| A new life |
We spent our first two weeks in America in a two-room, two-bed motel room in Chicago, my parents on one bed, and on the other, all of us children. Then we moved for seven weeks to a motel in suburban Wheaton. Knowing that we could get lost in the maze of streets and homes, we rarely left the motel, unless we were accompanied by World Relief, the organization that had brought my family. One day, though, my father decided that we should brave the new country on our own. TEWOLDE AND SELAMAWI, GET YOUR SHOES ON, he announced. WE NEED TO LET THE OUTSIDE AIR BEAT ON US. Sporting fully-picked afros and sun-broiled, Sudanese skin, clad in mismatched second hand clothes and low-budget Sudanese shoes, we trekked along the shoulder of Route 38. Needless to say, we drew plenty of looks. We walked until our new shoes tore into the soles of our feet. Night approached, and thousands of headlights, more lights than we had ever seen in our lives, streamed past our eyes. We watched in wonder, unable to believe that one road could hold so many cars. My father's voice assumed an uncharacteristic hush. THEY WERE RIGHT, he told us in amazement. I DON'T KNOW HOW THEY KNEW, BUT THEY WERE RIGHT. NO SMALL CARS HERE. EVERYONE DRIVES BIG CARS. AND NIGHT HAS NO POWER OVER THEM. If he could have read his future, my father might have feared the headlights. He might have seen the destructive power behind them, power that would one day take his life. But he could hardly read his new country's language, much less his future, so he remained amazed all the way home. The other times we left our motel were with our World Relief friends. They came almost daily and took us around Chicago--to parks, to skyscrapers, to the grocery store, showing us what life would be like in America. Even with their constant support, though, we still felt the deepest homesickness. We yearned for a piece of injera bread or a bowl of sebhi stew. For a neighbor who spoke our language. For our people. That's when they appeared. Out of nowhere, two angels at our door. It was two of our people: habesha women. And they came bearing gifts: injera bread and sebhi stew. My mother burst into tears upon seeing them. "How did you find us?" she asked. "We heard from someone that there was a habesha family that had just arrived, and that they were pent up in a motel and knew no one. We remember our first days in America, so we came." They showed my mother how to make injera and sebhi using American utensils, and they left us with enough food for a few days. Seventeen years later, they still hold a special place in our hearts. On some days, neither our sponsors nor our angels came. We still feared our new country, so we would stay inside and entertain ourselves by telling stories. Other times, we kids would play catch with little pebbles. It never took long before a stone went somewhere it shouldn't have, like my father's ear. GO AHEAD, YOU SONS OF WOMAN! BREAK SOMETHING AND GET US THROWN INTO THE HOUSE OF IMPRISONMENT. SIRAHKHA KEREKHA IYE: I WILL SHOW YOU YOUR WORK. As we searched for safer things, we discovered the great mouthpiece of America, the television. My siblings and I had seen a fuzzy black-and-white television once in the big Sudanese city of Gedariff. We had heard about it from our friends, and we squirmed through the crowd of Sudanese natives and habesha refugees to reach the rich man's small, dirt-floor room. Once there, we bunched in among 30 spellbound viewers and watched tiny dots struggle to form the outlines of boxers on the screen. Now, as we turned on the television in our motel room, we noticed immediately that American dots were much stronger than the ones in Sudan. They did not struggle to form the images on the screen. In fact, sometimes you couldn't see the dots at all, only perfect color images. Although we saw what the images did, we could not understand what they said. The only one who could was my father, who was considered an educated man among our people and could half-speak an Ethiopian/British dialect of English. He was appalled by what the television told him. GOD SHOW MERCY ON US! DID YOU HEAR THAT? THE BOYFRIEND KILLED HIS GIRLFRIEND AND HER PARENTS, TOO. HE STABBED THEM MORE THAN FIFTY TIMES. WHAT KIND OF COUNTRY HAVE WE COME TO? My mother turned her face toward the heavens and lifted her quivering hands, as if to draw in God's angels around her. We kept watching as the television displayed more footage of the girlfriend and her family. THEY WARNED US OF THIS WICKEDNESS CALLED BOYFRIEND AND GIRLFRIEND BACK IN ADI. DOING WHAT YOU WANT, LIVING OUTSIDE THE RULE, AND THE NEXT THING YOU KNOW, YOU HAVE A STRANGE SICKNESS OR THEY KILL YOUR FAMILY. We changed the channel. The dots formed a white child, getting ready to go to school. His mother hunched over and scanned his face for dirt, wiping white filaments from under his eyebrows and dirt from off his face. The lesson was not lost on my mother. Do you see this? Tewolde, Selamawi, Mehret. Take note. If you do not
wash your face and comb your hair, if you have even one speck on your face,
they will chase you away from the school. A new life |