Of Beetles and Angels

by Mawi Asgedom

  Copyright © 2001, 2002 by Mawi Asgedom

  Reading group guide copyright © 2002 by Mawi Asgedom

  Photographs used by permission from Mawi Asgedom

  Map copyright © 2002 by Little, Brown and Company

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  The Little, Brown and Company name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Originally published in hardcover by megadee books, 2001

  First eBook Edition: September 2002

  ISBN: 978-0-316-04822-4

  Contents

  PRAISE FOR

  DEDICATION

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  MEMORIES

  THE CAMP

  COMING TO AMERICA

  A NEW LIFE

  GOD’S ANGELS

  PLAYGROUND WARFARE

  DAYS OF MISCHIEF

  LIBEE MIGBAR

  COFFEE TALES

  THE MAKING OF A MAN

  THE UNMAKING OF A MAN

  EYEING THE MOUNTAINTOP

  FATHER HAILEAB

  IZG1HARE YIHABKOOM

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  MAMA TSEGE’S LEGENDARY HABESHA RECIPES

  READING GROUP GUIDE:

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  INTRODUCTION

  Praise for

  Of Beetles and Angels

  “In this powerful and heartwarming book, Mawi Asgedom tells an old story and a new story. Our American dream stays alive in part because people like Mawi show up who believe in it.”

  —Mary Pipher, author of The Middle of Everywhere: The World’s Refugees Come to Our Town

  “This earnest account of his life up to his graduation from Harvard is peppered with powerful moments.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Wry and tender… what stays with you is the quiet, honest drama of a family’s heartrending journey.”

  —Booklist

  “In an easy, straightforward style, this Harvard graduate recounts his amazing journey from refugee camp to Ivy League campus… The short length and simple, often humorous recollections of the people and places that inspired Mawi Asgedom will appeal to reluctant readers.”

  — Voice of Youth Advocates

  “Asgedom has taken the many disparate things life has given him up to now, bound them together to make them whole, and transformed his experience into something solid for the nourishment and use of others.”

  —Harvard Magazine

  To the true hero of this story,

  my mother, Tsege

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Since I have come to the United States, I have increasingly gone by the name Mawi Asgedom. But my true name is Selamawi Haileab Asgedom. Mawi is more convenient, but I can never abandon my full name, for my full name has meaning and connects me to my people. In my native language, “selam” means “peace.” “Selamawi” means “peaceful.” “Haileab” means “power from above.” And “Asgedom” means “he who makes others kneel before him.” So my full name means “peaceful power from above who makes others kneel before him.” (Don’t worry, you don’t have to read this book on your knees.)

  This story is not just my story or my family’s story but the story of hundreds of thousands of Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees. Many of my refugee brothers and sisters experienced hardships much greater than those described in this book. Their courage has inspired me since childhood.

  In the spirit of peace, I have taken great pains to leave politics out of this book. I pray that my brothers and sisters from Eritrea and Ethiopia will find no bias in my writings, for I love both countries equally.

  My homelands of Eritrea and Ethiopia fought a deadly civil war from 961-1991. Eritrea became an independent nation in 1993.

  1.) My birthplace; 2.) Haileab’s birthplace; 3) Tsege’s birthplace.

  MEMORIES

  The desert, I remember. The shrieking hyenas, I remember. But beyond that, I cannot separate what I remember from what I have heard in stories.

  I may or may not remember seeing my mother look at our house in Adi Wahla, Ethiopia, just before we left. Gazing at it as though it were a person whom she loved and cherished. Trance-walking to the house’s white exterior, laying her hands on it for a few moments, feeling its heartbeat — feeling her own heartbeat — then kissing it, knowing that she might never see it again.

  I remember playing soccer with rocks, and a strange man telling me and my brother Tewolde that we had to go on a trip, and Tewolde refusing to go. The man took out a piece of gum, and Tewolde happily traded his homeland.

  I remember our journey and the woman we met. Despite her fatigue, she walked and walked and walked, trying to limp her way to safety across miles of stones and rocks. She continued to limp, wanting to stop but knowing that if she did she wouldn’t move again.

  She pressed on and on, and soon her limp became a crawl. And then I saw a sight that I would never forget — the soles of her naked feet melting away and then disappearing into the desert, leaving only her bloody, red flesh, mixed with brownish sand and dirt.

  But still, she kept on crawling. For what choice does a refugee have?

  We had no choice, either. We — my mother, my five-year-old brother, my baby sister, and I at age three — kept walking, hoping that we would make it to Sudan and find my father. He had fled our war-ravaged home a year earlier, driven away by the advancing Ethiopian army.

  Even stories fail me as I try to recall the rest of our journey. I know only that the wilderness took its toll, that our young bodies gave way, and that we entered a more barren and deadly internal wilderness.

  We crossed the Sudanese border and arrived at a city called Awad. A sign should have been posted at the city limits: Awad, home of the exiled. Home of the hopeless. Home of the diseased. A simple sign that would warn and welcome us all.

  Welcome, all you refugees. All you psychologically tormented. All you physically malnourished. All you uprooted. Rest your burdens here, for you can rest them nowhere else. Rest your hopes here, for no other place will accept them.

  But do not hope too much. For too much hope can lead to insanity.

  Beware. We can ill treat your ailments. We have few pills here and little life. We have no guarantees that medicine, not flour, fills the pills. But you have no choice, and neither do we. For we give only that which we have.

  Beware our fishermen. Where’s the water, you ask? There is no water. They fish for strangers, vagabonds, foreigners, refugees. They look for you even now; if they find you, they will drag you with their iron nets and abandon you in a wilderness hell.

  Please do not blame us. What would you do if chaos approached you on the tortured feet of a million refugees? Could you handle so many?

  Selamawi in Sudan at age six.

  THE CAMP

  I don’t remember how we avoided the iron nets or reunited with my father. But I do remember seeking safety in a Sudanese refugee camp in Umsagata, a small dusty village of straw-and-mud adobes. Many of my people had gathered there, and for my family it became home from 1980 to 1983.

  Most of our village survived on goat milk, eggs, U.N. rations, and whatever we could grow in our small gardens. A Swedish ministry provided health care, and about a mile away sat a schoolhouse.

  We took some brutal beatings at the schoolhouse. But these didn’t c
ome at the hands of bullies. Our kindergarten teachers were the ones dishing out the pain.

  I still remember the jealous, one-armed math teacher, who beat me senseless with his good arm because I had more right answers than his son.

  He and the other teachers could punish us for almost any reason. Whereas parents in the U.S. often defend their kids against the teacher, parents in Sudan took the teacher’s side.

  With few checks on their power, the Sudanese teachers didn’t hesitate to pound us.

  Get up! Hold your hands together! Now interlock your fingers so the knuckles are exposed.

  Lifting the ruler high overhead, the teacher would unwind and slam torture into our naked knuckles, the ruler’s metal edge knifing deep into our flesh. Quiet! Hold your mouth or you will get more.

  Violence wasn’t restricted to the classroom, either. Some of the other kids tried to push us around, so Tewolde and I quickly mastered Sudanese-style fighting, where the only object was survival. You used whatever was within reach because you knew that your rival would. Sticks. Stones. Sand. You had to use it, and you had to win. I fought almost daily and still bear the scars. But I decorated a few bodies, too.

  During some of the fights, we got help from our dog. I forget his name, but I think it started with an H.

  H really made a difference one time, when Ahferom, the village bully, came looking for Tewolde and me. We tried to run. But it was too late — Ahferom had grabbed my shirt, and Tewolde had to stay to help me.

  Before Ahferom could get started, though, we heard deep-throated snarling, the rapid tearing of fabric, a bloodcurdling human scream.

  Ahferom hobbled off, crying all the way home. H had rescued us by biting through Ahferom’s pants, right into the dark flesh of his buttock.

  We usually didn’t believe in pets. How could we feed pets when all around us our countrymen struggled to feed themselves?

  No, all livestock — from the goat all the way down to the chicken — had to produce for their living. That’s why my father strung our first dog on the clothesline in our backyard. My father had caught him killing the chickens one night when he was supposed to be watching them.

  After H saved us from Ahferom, though, he assumed near-pet status. We pampered him. We played games with him. We took him with us when we went hunting with our slingshots.

  We didn’t use store-made, metal-and-elastic slingshots, either. No, we had the same kind of slingshot that David used to drop Goliath. Just a narrow strip of cloth, folded in half the long way, with a stone placed inside the fold. We’d spin the cloth so fast it blurred, and then at maximum centripetal force, we’d release the stone with a quick jerk of our wrist.

  Hitting a stationary object, especially one as small as a bird, required skill. Hitting a moving one required tremendous skill and a good dose of luck. My brother had both.

  One day he saw a bird flying and instantly let loose. Bird met ground. And then the pan. My mother cooked it up for us, and Tewolde, Mehret, and I gathered around to devour it. But Ahferom came and asked to taste just a little bit.

  It is unheard of in our culture to refuse people food, so we invited him to join us. He grabbed the whole bird and ran. He ate our bird!

  At the time, we were furious. But in retrospect, I feel no anger. How can I feel ill will toward Ahferom when I know that soon after, he joined one of the Ethiopian liberation movements? And that later, he joined the long list of senseless casualties, able to survive our crazed dog but not his own countrymen?

  Umsagata had no paved roads, so it didn’t attract many cars. We walked or ran everywhere we went.

  One time, though, a giant tractor pulled up. It was unlike anything we had ever seen. Its wheels were the size of small adobes!

  After a while, the owner got out and entered a home. We ran over to inspect the tires, wondering if what we had heard was true: that if you took a sharp stone and applied pressure to the tire’s little air nozzle, you could empty out all of the air.

  We grabbed little stones and pushed eagerly. Sure enough, the air shot out of the tire like lava from a volcano.

  The owner shot outside, shaking his fists in fury. We bolted. For we knew that no tire pumps could be found anywhere nearby. And who wants to be stuck in the middle of Sudan with a giant, immobile tractor?

  No doubt, Tewolde and I were mischievous. But we weren’t nearly as dangerous as our friend Kiros. He was only six but could climb any tree, no matter how tall. Fifty feet. Sixty feet. One hundred feet! No problem. And he loved stones. So he would climb trees with stones in his pocket and pick off whomever passed by.

  All of us made room for him at our tables, knowing that with one stone, he could take our eyes out. Even the old woman who peddled peanuts next to the clinic shared her wares with him.

  After two years, Kiros left Umsagata for a faraway paradise. I think his dad called it Amerikha.

  Kiros’s stones, while frightening, were hardly the most dangerous part of camp life. Famine always threatened, war raged nearby, and disease took its toll. Many refugees died from sickness, and at one point, a deadly disease called kala-azar invaded my body. Neither food nor rest nor medicine seemed to help. I remember approaching death and being carried around at night, through the dusty roads and thatched adobes of our own village, through the solemn silence of the neighboring Muslim village.

  With time, though, my body recovered.

  On days such as my recovery day, or on religious feasts, all the habesha, or Ethiopian and Eritrean people, in our camp celebrated together. We danced our people’s circle dance, moving our shoulders emphatically to the steady beat. We used no synthesizers or elaborate drum sets — just a goat-hide drum and a goat-hide guitar.

  To the best dancers went more than admiration. Spectators moistened bills and slapped them enthusiastically on the best dancers’ heads.

  My father knew how to dance with every muscle in his body — shoulders, arms, hands, back, knees, feet, legs. Even his face gyrated in perfect rhythm with the drum and the guitar.

  Villagers always interrupted their business when he joined the dancers’ circle. Conversations stopped. Cups were lowered. Heads turned. Then the villagers jumped from their seats and plastered him with money, until bills decorated his head, his neck, and even his clothes.

  He was hands down the best dancer in our village — the best dancer of habesha music that I have ever seen. Years later in the States, when my father had lost much of his eyesight and co-ordination, my habesha friends would still watch him in wonder. “If I could dance like that,” they would say, “I wouldn’t need anything else. Women would just drop at my feet.”

  When the dancing finished, we would return to our one-room adobe, where my entire family slept. My mother, who knew how to scare young children into proper behavior, always old me that if I let the covers down, snakes could slither into my mouth and enter my body. She said that it had happened to little boy in our neighboring village.

  I believed her and started pulling the covers over my head, still do it today.

  Unfortunately, my family had much more to fear than imaginary snakes. Sudanese rebel groups waged their own war against the Sudanese government, and though the fighting never reached our camp, the Sudanese armies were always looking for new soldiers. They didn’t hesitate to draft refugees.

  We also didn’t know how long we could dodge the diseases at had conquered so many of our countrymen.

  One thing was certain: We could not seek safety in our homeland of Ethiopia. The Eritrean liberation groups continued their quest for independence and were joined by other Ethiopian liberation forces. If we returned home, my parents believed, we would be wiped out by the rebel group or by the Dergue army of Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.

  So it was that my father started talking about a paradise called Amerikha, a distant land where everyone had a future. He told us that money grew on trees in Amerikha. Everyone was rich. Everyone had a home. Everyone had food. And everyone had peace.


  Everyone lived to be one hundred years old. And had access to free education. And no wars — no wars! Yes, everyone had cars, and no one had to work more than two hours a day.

  What a country! What a paradise!

  But such a faraway paradise included no relatives, no friends, and no one who spoke our language. Some villagers encouraged my parents to go; others begged them to stay.

  “Have you lost your mind, Haileab? Don’t you care about your children? Don’t you care about yourself?”

  “Don’t believe all the stories, Tsege. You will be lost if you go there. You and your children will be lost. You’ll end up washing their mules and other livestock.”

  “Go, Haileab. Don’t listen to them. Go, and take your family with you. Even if you remain poor, your children will become educated, and at the very least, you will have peace.”

  Would you go to paradise if it meant knowing no one? Would you give up everything you had ever known?

  The day came when my parents had had enough. War at home. War in Sudan. My parents wanted peace, and they were ready to go. The village elders watched them and offered a few words of wisdom.

  Heading to America, are you? They say that everyone there drives big cars and lives in big houses. Money flows through streets of glimmering gold. And everyone lives long, easy lives.

  You will undoubtedly be happy there. Go well, live long, and please, do not forget us.

  But as you gather your belongings, please permit us a few words of caution. We may be the poorest and least educated of folks, Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees living in Nowhere, Sudan, but even we have heard things that may interest you.

  America seems sweet on top, like fresh honey straight from the comb. But what’s sweet on the surface is often rotten underneath. So beware.

  Beware your skins. Blacks are treated like adgi in America, like packhorses. Beware, too, of thieves. Yes, thieves who steal much more than money — thieves who can loot minds, cultures, and even bodies.