Tower
In The Sky
Authored
by Hiwot Teffera
Addis Ababa University Press, 2012
Reviewed
by Ghelawdewos Araia, PhD
October
17, 2013
Hiwot
Teffera has produced a very powerful,
scintillating, and captivating book on the
Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP)
and the Ethiopian Revolution. It all began with
the author’s exposure to the uncharted waters of
political philosophy and ideology when one time
student leader and revolutionary, Getachew Maru,
whom she affectionately calls “my hero”,
baptized her. Tower In The Sky is an
enduring literary power, especially for the
Ethiopian generation that was engaged in
protracted wars against the feudo-bourgeois regime
of Haile Selassie and the most brutal Derg regime
in Ethiopian history.
Tower
In The Sky
wholly and thoroughly examines the struggles of
the EPRP in a very lucid and cogent way, but not
only in terms of narrating the complex Ethiopian
politics of the time and praising the fallen
heroes in due course of the struggle, but also in
criticizing the shortcomings and failures of the
Party. Hiwot Teffera eloquently captures in a
dramatic fashion EPRP’s clandestine operations
from the outburst of the Ethiopian Revolution in
1974 to her incarceration and her release in 1986.
On
top of documenting the chronology of the unfolding
events surrounding the political performance of
the EPRP, Tower In The Sky is also very
much a literary work that could be classified as a
non-fiction genre. Hiwot successfully blended
non-fiction literature with authentic political
discourse that virtually affected the entire
social fabric of Ethiopia. Though for the most
part Hiwot narrates the experience of the EPRP
vis-à-vis the Derg and other contending forces,
she also utilizes metaphorical language that goes
into recreating allusions. She uses verbal
patterns, including cadence, to dramatically
depict some frightening scenarios that, in turn,
capture, the horrendous torture and killings of
Ethiopian youth in general and her own comrades in
particular at the hands of the Derg murderers.
With
a conscious manipulation of form and language, she
echoes the gallantry of the Ethiopian Student
Movement (ESM) and the combatants of the EPRP. In
relation to the latter, thus, I am tempted to
claim that Tower In The Sky is one book
that represents the decades of indomitable spirit
by the Ethiopian fallen heroes and of some
comrades who survived to tell the tale. Hiwot is
one of the latter.
The
book is beautifully written and easy to read
because the author has exhibited extensive
creativity and meticulous craftsmanship in putting
the pieces (including the enigmatic encounters) of
the complex and intricate Ethiopian politics of
the 1970s and 1980s in one quilt. For this reason
alone, I would like to attribute ‘virtuoso in
political literature’ to Tower In The Sky.
Each chapter in the book opens up with a relevant
parable or maxim, but all the quoted people,
except for Zara Yacob, are non-Africans or
non-Ethiopians. Quoting Africans in general or
Ethiopians in particular would have given
authenticity to the Ethiopian resistance led by
the EPRP and rendered additional flavor to the
struggle. However, the apparent dearth in
Afrocentric thought in no way diminishes the
import of this great book.
As
we shall see in some detail later, however, Hiwot
would become disillusioned with the Party not only
because the latter committed egregious and series
of mistakes and as a result encountered
significant challenges, but also due to the murder
of Getachew Maru by his own party that she never
expected and suspected.
Once
the author met Getachew, she would slowly and
gradually delve into the world of ideology and
theoretical framework that would, in turn, enable
her grasp the essence of class and class struggle
and beyond. She would first learn, thanks to her
mentor Getachew, the elementary notions of class
relations. “I learned that one population in
eastern, western, and southern parts of the
country,” says Hiwot, “owned over ninety
percent of the land.” “I was incensed when
Getachew explained to me that these people lived
off the sweat of the majority of the people…”
But at this stage, Hiwot was not polished yet in
terms of class analysis; her perception of class
was individual feudal lords who could be nice
human beings until Getachew made an eye-opening
statement. He tells her, “We are talking about a
social system…In any case, he [the feudal lord
that Hiwot knew] might be good as a person but
remember that he is part of the system, a system
that oppresses and exploits people. Once an egg is
rotten…it is rotten. You cannot crack it and
separate the good from the bad. You have no use of
it once it is rotten.”
There
is no doubt that Getachew’s paradigmatic class
analysis in very simple terms “was so
overpowering” as Hiwot herself admits.
However, Hiwot was not only overpowered by
the spoken word emanating from Getachew; she would
also be in love with him because she “had never
met anyone who talked like him.” “I was taken
by his timidity, humility, and decency,” says
Hiwot. Who would not be in love with Getachew Maru?
He was two years ahead of me in campus and after
reading Tower In the Sky and sensed the
time line I gathered that Hiwot could have been
two years behind me at Haile Selassie I University
(now Addis Ababa University). I have known
Getachew very well especially during the USUAA
presidential campaigns. I vividly remember when
one day in 1971 the Interest Group met at the New
Arts Building, Sidist Kilo campus to campaign for
Tariku Debretsion (president) and Getachew Maru
(secretary general) in the USUAA electoral
proceedings. In the middle of the meeting Getachew
came and rendered a passing remark before he
departed; he said, “We must make this a historic
campaign not simply for the sake of holding office
but also for elevating the consciousness of the
people and mobilizing the masses.” We were
listening to him while at the same time looking on
his eyes; he, on the contrary, was looking down as
if he was communicating with our planet earth. The
more I knew Getachew Maru, the more I sensed that
he was a brilliant thinker and an electrifying
speaker on stage and/or public platforms, but he
was very shy on one-on-one encounters.
What
started out as a political orientation between the
tutor (Getachew) and the tutored (Hiwot) would
galvanize in romantic ventures when Getachew,
after much hesitation, broke his silence and told
Hiwot, “I don’t know how to put this…I am
desperately in love with you.” “I was
speechless”; “I almost fainted with
trepidation,” says Hiwot, “When he held my
right hand.”
Romantic
relationships, though beautiful and natural, were
secondary in a political movement poised to bring
about social change. In light of the latter
reality, thus, the author continues to narrate
student restlessness in all campuses and the role
played by student vanguards such as Meles Tecle.
Incidentally, many of the student militants
mentioned in the book such as Meles Tecle, Agerie
Mihret, Getachew Kumsa, and Girmachew Lemma were
either my classmates or compatriots at the
university.
On
pages 86 to 116, Hiwot superbly documents the
student movement, how Marxism-Leninism was used
“for trashing dissenting voice,” the schism
and internal strife among student groupings
(radical seniors vs. radical juniors),
reconciliation amongst these groupings,
imprisonment of student leaders at Gibe, and the
outbreak of the 1974 Ethiopian revolution. While
Hiwot is right of Gibe (Boter) where USUAA leaders
were detained, she forgot to mention that other
students were also detained at Chinagsen, Hararghe
during the same period. I was in the latter group
and we were detained at the 33rd
Battalion in Chinagsen for 53 days although
initially we were sentenced to three months hard
labor.
On
the question of fascism in Ethiopia discussed on
page 118 of the book, it is interesting to know
that Getachew had the same view like mine although
we were worlds apart during this time and we had
no connection at all. I have discussed it in my
debut book, Ethiopia: The Political Economy of
Transition (1995). While Democracia,
the official organ of the EPRP, declared the Derg
as fascist regime, Getachew had reservations on
the definition of fascism and he did not view the
Derg as a fascist regime. In my book mentioned
above, I have argued, “the Derg could best be
characterized as a state of exception regime of
the military dictatorship variety and a populist
one.” I still uphold this idea and I believe
that Getachew was right and the EPRP was wrong in
viewing the Derg as a fascist regime. My argument,
of course, is substantiated by the political
economy definition of fascism and the unique
historical circumstance that played a role as a
catalyst for the emergence of this type of regime
and not in the adjective connotation that some
people use to depict brutal dictators.
On
page 119, Hiwot states, “Meles Tecle took Azeb
and me to a place where Struggle, organ of
the students’ union, was duplicated. We helped
out with stapling in the pamphlet.” If Hiwot and
her friend were helping in stapling Struggle,
we were then in the same loop. I remember stapling
the USUAA organ along with many other colleagues.
The edition of Struggle that Hiwot is
making reference to be the last USUAA publication
of 1974 and Meles Tecle was the editor-in-chief;
English editor was Abay Tsehaye, the current EPRDF
leader; Girmachew Alemu was the Amharic editor;
Getachew Begashaw was the president of USUAA and
Aboma Mitiku, the secretary-general; and I
contributed an article entitled New Democratic
Revolution in Ethiopia in this last edition.
Meles Tecle and I went to the Commercial Printing
Press for printing the red banner of the front
page of the organ before the printing and
duplication process began.
On
the same page, Hiwot recalls the altercation she
had with Meles because he screamed on her friend
Azeb: “You contradicted Abebech on the national
question last night. How dare you? Don’t you
know that she is your mastermind?” And Hiwot
retorted by saying, “How can you talk to her
like that? Who do you think you are? And who do
you think Abebech is? She is not our
mastermind!”
Irrespective
of Hiwot’s reaction to Meles’ condescending
attitude, despite his brilliance and his many
qualities and unparalleled commitment to the
Ethiopian cause, Meles was too rough in his
dealings with people. I vividly remember one day
when Meles, myself, the late Meles Zenawi, and a
female student I can’t remember her name, were
going to dine somewhere near Nazareth School, and
when we were about to cross the street from Sidist
Kilo campus toward the then Haile Selassie
Hospital, Dean Akalu was walking by with his wife
on the other side of the street. All of a sudden,
Meles verbally attacked the Dean by saying “Dean
Akalu CIA” and the Dean furiously jumped on
Meles and fistfight was about to usher in earnest
if it where not for the good wife who managed to
restrain her husband. We were all embarrassed and
we directed serious criticism against Meles.
On
page 148, the author mentions the “sizzling
debates” between the EPRP and Meisone that were
published, according to Hiwot, on “the
government-owned Amharic daily Addis Zemen
– New Era – and Goh – Dawn –
magazine over the kind of democracy needed at that
particular point in time.” I don’t quite
recall the publication of these debates on Addis
Zemen but I remember very well the series of
debates published on both Goh (EPRP-controlled)
and Tseday (Meisone-controlled) magazines.
The debates were short-lived but magnificent, and
it was then rumored that the main actors in the
debate were Yohannes Berhane for EPRP and Haile
Fida for Meisone.
After
reading 150 pages of the book, the reader would
begin to get the flavor of Hiwot’s full-fledged
revolutionary engagement including developing
study materials, thanks to Getachew Maru. At this
point, a new Hiwot would be born, a transformed
Hiwot, so to speak. The early Hiwot Teffera would
undergo metamorphic changes akin to a caterpillar
that would become a butterfly; a revolutionary
transformation from virtually a crawling creature
on the ground to a flying and floating airborne
being, and looking down from a knowledge-based
vantage point. All these transformation took place
when Hiwot became a member of the Ethiopian
Peoples Revolutionary Youth League (EPRYL) or
simply League, EPRP’s youth organization.
“Having
plunged into the League,” Hiwot declares, “I
now saw the texture of my existence changing
rapidly and completely. I had peeled off the
layers of my former self and felt like a new
person was emerging out of the old skin. Life
became imbued with meaning. It seemed that I was
leading a conscious, purpose-driven, value-laden,
fuller and richer existence.”
The
author continues with her elegant literally
virtuoso in depicting her newly found person and I
personally found pages 157 to 162 quite moving,
and in reading these powerful statements I have
come to conclude that Hiwot indeed is a gifted
writer. Short sentences that go between prose and
poem elegantly depict the very feelings of the new
Hiwot and here is how she puts them: “A Feeling
of plentitude ascended in me”; “Almost before
I knew it, I had been tossed into a solemn but
fascinating and fulfilling adulthood”; “My
Afro shrank. I descended from my platform
shoes”; “My wandering soul finally found an
abode”; “The struggle was my present, my
future, my life.”
Hiwot
continues describing her relatively polished new
person and says, “Revolutionary songs rekindled
in me a sense of sacrifice, altruism, justice and
human dignity,” but even at this level of
transformation her love to Getachew would
intermittently visit her conscious being. “Even
from the beginning, I had seen something in him
that I had not seen in other men,” recalls Hiwot,
“As I got closer to him, I knew I was destined
to be with him. He represented to me not only the
Party but also what is best in it. The love I had
for him was meshed with the love I had for the
Party.”
The
Icarus analogy made in regards to EPRP on page 170
is a sharp depiction of the roller coaster that
the Party had encountered and it is right and
palatable to me because I have written about the
strengths and weaknesses of the Party in a similar
vein and tone and here is how Hiwot puts it:
“EPRP reached its zenith of popularity in 1976.
Its fame crossed land and water. Everybody
whispered its name. It appeared mighty and
invincible. It soared into the sky. The clouds and
the moon seem to fall under its dominion. But,
like Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and got
the wings of his chariot burned, it came too close
to the “sun” for its own good, too.”
To
be sure, the EPRP’s rise and fall is complex and
complicated. The EPRP was one sole political
organization that shook the foundations of the
Derg and became a nightmare to Mengistu
Hailemariam and Mieosne alike. It was also the
only party of its kind that had successfully
recruited members from virtually all Ethiopian
ethnic groups. But its main weakness was the urban
guerrilla warfare it conducted instead of
strengthening the EPRA, its armed wing. On top of
this major weakness, schism hit the EPRP and it
cracked itself as in self-inflicted wound; it had
confronted too many enemies that fought the Party
from without but also some that had infiltrated
the organization and began to undermine it from
within. The objective conditions surrounding the
EPRP inevitably escalated its downfall.
One
other thing I like about the book is the fact that
the author accompanies the many anecdotal
incidents with a piece of history, as for instance
“Dessie as home to Negus Michael, Lij Eyasu, and
Weizero Sihen…It had also produced students of
revolutionary credentials such as the famous
Berhanemeskel Redda and Walelign Mekonnen.”
Perhaps Hiwot is not aware of the fact that even
Meles Tecle was educated at Weizero Sihen. By the
same token, some pieces of history and
personalities like Zerai Deres (p. 176), Abune
Petros (p.181), Enda Iyesus (p. 193), and Maichew
(p.196) etc. are mentioned.
On
top of a touch of history in giving flavor to her
description of events, the author also does
appreciate the beauty of nature while at the same
time engaged in her Party assignments. On page
193, for example, Hiwot poetically explains the
splendor of the Alamata, and this is how she
presents it to the reader: “I marveled at the
beauty of the magnificent and rugged Alamata
mountain chains, particularly Amba Algahe. It was
breathtaking…It was a hair-raising experience
riding through those majestic mountains. I thought
it was soaring into the sky. I covered my face
with my netela to avoid looking below but,
unable to resist the temptation, I would now and
then look down and tremble like a leaf when I saw
buses and cars slowly climbing the formidable
mountains. …The seemingly bottomless pit would
send a chill up my spine every time I looked
down.”
Hiwot,
the born-again butterfly that was soaring on the
air would soon find herself with wounded wings and
unable to fly no more when she learned that
Berhanemeskel Redda (Ha) and Getachew Maru (Le)
were expelled from the Party central committee.
She was in “disbelief and confusion.” “I was
profoundly disturbed,” she says, “not just by
the shocking news but also by the very idea of
confusion creeping into my heart…In fact the
very fabric of my being was shaken.”
Getachew
Maru’s testimonials with respect to the
expulsion of Berhanemeskel and himself from the
Party and their difference with other central
committee members of the EPRP is clearly stated on
pages 208-09. Apparently, according to Hiwot, the
two Party leaders that officially confided the
expulsion of Ha and Le to the rank-and-file
members of the Party were Tselote Hezkias and
Girmachew Lemma. In relation to the former, Hiwot
says, “One of his own comrades would later kill
Tselote in Assimba.” It is true that his own
“comrade” killed Tselote but the so-called
comrade at the time of the homicide act was acting
insane, but an intriguing mystery followed soon
after Tselote was killed. When Tselote was shot
and killed, Tsegay Gebremedhin (Debteraw) and
Dawit Seyoum were passing by, as it was rumored
then and as it became public knowledge later on.
Coincidence? Perhaps! And they shot and killed the
murderer. Why couldn’t they apprehend the
assassin, investigate the case, and bring him
before justice? At that time I was very far away
from the crime scene but upon hearing of the
tragedy, I wrote a letter to one of the leaders
and requested an explanation on the incident but I
did not get any answer. Mysteries abound within
the EPRP!
As
I have pointed out earlier in regards to multiple
enemies of the EPRP, Hiwot correctly documents the
Derg-allied forces against the Party on page 223:
“On March 23, 1977, the Derg launched a five-day
assessa – search. The Dreg, Meison,
Nebelebal, Abyot Tebaki, the army, and Marxist
groups such as Woz League (Workers League)
and Malerid (Amharic acronym for
Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary Organization) all
rolled their sleeves up to crack down on the
common enemy – the EPRP. All the Marxist groups
around the Derg, including Meisone, had their own
differences and were in one another’s way, but
what united them was hatred of the EPRP.”
The
search and destroy policy initiated by the Derg
and its allies was designed to liquidate EPRP
members by wantonly and indiscriminately killing
Ethiopian youth and professionals suspected for
being EPRP sympathizers. Despite the senseless
mass killings of Ethiopians and in spite of “the
streets of Addis Ababa and other major cities
turned red with blood,” however, Hiwot believes
that “there was nothing enigmatic or mysterious
about death, it was simply a sacrifice.” “As
far as we were concerned, the fear of death had
long been vanquished” because the comrades have
“died so that the Party could shine”; “death
was the least price we could pay for the noble
cause; for the people…It was a sublime, even a
holy act.”
Hiwot’s
defiance and negation of death reminds me of Amiri
Baraka’s ‘Malcolm as Ideology’, in which the
writer claims that the revolutionary Malcolm X was
made after their house was burned to the ground by
racist tugs, followed by the murder of his father
by unknown people, and subsequent nervous
breakdown of his mother. For Amiri Baraka, the
young Malcolm was a “conscious victim” and I
truly believe the fearless men and women of the
EPRP were also conscious victims.
Consciousness
comes with price and the Ethiopian conscious
victims, in fact, will be killed one by one or in
groups and readers of this book should brace with
the loss of Getachew Maru, Girmachew Lemma, Tesfay
Debessai, Berhanemeskel Redda and hundreds other
Party leaders and thousands of rank-and-file
members, as it is fully documented on pages 268 to
281. After the murder of Getachew Maru,
understandably but sadly, Hiwot would countenance
the most heart wrenching sorrow: “I saw the
world I had built in the last four and half years
crumbling in front of me…the world suddenly
turned opaque…I felt life had closed on me.”
These are Blues Ethiopian style, Engurguro
(songs of sorrow) or expressions of sadness and
gloom.
Poor
Hiwot “wanted to hope in spite of doubt and
confusion clouding” her world, but
“Getachew’s brutal death had left an indelible
scar in [her] soul.” At this point, the flying
butterfly had not only lost her flying ability but
she had gone back to square one because her being
“was shattered to the core” and “revolution,
change and progress became tainted with
cynicism.” Moreover, during these trying times
Hiwot could have abandoned the Party but she
admits that she had no choice but to stay with the
Party for her own survival. I think the author is
trying to be modest here; she could in fact have
betrayed the Party, as some did, and find herself
in the camp of the Derg, but it seems to me she
was very much caught in a major dilemma like the
Ethiopian proverbial cow that gave birth to a fire
and could not lick it because it burned, and could
not abandon it because it was her only child.
Adding
insult to injury, the reign of terror consumed
Ethiopian youth and devoured Hiwot’s comrades.
Mengistu Hailemariam, the devil incarnate or Satan
in uniform and his henchmen like Melaku Tefera,
were out in full force to decimate the generation
that was pride of Ethiopia, and for this apparent
reason Hiwot says, “Hopes were dashed. Euphoria
turned to despair. The rainbow, cast on Ethiopian
skies during those revolutionary times, was rolled
up.”
The
author gives credit to her comrades who paid the
ultimate price, and she believes (and I concur)
that “they were genuine revolutionaries who
wished their country the best…they were indeed
tragic heroes. No matter what their flaws, they
were the ‘golden generation’- a generation of
‘shameless idealists’ with a great vision and
altruism. … Ethiopia will always remember them
with weeping eyes for their selflessness and
vision and with a forgiving heart for their
follies. Alas! She was orphaned of her children in
the twinkling of an eye.”
By
the time I have read three hundred pages, I have
come to conclude that Hiwot Teffera is brave,
brilliant, and broken heart (the three Bs) and yet
steadfast, staunch, and solemn (the three Ss) in
her observations and down to earth evaluations of
circumstances and phenomena much bigger than
herself. In spite of the double trilogy that I
have accorded to Hiwot, I also am compelled to
fathom her inability “to come to terms with his
(Getachew’s) death.” She is after all human!
Unfortunately, however, not only will the flying
butterfly lose her ability to fly and reverse her
metamorphic journey, but she will in fact would
become a caterpillar again and find herself in a
dungeon known as Keftegna and later at Kerchele.
These are two prison houses but it is in the
latter that Hiwot will meet many of her comrades
including Tadelech Hailemichael, the widow of
Berhanemeskel Redda. She would be delighted to see
Tadelech but she would also witness the most
horrific torture at Kerchele.
The
Keftegna and Kerchele prisons, by default, would
propel Hiwot’s psychological makeup to a
completely different angle, but it is going to be
for the better because, oddly enough, it is at
Kerchele that Hiwot will explore her third new
personality. In fact, the imprisoned new Hiwot
reminds me of Gwendolyn Brook’s ‘Poetic
Realism’, especially her poem entitled ‘To
Disembark’, the message of which could easily be
attributed to Hiwot’s disengagement from her
routine party assignments. “Slowly, I felt a new
person surging in me,” says Hiwot, and “I
gained confidence in the knowledge that can define
and redefine myself. I could determine who I
wanted to be and where I wanted to go. I did not
need a Party or a group of people to tell me who I
am or where I am going. I tasted the beauty of
freedom. I embraced it and vowed to stand by it no
matter what the ramifications.”
Despite
the pleasure of ‘the taste of freedom’,
however, “life did not make sense,” and at
times Hiwot had nightmares associated with the
continuous death of her comrades and she even
thought that death was hovering over her as well.
It goes without saying that the death of Getachew
was most devastating to Hiwot but the death of
Berhanemeskel also “felt like an end of an
era” to her. Hiwot is a sensible revolutionary
who had not lost her humanity in spite of her
exposure to dehumanizing practices perpetrated by
the Derg murderers. She even took care of a
tortured and helpless prison-mate by the name
Emebet who happened to be the wife of a Meisone
central committee member. Irrespective of
ideological differences and mutual destruction
between EPRP and Meisone, Hiwot thought it would
have been “the ultimate betrayal of [her]
humanity” to stand by idly while Emebet suffers.
I
wish the EPRP leaders could have emulated
Hiwot’s conscience and moral imperative and
extend it to their comrades who entertained
different ideas other than theirs. I wish the EPRP
leadership had extended some humanity and
camaraderie respect to Berhanemeskel Redda after
the Derg executed him. On the contrary, as I have
stated in my debut book, “Upon his death,
instead of mourning, the EPRP celebrated and
officially declared ‘Death of A Renegade’ in Abyot.”
Berhanemeskel Redda could have made a mistake and
to err is human, but to condemn the one time
legendary and selfless leader of the Ethiopian
Student Movement and one of the founders of the
EPRP is tantamount to trashing Ethiopian history
and betraying the very cause that the EPRP stood
and fought for.
As
indicated on pages 391 to 402, prison life after
all was not a completely shattering ambience.
Thanks to the many political prisoners, schooling,
self-reliant initiatives, social interactions,
debates, sense of humor, and stores such as Hebret
Souk flourished. The political prisoners
contributed to human dignity especially in
humanizing convicts of all sorts. Prison life was
a blessing in disguise, and as Hiwot correctly
puts it, the prison experience reflected, “proof
of the triumphal power of the human spirit.”
After
page 406, the reader would be forced to enter
dialogue with Hiwot in her quest for human nature.
The author has physically encountered convicts and
murderers like Zinash, Zergi, Bogeye, and Biri.
One of the crimes committed by one of the convicts
that comes as a revelation and a surprise to me is
that of Biri, who murdered her husband and buried
him in the same house she lived with her “life
partner” when he was still alive; I thought this
kind of crime was only palpable in Western
societies and I never thought it would occur in
relatively puritan and religious societies like
Ethiopia. At any rate, these kind of crimes could
have served as impetus behind Hiwot’s attempt to
explore “the mystery of the human mind.”
Interestingly, however, the very person who
presides over mass killings was Mengistu
Hailemariam who also murdered Emperor Haile
Selassie and buried him beneath his office. So
what is the difference between Biri and Mengistu?
The answer could be one small devil that commits
homicide and another giant Satan who is
responsible for the death of thousands and upon
thousands of Ethiopians, although I must admit
that Mengistu was not a lone actor and there were
his henchmen who were known to the public and
there were also some invisible hands whom history
has yet to expose.
Human
nature is complex, but it seems to me humans for
the most part are good in spite of the tinge of
monstrosity embedded in all of us. Martin Luther
King, Jr., in one of his sermons, ‘Love, Law,
and Civil Disobedience’, once said, “there is
within human nature an amazing potential for
goodness. There is with human nature something
that can respond to goodness…there is a strange
dichotomy of disturbing dualism within human
nature.” The ‘potential for goodness’ in
humans is what I already have stated above, and
the ‘disturbing dualism’ is what Hiwot
encountered and observed among the convicts at
Kerchele. In point of fact, on page 423, Hiwot
says, “I learned in Kerchele that I could still
believe in the beauty of life and the fundamental
goodness of people.”
There
is some soul that defies death in all of us, and
it is this very soul that kept Hiwot moving with
full vigor and stamina, and above all with
gratitude. “I am grateful for all the good
things I learned in the Party,” says Hiwot,
“It helped me tone up with discipline,
commitment, hard work, composure in the face of
hardship, and detachment from material
possession.”
In
regards to the cholera outbreak at Kerchele that
claimed many lives, Hiwot believes it was an
“existential threat” that, in turn, was
unacceptable to her. Death had become a common
occurrence and second nature and Hiwot was not
afraid of death, but dying of cholera could be
quite astounding to her. She says, “It had me
thinking that it would be a tragedy to die of
dysentery in prison after surviving the Derg’s
bullet and after being there for eight years.”
I can perfectly understand Hiwot’s frightened
soul desperately trying to grapple with the
etiology of death associated with cholera, and
that reminds me of what I have read to my students
in class two decades ago. It was Claude McKay’s
‘If We Must Die’ and here I offer to the
reader so that s/he appreciates the contradiction
between our wish and the conundrum of death. I
truly believe that ‘If We Must Die’ written a
long time ago during the Harlem Renaissance is
very much relevant to the fallen heroes of the
EPRP:
If We Must Die
If we must die, let us not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mud and hungry
dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die.
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though
dead!
O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us
brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one
deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderers,
cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting
back!
I
am delighted to have read and reviewed Tower In
The Sky. I am grateful to the unspoken
embodiment of the universe that enabled Hiwot to
overcome the pain of existence, the prosaic
disillusionment of realities, the political
engagement fraught with frustration, and the
endless nightmare that engulfed Ethiopia during
the Derg rule. Tower In The Sky, in fact,
is a monument on earth for the fallen heroes. Tower
In The Sky is not only a vibrant sophisticated
synthesis of the Ethiopian revolutionary period
and experience, but it is also the repository of
hopes and aspirations. I would be remiss and
unqualified if I recommend Tower In The Sky
only for accolades and a ‘must read book’,
without suggesting a grand literary prize for
Hiwot Teffera.
All
Rights Reserved. Copyright © Institute of
Development and Education for Africa (IDEA, Inc.)
2013. Dr. Ghelawdewos Araia can be contacted for
educational and constructive feedback via dr.garaia@africanidea.org
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