Of Beetles and Angels (8 page)

Of Gebre, who upon arriving at the airport saw a darkskinned, uniformed airline worker and panicked, thinking that the worker belonged to the Dergue army.

Sometimes, the adults even tell stories of why they left their homeland. Of how a rebel group hunted them, and how they fled across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia and spent months in a Saudi prison. Of how they somehow made it back across to Port Sudan and then to the States.

The adults in my house would sip slowly and resurrect their pasts. Even my mother. And whenever we could, we kids hid behind the stairs and listened.

When we were in our country, we were doing well. Tewolde, Selamawi, Mehret, they were all born there.

We lived in our own home, with three rooms and a long hall and made of cement — not like many of the other homes. My husband had set up a small clinic and practiced there. We had a pharmacy where we sold pills, penicillin, and soap.

Many village folk came to my husband with malaria; many came with snake bites but died before my husband could treat them; village folk came to my husband on mules and took him back to their villages to help their women give birth.

In those days, many women died as they tried to give birth, and their children died, too.

Sometimes they would bleed to death after they gave birth. Village folk did not understand, they would let the women bleed. But my husband would come and lift their legs up — not too much, just a little bit — and tilt their heads back and let them sleep in this position, so that they would not bleed to death. He would inject them with painkiller, too, and then he would give them light food.

My husband treated everyone. Some came to him almost dead from stone fights, some had hurt themselves as they watched their livestock, some came wounded from the war. No one taught him how to treat all of their different sicknesses, but he had a great ability to figure out what to do.

After a while, though, there came a time without peace; a time of leaving your home and fleeing, of leaving your children and fleeing; a time when a husband would flee, leaving his wife; a time when all fled, leaving their possessions.

In that time, the Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam and his Dergue regime waged war against the Woyane rebel group and the Jebha rebel group. Sometimes the Jebha and the Woyane waged war against each other.

When the Woyane or Jebha were said to have taken a village, the Dergue would come and try to take it back. When the Dergue came, the people fled, or hid in their homes, or sent their children to the countryside, for they did not want to be caught between the Woyane, the Jebha, and the Dergue.

Mengistu’s decree,
“Yematfat zemacha,”
struck fear in our hearts. “Kill all living creatures, spare none
.”

Whenever the armies approached, my husband fled to the wilderness and hid there for several days. He feared that they would take him away, maybe kill him, maybe make him join their ranks as a doctor. One day it became too much — they approached and he fled to Sudan alone. He could not take us with him, for he was being watched closely by those who did not want him to flee.

We did not know if we would see him again; it was only the will of God that kept us all alive and brought us back together.

All the villagers mourned when he left, the whole territory did, because he had never refused them and he had not feared to put himself in danger when treating them. They wept, saying, “How will we find another like him, like Haileab, the son of Zedengel?
”

Some time passed, and my husband had travelers bring us messages: “Come, come, come. What are you waiting for? Come to Sudan, leave the livestock, leave the house, leave everything. Just bring the children and come
.”

But how could I leave my people and my home?

Dergue kept coming in and out of our village, and we started to fear that Dergue and Woyane would clash in our region.

More and more of our people started to hide in the wilderness, and one time I sent Tewolde and Selamawi to their uncle Nigusay in the village they call Geza Gono. I kept Mehret with me.

Uncle Nigusay came back several days later and told me that he would never again take them. He told me that his daughter and Selamawi were sleeping near the doorway on some bedding that Uncle had set up for them, and that while they slept, a snake came in from outside and started to slither onto Selamawi’s body.

“We could do nothing,” he said. “We could have hit the snake, but then the snake might have killed Selamawi. We could have warned Selamawi, but Selamawi might have moved in fear and caused the snake to bite him. So all we could do was watch and pray.

“The snake moved slowly, from Selamawi’s body to my daughter’s body, and we kept watching, praying, able to do nothing, until finally the snake slithered past them.

“Once we had killed the snake, I raised my voice and my hands to God, and looking up, begged, ‘Savior of the world, please save me from breaking the trust that has been given me. Please spare these children’s lives and let me bring them back to their mother safely.
’”

So Uncle Nigusay brought Tewolde and Selamawi back to me. He told me, “You gave your children to me that they would be saved, but they almost died with me. From now on, do not hide the children away by themselves. Keep them with you, for who knows where safety lies these days?
”

But the sickness they call
niphoyoo
seized Selamawi, and he almost died. We did not know what to do, and then I said, “Father of mine, Father of mine, I will go to Sudan. I won’t say I’m tired, or that there are thorns, or that there is cold. I will go to Sudan. Just heal him
.”

God is good, and Selamawi got better, and we fled to Sudan.

We fled, carrying sugar, medicine, a few clothes, a little money. We left our house and our family and we sold our livestock.

At first, we went on our feet. We piled our two small donkeys with food and we rented a camel, and we had guides to help us for part of the way. I walked much of the way, even with the animals. I still have scars on my shoulder from the chafing where I carried Mehret and Selamawi.

We walked only at night because we feared that a plane would bomb us. From the sky, a pilot could not tell the difference between civilians and guerrilla fighters.

Every night, we would hear the hyenas shriek, INGHOOOOY!, and we would fear. The younger hyenas would say, cheecheechacheecheeechaachee, and we would sit up in terror. The foxes would howl, wild boars would yelp, haaah, haaah, haaah, haaah, and snakes would give noise, chee chee chee chee.

The night air entered my children, and all three became sick with the intense killer cold they call
tekh-tekh-ta.
They would throw up everything they ate; many children died from it.

We arrived at a small town called Deke Dasheem, a place where snakes wiped out many people and rabid dogs killed many others.

I encountered a woman named Hidaat who had a house of eating, and I told her, “Hidaat, please, I have money, just help my children.” God bless her, she helped us.

But the
tekh-tekh-ta
persisted, and many children died all around us. I begged a doctor named Kidane to treat my children, and he gave them penicillin shots, and after seven weeks, we left Deke Dasheem.

But the sickness persisted, until it became very bad, and then we could not find water. We approached a village and begged them to let us into their homes, but they saw us and said, “They have the strong cold, do not let them enter, we do not want our children to die
.”

But then a strong storm came and it almost swept us away, and they had pity on us and let us into their homes.

After we entered Sudan, we went from place to place and found many habesha that we knew in a land they call Awad, near Aliberia, and they became frightened when they saw us, saying, “Don’t you know that your husband is in a region called Hafeer, and that he is very troubled because of you?” So they sent someone immediately to where my husband was.

But there was an influential woman there who said, “No, they cannot stay here with their
tekh-tekh-ta.”
But our friends argued with her, saying, “She is our sister, either throw us away with her or hug us with her
.”

And the woman said, “Let her be, then,” and we were able to stay. Then my husband came, and our year of separation was over.

We were all very sick, maybe approaching death, but because of my husband, we became better. He injected the medicine into my children’s thighs, into their skin, and they became better.

After some time, my husband heard of the Swedish Ministry clinic in Semsem, in a refugee camp called Umsagata. He went to work there, and I helped at the food and nutrition place, and we lived there for three or so years in our adobe. And then we came to America, and you know the rest.

My father with a patient in Adi wahla, Ethiopia. He signed this photograph in Tigryna.

W
hen we children had grown up, we learned the rest of my father’s story, which my mother hadn’t mentioned in the coffee tales.

Haileab was born in Seraye, Eritrea, in 1934. His father died shortly after his birth, and soon after that, his mother grew sick. She could not care for him.

So while still a child, my father moved to a monastery, where he lived with Coptic Christian monks and learned ancient verse and holy chants from millennia past. And then, at age nine, he left the monastery and wandered to the home of a relative.

Some would say that he lived with his relative, but he might say that he almost died. For living implies life and vitality, and he had neither. He became an unpaid laborer, a servant, an orphan among family.

He started to wonder. D
OES GOD HATE ME
? D
ID
H
E CURSE ME BEFORE BIRTH
? I
S THAT WHY
F
ATHER DIED AND MOTHER GOES TO JOIN HIM
?

One day his relative hurled the wooden coffee grinder at his head. She promised to do much worse, and he feared to stay.

But he could not return to the monastery, and he could not return to his mother, who was still sick. So at age fourteen, Haileab turned from his homeland of Eritrea and wandered deeper into the heart of Ethiopia, into the province of Tigray.

Alone and almost penniless, he had to rely on strangers as he traveled from small town to small town. But our people are generous and big of heart, especially among the village folk, and few go hungry while there is any to spare. So he survived.

He arrived finally at the big city they call Mekele, where he found his one rich uncle and many other Eritreans.

Even with support from his uncle and countrymen, though, he sometimes went two or three days without eating. Then he would devour six or seven
injeras
at one sitting. I
T WAS A TIME OF EATING LUNCH, NOT KNOWING WHEN YOU WOULD EAT DINNER,
he later told US. S
O WHENEVER I COULD, I ATE MULTIPLE MEALS IN ONE.

The monastery and his relative had taught him how to work, so he begged a job at a shanty government clinic, cleaning rooms, folding sheets, making beds.

But he loved drink. He loved women. He loved every vice that a teenage boy loves when he has no adult supervision.

What one does in youth, one often regrets in old age. I
LIVED A SINFUL LIFE.
B
UT WHAT WOULD YOU EXPECT
? I
HAD NO MOTHER,
I
HAD NO FATHER,
I
HAD NO ONE TO TEACH ME RIGHT OR WRONG.
B
EJAKOOM, MY CHILDREN, PLEASE DON’T BE LIKE ME.

Despite these weaknesses, he also worked diligently, cleaning at the clinic. As he cleaned, he listened. As he listened, he lent his hand. And as he lent his hand, he began to learn.

He had learned how to read at the monastery, and now each night he read whatever books he could get his hands on. Anatomy, physiology, physics, mathematics, chemistry — he learned all the basics of science.

One day, all Ethiopian students who dreamed of becoming physicians came to Mekele to take the government’s standardized examination. To fail meant a volatile peasant life and dependence on the local economy’s unsteady orbit. To pass — as only five percent would — meant a permanent job in the Ethiopian government and a valuable place in society.

Although my father had not attended high school, he took the test with the other students. A vagabond among local favorites, what chance did he have?

He always told the story with pride.

T
HERE WERE MANY OF US WHO TOOK THE TEST.
O
NE PERSON SCORED EIGHTY-SIX OUT OF ONE HUNDRED, AND
I
SCORED EIGHTY-FOUR. EVERYONE ELSE SCORED BELOW US, SO
I
EARNED THE RIGHT TO TRAIN AS AN ADVANCED DRESSER.
N
OT A FULLFLEDGED DOCTOR, BUT IT DIDN’T MATTER BECAUSE THERE WERE SO FEW DOCTORS THAT AS AN ADVANCED DRESSER,
I
DID EVERYTHING THAT A FULL DOCTOR DID.