Of Beetles and Angels

by Mawi Asgedom

  “THE SON WENT TO THE BATHROOM, HOPING TO TAKE A BATH, AND INSTEAD, HE FLOODED THE HOUSE. WE DO NOT DENY HIS MISTAKE, AND IT SEEMS THAT HE SHOULD BE PUNISHED.

  “BUT LET’S THINK ABOUT THIS: WHO REALLY MADE THE MISTAKE?

  “THE LANDLORD KNEW THAT HIS TENANTS WERE REFUGEES FROM AN UNDEVELOPED COUNTRY. HE KNEW THAT THEY HAD JUST ARRIVED. DID HE GIVE THEM A TOUR OF THE HOUSE AND EXPLAIN THE NECESSARY THINGS TO THEM? DID HE EXPLAIN HOW TO TURN THE FIRE ON? DID HE EXPLAIN HOW TO OPEN AND CLOSE THE HEAT? DID HE EXPLAIN HOW TO OPEN AND CLOSE THE WATER?

  “WHOSE FAULT IS IT, THEN, FATHER? DOES THE BLAME LIE WITH THESE POOR REFUGEES? IS IT FAIR TO PUNISH THEM FOR BEING UNFAMILIAR WITH THEIR NEW ENVIRONMENT? IS IT RIGHT TO PUNISH THEM FOR HAVING HAD TO FLEE THEIR HOMELAND AGAINST THEIR WILL?”

  “OR IS IT FAIR TO BLAME THE LANDLORD, WHO DID NOT TAKE EVEN ONE SECOND TO SHOW THEM HOW TO TAKE CARE OF HIS HOME?

  “I THINK THAT THE PATH OF RIGHTNESS IS THAT THE LANDLORD SHOULD BE ON TRIAL RIGHT NOW FOR NOT HONORING THE RULE OF LANDLORDS. HE SHOULD HAVE TO PAY THEM MONEY FOR ALL OF THE TIME THAT THEY SPENT CLEANING HIS FLOOD AND FOR ALL OF THE ANGUISH THAT THIS EXPERIENCE HAS CAUSED THEM.

  “My father leaned back on the couch and smiled.

  I’M TELLING YOU, THE POOR LANDLORD WAS ALMOST CRYING BY THE TIME THAT I FINISHED MY GOOD EXPLANATION. HE KNEW THAT THE JUDGE WOULD SPARE US, AND THE JUDGE DID.

  My father was a poor man, but he had not feared to speak in front of judges. Nor had he feared to speak in front of other groups, even his church: HELP! MY PEOPLE ARE DYING! THEY NEED PRAYER! THEY NEED FOOD! THEY NEED BOOKS SO THAT THEY CAN LEARN!

  HELP! MY GRANDSON IN TIGRAY HAS NO PARENTS. HIS MOTHER, MY DAUGHTER, HAS DIED. HIS FATHER WAS A DER GUE SOLDIER WHO RAPED HIS MOTHER. PLEASE HELP HIM.

  Most Americans would have dismissed a poor, handicapped refugee like my father, but the beautiful folks at Wheaton Bible Church remained true to their calling. They saw past his disguise, and they helped him the best that they could, even sending monthly checks to his orphaned grandson.

  I wonder sometimes if God sent my father to test the truest sentiments of their hearts. I wonder if God sends angels to all of us.

  My father was never afraid to ask for help. But he also used his own power to help others, especially the most recently arrived refugees. The poorer the refugees, and the more desperately they needed his help, the more he wanted to do for them.

  The most desperate families usually came with five or six children, and with parents too old to understand life in the States. Landlords in Wheaton rarely rented to them.

  There was one exception: a landlord who rented out his basement. The families would pile in like sardines, up to ten people huddled in three dark rooms. Somalis, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Kenyans, Cambodians — they all moved in, one family after the other.

  Since my father knew Arabic, Tigrynia, Amharic, Giiz, English, and even a little Italian, he could usually communicate with the families, even with the non-habesha. Sometimes he would take a detour before he visited them, walking to the grocery store to buy bread and fruit.

  He would carry the bread and fruit to the cellar dwellers and talk with the parents and the kids. He would encourage the kids to educate themselves, and the parents to discipline their kids: IF YOU LOVE YOUR CHILDREN AND WANT THEM TO BE COME GOOD PEOPLE, YOU MUST DISCIPLINE THEM NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.

  On many occasions, he translated for the parents at Public Aid or at school. Other times, he introduced them to extra sources of funding. He helped so much that World Relief Refugee Services eventually gave him a special certificate in recognition of his tireless dedication.

  We watched in wonder as he showed us this badge of honor, as he framed it and kept it near him. We asked ourselves, how could this simple piece of paper inspire such joy and happiness in him? How could it make him radiate so?

  Maybe the answer lay in his past, and in the greatness he had known as an advanced dresser who could help others in their time of need.

  Life as a beetle had often cloaked it, but that same source of greatness still pulsated here in the States. That greatness continues to pulsate — if not in my father, then in those he helped and the stories they still tell of him.

  My father is not here to hear their stories. One night, while my father rode his bike near our home, a drunk driver stole his life.

  If he could hear the stories, I believe that Haileab, the son of Zedengel, a man who did not often cry, would weep uncontrollably:

  “When I found out that my mother had died back in Adi, Father Haileab came over and stayed with me for three days, never leaving my side, asking me what he could get for me, how he could support me.”

  “When I found out that my thirteen-year-old daughter was pregnant and the father unknown, Father Haileab came and wept with me, and counseled me, praying for my daughter and me for hours, encouraging both of us to keep our hopes burning.”

  “When my son graduated from college, Father Haileab came to my home, bearing gifts, and hugged me and laughed with me and danced with me for hours on end.”

  “When I first came to this country and I knew no one, Father Haileab let me stay in his home so that I would not have to live in the motel, and he even went with me to the Public Aid center, and stood in line with me for hours, and helped translate and advocate for me.”

  “When the policemen threw me into the house of imprisonment, Father Haileab collected twenty dollars from each habesha family and begged a ride to the station to free me.”

  “When a car broke my leg in two and I had to sleep in the hospital for two days, Father Haileab sat up with me and then even came home with me.”

  “When my son had no place to stay, and I had nowhere to go, Father Haileab risked the wrath of Public Aid and hid my son in his home for several months.”

  I do not remember much of what was said during his funeral, for I am not good at remembering such things. The little I remember was said in the language he loved and fought for, his native Tigrynia:

  Haileab lowha, ruruh, fetawee dikha, mejemera ni himoom kihiigeez, meewadaata kigedfoam, fetahwee hizboo, abona, keydu alo, ata zelalem, hijee nisilee kitkibolo.

  Haileab the kindhearted, the compassionate, friend to the poor and the downtrodden, the first to comfort the sick, the last to leave them, ally of his people, our father and shepherd, he has gone up, and we pray, oh, Eternal One, that you receive him.

  My mother and I celebrate my graduation from Haward.

  IZG1HARE YIHABKOOM

  Sometimes I wonder what my father would have done at my graduation from Harvard. He probably would have leaped up from his seat and interrupted my commencement speech in front of 30,000 spectators. Standing with his back straight, chest out, and right hand pointing forward, he would have shouted, loud enough for everyone to hear:

  THIS IS MY SON, SELAMAWI. A LONG TIME AGO, WHEN HE WAS JUST A LITTLE ONE, I TAUGHT HIM TO WORK HARD AND TO RESPECT OTHERS. NOW LOOK WHERE THAT HAS TAKEN HIM.

  To my speech coach’s dismay, I might have bowed and shouted back: “This is my father, Haileab. The woman next to him, with her quivering hands raised to the heavens, is my mother, Tsege. And I’m proud of both of them, too.”

  But like my brother, my father missed my graduation. Ironic, isn’t it, that father and son survived disease, war, and famine in Africa, but could not survive something as preventable as drinking and driving in America?

  My father departed before it came to full fruition, but the dream that he and my mother shared has already begun to come true. His children have graduated from college — first me, then Mehret, and one day, Hntsa. Mulu lives in Atlanta and raises two more children with that same dream.

  I graduated from Harvard one year ago and have since thought much about my parents’ dream. By earning my scholarship and graduating, I have fulfilled it.

  But along the way, I have found greater value in other dreams. And while Harvard University taught me well, my true education has come from less-likely
sources. As I look back to the angels, the Charlenes and the Beth Raneys; as I look back to God’s servants, dressed as beggars and as beetles; as I look back to my inspirations, to the Mamas and Tewoldes, I see true guidance staring back at me.

  True power comes from focusing on what we can give, not just on what we can take.

  Of the gifts that we can give, the greatest is to see beauty in each other — in essence, to give beauty to each other. When we give that beauty, we prepare our hearts to receive it back.

  So it is that I have been inspired by beetles and angels.

  So it is that I hope you will be, too. When you are, I hope that you will remember this story about an immigrant’s dream. As long as you remember, you’ll share the spirit of the two who dreamed it.

  As they say among my people, Izgihare Yihabkoom — May God give to you.

  EPILOGUE

  OF SNAKES, BUTTERFLIES, AND SMALL ACTS OF KINDNESS

  I delivered the commencement address at my graduation from Harvard in 1999. This is the text of my speech.

  When I was a child, my mother told me that I should always sleep with the covers over my head. At the time, my family was living in a Sudanese refugee camp, in Africa, and we owned nothing that we did not carry with us. On many a night, we slept out in the open, and my mother warned that if we let the covers down, snakes could slip in and slither into our mouths. We had no trouble following her advice.

  Years later, in the comfort of the United States, my mother gave me another piece of advice, this one less obvious. “Always remember where you came from,” she told me just before I left for Harvard. I was puzzled. The first piece of advice had been easy. Who wants a mouth full of snake! But why was it important to remember where I came from?

  When I moved on to Harvard and saw new worlds open before me, I quickly forgot about trying to understand my mother. Before I knew it, I was signed up for the Tae Kwon Do Club, the Harvard African Students’ Association, a Phillips Brooks House Program, the Freshman Crew Team (where I totaled a $15,000 boat against the dock), and a Freshman Bible Study (I figured I needed all the prayer that I could get). And, of course, I was taking four classes and trying to meet as many of my 1,600 classmates as wanted to meet me. As I focused my energies on myself and my immediate surroundings, remembering where I had come from seemed far less important than knowing where I was supposed to be every half hour.

  During my sophomore year, however, something happened to remind me of my mother’s advice. I was working as a delivery man for the Harvard Student Agency. One day as I was waiting for my packages in the office, an elderly black woman tottered in and wearily leaned on her cane. She hoped to find someone who would type a short letter for her. Such a simple, easy thing to do. But HSA has no typing service, and the receptionist had to tell her that she had come to the wrong place. As the old woman turned to leave, frustrated and confused, one of my coworkers called her over, gently sat her down, and typed the letter. It was such a simple act. Yet never has a Harvard student seemed so great to me as in that moment of reaching out.

  I began to reflect on what my mother might have meant. In the Sudan, we had carried with us all that we owned, but that included our devotion to one another. In that sense we carried a home, a community, a sense of mutual responsibility wherever we went. On that day in the Harvard Student Agency, my coworker carried a community with her as well: the simple community of human connection and duty.

  So what have I learned from my four years at Harvard? Many facts and formulas, many new ways of thinking, a fresh understanding of the world. But what’s most important to me is that after four years at Harvard I’m finally beginning to understand my mother’s advice.

  Remembering where you come from means holding on to the vision that you are a part of a human community that you can carry with you every day. That community has given us much. Are we not obligated to give it something back?

  My mother’s advice in childhood was to pull the covers over my head — that had been the easy part. But her later advice meant, I now realize, that I should know when to pull the covers down and stick my neck out. That’s the hard part. Too many of us go through life with the covers over our heads. We want to reach out, but we fear to make ourselves vulnerable. And we are also busy. We have appointments to keep; we have things to do. We race through a world of demands. And then we ask ourselves almost helplessly, “What can we do as individuals?”

  Some people say that a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan can cause a hurricane in Louisiana. Any one of us, however small and helpless we may feel, can spark unimagined changes. Today’s small act of kindness can become tomorrow’s whirlwind of human progress.

  But as you all know, progress is not easy, and it will not come unsolicited. I hope that many of us will inspire positive change. There is still so much to be done both in distant lands such as the Sudan, and closer to home in our own communities. The big, sweeping, revolutionary actions are always most noticeable. But quite often, it will be the small things that all of us can do that will have the most impact. Yes, we will be busy in our lives. But we can all take a little time to do a little deed of kindness. We can help write a letter; we can inscribe a little goodness on the hard surface of this world.

  In a few minutes we shall be welcomed to the ranks of educated men and women. As we start the journey to wherever our dreams may lead, we must remember where we have come from. We must recall our membership in the human community that has nourished us; we must accept the responsibility to keep that community alive. Improving the quality of life for the entire human community is the single greatest task that faces our generation and generations to come. Of course, no worthy endeavor is without risks and pitfalls — without snakes, if you will — but I know that you, my classmates, are ready to peek out, to see beyond yourselves, and cast off the covers. You are ready to face the snakes and drive them away. You are ready to change the world. Thank you! Good luck! And congratulations!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Great Professor Cornel West once wrote, “We are who we are because someone loved us, cared for us and believed in us.”

  To my boy Mike, for his great heart, for all the support that he has given me, and most of all, for being my boy.

  To Ed Porter for encouraging me to start my speaking business, and to Corey McQuade for lending me the courage to make it fulltime.

  To my friends Liz Drogin, Justin Porter, Alexander Band, Abby Fung, Jen Chau, Arden O’Connor, Asha Parekh, Aaron VanGetson, Rahwa Haile, Sewit Ahderom, Garrett Smith, and Getachew Kassa, thank you for your priceless help in editing this book. Special thanks to Amy Reynolds and Bo Menkiti for reading so many drafts so quickly.

  To Ben Kaplan, author of how to go to college almost for free, for your countless insights and enthusiastic support.

  To all my pals at ShopTalk, for always rooting for me, and especially for supporting me financially and emotionally after the thief broke into my apartment. Special thanks to my boy Jon Peterson. I’m lucky to know you.

  To Harvard’s model house tutor, Ben Berger, for always being in my corner and always going to bat for me — you make the difference, Ben.

  To Mrs. Benson, viva Jones, and Myrtle Amundson, for being our American grandmothers.

  To Shastine, A Swedish Missionary who became a close friend to us in the camp, for coming across the world to visit us after we came to America, and for leaving the picture (of Tewolde and Mehret) for the original cover of this book (now on page 32) — I hope that this book finds its way into your hands.

  To Doug Portman, for taking such joy in my father.

  To Linda Murphy and Peggy Coretti for taking such joy in my mother.

  To the Linszes and Davidsons, for taking such joy in all of us.

  To a true friend, my boy Kyle Romberg, for helping me with no thought of reward for himself.

  To an awesome marketing firm, KarmicFusion, for being so much fun to share office space with and for contributing so many fantastic ideas
to my speaking business.

  To Oprah Winfrey and everyone at Harpo, for their kindness and graciousness.

  To my friend Bella Stander, for her encouragement and support.

  To Brenda and Bob McDonell, for your love and for your support of this book.

  To Charlie Trotter, for your boundless generosity, for allowing me to contribute to your culinary education program, and for finding time in your demanding schedule to review this book.

  To Hayelom Ayele, for making time to review this book, for your many insights, for your good example, and for all the good work that you do on behalf of immigrants and refugees.

  To Harry Lewis, for creating time to review this book, and for your fantastic feedback — the reader has you to thank for the chapter entitled “Eyeing the Mountaintop.”

  To all the Wheaton North track coaches — Helberg, Eckman, Graf, McQuaid — and especially to coach martin, for giving me some of the best memories of my life and training me for the most important race of all.

  To Susan Martin, for showing me boundless love, and for encouraging me to apply to and then attend Harvard.

  To all the beautiful people in school district 200, everyone from Mrs. Mulholland and Mrs. Shaffer in first grade, to the Lucketts, Dr. Langlas, Mr. Crowl, and so many others in high school, and Denie Young after high school — you know i wouldn’t be writing this without you.

  To Ben Harper, for singing from your heart and inspiring mine — you set the bar just one notch higher, bro.

  To a truly outstanding writer, and a great friend, my editor, Dave Berger. You have taken this book to a level that I never could have taken it to on my own. Special thanks.

  To the wonderful folks at megadee books.

  To my agent Mary Yockey at MY Literary Agency, can we pause for a second to jump and shout: “YES! WE DID IT!” I know i wouldn’t be at this point without your hard work, intelligence, and persistence. Huge thanks, Mary, and huge thanks as well to all the beautiful folks at Anderson’s BookShop.