Zoha Ahmed
Zoha has loved stories since she was a little girl but she always gets confused when asked to tell her own one. She supposes what really inspires her to write is the need to understand and explore contradiction. 'Eritrea, 1988' came about as she was reading a newspaper in the waiting room of a dentist's office. One particular picture caught her eye. It was a picture of a young woman of average height and build resting a gun on her shoulder. There was nothing impactful about her physique. But it was the way she looked straight into the camera, her eyes proud and challenging. And below it was written 'Eritrea, 1988'. There's not much to do in hospital waiting rooms so Zoha started to wonder what would drive a seemingly ordinary woman to defy all social stereotypes of being from a more genteel species towards an act of violence and what kind of people are actually able to feel proud after inflicting harm on another? So, for her and for many others, being a writer is a way of being themselves and if their work is somehow appreciated it really does mean the world. Zoha would like to thank the 'FullStop' team for selecting 'Eritrea, 1988' and she would like to thank everyone who will read her story.
Eritrea 1988.
Eritrea 1988. A time of battle. A time of chaos. Of sacrifices spent by people who have nothing to gain from manipulating the politics of the country. And yet they flow in the destruction of war simply because they exist, like the spectators of a tsunami that fails to distinguish between what it wishes to destroy and what it should keep. One such victim was Sheshy Tesfay. A twenty six year old dark-skinned woman, though much darker than that was the destiny with which she was born. She stood proudly resting a gun at the man’s temple as he knelt in front of her. She had spent her life suffering in the shadow of others but on that day, in that moment, she was the beholder of power. She was not a soldier nor a politician, not even a patriot. And yet here she was contemplating the kill of a man who was already suffering. It must be time, Sheshy decided, that had made her so harsh, so immune to sympathy. Or maybe it was the effect of war, not only does it drain the country’s resources but also feeds on humanity to keep going.
Sheshy was fourteen the last time she was home. She was playing in the garden with her younger siblings. The innocence glowed in her brown eyes. The incapability of her fragile-looking body to inflict harm made her all the more adorable. Their play was interrupted as they heard their father cursing at the man called Fikru.
Fikru wanted the eldest child of every house to be trained as an assassin for the approaching war. He was known to kidnap the children of those who did not willingly comply. Sheshy’s father, Dawit, felt that this danger was not his as not only was his eldest child a girl, but Fikru was also his brother, Sheshy’s uncle. Dawit thought that as long as he kept his interest out of the war, the war will keep its interest out of his household. Until the day Fikru came to his door looking for one of the most precious things he had. His abuse was more of an act of defence rather than attack because he knew that even if Fikru left at the present moment, he was not going to back down. He was one of the most powerful men in the town of Afabet because of his influence in the revolution.
Fikru had lost his own two sons in the fighting, despite his wife’s pleas that they were too young to be enrolled in the army. Unable to bear the loss, she committed suicide. Even that failed to soften Fikru. If anything, he was now even more driven not only by the dream of independence but also revenge. Dawit thought very differently, he did not believe that war was a solution to any problem but instead it was the very root of it. Dawit dragged his brother out of the house through the porch, crushing the flowers that had not yet been affected by the devastation of the war. As Fikru was being dragged, his eyes were fixed on Sheshy. His look reminded her of how she felt when she wanted something from the shop but mother didn’t have enough money to buy it. She sometimes wondered if toys get a say as to which house they wish to go to.
“That is the difference between toys and humans, toys can’t influence their lives”, her mother had said to her as Sheshy peeped from the top bunk of the bed. The other two sisters were fast asleep even before the climax of the mother’s story. She always told them stories of princesses who Sheshy thought were a lot like her mother as they were always beautiful, gentle and charming.
“Will I be like you when I grow up mom?”, Sheshy asked looking down to where her mother was sitting.
She laughed “I’m sure you’d grow up to be an amazing woman”.
“I’d like three daughters too”.
She sighed at that “It’s very important to have a man in the family. Your father is getting old and he’s alone, there’s only so much he can… you’d be a wonderful mother sweatheart”.
Too bad that wasn’t the plan that fate had set out for her. Sheshy didn’t know whether to call it fate or cowardice but whatever it was, after that day her life was transformed forever, in a way that it could never be the same. Life after all, like time, only goes forward. It flows in one direction only and has to keep whatever the tide has managed to sweep.
The next day, she was walking home from school as usual. Her father had asked her to wait for him to come pick her up but she found no wrong in taking the familiar route home as usual. Her cotton uniform tormented her in the burning sun, the sand paths seemed hotter, the soles of her shoes felt thinner than they should, sweat trickled down her spine. Eventually, she lost consciousness.
The last thing she remembered as she woke up on a wooden bench was that she was wiping the sweat off her neck when she was struck on the head. She had no idea how long she was unconscious for but she noticed that her schoolbag was missing. A middle-aged man walked towards her with a water bottle in his hand. He slapped some on her face.
“Get up” he ordered roughly.
Sheshy wondered if it was the room that was so dark or did she still have her eyes closed and all that was happening was just a terrible nightmare?
“Where… where am I?” she asked confused.
“You don’t ask questions here” he said louder than he needed to. He drew his face closer to hers revealing a scar under his stubble, “You do what you’re told and we won’t hurt you”.
“Uncle please let me go!” she pleaded.
This time Fikru slapped her across the face and held her face at the chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Never, ever say that again. This is your home now. This is where you belong and where you need to fulfil your destiny”.
She began sobbing as he let her go.
“Don’t you see, this is the life of heroism where you’ll get the sweet glory in death when you sacrifice your life for your country. Tell me this my niece, if someone broke into your house, will you not defend it? Of course you would. Your country is your home. It is your duty to do everything you can to fight for its rights”
Someone called him from outside the room. On his way out, he slammed the door shut. Sheshy immediately ran to the door and tried turning the knob but it was locked from the outside. After struggling for some time, she gave up and went back to sit on the bench.
“Die” she whispered to herself in the dark, claustrophobic room. It also smelt foul because the only toilet was a bowl which already had someone’s faeces in it. When Sheshy looked at the bowl, she threw up. The vomit further stained her uniform which was already drenched with sweat and blood. She cried in agony as she had not eaten in two days, which she had spent unconscious. She’d also been given drugs to weaken her and keep her calm. Tired, hungry, depressed and helpless, she surrendered to sleep.
When she woke up, Fikru came in with a plate and threw it in front of her.
“It stinks in here!” he said.
“Could you get the bowl emptied?”.
He slapped her across the face “Are you ordering me?! Do I look like your servant?!”.
“No..I..”
“You know what punishment you’ll get for your insolence? No more light”.
In the nauseating, pitch black room, Sheshy fished for the crumbs of bread on the ground. They tasted more of mould and dust but she didn’t care. If she had stayed hungry for even another hour, she would probably have died.
Every day was almost the same. She was locked up in the dark room the entire time and Fikru would come once a day with rotten crumbs of bread. The hunger did not even let her sleep and she spent most of the time either crying for her family or from the pangs in her stomach. The days had never felt longer. Sometimes she felt there was someone in the room with her. She thought she heard someone breathing. In those times, she stayed under the bench hugging her legs, closed her eyes and wished for it to go away.
As Sheshy was standing over the man who was pleading for his life, she remembered how she’d been treated. How through no fault of her own she was plucked away from her family and plunged into the world of violence.
One day when Fikru walked in with the crumbs, she stopped him before he would leave.
“I’ll work for you” she said.
Fikru smiled victoriously “That means no connection with your family and no prospects of making a new one, for you will only have one purpose in life, to die for your country”.
Sheshy didn’t want to die. She didn’t care enough for the country’s independence to give up her life and her family. All she wanted was to go home. To live her life like anyone else would. Finish her school, get married, have children. She wanted to learn knitting from her mother to make sweaters for her baby. She didn’t want glory or a name in history. She just wanted a simple life.
She was shifted to a bigger prison after that which was better because she had company and much better food but worse because in exchange for the perks she had to go through extreme training. She was quite weakened from the lack of nutrition. She would struggle at even the easier parts of the training session which the others seemed to get through with ease. Other trainees were also her age and had been convinced, she believed, in the same way that she had. But she found it surprising that some of them had actually volunteered to be here. They found themselves fortunate to be given this opportunity. Far from finding anyone who would sympathize with her for what she had gone through, she was sometimes ridiculed as a traitor who forced Fikru to mistreat her to make her realize her responsibility. It was for this reason that when a soldier from an enemy troop was captured, Fikru picked her as the volunteer to kill him.
“This is your chance to prove your loyalty to us”. He handed her a dagger, “Stab him!”
The man was already brutally beaten and not even fully conscious. He had blood all over and if Sheshy were to stab him, she would struggle to find a part of his body which wasn’t already injured. Everyone’s eyes were dug into her. Sheshy tightly gripped the dagger thinking that this would finally get her accepted. She didn’t have to be alone. The man was already dead anyway, she would only nudge him closer to death. Nudge him closer to death, she would kill him. She knew what she was doing was wrong but she also knew what she would gain from it. Only she couldn’t do it. Under the pressure she slit her own wrist and fell to the ground.
She woke up in her old cellar.
“No” she screamed and ran to the door “Please get me out of here! Please! I’ll do anything, please don’t make me live in this hell-hole! Please”.
She was made live there a month and the first thing she had to do as she came out was resit the test. This time, the victim was much healthier looking. In fact, pride still glistened in his eyes, he was not afraid to die. He was at least two inches taller than Sheshy and looked down at her as she approached him with the dagger. This time Sheshy just picked up the dagger and struck him in the middle of his chest.
When she opened her eyes, everyone was congratulating her and for once Fikru looked happy. But the only person Sheshy kept looking at was the dying soldier. He was standing with his hands tied to his back and a dagger in his chest, he was crying in agony as his heart struggled to beat but no one else seems to have been noticing.
She didn’t kill anyone after that day. She was put mainly on planning and supervising duties.
“You are my niece”, Fikru once said to her “My only heir. You must lead my army to glory. Together, we will win independence for Eritrea and then you’ll see how proud you’ll make me. How proud you’ll make your family. You will do for me what your brothers couldn’t”.
Now in 1988, the war was at its worst. Anyone who could be present was present in the battlefield. It was in one of these riots that Sheshy was required to step in. The man kneeling in front of her, at her mercy was none other than Fikru Tesfay, her uncle.
“What are you doing?” he said panting “Save me, I don’t want to die”.
“Shut up”, she kicked him in the face. “I hate you, I hate the guts of you, you ruined my life!” she burst out crying. “Now you listen to me” she grabbed him by the hair “I’m going to kill you, I’m going to make you suffer all the pain you have caused me my entire life in your last moments. And I wish and I will pray long after you are gone that you rot in hell like no-one else ever has! People like you have no right to live”.
“Sheshy dear just think about what you’re doing, the country, the independence, it all depends on …”
She shot him six times in the head until his skull was completely shattered. The whole time she was crying; for her, for her family, for those around her and indeed in some way for the country. She stood in the middle of a riot with no gunshots and no will to live.