Ade Fana

      During our three years in Eritrea, East Africa, I tried very hard to use the Tigrinya language. It's a Semitic tongue with its own alphabet and its own phonemes, and it kept my vocal chords in a constant state of culture shock. An activity as simple as buying an egg was a real workout. In English the word is as fundamental as the thing itself. But in Tigrinya, it's an onomatopoeia: the sound, I was told, that a hen makes when laying the egg. Very difficult to hatch in an American throat; it always sounded like I was ordering a Coca Cola.

      There were two kinds of eggs on the shelf: small and brown or big and white. The grocer urged me to choose small. “They are the best,” he insisted; “The white ones are big, yes! But not so good. Those chickens eat only one kind of food. These chickens--” his hand swept over the brown eggs--” eat whatever they can find. A variety!” True; chickens in the capital city were given great range. Still I preferred white. Especially when I got to know Ade Fana.

       To me, Ade Fana represented what was most endearing about Eritrea: toughness, humor, simplicity, dignity, an open door and a low stool to sit on because, best of all, there was always time to chat. When I came for eggs, she greeted me with three strong kisses: right cheek, left cheek, right cheek again. But she never gushed or fawned. Her manner was as blunt as her wit was sharp, and she quartered no nonsense. She was Socrates in a shawl. One day I reported being startled by a mouse in the night. What did Ade Fana think about mice in the bedroom? She shrugged. “What is a mouse, or a rat? What harm can they do? You just say Shoo! Now a snake in the house...Ay!

      My favorite moment was early in our acquaintance. I think she was still sorting out who I was. I was the first “Italian” to frequent her home; I attempted to speak her language; I was kenisha (the word for Protestant that still connoted “heretic” in the villages). Ade Fana shuffled up very close to me, tilted her head back and peered under her glasses to look into my mouth. I thought a compliment about my Tigrinya was coming. Instead she said approvingly, “Of all the Italians I have seen, you have the straightest teeth.”

      Fana and her husband HabteMariam lived through the long decades of war. Like so many of their peers, bad news came in swift succession, the messengers of Job running up to their door again and again: first, one soldier son killed, then another, then—perhaps most tragically, for it was after liberation—a third was shot down, and their daughter-in-law died suddenly from grief.

      Ade Fana was a wisp of a woman, slender features, thin shoulders, swift little hands. Her husband was tall, stooped, big-boned. His eyesight was clouded by cataracts. Except for pumping water, he mostly sat in his chair, tended by his wife. One day I found Ade Fana sitting on a stool in front of him. She was holding his big bare foot in her hand and using a razor blade to cut away his corns. Not surprisingly, neither of them flinched.

      Though he was nearly blind and deaf, HabteMariam (his name meant “riches of Mary”) walked to and from church several times a week. To do so, he had to cross the busiest road in town, guided only by a hand-carved prayer staff. It was no small wonder, this parting of airport traffic for Aba HabteMariam. His wife went at different times. During the fast seasons it was twice a day, every day, five a.m. and again at noon. Together they kept the fasts, which lasted for weeks and consumed nearly half the year. They would eat no meat, no milk products, no eggs. From drar (evening meal) till fadus (noontime next day) they ate nothing at all and did not take even a sip of water.

      One day I heard that Ade Fana was sick; they had taken her to the hospital. (At that time--the early 90s--the one place you did not wish for your friends to go was the war-wasted city hospital). Her granddaughter told me she suspected it was all that fasting; Ade Fana just got too weak and dehydrated. One couldn't think of Ade Fana, grown thinner and at risk, without theological concerns. An elderly woman, frail as a dry reed, walking two miles fasting, standing through the long service fasting, listening for hours to the drone of an ancient language that she could not understand. A splintered cane at best, but she grasped it firmly.

      When my friend was back from the hospital, I visited her. It was good to see her smile, though in an uncharacteristic pose: resting on the big bed inside the modern house with her feet up, being waited on. She looked happy when I gave her the gift of a Tigrinya Bible, and she nodded approval when I read aloud from it.

      In the way of all flesh, the chickens eventually stopped laying and had to be eaten (in the proper season, of course). Ade Fana bought new ones, and the price for their eggs remained 60 centimes, no discounts. But you could still come sit on a stool and chat. It was a very good deal for the largest, whitest eggs in town.

Poem for a Young Friend

I have a Scottish friend whose little boy once left a sock at my house. His Scottish background had nothing to do with losing the sock (in fact, I think most Scots hold onto their socks very tightly). It was only that his foot was very small and the sock very light. I decided to mail it to him with a poem, because a little sock in an envelope seemed to need accompaniment. The boy's name is Rhuidrih, which is approximately pronounced "Rory;" it means "Red King." I needed a poem about a king who lost footwear, and as I worked on it, it got more serious than the ditty I originally intended. Here it is, with a variant of the Gaelic spelling, which I hope my young friend won't mind.

Victory of the Red King

King Rhodri, challenged by the Dane,

Rode forth his title to retain

While nobles followed at his will

To thwart the treacherous foe.

To thwart the foe his nobles rode

While in the rear his poor troops strode

Shoeless, tattered, loyal still,

Foot soldiers 'gainst the foe.

Foot soldiers 'gainst the foe were they;

King Rhodri tarried in the way,

Surveyed his troops, then cried out “Halt!

Behold these peasants' feet!

“These peasants' feet do stain our road,

Dragged for miles 'neath heavy load

Their steps of blood the battle mark,

Yet none do beg retreat.”

Yea none did beg retreat nor flew;

The king, amazed, his great sword drew;

“Hark, noblemen—this day our might

Is writ in peasant blood.

“This peasant blood doth show the way,

Nor sword nor spear will win the day,

Nor horse nor shield the foe will rout--

But this great sacrifice--

Great sacrifice, beyond all price,

Tho' hidden in a pauper's guise.”

Then king, his nobles to inspire,

Removed his own shoes.

Removed his own shoes, then held

Full forth his sword and gilded shield,

With naked feet he led his band

Of nobles high and low.

Nobles high and low went forth

To battle on the enemy turf,

And scornful Danes did point and jeer

At this, a weakened foe.

A weakened foe, or so they thought

Not knowing victory would be bought

By men emboldened by their king

Who unshod took the field.

Unshod he took the battlefield

Where scornful Dane was sure he'd yield,

Mocks and jeers, like javelins thrown,

Did meet the hero band.

But hero band did lift the sword,

The spear, the bow, and at the word

Of their dear king, with fearsome shout

They broke the enemy line.

Broke enemy line; but scornful Dane

Made one last, lasting mark of pain:

The royal steed's white flanks were smeared

With blood from Rhodri's feet.

For Rhodri's feet, in battle fierce,

Alone of all his men's were pierced;

His nobles, peasants, all could stand,

But not their sovereign lord.

And this is how the tale doth go:

That Honor honored those below.

Kingly feet, once well-prepared,

Humility caused to be bared.

Miming the lowly, the Red King gave

To every man, soul to be brave.

Binyam

In May, 1993, our family moved to Eritrea, East Africa, expecting many years of service there. We had three children (ages 5, 3 and newborn) when we arrived. In 1996 we came back for the birth of our fourth, expecting to return in six months. But politics in the land closed the door. We have not been able to revisit Eritrea since. Along with memories of its sweet hospitality, warm friendships, and God's faithfulness, I often have keen regrets and questions about my own contribution to the good of the people. This reflection comes out of that experience. The end is a reference to Genesis 35, which may or may not be used well, but it is intended as an expression of hope. Binyam would be in his mid-20s now, and likely forced into unrelieved military service, along with the majority of his peers.

The small East African nation of Eritrea ranks among the world's poorest, but it has a treasure that sets it apart: a capital city built above the clouds. Asmara sits on a plain at seven thousand feet. Palm trees line the streets, and gardens manage to bloom year round. You do not realize the height at which you live until you drive a mile or so beyond the last street. Then you can look down at a thousand rugged peaks in every direction. Moist air from the Red Sea gathers in countless valleys, filling them with white, promising clouds for this dry land.

Our family lived in Asmara for three years. Afternoon drives were our main source of diversion. When we parked our car to stretch our legs, we first stopped some local shepherd boy to ask if there were any land mines nearby. Eritrea had recently won independence from Ethiopia in what was called “Africa's longest war,” and the damage of those thirty years was everywhere. Tanks rusted on the roadsides. Shepherd boys were among the wounded. Our children could not race along a path freely.

In a freshly injured land the people often appear most beautiful. Captivated expatriates described the Eritreans as dignified and hardworking, handsome, courageous and hospitable. Outside of Asmara, herders and farmers lived much as in biblical times. In the city, young men and women craved exposure to the Western world from which they had been cut off. They had grown up in a besieged city—once described as the world's largest prison—and their older siblings had either escaped abroad or been killed, one by one, in the war. Relief groups were hurrying into the country to help rebuild. Missionaries forced to flee decades earlier returned, gray-haired, still in love with the slender, dark-eyed people of the land.

While my husband taught English and Bible, I carried my own small load, never more literally than on my weekly trip to market. I shopped mostly on foot. I knew my favorite vendors by name. Their one-room shops were crowded if three customers stepped in at once. Hefting five or more bags and baskets, I took home kilos of potatoes, cabbages, oranges, beef, bread, lentils, and imported canned goods. By noon my arms ached. I was dusty. The sun felt too direct, and I wished I had help.

Help stood on the street corner one Saturday. Catching sight of me from half a block away, a small boy ran up and stood in my path. He looked up expectantly, as though we were long familiar with each other. I smiled and tried to pass on my way. As slight as his figure was, his persistence was strong. He followed me and soon had grabbed the handle of one of my bags. His dark hand kept near my pale one, and he tugged for control.

I looked down and saw that the boy was barefoot. This surprised me. As poor as the nation was, the children of Eritrea usually wore shoes. Almost every family could afford the kind of sandal worn by the liberation soldiers, manufactured from cheap rubber. But this boy's toes pressed against the hot cement. The edges of his soles were ash grey.

“Hansab, hansab—Wait.” The boy's arm went slack for a moment; he stopped to listen to me speak his own language. “What is your name?”

“Binyam.”

“Binyam.” I let him take two of the bags—his weight in potatoes alone—and we walked together to the taxi stop. “Here is far enough,” I told him.

I had exactly ten birr left in my pocket, and I needed it all for my fare home. I wondered what to do with my unsolicited employee. Very carefully, he set my bags at the curb. His clothes were torn and unwashed. The dust of the streets had settled in his hair, so that the overall effect of his person was of a field in drought. His name meant Benjamin, 'son of the right hand.'

“Where do you live?”

“Akria.” It was a neighborhood far on the north edge, where no foreigners lived. I had been through it only once.

“Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“Eight.”

I thanked him for his work and said, “Binyam, I want to give you something. But I do not have it with me. If you come here--” I told him a familiar street address and explained it was a church meeting place--”tomorrow morning, I will have some shoes for you. I want to give you shoes. I want you to hear the word of God also. Your name is in the Bible, did you know that?”

Binyam came to the church, and I met him at the front steps with a pair of shoes. They fit him perfectly; as I had guessed, he wore the same size as my son. During Sunday School I watched for a look of pleasure on Binyam's face and for a new pride in his posture. He did not seem particularly interested in speaking with me; he quietly took his place among the other children and sang songs and heard stories. It was good for him, I thought, to be off the streets and in this crowded, happy room. Afterward I invited Binyam to come every week.

He came just once more; he came in the same dusty clothes, and he came barefoot. When I asked him, “Where are your shoes, Binyam?” he looked away and moved into the group of children out of my reach. All that hour I was distracted by his feet. When he did not attend the next week or any week afterward, I could not get him off my mind. The absence of the slight, shoeless boy was bigger than his presence had been. I kept imagining scenes of great turbulence for Binyam. Had other boys beaten him for his shoes? Had his father punished him for taking a gift from an unknown, condescending foreigner? I wondered if he had sold the shoes for money. I wondered what had happened to the shoes that I had given in the name of God. What had happened to the boy? Were his soles still the color of ash? What had happened, what had my own hands done, to his soul?

Many expatriates published articles on the virtues of this new nation, and many, like us, hoped to stay and work for several years. But the day came when the government, made up of the guerrilla fighters who had fought for independence, declared that all foreign relief agencies were illegal. Rumors spread about boxes of donated clothes arriving from the kingdom across the Sea, lined with militant religious tracts. The national press reminded the people that by their own will they had won independence, and by their own hands they would rebuild. The country was kicking off its shoes, and few outsiders knew where they went.

The people were left as poor as ever, but for a while the newspapers reported their jubilance. There were more battles fought along the border. My husband's work ended abruptly; we returned to raise our family in the States. But still I tell myself the stories of that city above the clouds. I think through the weighty times and the places we walked. And I remember Binyam, in the heat and in the dust, my burden upon his small shoulders, son of my sorrow, son of the right hand.

Down the Road

My oldest brother claims he tried to attend Woodstock, but I don't believe him. In August of 1969 we lived in rural Illinois, and Randy was only twelve. He would never have made it to the junction of Route 6 without being noticed; anyone would have realized that a freckle-faced kid with a buzz cut and a makeshift headband needed an immediate ride home in a pick-up truck.

There is further proof: all the photos taken of him during Woodstock are at the county 4-H fair. He may have failed at hitch-hiking, but he was a blue-ribbon winner at showing his horse, Misty. Dad had bought Misty for all of us to ride, but I was scared of her. It seems silly and unreasonable now, because I love the smell, feel and grandeur of a beautiful horse. But I was very young when we had Misty and was witness to a terrible event.

A family was visiting us, old college friends of our parents, and we children were expected to play with their children. Young David was my age. He was pale and dorky, and I stayed away from him. This made his visit dull, so my father offered him a little ride around the yard on Misty.

He set David in the saddle and showed him how to hang on. But, as my father later put it, Misty "took off a little faster than expected," and before my father could catch the reins, she trotted under the clothesline. David was immediately decapitated. I can still hear him howl. I will never forget the horror I felt while hiding my eyes and picturing his slitted throat. Later my dad scolded me for not even coming out to have iced lemonade with our guests before they went. There were no snicker-doodles left, either, so all in all it was a very bad day.

Years later, at the University of Illinois, I ran into David. I had seen many cute boys on campus, but unfortunately David was not one of them. He was still pale and, I'm sorry to say, still a bit dorky. But to his credit, he told me he was off to seminary to become a Lutheran minister. They wear collars in that denomination, and so it may just be that Misty gave him a head start in his career.

With the exception of my horse experience (or lack of), I was and am a loyal farm child. Of course, so is my brother. We recently had a heated debate with our parents about the barn.  Mom and Dad thought it had become unsightly; they wanted to tear it down. We were up in arms; I wept, and Randy argued with all the passion of his thwarted Woodstock days. We had memories, we protested, and in the name of all that must be salvaged in this crass, urbanized world, it was unconscionable to delete a barn. For our parents, it was a matter of safety and maintenance costs. And they rightly pointed out that, since their offspring lived hundreds of miles away, we were hardly around to help take care of it.

We had to grant that the barn isn't terrifically interesting from the outside; as barns go, it's pretty nondescript. But inside, there are hand-hewn beams with the original chisel marks; there are old hooks where milk pails were hung; the top plank of one stall is worn into a polished curve from the broad neck of a workhorse leaning over for a treat. The main problem is location. Unlike other barns, it doesn't sit back and preside nobly over house and yard. It sits between the house and the road. It's a view-blocker. Apparently great-great grandpa Otto thought the county road would be laid east-west; unfortunately the township changed its plans after he had dug his foundation, and the road ran north-south, just eight feet from the barn, parallel to its long side. Otto likely cursed the council in German from under his beard.

In our family feud, I didn't bare my real motives for wanting to save the barn. It was its very position, blocking the view of the road, that made it romantic. There was a boy I dated in high school who drove twenty-five miles across the county to come fetch me for a movie. I had all the symptoms—palpitations, preoccupations, stabbing pains—of deep love, and was always ready early and watching out the window for his car.

What I could see from that window was the interstate bridge. I-80 was just three hundred yards from our door (two hundred from the end of the barn), so our blacktop road passed over it. A visitor's car would crest the hill; you spotted it there; it would head down and then be briefly hidden by the barn. Then it turned into our driveway and its tires crackled over the gravel until it came to a stop.

Saturday nights I watched for the boy's car. It was winter and already dark when he came, so I would see his headlights first. There was no more thrilling sight in the world than those headlights on the bridge. They descended; they disappeared. Long, long seconds later they reappeared. Then the slow turn into our yard, then him standing on the doorstep and me already wondering about a kiss at the end of the night. When eventually this boy stopped asking me out, I thought I was demolished.

Our arguments saved the barn. But now I feel a new sadness. I've realized that over the decades, my parents have stood at that window countless times watching for their children to come. The rebel teenager. The troubled college student. The newly engaged pair. The first grandchild. The one who kept saying, “Maybe next Christmas.” A car to look for at the top of the bridge with its lights on in the dark, so close to home and yet, for a time, disappearing. Finally the blessed sight of that person walking towards the front door, which was already being held open by my father's hand.

Museum in Santa Marta

In Bolivar's room the clock is stopped
At 9:05
The precise time, says a sign,
That the conqueror died.

On a chalk white wall
A clean gold sword and a poet's ode
Hang and speak always, only
At 9:05.

Every day Bolivar is dead.
At 9:05 his bed is empty
And there is no trace of the doctor
With his ear to the sinking chest,
His finger on the chilling wrist,
Remembering to draw out his watch.

But what if he had only heard
His own pulse? Or missed a breath,
Arriving at the wrong time,
Like a harried visitor showing up
Just as the museum closes for the night?

At 9:05 the continent is conquered.
The sun crosses borders
And casts new shadows
Over bed, sword, ode
In the room where Bolivar was stopped.

The ode repeats itself: 
Require la voz del viento
Y el pecho del mar--
Every hour, on the hour,
One needs
The voice of the wind
And the chest of the sea
To praise this liberator.

But it is still 9:05
And Bolivar has died
And the wind coughs and staggers across the land
And the moon tilts and thrusts
And drags the bare sea out
Like a corpse,
Like so much wasted skin.

Victoria's Apologetic

When my daughter Victoria was six months old, I caught her in a strange act. She was in her walker, lolling near the bookcase, when suddenly she bolted upright, eyes wide, and began babbling at the air. If I hadn't been with her, I would have guessed that a long-lost acquaintance had burst into the room and completely astounded her. She kept up an insistent babble, looking in turns absorbed and fanatic, subdued then newly alarmed, waving her arms and lifting the chin of her hairless little head. She repeated this inexplicable behavior on several occasions.  
 

Another parent might have dismissed it as teething. But to me it was something more wonderful. What could produce this blend of bewilderment and ecstasy, sudden fear followed by sudden calm, near anger turning to wild joy? Perhaps there were guardian angels after all, and Victoria was conversing with hers. 

It was not the first time my daughter reminded me of things I had forgotten about the world. Once I was holding her in front of the hall mirror. Suddenly I sneezed. Victoria looked straight into my face, with the same astonishment with which she had regarded the angel, and began to laugh. It was a genuine fit of uncontrollable laughter: tears filling her eyes, nose scrunched, breathless snuffles. It was hilarious to her that a dust fleck and a facial grimace should produce such a sound. Later I watched her display the same unrestrained glee over the most ordinary things: a cat rubbing against my leg, a carton of yogurt tipping over, water rising in the bathtub. My daughter had discovered comedy, and it was the finest thing life had to offer.

As a mother at home with my child, I often felt that the world with all its mystery had been opened to me. The latest example was this relationship between comedy and creation. Comedy is incongruity: a thing happens that could, imaginably, have happened another way. For a mind new to the world, most things fall into this category. Gravity. The location of ears. The moon hanging above the trees. Yawns and bellows from the mouths of furry beasts.

When I discussed this with my husband (a seminary student at the time), he told me that Victoria and I had stumbled upon the classic philosophical question of causality. Just because Cause A regularly produces Effect B doesn't mean there is an iron-clad, logical relationship between the two. When you toss the Fisher Price toy down the stairs, it isn't necessary that it rolls. G. K. Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, presents the idea this way:

All the terms used in the science books, “law,” “necessity,” “order,” “tendency,” and so on, are really unintellectual, because they assume an inner synthesis which we do not possess. The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, “charm,” “spell,” “enchantment.” They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.

Babies sense this. For them, rules of nature are not yet rules, but wonders. What to adults is simple cause and effect, to them is occasion for laughter. Because they are fresh to creation, babies have the purest, most undiluted sense of humor. The supreme funny bone, if you will. Why should such a cause have such an effect? One-plus-one always equals two; we can imagine it no other way. But when Daddy steps up on a chair and his head is suddenly bumping the ceiling, it's funny. When Mommy cracks an egg into a bowl, why should the yoke go down? Why not up? It's all startling and novel. To Victoria, it was hilariously illogical. Surely Somebody schemed it.

Victoria's amusement with the world was her own apologetic. It was her evidence that this is a created place and the Creator smiled when He thought it up. Because of her, I could imagine God's mirth when He told the homely caterpillar to sprout rainbow wings, or the satiny blossom to unravel and become crisp fruit. I imagined Him chuckling at a glossy wave turning to white foam. Or lightning leaping across the clouds. The tiny mustard seed sheltering the birds of the air.

Mr. Hoyt Bowman was an elderly usher at our church, whose self-appointed task was to distract fussy babies brought to the back of the sanctuary. One Sunday, Victoria's eye was caught by his shiny black patent leathers. To amuse her, he began sashaying them together in little zigzags. Victoria was captivated by the bouncing black tips. He popped them up and down, heel to toe. Victoria chuckled. Here, comedy and art found their perfect blend. Light and motion were noticed for what they truly are: created things. Victoria smiled as if to say, “Now that is original.” And of course, in the truest sense, it was.  

In her second year, the complexity of Victoria's nature became more apparent. The poetic “clouds of glory” which had seemed to trail her showed up soiled after all, and with the rest of humanity, she more and more tugged at the world to pull it her way. There was willful defiance of what to us were perfectly logical commands: that the beans stay on the tray, the milk in the cup, the doll out of the toilet.

Still, she was full of mirth. She reminded us that there is a Creator. The universe is ordered by Him. In Him all things hold together as by a spell. The ancient psalmist never doubted, and neither should we, that one day the rivers will clap their hands and the mountains sing together for joy at His coming. Until then, we shouldn't sneeze at the thought of angels in our midst.

Odyssey

Suppose you didn't hear that Bill Coggers died last night.

Is that right? Just talked to him yesterday.

I asked, 'Do you still have that old flintlock?'

He'd told me it was from Napoleon's time.

Now how would he know a thing like that?

Better to die an old man in your own village

Than to fall fighting in battle.

His comrades protest:

Achilles, you will lose your soul,

You will turn our world upside down

Believing this!

Still, he tells them, better to lie down at home

Than be slain as a king robbed of spoil.

How old was Bill, about 50?

He showed me an old coin once.

'I paid a hundred dollars for that.' Then he says,

'Do you think it's worth it?'

I said, The way I look at it, Bill,

If it's worth it to you,

It's worth it.

Odysseus rages back:

To live upright you have to shake the fist,

Plunder villages,

Take the sword!

Better to wage war far from home

Than live in peace, with just one piece of gold.

Gold coins surround like sand the man who takes a city.

Old Bill.

Used to work in that factory, remember?

Could hold a janitor job at least.

He lost it, remember,

Took his flintlock to work.

They saw it in his car and fired him.

Probably just looking for an excuse.

Big heart, though.

Used to let school kids hold his rifles.

You couldn't help liking Bill.

To be feared for your sword and bow

Makes the love of one woman sweeter,

Binds her loyalty.

Like an idiot boy breaking open a wasps' nest

Is the man who breaks that truth.

Didn't our king sacrifice his own daughter

To gain fair winds to Troy?

To the field, to the field, before the bed!

Bert Doty felt sorry for him,

Knew he didn't mean anything by that gun.

So he paid Bill to drive him to a restaurant now and then.

Bill didn't mind just waiting.

At least no one thought he minded.

So that was it? Just last night you say?

Just last night. Just heard about it. Found him in a field face down.

Old Bill. Never did much,

But wouldn't hurt a fly. Want to grab a coffee?

No, Jane's waiting at home.

I am the man of twists and turnings

Who outwits the gods

Seduces princesses

Entrances with my tales.

For what is a man without a great story?

More useless than a rusting sword.

Forever they will sing of Odysseus,

Who held the world upright

Fighting to his death.