There are some stories, which find permanent residence in our consciousness. They refuse to go away. They linger to torment us; they are there to make us aware and to never forget the many, many innocent Eritreans who perished at the cruel hands of successive dictatorial regimes, all the way from the colonial era, to Haileselassie, Mengistu, and Issais.
One of those stories is the saga of Letedawit of Hagaz, as Woldeyesus Ammar narrated it, Even though the incident happened twelve years ago, the shock wave this horrible act initiated has yet to rest on the shores of justice. She died at the hands of lawless thugs of EPLF for what she believed and for who she was. After a torturous night in the police station of Hagaz she was pronounced dead: cause of death - “ suicide she hanged herself with her aderye.”Give a break! Of all things aderye. For those people who are not clear what aderye means and what it signifies, allow me to elucidate a little bit. Aderye is an elegant multi-colored head cover that adores and dignifies many beautiful Eritrean mothers and sisters; predominantly used in Keren region and Barka. Mind you when they say “ Welet Keren zada” Aderye stand to claim portion of the complement. Aderye and suicide are not compatible; to bring them in one breath is a sacrilege.
The very mention of the beautiful aderie as suicide tool sent a shiver down my spine and stirred a murky memory, which has been bottled up since the Ona and Besidira massacre. Believe me, it takes a simple episode to trigger a chain reaction of buried memories to appear and reappear. O’ well, if it came to that let me take you to a fascinating ride down the memory lane.
It was a gloomy day. The day after the Ona massacre where hundred innocent Etireans were shot at a point blank, machine gunned indiscrimately, bayoneted randomly, and burned alive. I guess fate had it; I ended up in front of Keren Hospital to witness what was happening and to check the status of my immediate family members who happened to live in Dearit adjacent to Ona. The air was thick laden with all the toxic by-product of burned households, animals, and human beings. The mood was depressing. The sadness was beyond and above human capacity. In a nutshell, the scene was something from hell. Every now and then a group of twos or threes will appear in the gate of the hospital carrying a person with a gun shot wound tied with aderye. People will rush to ask them about their families and beloved ones before they check in, but to no avail. A depressing bites and pieces of sad news make its way through the crowd rather in a very fast pace: “a family of ten has been killed no one survived even an infant of one year old was killed…” Suddenly, an elderly gentleman shushes…. and all the eyes veer towards one direction, there comes a mother holding her wounded adolescent daughter trudging her way up to gate of the overwhelmed hospital, bandaged with aderye and collapses, few meters from the finish line- the gate of the hospital.
The flow of the news which was interrupted comes back again, somebody shakes his head and the tells the group “ an infant was found resting in his dead mother’s arm; they brought him this morning in the hospital….” Yet again, men and women make their way up to the hospital their legs and hands bandaged by color-full aderye which gave them the look of zebra; of course, who cares about the look, the aderye is there to stop the hemorrhaging and save the very precious drops of blood - to save the life.
I admit it was the aderye connection that touched my nerve and elicited the whole scenario of writing this article. Aderye consistent with its intended use to adore and to dignify our sisters and mothers, once again it was used to stop the hemorrhage of blood and extend the life line of those few lucky who escaped the inferno of Ona and Besidira. Sure enough, once again, aderye stand to acknowledge the applauded, as savior of life.
“Alas, poor Letedawit of Hagar, they broke her neck and blamed her for suicide with her own aderye”, was my reaction in a gathering with friends, but I was quickly reminded by friend who recently visited the God forsaken land of Eritrea, to look beyond the smoke screen, and he said, “ don’t be naïve the aderye excuse is an open secret; it has been used rather casually by PFDJ interrogators to mean we killed her. Period”. After a long pause he proceed to tell me about a true story which has escaped the publicity like many victims of abuse who died or disappeared at the hands of PFDJ interrogators until Haile Tensew wrote the story of a couple victims in Nharnet web site.
One of them was Hiwet Abraha a beauty from Hangol a small village near Besidira who came to Keren for job opportunity, her search landed her in an abusive family who over worked, underpaid, and abused her. When she exhausted her patience she run away back to her village; however, her bosses who were well connected, God knows what kind of crime they accused her, the police went all the way to her village, and snatched her from her family and threw her in jail. The next thing everybody new was- “dead, she hanged her self with her aderye.” It sounds familiar, isn’t it?
Poor parents, I can’t imagine how their world came crashing in front of them, though I can visualize the sad droplet of tear forming in the eyes of her mother, making its way down her checks hangs momentarily on the edge of her chins, before it gives up to the force of gravity and disappear in the ever thirsty ground of the of the jail perimeter. If it were not for the drought Eritrea is afflicted with metaphorically we would have seen stream forming around the prisons all over Eritrea. And the sad thing is the number of aderye strangulation cases is unlikely to go anywhere but up.
The second victim is Kerba Abdu who grew up in Keren and some how ended up in Mensura (a small town about forty kilometers from Keren) to provide for her family. She disappeared without a trace under suspicious circumstance from her home. Nobody knows whether she met the fate of Letedawit and Hiwet or still languishing in some prison.
For now, these families of victims, the only alternative they have is to hold on the sweet memory of their loved one and mourn silently. They know they can’t stand a chance to question or challenge the death of their daughters. However, they hope for a better future where accountability rule, and rule of law becomes the order of the day; where the cruel hands who desecrate the beautiful aderye and used it as tourniquet to squeeze the life out of their daughters stand before the court to hear their gruesome crime against humanity and pay the over due price they deserve, because beast cannot correct their faults unless punished.
