Of Beetles and Angels by Mawi Asgedom Page A

friend named Berhe at an annual Eritrean conference in Columbus, Ohio. I had met him when I was a boy — each year, he had helped drive my family to the conference.
    Berhe was thrilled to see me. He grabbed me, hugged me, and as is our custom, pelted me with questions.
    “How are you doing? How is your family? Your health? School? Your family? How are your parents and siblings? School? Your family? And you? How is your health? Mother? Father? And you? How are you?”
    “Dehaan,
” I repeated, “we are fine.
Dehaan, dehaan, dehaan
.”
    I sat with Berhe and talked of old times. We laughed as we remembered stories of going to the Eritrean conference together.He told me of his wife and kids, and I congratulated him.
    Then Berhe started to tell me stories about my father.
    “Sima,
Selamawi,” he began. “Listen.”
    “I went back to the homeland recently and ran into some of your father’s old friends in Tigray. Old-timers, dinosaurs from way back in the day. There are only a few of them left now — thirty years of war made sure of that.
    “The old-timers started to tell me stories of Haileab, the son of Zedengel, stories of the deeds that he had done and the people that he had helped. We sat in the tavern, and the tavern filled up, and more and more came. Many others, even younger ones, started to speak of him:
    “ ‘He walked through miles of winter mud to help my aunt give birth.’
    “’He saved my grandfather from the snakebite’s certain death.’
    “’He stitched my head up after the son of Tesfi busted it open with a stone.’
    “’He always gave what he could to the poor, even giving them animals during feast times so that they would not go hungry.’
    “ ‘His generosity knew no bounds. How we mourned when they came for him and he fled. For who was ever like him, like Haileab, our father and our friend.’
    “As I listened to all of these witnesses testify to your father’s love and his heart, I became overwhelmed with emotion. All of them regarded your father as a true hero. A generous, talented hero who served his people with great love and distinction.
    “I am glad that you and I were made to find each other today so that I could tell you all of these things. In my heart, I knew that it was you and your siblings who should have heard those stories, not me.”
    All throughout my childhood, I had witnessed my father’s metamorphosis. Watching him deteriorate, seeing him become dependent on others, feeling sorry for him and even feeling embarrassed, I had witnessed his unmanning.
    All that time, the thought had never occurred to me that my father had once been a hero. Or that he might
still
be a hero, tragic and flawed though he might be.

High school track, anchor leg of the 4 ? 800 meters. I hang on to win the conference championship for Wheaton North.

E YEING THE M OUNTAINTOP
    G rowing up, I saw my parents welcome many guests into our home. It didn’t matter who the person was or how much they had. The poorest, most recently arrived refugee received the same welcome as the richest American.
Sit down, please. Have some
injera.
Have something to drink.
    I used to think the whole world shared my parents’ philosophy. As I grew older, though, my eyes opened.
    I saw that most people used a different calculator. Beauty was external, money mattered, and so did skin color. I looked some more and saw that those who discriminated most, those who saw angels only when angels could help them, were often the ones who seemed to flourish.
    And I thought to myself, this seeing angels thing, maybe it offers only spiritual rewards. Maybe God will reward us in another land someday. Maybe the reward is in our hearts and in the kind of people we become.
    I was convinced, though, that the reward was not a material one.
    But that was fine with me. My brother had always looked for angels. I had watched him see angels in the least likely places, and wanted nothing more than to be like him.
    So I did my best to