Eritrea: the Elusive Farewell to Arms

A Book Review: The Conscript: A Novel of Libya’s Anticolonial War

Book in Tigrigna: by Gebreyesus Hailu

Translated: by Ghirmai Negash

Reviewed: By Zekre Lebona

Conscription has been a burden for generations of Eritreans subsequent to the occupation of Eritrea by Italy in 1890, except for the brief period in 1941-1961, a period when small governments of the British Occupation and the Federal Eritrean governments were in sequence at the helms of power. A fiction book, The Conscript: A Novel of Libya’s Anticolonial War, discusses in an original way the conscription regime under the Italians; it is available now in English for people with historical inclinations or the curious types. Written in Tigrinya in 1927, it bided its time and was only published in 1950, after the advent of the publication boom in the vernacular language.

Ethiopian nationalism

Aba Gebreyesus Hailu’s novella has tried to encapsulate the conscription experience, though it falls short of assessing the impact and magnitude of this institution that has become a part of the landscape, in other words, its zeitgeist.  The author is harsh on his people for collaborating with the colonizers without explaining the militarization under Ras Alula and the famine caused by rinderpest that followed it that devastated a large percentage of the population and the livestock on whom they depended. He also accuses his country people for easily succumbing to the military recruitment without considering the pull factors. For the peasants of the Mereb Melash, and the regions south to it, joining the colonial army was a social mobility that was in the monopoly of the class of soldiers in the traditional class system.¹ An unfair comparison of their reaction to Italian occupation is also made with what transpired in 1868 Ethiopia.

His hero, Atse Tewodros, did indeed make a suicidal attempt to resist the British Empire’s massive invasion only after having isolated himself from most of the nobility and the tired farmers. The reaction of the peasants in both circumstances was not resistance but survival; bravery and resistance are their least concern. As people in the frontier-areas the might and violence of invading imperial forces invariably falls on the kebesa people before the agriculturalists of the hinterland. When the forces of the sovereign are present pillage and depredation are rarely absent.

Deeply conscious about the race of colonial Italy as the Aba is in the novel, he commits a political sin when he succumbs to the allure of modernization introduced by the Italians. The straight streets in Asmera and trees planted beside them described in the story were made for the colonial officers and settlers, and clearly not for the indigenous farmers of the region. This state of fascination with superficial aspects of modernity seems to infect all generations in Eritrea that benefited from some form of modern education. Its deleterious impact is still noticed by Asmera’s urbanites and others who, though born and raised in other towns and villages in Eritrea, want to be still seen as modern city folks.

This writer remembers reading this book in its original Tigrinya version in the library of the now defunct University of Asmera many years back. It was rightly titled Hade or Hanti Zanta (A Story), possibly a style of writing in early literate societies with the intent of attracting readers, who except for the prayer books had little exposure to secular literature. Old and worn-out it might have looked, somebody had paid his attention to it and that is the teacher/journalist Amanuel Sahle. He was the first, to my knowledge, who translated it into English, but has been strangely not given credit by the publishers of its latest version, The Conscript: A Novel of Libya’s Anticolonial War.²

Eritrean nationalism

Translated by Ghirmai Negash, the original title in Tigrinya was dropped; it was replaced by the more specific word of “conscript” for the much wider modern reader. Understandably, it is a better way to market the book. What is incomprehensible however is the subtitle, which gives readers unfamiliar with the region the idea that the book is about the resistance of the Libyan people. To the contrary, it is the experience of Tiquabo, the protagonist character in the novel, and many other thousands of native colonial soldiers from Eritrea.

Negash has done a good attempt to preserve the spirit and nuances of the original book in Tigrinya. He has also remained faithful to the frequent use of proverbs effectively used by Aba Gebreyesus for a largely oral-based culture as some of book’s critiques indicated. His failure however is in his complete refusal to remark on the identity and sense of belonging of the hero of the book, the parallel phenomenon of conscription in contemporary Eritrea, and the turn of history.

There is little chance that any person with modest exposure about Eritrea’s history would miss the connection. The translator’s note and the introduction to the book unnecessarily  dwell on, and give some space to, the similarities of the book to the great writers of post-colonialism such as Franz Fanon, and Aime Cesaire, completely forgetting the military serfdom in contemporary Eritrea. The harsh policies and practices of the colonial states notwithstanding, a focus on it as the only reference point and omitting the terrible toll of the post-colonial state is deplorable. In order to redress this, a postscript about the conscription in present day Eritrea should have been included.

Negash points out to the desert setting in Libya as beautifully portrayed by the Aba and reminds the reader about the “uncanny” image of the satellite pictures of the Libyan landscape that was beamed during the recent rebellion against Ghaddafi. Yet, he missed the wanderings and deaths of hundreds of the great grandsons and great granddaughters of the same veterans of the old Libyan war in the inhospitable desert and sea of the same location. The irony in this is that the latter were escaping the same curse of the conscription that is prevalent in Eritrea now.

In The Conscript, we hear the peasants cry, “Our priests, why don’t you speak out? Not even one young man can be found; all have gone to Tripoli?” In a like manner, where are the great majority of the elite in defense of the masses now? Well, mute and silent or endorsing the policies of the regime including the never-ending conscription. The fact that even the conscription of the deacons and clergy that colonial Italy never even violated does not seem to shock them indicates the depth of the moral abdication reigning in the land.² In contrast, the caliber and ethical responsibility of the priest and writer was much to be admired.

Unknown political terrain

Aba Gebreyesus Hailu was a humble priest deeply anchored in the traditions and way of life of his village. He had lived a long life to have observed or have heard about the forced conscription of poor farmers, this time in the hands of his indigenous power elite during the war for a separate nationhood from Ethiopia. Had circumstances allowed him, a sequel to the same novel on conscription would have been an excellent tiquabo or gift for his readers. The late Aba would certainly have been abhorred by the decree of the Eritrean state to draft the welude keh’net or clergy to the boot camps and the trenches that seem to crisscross the whole country.³ His rural background would have equally made him condemn the perpetual military slavery that has become the lot of the ghebar population.

In The Conscript, the vow of “farewell to arms” made in the end of the novel would have been as valid and as relevant now as it was for Tiquabo and his generation (who served for only a period of two years!). The fact that it never was for the succeeding generations, who fought and died in the tens of thousands for a new Eritrean identity different from Tiquabo’s strongly affirmed Habesha identity, is a quirk of history.

More strangely, this story would likely put many Eritrean nationalists who happen to read the book in a predicament. Will they claim the character, Tiquabo, as one of their own without of course his Ethiopian identity as repeatedly affirmed in the little book? Will they deal with the lament of Tiquabo who wishes his “nation” Ethiopia had a sea outlet in order to bring to it the benefits of progress? If yes, what will they make of the war and the call of the later generations to re-possess the wedebat or ports from the same nation?⁴

In the same vein, how do they explain Aba’s hero, Atse Tewodros, the nationalist emperor of nineteenth century Ethiopia? He heaps praises on him for bravery and resistance to the British Empire’s invasion in The Conscript. His other book written in verse is about the late emperor (it has not been published yet). This will certainly be for many a politically incorrect subject, and a political landmine to be avoided at any cost.

The political economy of conscription in Eritrea, therefore, needs the urgent attention of researchers as already pioneered by Tekeste Negash and Uoldelul Chelati Dirar. It is urgent because the issue of demobilization is imminent than all the adversity that has engulfed Eritrea; if the community of people is to continue to exist in the nation-state of Eritrea, a systematic and thorough analysis of the subject is an imperative task that the late Aba would have probably loved to witness.

This writer believes they will not adopt him. To the contrary, the nationalist lot will consider him as an anomaly to the majority of former askeris, who were allegedly the precursors of Eritrea’s nationalism according to Dirar, Uoldelul Chelati.⁵ In light of his recent call for reviewing the nationalist historiography of Eritrea, it is incumbent upon him to read the novel and do the same. True, Tiquabo is a fictional character, but who says Eritrean nationalist literature is remotely clean from it.⁶

In sum, absent of a total demobilization in the country, the saying of the griot, “One by one they got fewer” used by the narrator in The Conscript is still valid in Eritrea.⁷ The filset or exodus that the dictator could not even avoid mentioning during this year’s independence event is inextricably linked with the conscription regime.  Horrible as it may look, filset is the likely scenario for the nation-state of Tiquabo’s great grandchildren.

Footnotes

[1]Mordechai, Abir. Ethiopia and the Red Sea p.48.

[2]Hailu, Gebreyesus. The Conscript A Novel of Libya’s Anticolonial War. Translated by Negash, Ghirmai. Modern African Writing, Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 2013.

[3]See the document made in reply to State of Eritrea’s Religious Affairs at the archives of Asmarino.com.

[4]The Conscript p.18.

[5]Dirar, Uoldelul Chelati, From Warriors to Urban Dwellers, Ascari and the Military Factor in the Urban Development of Colonial Eritrea. Cahiers d’etudes africaines 175 (2004) p.15.

[6]Dirar, Uoldelul Chelati, Trespassing Boundaries: the Challenges for the Nationalist Historiography of Eritrea.

[7]The Conscript p.48.