“They are stretching as the sun rises,” I said. “It is as if they are trying to grasp each other.”
“I like how they are exactly the same,” said Devina. She did not roll her eyes, and her voice carried no sarcasm.
“These sundogs make me think of my family,” I said. “The big center one, that’s Etheye, my mother. The little ones, they are my brother and me.”
“Oh, puh-lease,” she said. “You are starting to sound like Shakespeare. Besides, I thought you came from a huge family with a bazillion siblings, not just one brother.”
“One brother is my twin. You would like him.”
“Probably not,” she said.
“We look exactly the same, but we are different in every other way.”
“Well, that’s something in his favor.”
Devina was the rudest person I had ever known. She had no thoughts to protect another’s feelings, but her honesty pleased me. She would not pretend to be who she was not.
Her school came first when we crunched again along the street.
“After school? We’ll do homework again?” I asked.
“Like you were a lot of help. That last assignment? An epic fail. The teacher actually laughed.”
I recalled her misguided diagram.
“I’ll explain it,” I said. “I’ll show you. With strings.”
“Fine,” she said and rushed toward her school.
I also wanted to show her something else. I had filled two paper cups with the Orange Crush that fell and rolled from the vending machine at school yesterday when I inserted coins. I had stuck twigs in the sweet soda this morning and left them outside. They would be frozen solid after school.
In this country, we didn’t have to wait for a special Holy Day to get one, or for the electricity to work.
We could have Ethiopian popsicles all winter, whenever we wanted.
Author’s Note
It has been an honor and a privilege to be trusted with this story. It is a work of fiction, but it is based on a true story. Researching and writing it has taught me so much, and it has reinforced my belief that we must seek in each other what is the same, rather than what is different.
When “Tesfaye” and I first met to explore the concept for this book, I explained how honest he would have to be, the level of detail I would need, how we would go together to places I suspected were dark and possibly terrifying. There was something in his eyes when I spoke of the potential pain that called directly to my soul. The man vanished, and I saw, sitting across from me, the boy he once was, alone and afraid.
Memory is a tricky thing — the things we remember and the things we forget. Some parts of this story are as near to true as possible, given his age when certain events occurred, and some parts are purely fiction, based on embellished episodes from his life — historical events, or things that were likely. If there are mistakes, they are mine alone.
I know people will want to know what is true and what is not. I won’t tell, but if you find yourself thinking, “That’s not possible. That couldn’t have happened,” it’s probably one of the true pieces.
The work became fiction to protect Tesfaye, even though he is now safe and thriving in his adopted country. The fear is for his family still in Ethiopia. No story is worth putting a life in danger.
Cold White Sun was never meant as political commentary, nor to disparage any country. I apologize to anyone who finds it hurtful. Rather, the goal was to tell the story of a refugee. My hope is that in learning about Tesfaye, we might take opportunities in our everyday lives to look beyond appearances, heritage and religion. That we might look more often for commonalities, the things that bind all of us.
I haven’t words to express my gratitude to Tesfaye and to his family for their patience and their confidence in me. I would love to tell you who the real Tesfaye is. I would like to yell it from the top of a mountain and let it echo.
So sometime, if you are in the Alberta mountains — in Banff, or Jasper, or Kananaskis or Grande Cache — and you hear a name echoing, mountain to mountain, it might be me breaking my silence. Or it might be the echo of two strangers meeting, and forming a friendship destined to last a lifetime.
About Ethiopia
When I first started writing Cold White Sun, the only thing I knew about Ethiopia was a terrible famine in the mid-1980s in which millions of people of died. The news images from those days made me believe Ethiopia was a vast desert. The people looked like exhausted villagers, skeletal and dressed in rags. That’s what I thought Ethiopia was.
Village life is part of Ethiopia, but certainly not all.
Ethiopia is a landlocked country located in northeastern Africa, in an area often referred to as the Horn of Africa because of the shape of the continent. Near its center is Addis Ababa, the country’s capital. It is a huge, vibrant and rapidly growing city, with a population of more than 6.5 million — about the same as New York City.
Ethiopia is an ancient civilization and home to the Great Rift Valley, which is often called the “cradle of civilization” or the “birthplace of man,” based on archeological evidence that dates back more than 3 million years. It is where the fossils of the pre-human “Lucy” were found.
One of the reasons Ethiopia is such an interesting country is because it was never colonized. While the country was invaded in 1935 by Italian forces led by Benito Mussolini, who intended to colonize it, the attempt was unsuccessful. It took five years, but the Ethiopians — with the help of the British — were able to drive out the Italians in 1941. The influence of that occupation remains. It is why pizza and spaghetti are not uncommon, and why the architecture in the Piazza District of Addis reflects Italian design.
Without a significant influence from outsiders, Ethiopia maintained its own culture, tribes, languages, traditions and religions. The country uses a different calendar than the Gregorian calendar used in North America. The Ethiopian year has thirteen months, and the years are calculated differently; there is a seven- to eight-year gap between the Ethiopian calendar and the Gregorian one.
At the time when this story took place, birth years were unimportant and age was not relevant. However, the approximate ages of children were kept in mind until they turned five, so parents knew when to send their children to school.
The primary language is Amharic, and all government documents would have been kept in this language, using the Ethiopian calendar. It’s why Tesfaye has difficulty answering the questions of immigration officials.
Names are also different than they are in North America. Ethiopians have only one name. However, they will sometimes use their father’s first name as a type of equivalent to a North American surname. So, if you were Ethiopian, you would use your given name, followed by your father’s first name. Using Ethiopian “surnames” to trace ancestral lineage is impossible.
Ethiopians also did not have street addresses when this story took place. Only a few roads had names, even in Addis Ababa. Directions were given based on landmarks.
Ethiopia is a country rich in history and culture, and wound tightly into that culture is religion. The majority are Christian — primarily Ethiopian Orthodox Church — followed closely in number by those who are Muslim. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC), the faith Gashe and Ababa practice, is an ancient religion that may feel familiar to those of other religions. The veneration of the Virgin Mary, for instance, will feel familiar to Roman Catholics; not eating pork will be familiar to Jews and Muslims, as will customs surrounding the slaughter of animals for food. Religious postures, such as kneeling with the head to the floor, demonstrate humility, unworthiness and the need for mercy. The EOTC faithful are required to pray seven times a day at prescribed times. Men and women worship at the same time but separately in the EOTC church.
Traditionally, Ethiopia was a monarchy. Perhaps its most famous emperor was Haile Selassie, w
ho ruled the country for forty-four years. He was deposed in 1974, following a coup when a group called the Derg seized control. Mengistu Haile Mariam soon rose to power with a communist philosophy. This was a dark time in Ethiopian history. Mengistu was a cruel dictator who launched a campaign to rid the country of his opponents. Known as the Red Terror, it was marked by two years of horrific violence. Tens of thousands of citizens were murdered in the late 1970s.
Mengistu remained in power until 1991. This is the revolution that opens Cold White Sun. Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe, but although an Ethiopian court convicted him of genocide and sentenced him to death, Zimbabwe has never extradited him. Mengistu is now in his eighties.
In addition to the 1930s conflict with the Italians, Ethiopia has fought decades-long battles with its neighbors, Somalia and Eritrea, over borders. Following World War II, Ethiopia and Eritrea were united in a federation, with both sides being equal. In 1961, Emperor Haile Selassie ended the federation and made Eritrea — with its important access to the Red Sea — a province of Ethiopia. Eritrea did not like this arrangement and began its fight to gain full independence. The war created a deep-seated bitterness on both sides. Ethiopia wanted to keep Eritrea; Eritrea wanted to be its own country. The war lasted for thirty years, until 1991. The United States was involved in the negotiations, and that’s why we see the uprising outside the American embassy in Addis. Eritrea officially gained its independence in 1991.
Tensions between the two countries remained high, with a second war breaking out shortly after independence. A peace agreement was signed in 2000 but was never honored. Borders remained closed, with not even telephone calls allowed between the two countries.
The good news is that relations are improving. On September 11, 2018, the border crossings between Eritrea and Ethiopia reopened.
Originally from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Sue Farrell Holler comes from a culture rich in storytelling. She believes in the power of story — the stories we tell and the stories we listen to — to bring people together. She writes for children of all ages, and sometimes for adults. She lives in Grande Prairie, Alberta. www.suefarrellholler.com.
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