From: Eri_news (Er_news@dehai.org)
Date: Mon Apr 26 2010 - 22:26:57 EDT
Farewell to Tekie
This moment is most unenviable for me. But, as a famous poet has said life is but a walking shadow and goes out as a mere brief candle. So it is with Tekie, and we have to face this reality.
I always thought that I will have the privilege to have Tekie read my eulogy. Sometimes, I even juggle in my mind the words he would use. Talks about death were a lot of times filled with humor, as if to ease the ugliness of the prospect of dying. After a heart bypass, he mused that he has extended the original warranty by 20 years. At one time, I said to Tekie and my wife that I want to be buried here, he replied: Dont worry. Just die. We know what to do after that.
I will attempt to give you a brief overview of a long and illustrious life of formidable person and mind, who is really one of a kind.
Let me fast rewind 63 years, back to 1947. Yes, 1947. That was the year Tekie and me started school at the Evangelical School (Geza Khenisha) in Asmara.
One afternoon, when we were on a short break I saw students clustered around a little kid. He was reading from an abridged version of the bible to Adey Letezien, the nurse/dresser in the clinic. He could read so well that I told myself that I will be able to read as well as this kid, one day. That little kid was Tekie. The book was so old, a paperback, it was falling apart and fell from his hands. Tekie, with a book in his hands, is an image that persists in my mind up to now, and is a precursor to the image of Tekie the reader, writer, the scholar that is in everybodys mind.
Ever since our childhood days, our paths followed, more or less on the same trajectory. We attended the same schools at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Although he went to Dessie at the eleventh grade and finished high school there, we met again at Harrar. We were drafted into the Military Academy. Tekie detested the military and after six months, failed to return from vacation. After hiding for a couple of years he got a scholarship from ASPAU. Then I left the military and came to the US for graduate studies and eventually settled here. All the time, we were in contact.
Many of the things we said and did together were so memorable that they keep coming to my mind all the time. Tekie was the wise guy and was philosophical about everything. When we were young, me and another friend, Yohannes Fekadu, were usually aggressive. Tekies admonishment was violence is a sign of weakness. When we hear those words, we used to cower. When we looked down upon people that we felt were not academically up to the par, he used to say people have the right to be weak.
I was always the beneficiary from Tekies friendship, starting from character development to advice on everything, to this day. We would call each other at least a few times a week and visit each other as often as we can.
Developing reading habit was one of these benefits. In high school, I saw Tekie reading books that I found even heavy to carry. Quickly, I started reading heavy volumes. By the time we finished high school, we have read all the books in the small school library, and the public library. I read the largest number of the books in my life during that time. We read Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy and all classics in English literature. Books turned my life around and gave me direction; my reading of books even contributed to saving my life at a critical moment.
If I contributed anything to Tekies life, it was in turning him into a soccer player. When he told me he wanted to be a goal keeper, I started kicking the ball to him so hard for hours. In the end he become an excellent goalkeeper. He became our class goal keeper in high school and we won the school soccer championship trophy.
That was a fair deal. He turned me into a bookworm, and I turned him into a macho athlete. Each of us got the complement that we needed to be full persons.
Tekie assumed the role of a public intellectual for himself. He used knowledge for the service of people. He devoted most of his time using the might of the pen to advance the causes of his country, Eritrea. His contribution is part of the struggle for independence and defense of its sovereignty.
In all his intellectual pursuits, he demonstrated his background in American liberal intellectual tradition. However, he was different from the ordinary run-of-the-mill American-educated intellectual and economist. He was comfortable in combining history, philosophy, and politics, to get a more complete picture. He did not care much about economic/econometric models, as Kenneth Boulding would say were built on assumptions, and more models built on them, that in the end have no relation to reality.
I will be remiss if I failed to mention one unique quality that Tekie had, and may not be understood clearly by people who did not know him that well.
Tekie was pragmatic enough to realize that truth, theory, and many things we idealize get diluted in the application process. In that sense he was not an idealist ivory tower intellectual that did not see the real world situations. But, he saw the need and importance for invoking principle at all times.
To this end, he set limits beyond which there should not be compromises. To go beyond the limit will be to go against the principle and his conscience. This test applies to everything, be they personal and social issues, or politics. Everything he did and wrote about was because he believed in them and not to please anybody. By the same token, he would not be deterred from expressing his opinion for fear of displeasing anybody. In that sense, he called the shots as he saw them.
As he approached retirement, he had plans for spending his time in Asmara and the Red Sea coast, much in the tradition of Hemingway in Cuba, writing and writing. It is our total loss that we will never see the fruits of that fertile mind.
The only consolation is that he has done enough at the time when it mattered most. This will be the living legacy he left us. It is also a source of consolation that we will continue on the path he left. More encouraging is the thousands of young people he has inspired.
At a personal level, I will miss the endless discussions, and the enduring friendship; a friendship that lasted, literally, a lifetime.
As he leaves us, he is joining the company of our schoolmates, all martyrs and heroes of the Eritrean struggle and were close to Tekie, Fitsum Gebreselassie, Kidane Kflu, and Mebrahtu Teweldemedhin. A poem from the novel based on the American Civil War, Raintree County comes to mind whenever I remember the paths we followed:
Many are the days since last we met
Tears have been blushed and cries have been wept.
Friends have been scattered like roses in bloom,
Some to their bridal and some to their tomb.
In the 1980s we made vows as to what we may do when Eritrea gets independent. One of them was to celebrate mass at St. Marys church in Asmara, which was our childhood church. That is what we did in July 1991. I had to go to Abashawel and drink swa by myself.
In a curious set of circumstances, many things turn back to previous conditions. He was married 27 years ago on New Hampshire Avenue, a few miles from here, where his memorial services are held. He is going back to the same St. Marys church in Asmara, and will be buried in the cemetery located in the very neighborhood he was born in, HazHaz.
So, for Tekie, this is a special homecoming. Robert Louis Stevensons requiem seems fit for the occasion:
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Gladly did I live and gladly die.
This be the verse you grave for me
here he lies where he longed to be.
Home is the sailor from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hills.
I convey my deepest sympathy to his son Michael, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, and friends everywhere.
I also express my heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Zerom and Hidaat, Fikremariam Asres, Dawit Gebremichael, and Ghidewon Abay Asmerom, who were around Tekie throughout the difficult moments.
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