Of Beetles and Angels

by Mawi Asgedom

  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.

  THE MAKING OF A MAN

  When 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. DOES GOD HATE ME? DID HE CURSE ME BEFORE BIRTH? IS THAT WHY FATHER 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. IT WAS A TIME OF EATING LUNCH, NOT KNOWING WHEN YOU WOULD EAT DINNER, he later told US. SO 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. BUT WHAT WOULD YOU EXPECT? I HAD NO MOTHER, I HAD NO FATHER, I HAD NO ONE TO TEACH ME RIGHT OR WRONG.BEJAKOOM, 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.

  THERE WERE MANY OF US WHO TOOK THE TEST. ONE 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. NOT 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.

  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.

  WHAT COULD BOOKS TEACH ME IF I DIDN’T HAVE ACCESS TO THE MEDICAL EQUIPMENT THEY DESCRIBED? WHAT 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: Se
raye, 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: YOU CANNOT KNOW HOW IT FEELS TO KNOW THAT YOU BROUGHT CHILDREN INTO THIS WORLD AND ABANDONED THEM. ABANDONED 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.

  THE UNMAKING OF A MAN

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

  — Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

  One 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. GUESS WHO JUST MOVED INTO YOUR COUNTY — THAT’S RIGHT, THE BADDEST ALLPURPOSE STITCHER AND BABYBIRTHER THAT THE BACKWOODS OF TIGRAY EVER DID SEE. JUST 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.

&nbs
p; 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.

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

  BUT THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT HELPING YOU IN THIS COUNTRY. THE DOCTORS HERE ARE NOT HOW WE WERE IN ADI. THERE, WE TREATED EVERYONE THE BEST THAT WE COULD, REGARDLESS OF THEIR FINANCIAL SITUATION.

  BUT IN THIS COUNTRY, THEY CARE ABOUT YOUR MONEY. IF 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. SIT DOWN, EVERYONE. WE NEED TO IDENTIFY THE PERSON WHO LEFT THE CUP ON THE STAIRWELL. YOU SHALL NOT MOVE EVEN ONE INCH UNTIL WE FIND THE CULPRIT.

  The most innocent actions became an assault on his character.

  CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT FRIEND OF SELAMAWI’S? HOW DARE HE CALL SELAMAWI AND INVITE OUR FAMILY TO DINNER WITHOUT ASKING ME FIRST? I GUESS THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU ARE A FALLEN OAK. NO 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.