed in Jerusalem. Following a honeymoon in historic Galilee, the couple settled in New York. Daughter Sasha was born in August of 1984, just weeks after Esther graduated from NYU with a degree in Russian studies. During this time, Esther's father was finally released from jail. He settled in Addis Ababa and remarried.

Money was tight for the new family. Anatoly did freelance directing, drove cab, and sold paintings while Esther waited tables and cared for the baby. In spite of their difficult 'personi circumnstances; Esther had not forgotten her homeland, which was now experiencing sever famine, and in 1985 she was instrumental in helping to raise $100,000 in five months for famine relief.

Anatoly was hired to teach theater by Hollins University in Virginia in 1986 and the family--now four following son Alex's birth in June--stayed there for three years, at which point Anatoly applied for and was offered a position as Associate Professor of Theater at UAF. They drove from Virginia to Fairbanks, arriving at cusp of summer in late July, 1991. In Fairbanks Esther taught Russian at UAF and tutored at local schools. From 1992 to 1994, the

From 1992 to 1994, the Antohins spearheaded the Russian-American Theater Exchange, coordinated by UAF,and lived in St. Petersburg with UAF students who were studying theater in Russia.

Since their return to Fairbanks in 1995, Esther has continued her studies at the graduate level, needing just a thesis to complete her degree in Cultural Anthropology. She has also served on the Fairbanks Youth Symphony Board and on the school district's Curriculum Advisory Committee. Her children were involved in the Tanana Valley Farmer's Market when Esther recruited them to assist her as general manager of the market in 1988.

Sasha, 15, will attend her mother's alma mater, the Emma Willard prep school, this fall and is an accomplished violinist. Alex, 13, who loves theater and was the captaln of his basketball team, will attend Monroe High School.

In 1994 the Antohins -- at Anatoly's urging -- returned to Ethiopia for seven months to give the children a feel for their heritage. "By then it had pretty much calmed down and there was no longer a black list," Esther said. "In some respects it was very hard to go back. The poverty level was the same, if not worse. My children shocked by it, the poverty and the people begging. They never could have imagined it."

It was strange, she said, that Haile Selassie's name is nonexistent in the country today. "They have no memory of Selassie. One generation forced to forget him and was replaced by another that I hadn't any knowledge."

While there, they lived in relative luxury, with servants and drivers, and considered staying longer until Alex contracted meningitis and they returned home.

For 20 years she had dreamed of returning to Ethiopia and going back. "I thought there was something in me that still preserved it but it was good to find out it had been taken away." Being forced to flee her homeland, she said, had for years caused her to wonder "where's home?" Going back instilled a greater love for America and what she has here.

"I always felt fortunate to be an American. This was a place that took me when I had to literally run away from home. I was one of the first to become an American citizen," she said, adding that of some 60 Selassie relatives most live in the United States and most are citizens.

"It was hard visiting grave yards and taking flowers," she said of going back. Het father still lived there then. He lived quietly and modestly and, from 1984 -- when the arrests stopped--until his death in 1996, he was a free man.

A family project over the years is an extensive webgite created to keep the memory Of Haile Selassie alive and to educate the world on his role in history."He emerged onto the world scene in a magnificent way," Esther said, adding that countless thousands worldwide have visited the website. Also gathering momentum today is a worldwide reverence for a Christian Orthodox man whom many feel was blessed with a mantle of prophecy.

There is also an active group trying to recover some of the confiscated Sellassie fortune and property. If it happens, Esther said, she will probably use it to benefit others or to finther the name of her great-grandfather. She feels she has no right to it,that she was given a new life to start over and that part of her life is in the past.

Today, Esther works for McDonald's on Geist Road. As full-time shift manager, she has done everything from grilling burgers and mopping floors to orienting trainees, serving customers and doing paperwork. She hopes, eventually, to utilize her languages and education and travel with the company to sites around the world.

So, look again at the person in the familiar McDonalds garb. If she is a petite, olive-skinned woman with warm, dark eyes and a dusting of freckles and has a lilting charming accent to her English,chances are you have just seen Esther Selassie Antohin -- great- granddaughter of Ethiopia's last emperor and heiress to Maqueda, Queen of Sheba.

Author's note:
If you would like to learn more about Haile Selassie, log onto the website maintained by Anatoly and Esther Antohin at http://www.angelfire.com/ak/sellassie.