Of Beetles and Angels

by Mawi Asgedom

  Most of all, please remember your country and remember us. Remember your people.

  My family in Khartoum, Sudan, right before we came to America. From left to right: Top: Mulu, Tsege, Haileab; Bottom: Selamawi, Mehret, Tewolde.

  COMING TO AMERICA

  My parents couldn’t just snap their fingers and conjure up a transatlantic jetliner. They needed help, so they contacted World Relief, a U.S.-based Christian organization that located refugees and helped them resettle in the United States.

  Millions of my people had become refugees during the thirty-year bloodbath between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Most had fled to Sudan. Seeing their plight, World Relief had mediated an agreement between the United States and Sudan to resettle some of the refugees.

  As part of the resettling process, World Relief would have to identify American sponsors who would find the refugees housing, furniture, jobs, medical treatment, and schools — everything that they would need to get on their feet.

  But before a family could qualify for resettlement, it had to pass the infamous tests. No one knew which answers were right and which were wrong.

  “Why do you want to go to America? What will you do when you get there? Do you want to come back to your country someday? Do you plan to work in America?”

  Many clever interviewees had failed despite giving the same answers as those who had passed. Others had passed after giving the same answers as those who had failed.

  My family hadn’t even gotten to the interview room when my father’s booming voice stopped the rest of us in our tracks. DON’T ANY OF YOU SAY A WORD OR I WILL MAKE YOU LOST. LET ME DO ALL THE TALKING.

  Apparently, he told the officials what they wanted to hear, and they told us what we wanted to hear: “You are going to America! To a city called Chicago.”

  We would have left for the States in 1982. We had already passed the infamous immigration tests, sold our six goats, and begun to say good-bye to our fellow villagers. But in the final days, right before we were to leave our village forever, my half sister Mulu came from another region of Sudan, surprising us.

  Although we were scheduled to depart in a matter of days, my father and mother refused to leave without her. They begged the immigration officials. YOU HAVE CHILDREN, DON’T YOU? WOULD YOU GO TO AMERICA AND LEAVE YOUR DAUGHTER ALONE IN THIS REFUGEE CAMP?

  “Look,” they told us, “World Relief agreed to work with a family of five, not a family of six. They agreed to bring you now, not later, and it’s impossible for her to come with you now. She has no paperwork.”

  But my parents refused to leave her. Returning day after day, sometimes three times a day, my father wore down the officials until they finally caved in. She could come if we waited one year.

  We waited, the year passed, and in 1983 the six of us started on our way: my father, Haileab, in his late forties; my mother, Tsege, in her mid-twenties; my half sister, Mulu, in her late teens; my older brother, Tewolde, nine; my younger sister, Mehret, five; and me, Sclamawi, almost seven years old.

  Our friends gathered around to bid us farewell and a truck rumbled toward us. It was a lorry, one of those mammoth vehicles that looks like an African elephant. Its gaping back entrance beckoned us, giving us advice. Oh, that we could have heard it!

  Come on in. Come, if you dare.

  Make your choice carefully, for once you enter, you cannot return.

  Turn and look at your friends, and know that they are your true family. For friends and even enemies become family when you live in exile.

  Look at them and know that you will never see them again. Wave good-bye to H. Go hug him.

  Believe it or not, you will miss even the bullies and the cruel math teachers. For even the most horrifying memories are you; they are yours and no one else’s. And they, along with the good memories, are your life.

  You know America through stories. You know it to be paradise. But beware! Rumors are malignant tumors. Snakes lurk even in paradise. And the advice of mothers does not always ward off evil.

  Look back, too. You have survived many dangers. Famines. Diseases. Wars. Despair. Homesickness and more. Who knows what your future will bring?

  We entered the lorry slowly. Behind us, our village waved, both happy and terrified for us. And for themselves, too. We waved good-bye, and the lorry rumbled off, a bloated country taxi, jam-packed with hopeful innocents.

  We made our way through the Sudanese wilderness, up and down the hills, to Gedariff.

  We spent several months in Gedariff. Then a week in the capital city, Khartoum.

  Then we entered the plane and took off from Khartoum. Next stop, Athens. Then Amerikha, and there, a new life.

  I’m holding the newest member of our family From left to right: Tewolde, Hntsa, me, Mehret.

  A NEW LIFE

  We spent our first two weeks in America in a two-room, two-bed motel room in Chicago, my parents on one bed, and on the other, all of us children.

  World Relief had met us at the airport and paid for our room. Meanwhile, they searched for a church that would sponsor us.

  But World Relief could not find a sponsor in Chicago, so they moved us to another motel in the suburbs, on Route 38 in Wheaton. A World Relief caseworker named Beth Raney had agreed to find us a sponsoring church in the area.

  The first time we saw Beth, we wondered how such a small woman could exude so much energy.

  The first time Beth saw us, she saw trouble. My father lay shivering under a blanket, his head aflame in fever, and Beth, a nurse, knew instantly that he had malaria.

  We did not have access to medical care, so she went to a physician friend to obtain the medication that my father needed.

  She also met with the pastors of area churches and asked if their congregations would sponsor a refugee family of six.

  While she searched for a sponsor, she visited several times week, talking with my father in his broken English, trying to communicate with my mother through words, but succeeding more through hugs and smiles.

  “I still remember looking at Haileab’s and Tsege’s eyes and seeing the deepest pain,” Beth recalls. “The pain of people who have been torn away from their loved ones, from their culture, from their place in society, from everything that has ever given their life coherence and dignity. I tried to help them, talking often with Haileab, trying to get him to talk about his life in his homeland.

  “I tried to talk with Tsege, but it was hard because she knew so little English and because she would always retreat to the other room with the children when I came. Her culture had taught her that only men could speak with important visitors. She did not realize that I considered her to be just as important as Haileab and myself.”

  Beth found a sponsor, the Bethel Presbyterian Church. Like the rest of Wheaton, the church was almost all white, and from our standpoint, all haftamat, or crazy-rich. Bethel went to work immediately on finding us an affordable home — no small ask in Wheaton.

  Knowing that we could get lost in the maze of streets and homes, we rarely left the motel unless we were accompanied by a World Relief caseworker.

  One day, though, my father decided that we should brave the new country on our own. TEWOLDE AND SELAMAWI, GET YOUR SHOES ON, he announced. WE NEED TO LET THE OUTSIDE AIR BEAT ON US.

  Sporting fully picked afros and sun-broiled Sudanese skin, clad in mismatched secondhand clothes and low-budget Sudanese shoes, we trekked along the shoulder of Route 38. Needless to say, we drew plenty of looks.

  We walked until our new shoes tore into the soles of our feet. Night approached, and thousands of headlights, more lights than we had ever seen in our lives, streamed past our eyes.

  We watched in wonder, unable to believe that one road could hold so many cars. My father’s voice assumed an uncharacteristic hush.

  THEY WERE RIGHT, he told us in amazement. I DON’T KNOW HOW THEY KNEW, BUT THEY WERE RIGHT. NO SMALL CARS HERE. EVERYONE DRIVES BIG CARS. AND NIGHT HAS NO POWER OVER THEM.

  If he could have read hi
s future, my father might have feared the headlights. He might have seen the destructive power behind them, power that would someday alter his life. But he could hardly read his new country’s language, much less his future, so he remained amazed all the way home.

  The other times we left our motel were with our World Relief friends. They came almost daily and took us around Chicago — to parks, to skyscrapers, to the grocery store, showing us what life would be like in America.

  Even with their constant support, though, we still felt the deepest homesickness. We yearned for a piece of injera bread or a bowl of sebhi stew. For a neighbor who spoke our language. For our people.

  That’s when they appeared. Out of nowhere, two angels at our door. It was two of our people: habesha women. And they came bearing gifts: injera bread and sebhi stew.

  My mother burst into tears upon seeing them. “How did you find us?” she asked.

  “We heard from someone that there was a habesha family that had just arrived, and that they were pent up in a motel and knew no one. We remember our first days in America, so we came.”

  They showed my mother how to make injera and sebhi using American utensils, and they left us with enough food for a few days.

  Seventeen years later, they still hold a special place in our hearts.

  On some days, neither our sponsors nor our angels came. We still feared our new country, so we would stay inside and entertain ourselves by telling stories. Other times, we kids would play catch with little pebbles.

  It never took long before a stone went somewhere it shouldn’t have, like my father’s ear.

  GO AHEAD, YOU SONS OF WOMAN! BREAK SOMETHING AND GET US THROWN INTO THE HOUSE OF IMPRISONMENT.

  SIRAHKHA KEREKHA IYE: I WILL SHOW YOU YOUR WORK.

  As we searched for safer things, we discovered the great mouthpiece of America, the television.

  My siblings and I had seen a fuzzy black-and-white television once in the big Sudanese city of Gedariff. We had heard about it from our friends, and we squirmed through the crowd of Sudanese natives and habesha refugees to reach the rich man’s small, dirt-floor room. Once there, we bunched in among thirty spellbound viewers and watched tiny dots struggle to form the outlines of boxers on the screen.

  Now, as we turned on the TV in our motel room, we noticed immediately that American dots were much stronger than the ones in Sudan. They did not struggle to form the images on the screen. In fact, sometimes you couldn’t see the dots at all, only perfect color images.

  Although we saw what the images did, we could not understand what they said. The only one who could was my father, who was considered an educated man among our people and could half-speak an Ethiopian-British dialect of English.

  He was appalled by what the television told him.

  GOD SHOW MERCY ON US! DID YOU HEAR THAT? THE BOYFRIEND KILLED HIS GIRLFRIEND AND HER PARENTS, TOO. HE STABBED THEM MORE THAN FIFTY TIMES. WHAT KIND OF COUNTRY HAVE WE COME TO?

  My mother turned her face toward the heavens and lifted her quivering hands, as if to draw in God’s angels around her. We kept watching as the television displayed more footage of the girlfriend and her family.

  THEY WARNED US OF THIS WICKEDNESS CALLED BOYFRIEND AND GIRLFRIEND BACK IN ADI. DOING WHAT YOU WANT, LIVING OUTSIDE THE RULE, AND THE NEXT THING YOU KNOW, YOU HAVE A STRANGE SICKNESS OR THEY KILL YOUR FAMILY.

  We changed the channel. The dots formed a white child getting ready to go to school. His mother hunched over and scanned his face for dirt, wiping white filaments from under his eyebrows and dirt from off his face. The lesson was not lost on my mother.

  “Do you see this? Tewolde, Selamawi, Mehret. Take note. If you do not wash your face and comb your hair, if you have even one speck on your face, they will chase you away from the school.”

  We lived in the second motel for seven weeks. Then, one day, our sponsors at Bethel told us we had a home.

  We had no idea what to expect. We had spent the previous three years living in a one-room adobe, and even then we had been grateful that we had the one room.

  So when we saw our two-story house with its huge yard, we could not believe our eyes. Are they right? Is it for real? This whole stretch of house and yard ours? It’s too much.

  We could not afford the rent, even after my father found a job as a janitor, so we rented out the entire upstairs. And then, a few months after settling into our new home, our-family grew even bigger.

  My parents went to the hospital. Our sponsors took us kids to their home. Two days later, my mother returned with a baby boy. Conceived in Sudan but born in the States, he was a child of both the old and new worlds. My father proclaimed:

  HIS NAME SHALL BE HNTSA-EYESUS, BUT HE WILL ALSO BE KNOWN AS TEMESGEN, OR “THANK YOU.” FOR WE ARE THANKFUL TO HAVE MADE IT HERE SAFELY, AND THANKFUL FOR OUR NEW LIFE IN THIS LAND.

  At a community dinner With my lifelong angel, my mother, Tsege.

  GOD’S ANGELS

  We were just starting our life in Amerikha when our father told us about strangers. We should always treat them kindly, he said, because they could have been sent by God. He told us stories of how back home in Adi, God’s angels would descend out of mountains and mingle among the people.

  People always mistreated the angels, my father said, because the angels never looked like angels. They were always disguised as the lowliest of beetles: beggars, vagrants, and misfits.

  But no matter how much the strangers resembled beetles, my father always maintained that they could be angels, given to us by God to test the deepest sentiments of our hearts.

  When we were but infants in our new home, my father welcomed an angel into our house. This angel was particularly well-disguised. He emitted the most ungodly odor, half from his nasty clothes and half from his smudged and muddy body. He walked with a great weariness, as if he were about to collapse with each step, and his spirit had almost abandoned his eyes.

  Maybe because my father had often been an angel himself; maybe because he had survived only through the kindness of those who could see past his disguise; maybe because in Africa he had felt the deep pain of homelessness — my father welcomed the man into our home. We fed him and clothed him and gave him shelter.

  This angel did not have much; in fact, it looked like he had absolutely nothing. But as he left, he gave us a gift.

  He pulled a rainbow-colored address book out of his dirty shirt and handed it to us. We refused, but he insisted. So we accepted. For we knew that the exchange of gifts blesses the giver even more than the receiver. And even though we were not familiar with address books and had not used them before, we used his address book to store the addresses and phone numbers of our loved ones for the next several years. And we always thought of him: our angel.

  Most angels don’t look like angels. But a few do. A twenty-year-old angel with a celestial face and long, streaming, brown hair floated into our lives right after the other angel departed. I don’t remember when she first came to us, but I remember her visits.

  We would be cooped up in the house, our parents too scared to let us play outside and too scared to take us around themselves. And then, she would come. I don’t know why my parents trusted her. Maybe that’s why she looked like an angel, so that they would trust her.

  She would take us to play soccer at Wheaton College, where she went to school, then to the playground, and then she would pull out her acoustic guitar and sing to us. Sing with us, sing to us. Then she would teach us of the lamp that guides all paths. Tewolde and Mehret and I were just kids. Maybe that’s why we saw her for what she was and still keep her in our hearts countless heartbeats later.

  If you are out there, Charlene, and are reading this, I know your heart of gold weeps and smiles. Know that we have often thought of you and looked for you. When we look, we always look toward the heavens, for we know that is your true home. You are but a visitor here.

  Tewolde and Mehret at Longfellow Elementary School, 1985.

  PLAYGROUND WARFARE
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br />   From our very first days in America, my mother and father hammered into our minds the importance of excelling in school.

  RIGHT NOW, WE ARE AMONG THE POOREST IN THE LAND. NEITHER YOUR MOTHER NOR I WILL FIND GOOD WORK BECAUSE WE LACK SCHOOLING. WE WILL HAVE TO WORK BACKBREAKING JOBS, WE WILL NEVER FULLY UNDERSTAND OUR RIGHTS, AND OTHERS WILL TAKE ADVANTAGE OF US.

  BUT IF YOU, OUR CHILDREN, WORK HARD AT SCHOOL AND FINISH THE UNIVERSITY, MAYBE SOMEDAY YOU CAN HELP YOURSELVES AND HELP YOUR FAMILY, TOO.

  My parents may not have known much about this country, but they knew that the university cost more money than they had.

  They had a solution, though. They told us that if we were among the best students in the land, we could earn scholarships and attend the university for free — in spite of our race and background.

  YOU ARE POOR AND BLACK AND WE CANNOT BUY YOU THE RESOURCES THAT OTHER PARENTS CAN. BUT IF YOU HAVE ENOUGH DESIRE TO OUTWORK ALL THE OTHER STUDENTS AND YOU NEVER GIVE UP, YOU WILL WIN THE RACE ONE DAY.

  What’s both beautiful and scary about young children is that they will believe most anything that their parents tell them. If our parents had told us that black refugees growing up on welfare in an affluent white community couldn’t excel, we probably would have taken them at their word.

  But they told us that we could do anything if we worked hard and treated others with respect. And we believed them.

  Sometimes, though, faith was not enough. No one taught us that lesson quite like our classmates at Longfellow Elementary School.

  They had never seen anything like us, with our thick, perfectly combed afros, our perfectly mismatched clothing, and our spanking-new XJ-900’s, bought from Payless ShoeSource for under seven dollars a pair.

  My brother Tewolde and I patrolled the lower-grade playground for the hour-long lunch recess. Kindergarten met for just a half-day, so my sister Mehret went home before recess.