One of Those . . .

I've lived long enough to witness and experience many things that in my native tongue, Amharic, we call it "gud" or "ye gud yaleh" or "ere gud new." When I was a child, my nanny used to say "sost gud" and she meant the gud was triple fold. Gud is an expression for something beyond wonderment or great surprise. It is often used for what is unimaginable, indescribable, unacceptable or inexcusable.

It was five decades later that I awoke from my deep slumber to realize the gud that had been my personal experience. In the mid-1970s I went back to Ethiopia after graduation from college and six months at my first real job in Oregon state. I was then cautioned not to return. Reverberations of insurrection and riots were the daily news I was told. As fate would have it, I went anyway. One year later the 1974 socialist revolution broke out. On hindsight I am so grateful for Grace that compelled me to go back because those were the last few months I spent with my father before his untimely and unjustified death.

Shortly after the popular uprising of February 1974, the military known as the DERG took over and arrested all higher echelon members of government. My father, Lt. General Kebbede Gebre was the sitting defense minister (secretary of state) during Emperor Haile Selassie's regime. Fast forward to November 1975 when the presiding DERG leader, Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam decided to execute 60 high ranking officials without any legal proceedings. To justify his action, the one hundred and twenty noncommissioned officers known as DERG were asked to vote over each life. The mystery to this day (we learned some fifty years later) is that Lt. Gen. Kebbede Gebre was not on the list. That means a vote was not taken on his life, but somehow, he was executed. We are told he refused to wear a blind fold, and that his last words were, "You are slaughtering the innocent like sheep, and for this, history will judge you." Evidently, Mengistu wanted him removed for fear that the military might choose him as their leader albeit while he was being held as a prisoner.

It is an experience that will never leave my mind. I am no longer drowning in depression nor am I filled with rage and a burning desire for retribution. All of that gradually melted and oozed out of me like molten lava from an active volcano. My sense of helplessness had taken me on a path of despair and emotional paralysis. I was more like a robot that engaged in doing, making and producing one thing after another, but without any agency to connect with myself or with others in a profound way. During all these periods of tumult and isolation, art was the place of refuge, it was the balm to soothe my wounds and the source of love and light to inspire hope through the dismal darkness of an abyss.

I now find myself at peace and without a shred of hatred or bitterness in me, all by the Grace of God. But in this calm and peaceful state, I awoke to realize one day not too long ago, that I am one of those to whom the unthinkable had happened. My father was executed by a firing squad or he was murdered at point blank, and his body was thrown in a mass grave. Later in 1993 when a regime change happened in Ethiopia, the bodies of the executed were exhumed but it was only bones and who knows whose bones were whose. This is the gud, the sum of it. It is the kind of stuff we read in the papers, or we hear on the crime channel on TV. One never prepares for such an event nor does one ever anticipate being one of the characters in this kind of tragic drama. But of course, I am one of the millions to whom this has happened across the world.

I, being spiritual, decided to bury my father on the beach at Santa Monica. I willed his soul to rest in the vast Pacific Ocean. Father loved to swim and fish. My earliest memories are of him teaching me how to swim in the Red Sea when we lived in Assab, a port that now belongs to Eritrea. I was so fearful of the water and my training was interrupted when I went off to school in Addis Abeba, so I didn't become a great swimmer. Still, it is one of the most precious memories I have of my dad.

Recently I've been working on a painting on a recycled foam board. I started out with vivid floral colors in random splash, but it evolved into a scene of a forest at sunset. I've spent much time on this piece not to mention a lot of paint as the board soaks it all up. The other day, I asked myself why I chose to paint a forest. I'm more like an ocean or sea scene lover. When I make art, I'm transported to a place where the past and the future do not exist. The moment is consumed by what I'm making and the challenges I face to realize the inner vision. In this place I find hope that all is well even with all that is lost, broken, corrupted and usurped. Confusion does not rule, and despair does not propel to a downward spiral of victimhood. I can ride the wave or sorrow and find joy like the sun peeking through the clouds after the storm.

My mom and dad ultimately rested in a grave that belonged to my mom's paternal family. Recently, the government or the church, not exactly sure which, determined that the graves should be dug up and the bodies removed because the land will be used for some development. When I heard the news, it was yet another one of those "ere gud" kind of incidents. Only because it defies the Christian Orthodox values of honoring the dead and the tradition to respect those who served and fell for their country. Still, I was totally chill. I told myself mom and dad are not there, and neither are all the other family members. It would have been fitting to mark the grave as a historical landmark because of their contributions to Ethiopia's advancement, modernization, to women's rights and to social welfare. It seems that basic common sense and fundamental principles are thrown out the window. There is no need to seethe with anger or to feel victimized. The dead serve the living, I've always believed. It is no wonder that my soul is working out these greater than life emotions regarding my parents’ whereabouts with a depiction of a forest at sunset. It's a metaphor for the mystery that shrouds the end of a day that is a lifetime. The resting place for their souls, a green meadow leading into the dense forest  wherein lies the mystery of the universe. So, my "gud" or "sost gud" turned out to be a painting that will hang high up on the wall in my home. There I can pay homage to their love for one another that brought me into this world and to their love for me that shaped my core values. I am not just one of those for whom gud was a boulder on the head but I am also one of those for whom art is a refuge and a weapon of mass construction.