“As a child, I found it hard to understand: on the one hand the emperor was part of our extended family – my grandfather, Ras Kassa Hailu, was his cousin and one of his most loyal companions from childhood to old age – yet at the same time he was unapproachable; he was the King of Kings, Abbaba Janhoy, the Great Father of the Nation, and everyone around him would bow and prostrate themselves as a sign of their great reverence for him. I, too, always found him to be surrounded by this imperial aura except for one single occasion. This encounter took place in the 1960s in Eritrea. The emperor had come to Asmara and taken up residence during his visit at the Viceroy’s palace, my father’s official seat of administration as governor-general of the then-province of Eritrea. When Haile Selassie and his cousin Ras Imru came to call on us one afternoon at my father’s private residence in the palace grounds, the emperor’s interest was piqued by the pool room. Evidently he felt inclined to have a game of pool. He slapped Ras Imru – who was actually several years younger than his cousin but looked somewhat older – on the shoulder and said: ‘Come on, old man! Can you still remember how we used to play in Lij Iyasu’s house when we were boys ? Let’s see if you’re still up to it !’. Ras Imru laughed, and the emperor took off his suit jacket and handed it to my father. ‘Come on, Asserate, you too!’, Ras Imru challenged my father. His Majesty’s jacket was duly passed to me, and the emperor broke off. Even after just a few shots, it was apparent that Haile Selassie was markedly superior to his cousin and his kinsman – though none of us or any of our acquaintances had ever seen the emperor with a pool cue in his hand. This was the first and only time I ever saw the emperor in shirt sleeves. All the gravitas of his office had fallen away from him, and at this moment he was just an ordinary person enjoying a game. I stood there rooted to the spot. Holding the emperor’s jacket in my outstretched hand, I watched enthralled as the emperor potted ball after ball. After the final one, the black eight-ball, had also disappeared into one of the pockets, he laid his cue aside and I passed him his suit jacket. He slipped into it, and in a trice he was transformed back into the Emperor of Ethiopia.”
(Taken from “King of Kings”, Asfa-Wossen Asserate, Haus Publishing, 2015 p. xx)