One Ethiopian Boy
The following is an excerpt from my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, published in 2006. It was written in my travel journal on May 3, 1985.
A few hours on Friday afternoon before Shabbat began at sundown, Reuven came to my room to get help writing letters to some of the Americans who had visited our boarding school. My radio was on and a report came on from BBC about the Ethiopian government closing a refugee camp in the Gondar region and sending everyone back home even though there was no food. He asked me for some details his minimal English couldn’t pick out.
As I spoke, his brown eyes began to deepen. It was as though the covering over a well had opened and I was being drawn inward and downward into the depth of his private pain and suffering. He told me that his grandparents were still there, and said simply and practically, “But, what can I do?”
I had to go off to do an errand and told him he could stay there and listen to the radio while I was gone. When I returned, he was sprawled across the bed sideways holding the small radio and looking like a very sad old man-child. Although Reuven was a child to whom tears often came quickly, I saw that this pain was both familiar and deeper than tears. I knew he had also lost a young brother who hadn’t survived the refugee camps.
I was awed by the depth of pain in his eyes, and I felt admiration and respect for the internal resources for physical and psychic survival that he had developed over three years in Sudan before getting to Israel. I also felt guilty for having brought the news to his attention. I suggested that, in the time remaining before dinner, we take a ride in my car. My car, new and shiny, had been a source of wonderment, curiosity, and delight to all the children at the boarding school, and especially to Reuven.
He readily agreed, and I turned my car toward the mountains leading to the nearby Lebanese border. I suppose I symbolically chose the mountain route because I wanted to lift his spirits. And it worked. As the car climbed higher, he climbed out of the well of pain. I knew, as I’m sure he knew, that the pain would remain unchanged deep within him. But he wanted to let go of the pain for now and just soar up there with the mountain and the rocks.
He and I shared a common trait. He, a child of the mountains, and I, a product of city life, loved nature and went to it for comfort and revitalization. We both exclaimed over and over again at the breathtaking views. I put on a Stevie Wonder tape and we sang, “I just called to say I love you. I just called to say I care,” — I in my not-so-in-tune American accent, and he in his Ethiopian approximation of the sounds.
Well before the border, we stopped and walked a bit in the quiet and stately beauty of the place. We investigated the rocks and small vegetation, and he found an old, rusty knife blade. He spoke of how he had watched his father forge knife blades in Ethiopia, and how he had learned to help him. I was glad to see that he could feel the happiness of this memory, and with some shock, I realized that all the good and happy memories of his childhood came before he was 11 years old when he had walked out of Ethiopia into Sudan. I was glad that, at least for this moment, he could enjoy his childhood memories in a happiness uncontaminated by ugly memories or of missing and longing for what once was.
We drove back to welcome Shabbat.
Tags: Jewish Ethiopian immigrants in Israel;, Travel
