ለሚጹ �ልኩም ገልገል አይትስረሩ
ጥዒሙ �ልኩም ምስ ጔና አይትምከሩ
ወዲ ገለገል ሒዙካ ንዱሩ
ወዲ ጔና ሸውዓተ ዝምኽሩ
ሻምነይቲ ውን ረጊጹዋሎ ትሕቲ እግሩ

From a song By Yhya Khyar (Eritrean wata Artist)

It was not on plan to review and expose this book if not for a message I received. It was a message from an Eritrean friend, a prolific writer, and familiar to the readers of Awate.com. He sent me a message in which he, in his way, reproached me on the account of my essay of �Ras Woldemikael vs. Yohannes IV�. He wrote:

�Are you serious? You really think Eritrean nationalism would be simply undone over a war that was inconclusively finished---if it was about Badme of course---and then the resurgent political crisis that followed it?�

I would really excuse my friend if he paid little or no attention to the arguments I put forward. The war by itself and alone could not have done damage, as far-reaching as it does when it is allied with other factors.  The war was only a link in a chain of attacks on Eritrean Nationalism, by, mainly, Eritreans themselves; and unless something is done to turn the tide, Eritrean Nationalism can certainly be undone. It is stressed here that only Eritreans can carry this out. That was the main message of the essay, if it were to be looked at with some fairness and sympathy.

Following that thread, here is a form of an attack on Eritrean Nationalism. The form, which preferred to take an elegant-looking attack, was in the form of a book, one of the many books which characterized a certain period of our recent history. It was an ambitious attempt to re-write our history in conformation to Mr. Keneally�s imagination. No more and No less. His imagination projected, pretending that it is the only reality out there.

The Empire

***image2:left***When Menelik II, Emperor of Ethiopia and the famous conqueror who expanded Abyssinia to its modern frontiers, deliberated with himself and concluded that his newly vanquished subjects seemed to be forever vanquished, he thought of seeking for himself and his new Empire a piece of glory and a place in history. He did that, in the only way he knew: He bought the services of Sir Wallis Budge to re-write the History of Abyssinia. Wallis budge was an influential name in the studies of Egyptology, an authority in the history of Egypt, a famous and skillful Orientalist who translated the ancient Egyptian �Book of the dead� in addition to a list of quite few other books on different oriental histories. This was the man perceived by his majesty as the man who would mold him a brand new history that would provide and acquire the honors which would legitimately allow him to partake in the glory of Ancient Egypt.

The historian, to his credit, didn't completely yield to the Imperial wish. The most that he could do, it seems, was to take and play the role of what may be termed as one of a passive witness, a position in which a witness withholds information which may, otherwise, cause the case to change courses.

Wallis Budge, The author of �History of Ethiopia (Abyssinia and Nubia)�, has, for a mysterious reason, chosen the title as it appears here above. The subtitle, which comes immediately under the main title and between brackets, lures, others more than readers, into the easy slide of belief into that (Abyssinia and Nubia) is an alternative name of the book--only a one step distance to confusing the Physical and historical realities in one giant leap of the imagination disguised as reason. Is it not reasonable for the uninitiated to believe that Ethiopia=Abyssinia+Nubia.

The book, given its title, is supposed to tell its readers, at least in brief, about the relation of Nubia (Ancient Ethiopia) and Abyssinia, but the author chose to keep neutral and mum on this relation. No word to explain and purge the confusion was said, as if the book was made for the sole purpose of exhibiting the history of Abyssinia side by side with that of Nubia (the real ancient Ethiopia). The Author didn't think it was necessary for his readers to know that Ancient Ethiopia is not geographically congruent, tangential or even close to the location of modern Ethiopia. He may have, as well, thought that it was not essential that his readers should know that there was no relation between ancient Ethiopia and ancient Abyssinia. It also seems the author thought it unnecessary that his readers be informed that Ancient Ethiopia and Ancient Abyssinia were not fully contemporary. It may be true also, that the author thought that it is not necessary for his readers to know why two unrelated histories of two different countries come bound in a single book under two confusing titles. Was it a kind of passive and implicit misrepresentation of truth? Ibissa and Holcomb in their book �The Invention of Ethiopia� come to the conclusion that modern Ethiopia was indeed an invention of the colonial powers, made the way it was, to serve their purposes at the close of the 19^th century. Could it be that the book was a brick in a building block of the Empire with a fake history? 

The historian, for all we know, may have been serving the interests of his country, and for that he deserves recognition from those who made use of his services. One should also remember that even if the author's case was different, and that he was only pursuing his own selfish interests, he couldn't, anyway be (fairly) blamed on that account, not even as much as a football player who sells his expertise to a non-national team is blamed for earning a living that same way. However, its seems quite interesting to see how the Historian was justifying his fallacies:

�It seems certain that classical historians and geographers called the whole region from India to Egypt, both countries inclusive by the name of �Ethiopia�.

Then in another part of the same page he goes on to say:

�It is not certain who first gave the name of �Ethiopia� to Abyssinia, but it is clear that the Syrian monks who translated the Greek Bible into Geez (i.e.Ethiopic) identified K�sh, or Nubia with Abyssinia, and generally translated the name of Kush by �Ethiopia�.

The odd situation here is that of the Emperor who introduced and initiated this strain of lunacy, a lunacy which dictates history to be re-written so that past non-existent Empires can be resurrected, dedicated, perpetuated, and worshipped to the point of crossing the rational and embracing the irrational and the unreal: this present, is the offspring and a continuation of that glorious past. Legitimacy and glory begotten by one single strike!

Perhaps, the historian Wallis Badge was not the one chosen by the Emperor to do that noble job, it is possible that Budge himself was the one who chose the Emperor to do the job for. It is indeed a possibility, that in the fashion of those who preceded him, came, albeit a little late, pursuing this illusory world of Prester John, and when he didn't find it, he decided to create it, even if it was on a book wrapping itself in the mantle of history, and for that, he had a readily available ally: Prester John to be.  The following is what Jones and Monroe wrote in their book �A History Of Ethiopia� descriping Prester John and his realms:

�He (Prester John) ruled over seventy two tributary kings and his dominions included the three Indies. In them were to be found all the strange beasts recorded in medieval bestiaries, including the salamander which dwelt in fire; from its incombustible envelope were made the Presser�s own robes, which were washed not with water but with fire. In his dominions were also the Amazons and the Brahmans and the unclean races of men whom Alexander the Great had walled up in the cities of the north to emerge at the last day. His palace was built according to the designs of St. Thomas, the apostle of the Indies, and contained a marvelous mirror in which he could see all parts of his dominions.�

Emperor Haile Sellasie I walked in on the footsteps of his predecessor, and when he came back from exile at the end of World War II, a brigade of historians followed his reinstatement. The Pankhurst family where among the most prominent; what sort of history is, then, a history written by foreigners, one may ask, wondering how audacious these men are, men who came posing as historians! Their vanity made them believe that they may write histories of peoples regardless of the fact that they can't think in the languages of the very people they pretend to be writing their histories. Such a history must, by necessity, be deprived of the spirit of its owners, a non-history by virtue of this quality only.

The Republic

Eritrea unknown to Eritreans, intimately familiar to foreigners

***image1:left***Most impressive and tragic of this saga, is that this lunacy was inherited from Ethiopian Emperors and passed to those who claim to be the only revolutionaries of Eritrea, the EPLF/PFDJ and its intellectual brigade in Europe and North America. Herds of western personalities were brought to Eritrea to, later, write about it. And what did they write? It was about Eritrea, yet it was about an Eritrea unknown to Eritreans, though it seemed so intimately familiar to these foreigners, the so-called experts. Patrick Gilkes, a BBC analyst and a researcher, wrote and spelled this in the Periodical (African Affairs, v.90, no. 361 1991):

�Much, indeed, of the writing on Eritrea has been at the level of the polemic or a product of the 'guerilla groupie'. A surprising number of eminent scholars and journalists have taken the leading Eritrean movement, the EPLF, at its own evaluation, and its historical claims as fact. The results have impoverished the literature on Eritrea and have created a distorted national mythology. Most recent writing on Eritrea for example, relegates the Amhara and the original liberation front, (the ELF) to the role of demon enemies.�

Of course these foreign scholars had their agenda, known to every soul on the planet save the Eritrean fascists, rank and file. An agenda, totally different to the Eritrean agenda of independence and liberation.

In another part Mr. Gilkes writes:

�Prior to the Italian takeover there was no link between the disparate areas except in their relationship with the local imperial power, the Abyssinian empire. The use of Eritrea as a concept before the Italians created the region is anachronistic. Dr. Yohannes not only uses it in this way, he carries the process a stage further and invents an Eritrea which resisted the advances of Egypt from the 1840s on the one hand, and the pressures of Emperor Yohannes IV, on the other. He even suggests that the clashes between Yohannes and Egypt, which led to the battle of [Gurae] in 1876, were part of a northern drive to annex Eritrea. The end of this line of argument can be summed up by another Eritrean�

These foreign scholars were busy doing just the same as what Wallis budge perfected long years ago, except this time they were in the business of inventing a republic very much like the Empire next door before it, with all its oppressive paraphernalia in addition to a few other new characteristics including allergy to freedoms and the law. There were, between these imported men of knowledge, those who were teachers of law writing on the economy of Eritrea, there were also novelists who were writing its history, there were men of literature who were giving advices on meteorology. One of these was the Australian Thomas Keneally, a novelist, writer and activist.

He wrote a book, To Asmara, a novel, as if designed to drive a wedge between Christian highland Eritrea and the Muslim lowland Eritreans in the one hand and between all the Eritrean ethnics and Highland Tigrigna speakers in the other.

Eritrean Development gets sophisticated

It has to be stressed here, that the novel by itself is harmless, as harmless as any paperback pursuing tabloid-defined truth could be. But look at it when it is endorsed and adapted by a national body like the Eritrean Development Fund (EDF): a divisive book written on the outline of �Nehnan Elamanan�, and in fact the whole novel is a novel-form of that ominous document prepared by the tyrant himself. Were the dictator to write a novel, he wouldn't have written any other than this one, written by Mr. Keneally. It is only when Eritreans, and Eritrean official bodies like the EDF, endorses it and go further certifying and recommending the author for a prize of Eritrea that the book becomes divisive and evil. The proper Eritrean way to look at this book should be the way the Japanese looked at Madame Butterfly. This is how the EDF, Eritrean Development Fund, made its sectarian stance public in its website, in April 18, 2003:

�Acclaimed Australian author, Thomas Keneally has become the first ever Fred Hollows Award recipient. Commissioned by the Eritrean Development Foundation (EDF), the award acknowledges Mr. Keneally�s exemplary artistic and humanitarian contributions to Eritrea�s development.�

One wonders, if those who have showered the author with such an extravagance of generosity on the account of imagined artistic and humanitarian contributions to Eritrea's development have, at all, taken a glimpse into this man's alleged artistic and humanitarian contribution to Eritrea. If so, did they not feel a little of embarrassment and shame with this artistic work said by � Darcy�, the protagonist of the novel on page 95:

�I was engrossed by her easy glide. All the people of the horn are impressive movers, even though they mightn�t have stable surfaces to move on. In profile she was exquisite, lean-featured, her skin blue brown. Her style was what you�d call �Italianate�. Don�t think this was to Italian genetic influence � a lot of people in the Horn happen to carry such fine-lined features. It is one of those little ironies of history that the Italians should get a colony called Eritrea in 1889 and see an African echo of their own finest faces staring back at them.�

It is, speaking in all honesty, difficult for an Eritrean, to read these words and not be taken back.  For, how would you think and feel, if you are defined in terms of another one, specially if that one is a previous master of yours? How would you feel if you were perceived as only an image of someone else, a previous master? This man perceives Eritreans, as images of their colonial masters. And for that, the EDF names him to an Eritrean prize and showers him with words of glorification. Why not name, then, those Ethiopian extremists who have said much less about us and about our colonial connection.

Readers on Amazon.com review the book

The novel is narrated by the hero, Timothy Darcy, a freelance journalist who came to Eritrea to write about the truth of the war. Darcy didn�t write about it. He was from the beginning on the grip of his illusions, and ended up becoming an ugly voice of falsehood, wishfully caught in a web of lies and half truths many of them of his own making.

A reader-reviewer on Amazon.com wrote about the novel saying:

�Written in a more journalistic style than his later works, this book chronicles a newspaper reporter through his journey into rebel Eritrea before its independence. The reporter, and Keneally, are so smitten with the cause and the people that he cannot see objectively that he is being spoon-fed the revolution very carefully. It does a good job of exposing the Amharic tyranny over other tribes in East Africa, courtesy of Haile Selassie then Mengistu, but it seems a bit dated now that Eritrea has been recognized by the UN and Ethiopia as well. The political manipulation of food as aid still persists, however, and this book dramatizes that situation well, with a bit of Anne Tyler-esque marital dissolution thrown in for "personal growth".

Another reader reviewer wrote:

�Kenealy was predictable as a journalist of the age in his inability to report the facts without delving into the adorative fiction one side or the other chose to feed him. For the uninitiated this passes as Gospel, who after all would doubt the author of �Schindler�s List�.

Yet his hatred and condemnation of Haile Selassie and later the Marxist (not Stalinist) administration of Mengistu Haile Mariam comes not from the culpability of these two in Eritrea�s and Ethiopia�s woes but from a singular and unrequitied love Kenealy has for the no less Marxist EPLF that would later Crown Issayas Aferweki, placing him as an Emperor beyond reproach in Asmera Palace. Kenealy was predictable as a journalist of the age in his inability to report the facts without delving into the adorative fiction one side or the other chose to feed him.

Such is Kenealy�s forgetfulness of his sacred trust as a reporter that the half truths he was fed and reported, now gussied up under the questionable respectability of a book, live not as a signal accomplishment but as a damning written record not of those he points fingers at but of his serious romantic lapses in judgment for the truths of the Kunama, Afar, Akele Guzai, Saho, Muslim, Bilen people of Eritrea he did not write about and that are written in the indelible ink of human suffering.

Idris Awate�s (a Hero of the Eritrean Revolution) massacre of the Kunama, a group who Thomas Kenealy�s friend Issayas Afewerki continues to kill and imprison is conveniently ignored. The EPLF (later renamed the Popular Front for Democracy and Justice, PFDJ) conduct in mistreating Red Cross, and Amnesty International volunteers, execution of captured Ethiopian Prisoners (documented by eyewitnesses from western Media) remains unmentioned. Kenealy neglects to mention even at the earlier stages, the EPLF�s and later Eritrea�s stormy relations with Sudan, Djibouti and its own Muslim population. The liberation struggles of the Akele Guzai, Bilen, Saho, Afar and the fight both for suffrage and self-determination of Eritreas forgotten Muslim populace are ignored.

These would lead to successive Wars an armed confrontation and low intensity war through EPLF assistance of FRUD, a terrorist Marxist cell in Djibouti, OLF and EPRP terrorist cells within Ethiopia, guerilla warfare against the Eritrean Liberation Front, Kunama Liberation Front and a Confederated Army of Afar Liberation under the leadership of Sultan Ali Mirah.

I was very disappointed in Thomas Kenealy�s effort as I had thought his �Schindlers List� was well-researched and showed human compassion and fortitude at their best.

I could not understand why his book chose to portray the worst of Eritrea as her best.� 

What is it, then, that wonderful and great art that the reader-reviewers have missed but the EDF�s Men Of Letters captured?

The truth is, that no matter how hard one may try, one cannot escape seeing the novel as one of pretension, racism, sexual obsession, fanaticism and divisiveness. Can those Eritreans who named the author for an award, tell us that they have read any, randomly chosen, few pages throughout the whole book and didn�t come across one or two of these serious and malignant traits in the novel �To Asmara�?

A humanist in defense of the inhuman

We have no dislike of Mr. Keneally; to the contrary, we revere him and know who he is. He is the author of �Schindler�s Ark�, later a movie by the name of �Schindler�s list�. The whole world was mesmerized by the story, and the wisdom that came with it. The ideals upheld in that book were, in fact, a recommendation of the man behind it, the author, to a position of leadership in the cause for advancement of human morals. A position occupied in past epochs of Man, by men like Socrates, Plato, Marcus Aurilius, and a few others in the ancient times. In modern age it was occupied by men like Voltaire, Tolstoy, Nazim Hikmat, Rabendranat Tagore, Bertrand Russel Jean Paul Sartre, Nelson Mandela and many others. Reading �Schindler�s Ark� is the kind of work that makes one believe that the man behind it belongs to this class of excellent men. It is the sort of art work that lifts the soul to the highest of heights until, if you are an Eritrean, read the Novel �to Asmara� and have the feeling of being dropped from these highest of heights on a rock down the low ground and a feeling of a great crash ensues.

Take it easy! It is only a novel!

The main purpose of this essay, besides being a pointer to one link in the chain of undoing of the Eritrean Nationalism, is to ask why the author of �Schindlers Ark� is firmly taking a stand against the author of �Schindler�s Ark� in the novel To Asmara. It is also about wondering and asking: why is the author of  �Schindler�s Ark�, against all evidences, think that his statement in page 243 of the novel �To Asmara� holds any truth, if not, why did he confirm it by accepting the EDF Prize?

�Issayas, said Masihi,� is impossible! They all are! Camera-shy every one. You met Askalu? The one with the baby? She is better. She did a lot of television in the west. But Issayas is terrified that the Muslims of Barka or Denakil will be disaffected if he appears on their communal video screens all the time. �Who does he think he is? He fears they will ask themselves. A highlander and a Coptic Christian and an intellectual, as he is! He knows that the Camera defies, and he doesn�t want to be defied, the way Mao was. He disapproves of the god Mao. Issayas is a puritan when it comes to film. He believes the Camera corrupts every one, the one behind the viewfinder, the one in focus, the one who watches. Every one.� 

This is left for readers to appraise and judge. But before that, a little advice to those who may tell us to take it easy, as the work is of fiction and a novel.

No effort will be undertaken to stress on the importance of novels and their indicators. That is not necessary at this point. A novel, however, is based on factual substratum, without which it would belong to another class of literature named fairy tale or a fable. But, then, what has a fairy tale to do with a Prize of the prestigious EDF.  

Arrogance, ignorance and racial supremacy

The central character of the novel and its narrator � Timothy Darcy�, came dragging his orientalist baggage of stereotypes behind him. He takes these for unshakeable source of truth and knowledge. He shows no care to dilute his cocksure belief in his supremacy in himself and his race. He doesn�t hide his contempt for Muslims who are supposed to be half of Eritrea, his host country. A fact, Darcy was too blind to see. In fact the reporter was very much keen to show his racism and his sense of supremacy. While he was in Khartoum, before going to Eritrea, he met Christine, a French young woman, who herself, was going to Eritrea to meet her father Roland �Massihi�, the Cameraman and filmmaker of the EPLF. This is what he says early in page 21 when he learned that she didn�t have the papers necessary for her trip to Port Sudan:

�I tried to swallow the irritation I felt. I knew all the next day would be spent in the offices of Sudanese immigration, in Police offices as well, waiting on benches with an Islamic patience which isn�t really my character, while officials took their mysterious, not wishing to offend God by working faster than they knew he did.�

Darcy, in his monologue (quoted here above), exposes himself for what he is: a bigot, dragging behind him his baggage of complexes, stereotypes and a full set of ready made principles of judgment which conform only with his load of stereotypes. Such are his biases that they give him and his secret-ego, away, in the first twenty pages of the novel. There, between few other attitudes, he exposes himself to be an irrational, spoiled brat.

Here is a man who comes to a country, Sudan, behaving like knowing it all, all the minute details, knowing the people and even their religious beliefs upon which their lives are built and on which their office services are based and because of it, and on its account, laziness is the order of their days. He came showing to knowing all that, yet he complains and shows his indignation, pretending he didn�t know it before hand. Was he expecting the fluency he was used to in the places he came from? Or was he insinuating that the services for him in this African country should be different than they are to others, including the locals. This is an echo of what happened one hundred years before Darcy�s appearance in Eritrea.

"Richard Burton, an orientalist, linguist, adventurer and one of the great racists of all time. Burton came to Africa to look for glory in the discovery of the source of the River Nile. He penetrated Central Africa westwards from Zanzibar in the east. Zanzibar was then ruled by an Omani Arab Sultan, a slave trader. Here is what he says on a two-month long tough walk on maleria-infested route:

�Eastern and central inter-tropical Africa...lacks antiquarian interest, it has few traditions, no annals, and no ruins, the hoary remnants of past splendor so dear to travelers and the reader of travels. It contains not a single useful or ornamental work of Art, a canal or a dam is, and ever has been, beyond the narrow bounds of its civilization�

This is an old and often walked road, which have proven itself, always, to be an excuse for legitimizing and justifying racism and ideas of Supremacy. And why not? Were Burton and his writings not a reference to the adherents of Social Darwinism (built on the deliberately erroneous reading of Biological Darwinism), a creed that advocates the supremacy of the white race over other races?

Projected sexual fantasies

�Darcy� is not even a subtle racist with brains. He blows his cover off early in the beginning when he was in Khartoum driving with Christine, the French girl who was in Sudan in her way to Eritrea to visit her father, The cameraman and filmmaker of the EPLF, Massihi. A Nuba Sudanese Policeman who wanted to check their papers stopped them. Here is what Darcy said in page 21:

�The Nuba handed back my papers and inspected the girl, asking only for her passport. He stared with particular emphasis at her shoulders, as if he was punishing her with desire.�

And in page 48 Darcy says:

�The Sergeant gave Christine the slowest time of all, checking her features one by one against the photograph �

�There is something wrong with this permit,� he said.

�I don�t think so effendi,� I said

The sergeant ignored me and spoke in Arabic to Techleh. Tecleh reported to us �He says he must radio Khartoum Hours and hours. Ai-ai-ai�

�Come� the sergeant told us in English at last.� You must sit inside. And your luggage. I must see your luggage.�

We groaned. Techleh was arguing strenuously, but I could not understand what he was saying. Henry said to me,  �He is not opening my luggage! You know what it is? He wants to have Christine around for few hours to look at. Probably hasn�t seen a European woman for years.�

One needs no imagination to see that it was Darcy himself who was exercising the fantasy on the French girl and not the Sudanese Sergeant or the Nuba policeman who did not say any thing outside their job limits. It is a case of fantasy projection by pretending it is the other�s.  A psychiatrist would not find it difficult to answer the question why Darcy is pretending. He may say that �Darcy� suffers of what is known as Morbid Sexual Exhibitionism, and since this is, socially, not allowed to come out to the surface, the exhibitionist would circumvent this inhibition and describes sexual scenes of his preference pretending it to be acts committed by others. Irvin Gameel in his book � Orientalism: a sexual exposition� writes:

�A British reporter, responding to the request of his head office in London, sent photos of a Turkish house. A house seeming in its looks and furniture like a European house. The Photos were sent back to the reporter footed by a comment: �The British public will not accept these Photos for a Turkish Harem.� A Turkish house as projected in the western paints and books is centered around a fountain inside the house, with many nude women leaning on pillows and smoking the �Nargileh�. This is the scene which would live up to the expectations of the European, and not the European-like monotonous pieces of furniture. The Orient, then, is shorthanded and summarized by the word �Harem� in the orientalist western mentality. Harem, that gathering of females assumed to be secluded and isolated from strangers gives full rein to the western peeping imagination which reproduces itself with this peeping imagination pretending that it is describing and transcribing the other. Westerners have always tried to make other worlds appendices to theirs by re-inventing these worlds not as they saw and observed them, but by painting them in colors which suit and serve their intentions and objectives. The Orientalist depiction of Woman in Islam is that of a creature offering ecstasy to Man for the purpose of giving him an idea about how heaven could be. One needs not to add that this is the European depiction and not the reality.�

Similar to Mr. Gameel's orientalist, Darcy was trying to project his fantasies, pretending that they are those of the Sudanese Policeman, unknown to him it is a game from home, it is a game of the Boomerang. "Eldridge cleaver, in his book �Soul On Ice� convincingly argues that the root cause of racism is the erroneous belief of some white men in the sexual superiority of the black men.

One would be simplistic and unrealistic to expect beyond the possible; that a tourist who comes to Eritrea few times on and off for a few weeks to collect materials for a novel, would depict Eritrean life at any stage of history and with any degree of authenticity, especially if the tourist is, like Mr. Keneally, ignorant of the languages, values, the different cultural symbols and the interaction and influence of each one of them into the rest considered individually and collectively. That much would be describing, an epic, a task waiting for gifted, Knowledgeable and experienced Eritreans to undertake.

Self centered Darcy!

�Darcy� is also selfish in more than a way, but what is a racist if not selfish! While We see Darcy in Khartoum disapprove of the Policeman's (Alleged) fantasy on Christine the white French girl, we see him in Eritrea taking liberty in exercising the same fantasies on an Eritrean woman, Amna, an EPLF Bureaucrat soldier. In page 205:

�She was on her way to visit friends in Nakfa or so she said. I watched her turbanned head jolting as we entered the bombed town, and my first sight of it was framed by the gap between the slope of her head and shoulder on one hand, and Henry�s body on the other.

I wondered if Henry was thinking the same, embarrassing, paperback kind of thoughts I was: Thrown together on a dangerous frontier, etc., Etc. Yet in view of Fryer River, I knew it was childish to give space to any feeling for a woman like Amna, whose life was so essentially removed from me, essentially beyond my imagining.�

And in page 179 he exposes and manifests the �peeping imagination� described by Mr. Gameel:

�When I woke properly on my side in sand which still kept the day�s warmth. From behind my bank I could hear a woman�s voice speaking one of the Eritrean languages with that familiar cadence. It was rich, full lipped, sensual sound. For some time I didn�t dare to turn around. All I knew was that close to me an Eritrean woman was in passionate voice.

After a lot of planning of the movement I was to make, I looked over my shoulder. The little bureaucrat with the dazzling teeth sat by Moka against a log in the now empty oval stone. Moka�s gaze was fixed abstractedly across the river, in the direction the prophet�s horse had fled in the seventh century. Now and then he�d punctuate the flurries of language from the girl with a languid �Ai!�

�As I turned my back again and began to drowse, the little beaurocrat's Tigrinyan explanations ran strongly in my sleep. They were points of light in a drugged night, a film across the brain. They prevented me from the full-bodied coma of exhausted sleep and they pricked my fairly deprived flesh.  

Little knowledge or no knowledge

Mr. Keaneally's inadequate depiction of Eritrea and Eritreans in his book �To Asmara�, compared to the reality of Eritrea, may be better understood by taking an analogy of one who went into a picture house, to watch a movie in a foreign language, with no subtitles underneath. Were this man to be asked to recount what he understood from the movie, he would come up with a different story, a story, though having its similarities to the original scenario, yet, never will it be the same with it. That is why one would without any mediation know that the novel to �Asmara� is written by someone who has little or no knowledge of that country when he reads this on page 231:

�The chief warden, a denakil with filed teeth and tribal slashes on his cheeks,...........�

A derogatory remark to a whole Eritrean national group, coupled with ignorance. This is an instance of the EDF's men of letters on how an exemplary art in the service of Eritrea should look like!

His historical and geographical information of the novelist is miserable. In page 217 of the novel he writes:

�There was a certain fashion to rebellion, to being a member of the old ELF, whose most visible members were certain glamorous intellectuals and various grizzled tough men who had once been NCOs in the Ethiopian or Sudanese Army.�

One understands the Sudanese connection of old ELF, but the Ethiopian piece belongs to EPLF�. The novelist here is trying to create a new fact to suit his taste. It doesn�t matter if the fact is on the ground; it is enough for him and his purposes if it is on the paper.

In page 215 �Darcy� says:

�what a polished life Eritrean traders and officials of the Italian empire must once have lived here, in this town which marked a boundary between the Islamic plains of the Red Sea and the Coptic highland�

The author wanted to make sure that he should not be misunderstood in his mission created the character Roland a white French man who walks turbaned and working as a cameraman of the EPLF. He nicknamed him Massihi (Arabic word for Christian). The implication is not hard to come by, if you know that the cameraman is the one who captures everything including history. The question is, couldn�t the cameraman have been an Eritrean Christian with an Eritrean name or is the author trying to show us who the boss is? Or is it that Eritrean being images themselves can�t capture other images?

The author also wanted that readers make no mistake that he, the creator and �Darcy� the created are the same and one person. �Darcy� in the context of practicing a fantasy on Christine, mention that he is bald headed and old for Christine!

The appearance of the novel �To Asmara� is very sad and one which defies reason and common senses, for how is it possible that such renowned and respected human rights advocate, shows this kind of active literary militancy and hate, to a whole population of a country, hardly there is a chance they may know about him.

Could it be that he was also chasing a romantic passion of finding a modern age Prester John; if that is the case he has in the dictator a willing Prester John wannabe.