Grazmatch Tsegu

This reprint has been published with the permission of the publisher, The Red Sea Press

About Alemseged Tesfai and Two Weeks in the Trenches

In the mid-fifties, Villaggio Paradiso was a lot different from what it is today. All the villas to the west of the Asmara-Keren road have now totally replaced the government barracks of those days. The barracks had so much space between them that children could run and play at will.

The big building to the east of the road was two separate buildings with a dirt road between them. These were joined to form the present structure only much later. The dirt road used to lead to a buttons factory half a kilometer away and then on to Emba Galliano some distance farther east. The factory was a smelly place where animal bones were crushed and processed to make all types of button. The two buildings I mentioned were actually the monastery of the Cisterncensi or Sitawiayn, a Catholic association of the order of San Bernardo. In the same big compound was a small church and a few government houses. We used to live in one of these.

The mid-fifties was a time when every child in Paradiso was crazy about Ghilia Mariano, the great Eritrean goal keeper whose actual name was Ghilamichael Tesfamariam. He had a coach called Wedi Libi, whom we used to watch training Ghilia on the roughest of grounds. He would throw balls at the young goalkeeper in quick succession and expect him to dash, swing and swerve to catch them, regardless the height or direction. Every child wanted to emulate Ghilia Mariano. So, bouncing tennis balls against the walls of Villaggio Paradiso and flying into the air to catch them was a favorite pastime. Going home with torn flesh and bruised knees and elbows was also a mark of great things to come. We called the game, “Ghilia's acrobatics.”

One day, I swung into the sky only to miss a ball I had just bounced against the wall of the Cistercensi. It was a bad fall. Spitting dust from my mouth, I started to run after my tennis ball, when a wheelbarrow that I had neither seen nor heard coming tripped me over. After a somersault that even Ghilia might have envied, I came down crashing to the ground. The barrow overturned too. Animal bones of all description—jaws, arms and legs, skulls, ribs and thigh-bones—literally scattered all over me. I rolled away scared and waited for the wheelbarrow man to beat me up.

“Rise, rise, my son, and clean your clothes,” came a gentle voice. The tone might have been from one's own father or from a kind teacher. Even at that age, I could not expect it from a wheelbarrow pusher. It sounded refined and civilized, so I looked up to stare at him.

Tall and thin, he wore a hat. His tattered safari coat and his patched khaki trousers were surprisingly spotless. His sandals were equally worn out. Had I been asked to guess his age then, I would probably have put him at around a hundred. I doubt now if he could have gone beyond sixty.

As I got up to dust my shirt and shorts, he bent down in obvious pain to put the barrow back in place. His movements were slow. He collected the bones, re-arranged them on the barrow and, without a word, started to push it down, towards the buttons factory. Our house was some fifty meters from where I had fallen. I followed hm up to our gate. The dirt road was full of stones sticking up from the ground. The barrow shook and made a lot of noise as it jumped over them. It was too short for him. He had to stoop way down in order to push it and, as it shook, he seemed to tremble along.

From that day on, most of the kids in the neighborhood started to take an interest on the gentle wheelbarrow pusher who also sold bones. His punctuality was amazing. At close to five in the afternoon, we would expect to hear the sound of the barrow and the bones jumping on it and it would be sure to come. We would then stop our games and accompany the old man halfway to the buttons factory—up to the juncture that led to the Cistercensi school. He never seemed to mind. At the edge of the juncture was a huge eucalyptus tree under which he used to take a rest. He never talked to us, but he seemed to enjoy watching us with very kind and appreciating eyes.

There was, however, one peculiarity about him. Whenever he went past the two buildings towards our houses, he would stop and tilt his hat forward so that it covered his eyebrows and camouflaged part of his face. He would then bow his head and, with his chin almost tucking his chest, pass the houses totally unrecognizable. It was the older kids who first noticed this. Fascinated, the younger ones simply followed him. We had never seen his type of wheelbarrow pusher.

One day, when most of the neighborhood children had strayed somewhere else, my sister was playing alone. He stopped near where she had been and, as usual, started to work on his camouflage. He watched her long and carefully. A piece of bone had fallen off as he was stoping the barrow. My sister ran over and put the bone back on its place.

“God bless you, my daughter. May you have many children who will run errands for you,” he said to her. After a pause, he asked her for the names of our parents. She told him.

“Where are your older brothers and sisters,” he asked her next, even mentioning their names. She told him again. Without another word, he left with his face hidden.

My sister could not wait for the rest of us to come. When she told us what he had said, all four of us siblings raced home to tell my mother about this strange revelation from our strange friend. Everyone talked at the same time. Mother frowned till her eyebrows met.

“Who could he be?” she asked. “Why didn't you ask for his name?”

“He rarely talks,” we replied.

“What does he look like? Give me an indication. Does he have a scar on his cheek? Is one of his teeth missing?”

“He doesn't have a scar.”

“How do you know? You can't even see his face....” We almost came to blows.

“Then who could he be?” Mother kept musing. “A wheelbarrow man who knows your father and my older children!” Mother became concerned.

She was right. This was the fifties, and the Second World War was still very recent history. Hundreds of Eritrean family, friends and neighbors who had gone to the Italian campaigns in Libya, Somalia and Ethiopia had not returned. Individuals reported dead and duly commemorated were occasionally popping up; some were being re-reported as still living, married to some “Galla” women somewhere in Ethiopia....One could not give up on the missing. Anticipation, expectation and hope were still in place. Mother had cousins and in-laws who had not come back. Therefore, her concern and interest in the man with the wheelbarrow.

When Father was told about the incident with my sister, he paused to think. He was, of course, not as excited about it as Mother had been. When Mother started to go down the list of names that were in her head throughout the afternoon, however, he got irritated. “And now we are guaranteed a sleepless night,” he cried out. “All the people you are mentioning are dead. The date and place of their deaths have been identified. Are you proposing to bring them back from the grave?”

“How about your brother, Woldie? We have not been told about him.”

“That's preposterous! How can my brother, Woldie, be still alive and pass by my house, pushing a wheelbarrow?”

“All right then, who is this man?”