Of Beetles and Angels by Mawi Asgedom

arrest or at least fine him. But after talking to him, they instead obeyed the golden rule and gave him only a warning.
    Y OU SEE HOW THIS TREACHEROUS WORLD WORKS ? S OMETIMES YOU TRY TO DO SOMETHING GOOD AND YOU END UP GETTING PUNISHED FOR IT.
    Although we
habesha
refugees have scattered to every imaginable corner of the Earth, we occasionally gather by the hundreds at old banquet halls in Chicago.
    At each get-together, we come yearning for fellowship. We also search for news of the homeland, something we desperately sought before 1991, when the civil war between Eritrea and Ethiopia still raged fiercely.
    In the earliest days, at our very first party, the Chicago
habesha
kids jumped Tewolde and me in the hallway within minutes of our arrival. They had their own little gang.
    “You suburban commandos, we’re gonna beat your butt!”
    Tewolde and I ran into the closet, reappeared with brooms and started swinging at the city boys, wild as we could.
    Believe it or not, we ended up becoming friends in later years.
    We usually hung out in the hallways of the old buildings. When we grew tired, we would retreat to the main room and sit at a table with our other young friends. The adults would sit at their own tables, the women usually at different tables from the men.
    The dancing began around eleven P.M. and did not finish until four or five A.M. Before the dancing, though, they always had announcements, news sharing, and other preplanned programs.
    My father would interrupt the programs, rising and leaving his seat, heading right for the stage. He would take the microphone and start reciting
geetmes,
or rhyming poems.
    Being a child, I would cringe in embarrassment. “Who is that?” people would ask, especially the kids who lived in Chicago and did not know that he was my father. “Does anyone know where that crazy old man came from?”
    I kept my mouth shut, denying him, too ashamed to acknowledge him.
    He had a rare talent for rhyming in
geetme,
our culture’s spoken-word freestyle rap. He would go on for half an hour without pause.
    I SIKOOM DHO KITBAHALOO AKAHL GODOLO, AYNISIKUM INDEEKUM BEHAGOS NETEE MULUO KEYHEE BAHREE TIZELILWO.
    “O H, YOU, WHO ARE CALLED HANDICAPPED. A REN’T YOU THE VERY ONES WHO WITH BOUNDLESS JOY LEAP OVER THE EXPANSIVE R ED S EA ?”
    All listened in amazement, wondering who this eccentric old man was. Did he not fear to interrupt the program? Did he not realize that shouting into a microphone creates sonic hell? And how was it that he loved his homeland so much that he could sing-say half-hour
geetmes
about it?
    Some days he would write the lyrics ahead of time. But then his eyes would fail him and he would struggle to read his own writing, even when he held the paper right up to his bifocals. He would call my friend Abraham, who was my age but had come to this country later and could still read Tigrynia quickly.
    A BRAHAM, MY SON, ARE YOU HERE ? P LEASE COME AND READ THIS FOR ME. Abraham would go up respectfully and read the rhymes, with my father’s hunched frame standing guard next to him.
    In my younger days, my embarrassment created a smokescreen that blocked me from hearing my father’s rhymes. But as I got older, maturity opened my ears and my heart, and the haze thinned. I started to feel his words and the spirit beneath them, and then I started recognizing his genius.
    I remember one time when his poetry rivaled that of Homer, Virgil, and Shakespeare. I waited until we got home and then asked him to repeat the lines.
    I have since forgotten those lines, but I can never forget the quiet, almost embarrassed shock that flooded his eyes when I asked him to repeat them. It was the shock of a man who had slowly been convinced by those around him that he had little to offer; a man whose new country had labeled him insignificant; a man whose opinion rarely mattered as it once had.
    It was the shock of a proud man who had metamorphosed into a beetle.
    Several years later, I ran into an old