Of Beetles and Angels (9 page)

Living in a desperate time, among a desperate people, among wars, among famine, among epidemics, he found that he often held the keys to life.

He also found that books and training were not always enough.

W
HAT COULD BOOKS TEACH ME IF I DIDN’T HAVE ACCESS TO THE MEDICAL EQUIPMENT THEY DESCRIBED
? W
HAT COULD THEY TEACH ME IF
I
HAD TO TREAT MODERN-DAY HORRORS WITH ANCIENT TOOLS OR IF
I
HAD TO TRAVERSE TWENTY-FIVE MILES OF BARREN WILDERNESS TO TREAT A BEDRIDDEN MOTHER, KNOWING THAT SHE MIGHT BE DEAD BY THE TIME THAT
I
ARRIVED
?

The decades passed and he became famous among village folks.

Haileab, the son of Zedengel. Birthplace: Seraye, Eritrea. Now living in Tigray, Ethiopia. Deliverer of babies. Stitcher of the bloody. Mender of the broken.

He would travel any distance. On foot. On mule. At night. By day. In the blistering heat of summer. In the flash floods and deep mud of winter.

One day he would drink thirty cups of
sewa,
or
habesha
beer. The next he would trek six hours to a remote village to save someone’s life. One moment he would captivate an entire crowd, pumping his arms to drive home a humorous point. The next he would raise his shoe in anger and rifle it across the room at someone’s head.

When did he have his first child? Sixteen? Eighteen? Twenty? I have many half siblings that I don’t know and never will. Most of them have already died.

Haileab, the son of Zedengel, rarely cried. But he always cried when he thought of his lost children, knowing, perhaps, that he had created his own childhood nightmare in their lives: Y
OU CANNOT KNOW HOW IT FEELS TO KNOW THAT YOU BROUGHT CHILDREN INTO THIS WORLD AND ABANDONED THEM.
A
BANDONED YOUR OWN BLOOD TO THIS HARSH WORLD.

He married my mother. He was much older than her, maybe twenty years older. But that was the way of our people.A younger man had nothing to offer a woman’s parents. He had to accumulate many years’ wealth to convince the bride-to-be’s family that he could provide for the daughter
and
the parents.

Several years after they were married, my brother Tewolde was born, and then me, and then my sister, Mehret. All three of us born in Adi Wahla, Ethiopia, not far from the Eritrean border. All three of us cultural wholes but political half-breeds, with our father from Eritrea and our mother from Ethiopia.

We are the same people. Same language. Same food. Same culture. We even share the same genes. We, the Tigrynia-speaking people. But somehow, we have formed separate identities, and more recently, have become bitter enemies.

Some say our division started centuries ago. Many others say it started with the Italians — that when they colonized us in the late nineteenth century, they separated my father’s people from the rest of Ethiopia. With the end of World War II, the colonizers departed. But they left us to fight through our differences, differences that they had amplified.

For thirty years, we fought against each other and alongside each other. We took a little break to catch our breath and have resumed fighting now.

Many of my father’s and mother’s people now hate each other. But they did not hate each other in my father’s day. How else could my father, an Eritrean, live among my mother’s people for almost three decades? How else could he nurse so many of her people back to life? How else could he marry my mother?

My father grew wealthy. He had his own pharmacy, his own general store, and he ran his own clinic. He had livestock by the hundreds and was known to all in the area.

He had many friends, but he also had many enemies. Powerful enemies. They came uninvited and threatened him:

“Do not treat this patient. He killed my brother. Didn’t you hear me, you son of a woman? I said do not treat him!

“You won’t stop? Okay. Just wait then. I will show you your work. Just wait. We’ll see how long your clinic stays open.”

My father, a healer, had been robbed of his power to heal. Soon he began to think about leaving.…

“They have broken into my clinic and destroyed all of my supplies. They have threatened to do worse.

“Tigray does not have the medicine that I need, and I fear to go deeper into Ethiopia. My friends warn me not to report to headquarters for more supplies; they say the ruthless Dergue regime will kill or imprison me.

“Gathering the provisions that I will need, I pack my mules and head across the border to Sudan. I purchase the supplies — thank God for the black market, I get them for half the price. Let’s just pray that these pills are real; even the regular market sells fake pills.

“I return and I treat whomever comes to my clinic. Hippocrates lives among us, and I can refuse no sick person.

“But my enemies return and even my friends pressure me to choose whom I will treat. Their threats run through my mind all day long:

“What? You bought more supplies? You must be crazy. You must not like living.

“The first of the month beckons, and I must enter deeper into Ethiopia to report on how many patients I have treated, to receive updated orders, and of course, to receive my monthly salary. But my friends refuse to let me go, telling me to think of my children:

“If you want them to grow up fatherless, go ahead and report to headquarters.

“I cannot risk it, so I stay. But I keep seeing patients. For I, Haileab, the son of Zedengel, am a doctor. I have served my people for more than twenty years, and I will not stop now.

“Good thing that we have savings. Good thing that we planned ahead. We can survive even without my paycheck.

“But what use is money if you are not alive? The Dergue approaches with their army. I fear that they will kill me because I did not report to headquarters when I was summoned.

“They even say that the Dergue has given their army clearance to wipe out all our people. No questions asked. Burn and loot. Rape. Create a race of tortured half-breeds who hate at least half of themselves. Annihilate all those who show the slightest resistance.

“I have to flee, but what of my family? Can they make it? Can three young children and their mother survive the scorching wilderness? Can I survive it? Can I even flee? Will my friends let me leave? Will my enemies let me leave? Or will they make me join their ranks as an army doctor?

“If I flee with my family, all will know what I intend, and they will capture all of us. So I must go alone for now. I will pack my mules slowly and pretend that I am going to buy more supplies in Sudan, and then I will stay there.

“Do not worry, family. I will get settled and then hire a guide for you.

“How will you get through the border and into Sudan, you ask. The rebel groups will not let you pass? Yes, this is true, for all of you were born in Ethiopia. Do not fear. I will mail you letters of clearance. The rebels are my friends and will let you through.

“Here, too, is money. With money, you can do much.

“But exercise great care! Even those who befriend you seek to rob you. Sew the money into your cloth and NEVER take your cloth off. That way, no one can steal it.

“I must leave now. My community, my people, my family, my wealth, the status that I have earned through decades of service — I leave all of this behind. I go to join the millions — the refugees in Sudan.”

Haileab (left) working at a clinic in Sudan. Haileab would have to find a new line of work in America.

“One day, upon awakening from troubled dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin
.”

— Franz Kafka,
The Metamorphosis

O
ne day, upon awakening, Haileab Asgedom found himself, in America, transformed into a monstrous black beetle.

He had been an advanced dresser back home in Adi, and he had done everything: stitched head wounds, birthed babies, treated snakebites and malaria.

But when he came to the States, he couldn’t just stroll down to Central DuPage Hospital and proclaim, “Y’
ALL ARE IN LUCK.
G
UESS WHO JUST MOVED INTO YOUR COUNTY — THAT’S RIGHT, THE BADDEST ALLPURPOSE STITCHER AND BABYBIRTHER THAT THE BACKWOODS OF
T
IGRAY EVER DID SEE.
J
UST SHOW ME THE SURGERY WING, AND
I’
LL GIVE YOU A FREE DEMONSTRATION.
”

No, my father was fortunate to get a job as a janitor at Wheaton College. He worked there for a few months, and then his eyes started to fail. He blamed the bright glare of the snow, but I always thought it had more to do with his glaucoma and the cataracts in his eyes.

His eyesight departed slowly, and his work errors multiplied — a lost key here, an unlocked door there — until his employers had no choice.

He arrived at his job one day as Haileab Asgedom, the working man supporting his family.

He returned home that same day as Haileab Asgedom, the unemployed beetle.

Such is the fate of many immigrant fathers, especially those from third-world countries. Those who can find work often toil at menial jobs. Those who cannot, stay home. For both, life is a far cry from the glory and self-worth they knew back in their homeland.

For Haileab, it meant several levels of dependence.

He could not get a driver’s license because he could not pass the vision test. And though he could still ride his bike, he usually relied on others to get around.

On the worst days, his eyes swelled almost completely shut. Then he was forced to stay upstairs in bed.

The doctors could heal him, he told us, if they really wanted to.

W
ITH ALL OF THEIR EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY, THESE DOCTORS COULD HELP ME.

B
UT THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT HELPING YOU IN THIS COUNTRY.
T
HE DOCTORS HERE ARE NOT HOW WE WERE IN
A
DI
. T
HERE, WE TREATED EVERYONE THE BEST THAT WE COULD, REGARDLESS OF THEIR FINANCIAL SITUATION
.

B
UT IN THIS COUNTRY, THEY CARE ABOUT YOUR MONEY
. I
F YOU DON’T HAVE MONEY, THEY WON’T GIVE YOU THE REAL TREATMENT BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO.

Eventually, my father lost his teeth and had to get dentures. Then came diabetes, which forced him to adjust his diet.

As his physical condition worsened, so did his emotional state. The more time he spent in the house, the more obsessed he became with household details. S
IT DOWN, EVERYONE.
W
E NEED TO IDENTIFY THE PERSON WHO LEFT THE CUP ON THE STAIRWELL
. Y
OU SHALL NOT MOVE EVEN ONE INCH UNTIL WE FIND THE CULPRIT.

The most innocent actions became an assault on his character.

C
AN YOU BELIEVE THAT FRIEND OF SELAMAWI’S
? H
OW DARE HE CALL
S
ELAMAWI AND INVITE OUR FAMILY TO DINNER WITHOUT ASKING ME FIRST
? I
GUESS THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU ARE A FALLEN OAK.
N
O ONE RESPECTS YOU ANYMORE
.

Fearing that he was losing control and respect, he became increasingly paranoid. But what would you expect? He stayed home twenty-four hours a day, unable to work, barely able to see, and dependent on others for his welfare. He had all the time in the world to wish for his past, ponder his present, and question his future.

Still, my father had never known shyness. And he maintained his vigor. So he focused his energies elsewhere: on his homeland, on his neighborhood, on his family — though not always to our liking.

When we kids were in elementary school, he started to wake us up at five in the morning so we could do aerobics.

W
HERE ARE YOU GOING TO SAY THAT YOU GREW UP
? E
H
? H
ow ARE YOU GOING TO SAY THAT YOU GREW UP IN
W
HEATON WHEN YOU DIDN’T TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ALL OF THE RESOURCES THAT YOU HAD AROUND YOU
? D
O YOU KNOW WHAT THOSE BACK IN
A
DI WOULD DO TO BE IN YOUR SHOES
? A
NYTHING.

We wanted to respond with some common sense —
We’ll happily say that we grew up in Wheaton, and like everyone else in Wheaton, we want to be asleep right now.

But that would have resulted in a near-death experience, so we did the aerobics.

Other times, he led us to the Wheaton College track. We usually beat the dawn.

I
T IS IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO RUN EVERY DAY AND TO GET STRONG
. Y
OU SEE THE LANES.
T
HERE ARE EIGHT OF THEM.
I
WANT YOU TO CIRCLE THE TRACK IN EACH OF THOSE LANES ONCE.

Like with the aerobics, we would have mutinied had we not harbored such respect for our good friend Mr. Quul-fee. Mr. Quul-fee was long and made of animal skin — he could usually be found around my father’s waist — and when he came to call, you cried.

So we circled the lanes as fast as we could, racing each other, with my father timing each lap.