From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Fri Nov 20 2009 - 13:32:09 EST
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/magazine/22lives-t.html
How My Father Looked
By SULAIMAN ADDONIA
Published: November 20, 2009
I think I have a way of finding out what my father looked like. Yes,
finally! Excuse my excitement. My father died when I was very young, and to
this day, I have never seen a picture of him. My search for his face goes
back to when I lived in a refugee camp in eastern Sudan.
It was around 1977 when we arrived at the camp on camel from Eritrea, then
under Ethiopian control and fighting for independence. My father had been
murdered, but at 2 years old I had no understanding of the circumstances.
Sudan promised a new beginning.
For the next two years, we lived in a hut, and my mother did odd jobs, but
it wasn’t enough. She finally found work as a servant in Jeddah, Saudi
Arabia, and left us with our grandparents in the refugee camp. I was about
4. Each day afterward, her image became more vague and abstract, just like
my father’s. It felt as if I had never had parents.
My mother couldn’t read or write, but she used to record tapes and send them
to us. She told us about her life in Jeddah. I would stay in our hut and
play the tapes over and over again. I tried to focus on visualizing her
face. That was when I started trying to create portraits of both my parents.
I imagined my father’s features like mine, with pronounced nose and eyes,
and I reinvented my mother’s warm smile. Drawing their pictures in my head,
I believed, brought me closer to them.
Then one day, three years after she left, my mother finally sent us a photo
of herself. We hung the framed photo on the wall, the only bit of color
against the pale mud. Oh, my beautiful mother! I missed her madly.
But her face in the picture was nothing like the delicate one I had in my
mind. The difference between the real picture and the one based on memory
meant that I could no longer believe the image of my father either, however
vague it was. I had created it completely from scratch. When that image
died, I became fatherless not only in life but also in my imagination. I
found I had only begun to grieve for him.
I had to find a picture of him. My brother and I looked everywhere, hut by
hut, but no one had any. Some people, including my mother, remembered seeing
or owning pictures of him, but they explained that things get left behind in
the rush to leave a war zone. I understood. But how I wished they had saved
his picture.
In 1990, my brother and I went to London as refugees. But it wasn’t until
2005, when I returned to an independent Eritrea to see my mother for the
first time in as many years, that I learned the details of my father’s
death.
He was born outside Eritrea, in Gondar, Ethiopia, but he and my Eritrean
mother made a home across the border in Om Hajer, where he worked in the
clothing trade. One night, when we — my parents, sister, brother and I —
were sleeping in our hut, we were awakened by the loud shouts of men calling
my father’s name. My mother didn’t know who they were or why they came after
him. My father, sensing danger, refused to leave the hut, but the shouting
grew louder. My parents pulled us close to them as we sought refuge under
our beds. I imagine that in that dark place, I could feel my father’s skin
and pounding heart.
The men began to shoot. A bullet ripped through the wall and almost killed
my brother. That was when my father made his choice: “I’m coming out.” He
stood up — a balding man, over six feet, wearing blue trousers and a blue
shirt. His children were at his feet; his wife begged him not to go. He
walked out of the hut and stepped into the night full of waiting men.
He came back the next morning. His face was covered with blood. His blue
outfit had turned red, and his head had been battered to make him confess to
a crime he didn’t commit. They let him go because they finally believed he
was innocent. But as a result of the severe beatings, he died.
Recently I was watching a TV program about wanted people, and I came up with
my idea. Tension between Eritrea and Ethiopia continues, but when it thaws I
hope to travel there with an artist to sketch a picture of my father, based
on descriptions from friends and family who live on both sides of the
border. Such a method doesn’t befit my father’s memory, but he is the
fugitive that I have been searching for all my life, and it is the only
chance I have left to see his face.
Sulaiman Addonia is the author of “The Consequences of Love,” a novel.
----[This List to be used for Eritrea Related News Only]----