Analyse Asmara – Part 5

Related: Analyse Asmara - Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

In January of 2016 and to mark the Silver Jubilee celebrations of the independence of Eritrea for May of 2016, the State of Eritrea made the following announcement:

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Independence Torch in Nakfa for May 2016

Ms. Tsegereda Woldegergis, Governor of the Northern Red Sea Region, stated that the Independence Torch prompts us to evaluate – as a people and nation – to what extent we have fulfilled the pledges we have made in past 25 years to uphold and advance the vision and dream of our martyrs.

The Independence Torch will cover more than three thousand kilometers in all the Regions of the country and reach Asmara, Eritrea’s capital, on Independence Day.

(Eritrean Ministry of Information – January 15, 2016)

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Eritrean ‘Martyrs’

The above reads like an official statement of a lost nation that tends to repeat again and again that displacing tendency to ‘run away’ from a given centre of gravity only to take it for granted and start all over again.  It is really not that different from the behaviour of a dependent child or an adult who has chosen or consciously refused to grow up.

This year-on-year recurrence is at the centre of Eritrea’s lost sense of identity.  Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place – the ghost in our midst!

What is not yet obvious, at least to an Eritrean mindset, is this: the redundant construct of the nation state is not fit or unable to adapt to the fast-evolving reality of a globalised world.  Eritrea’s dysfunctional relationship with the outside world is the evidence and Eritreans are literally running away from it.  The rate of change is so fast that unstable nations are bursting at the seams.  No wonder issues and control of borders and movement of people are on a magnified scale all over the globe.

What is becoming increasingly clear now is: it was always about resources and national security and if people get in the way, let them take the highway.  This mythologized mind of the Eritrean identity has managed to deform or distort the mental landscape of its origin only to get lost all over again and acquire a memory of loss not fit for recovery. 

There is a mismatch or something out of sync here.  How is it possible that a defective construct of a national identity, not fit for purpose, takes over like a death-mask glued to the face and takes control of the lives of so many millions for so long?

So far and for the last 55 years, what happened or is still happening in Eritrea is nothing short of a self-inflicted genocide in slow motion and in which Eritreans themselves are active participants or silent witnesses in their own act of self-extermination with a twisted sentimentality they have for Eritrean ‘martyrs’ who, if given the chance to rise from the dead, would not even imagine raising a finger or pulling a trigger and die for Eritrea.  Yet, their dead soul is used, misused and abused to remind the living or the walking-dead that Eritreans are better off and, lest they forget, they will be labelled as disrespectful to those who gave their lives for the independence of Eritrea.

What a crafty and emotionally loaded logic that holds the survivors, bystanders or the-easy-to-manipulate Eritreans fenced behind a mental brick-wall of guilt!  In the current information age, the upgraded Eritrean ‘martyrs’ are being used as emotional buttons via smart phones to keep a defective memory alive while turning live Eritreans into zombies.

How bizarre is that?

When will Eritreans accept the fact that Eritrea is an arbitrary and resource-base geographical map for which the ‘martyrs’ paid a price and in whose name those in power now are playing games with that memory for their own survival?

That is the surreality (no other way of describing it) that pumps the ‘Eritrean identity’ bubble and, sooner or later, there follows a burst, leakage of some kind or a gradual disappearance of a flickering flame.  In other words, no need for a ‘torch in memory of martyrs’ but a candle might do to remember the wasted souls and help figure out how to put the history of Eritrea, the endless sequence of damages, the blunders and their intolerable consequences in some perspective.

Well, the martyrs are dead and buried and whatever vision or dream they had, if they ever had one of any relevance to the present, has turned INto a nightmare.  As for the Independence Torch that will travel 3000 Kilometres across the country – presumably from Nacfa to Asmara.  It is designed to soften and downplay the gravity of the never-ending cycle of migration, re-location, displacement, death and remembrance all over again while a monument of a gigantic pair of concrete sandals stay in a round-about in the city Asmara while young Eritreans are literally walking, swimming, sailing, drowning, flying or being trafficked away.

The State of Eritrea declares: the Independence Torch prompts us to evaluate – as a people and nation – to what extent we have fulfilled the pledges we have made in past 25 years.

They might as well call it the Torture of Independence… and all in the name of the dead! The Torch will reach its destination in Asmara on May 24, 2016.

Analyse that!

The current location of Asmara and, it seems, the capital city itself has been the focal point for the story of Eritrea for nearly a hundred years now.  Having been designed and constructed as the seat of political power for a long time, it all begins and ends in Asmara.

It could probably hold the key to investigating why Eritrea is the way it is now – hopeless, to say the least.  The three crucial and consistently repeating phenomena in the so-called Eritrea are internal displacement, resource mismanagement and migration – in all their forms.  A suitable but grotesque analogy one could possibly use for such a conundrum is the impact of a meteorite on the surface of a planet.

In our post-modern world, man-made ‘craters’ (see picture below) do serve as visible examples what ‘modernity’ is capable of doing to the natural environment.  Asmara is one of those craters. Although we and the coming generations have to live/survive the impact, we can at least begin an alternative argument to figure out how or why Eritrea is in the state it is now.

In its heyday, Asmara – a crater of the city-kind and in the so-called dark continent – was like a meteorite that fell on earth and indented a socio-cultural environment and a way of life that still finds itself unable to recover from, adapt or adopt to evolve and switch-on to a survival mode other than to run away or dig deep in denial. 

The problem with running away is the shadow never lets go – except in the dark.  That could be the fate of Eritrea if it isn’t already there.  It can only be at peace with itself when it disappears.  Hence, the incessant echo of the beating drums of ‘martyrs’ and blowing trumpets to raise the dead in a year-in and year-out cycle.

Eritrea’s most precious resource, it has been said so many times and by those who should have known better, is its human resource.  It turned out to be, after decades and decades of endless strife, the cheapest, least important and most wasted resource.

Fact!

We are talking about the loss of human lives on a grand scale here.

In the beginning, there was no such thing called Eritrea.  Why Eritreans are so obsessed and stuck with it for so long is an enigma and, since what we are seeing around are the remains of a long-standing and unsettled settlement in which the walking-dead are still with us, it demands some kind of archeological digging with a gentle brush.

Just to put some flesh on all that, let’s say it was born in 1890 and, like a new-born baby, had no idea in what kind of world it emerged. 

In 1896, as if going through a right of passage to adulthood, it entered (heralded by the Italians) its first battle with Ethiopia.  It lost.  These were the first generation of ‘Eritrean conscripts’ who, in their tens of thousands, lost their lives and limbs as part of the Italian army that invaded Ethiopia. 

They were not labeled as martyrs. They were just conscripts – some of whom might have volunteered.

In 1998 and at least five generations and almost 100 years later, the same thing would happen.  This time however, no one is yet certain on whose behalf or for what purpose it was fought. 

Take note!

The second right of passage came around 1912 when Eritrean and Somali conscripts were taken to fight in Libya.  Soon after, Libya would become an Italian colony.

The third right of passage came when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935 – a few years before the beginning of the Second World War.  Eritrean conscripts fought alongside the Italian army which succeeded in occupying parts of Ethiopia for about five years.

The fourth right of passage was in 1941.  Thousands of Eritrean conscripts again fought alongside the Italian army against the British.  The British won and Eritrea was under the British Administration for 10 years.

Three successive generations of young ‘Eritreans’ went through 4 wars within a period of 44 years. 

The fifth, the mother of all wars, is yet to begin in 1961 and would take 30 odd years and more than a hundred thousand lives.  It put Eritrea on the world map in 1993 only to warm up to another war 5 years later and have tens of thousands of sixth generation soldiers killed over a period of 2 years. 

In short, Eritrea – colonized or not – has, over its entire 125 years of existence, gone through wars that involved or kept every generation occupied.  The successive socio-cultural and economic impacts of such phenomena should not be underestimated and has to be explored further.

Is it not yet self-evident that the Eritrean identity is a bruised, brutalized and an identity prone to endless cycles of physical and mental displacement in need of treatment of some kind?

Let’s see if Asmara can offer some insight into all that.

Asmara

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While walking the nostalgia road in Asmara, there was something that wasn't resonating, something that was grand and smelled good in the senses of a child, became unsettling and it had something to do with the facade and its history and imagining that this is the Ministry of Education and being glad may be its good that it's in disrepair because it still carries the same weight it was meant to represent. Reading the article made me imagine the best usage of Art Deco Asmara; fish market, meat market, bar but not a ministry of high court or education. Now I have a name for it: dissonant heritage -- to borrow from Yebio's eulogy ... fighting for the spoils of colonialism, to dwell in the same space, begets the same fruit. (Eritus)

Asmara – built between 1922 and 1928 – in its infancy and make-up, was a city totally out of time and place and more like a settlement that landed from outer space.  A premature birth, shall we say.  It was an alien urban ecology that truly changed not only the ‘Eritrean’ landscape but also deeply affected the psyche of those who witnessed its impact on their lives. 

What is so crucial to grasp about Asmara and its effect on the ‘natives’ is that everything about it is inorganic – a settlement that didn’t grow from within and had that disabling and alienating influence upon the locals.  In a way, the 1920s were the early stages of the long process of sensing that feeling of internal displacement which, over the years, developed to a way of life or a ‘thing’ one has to aspire to.

It is internal displacement or migration from the rural to the urban that set in motion the sense of being ‘elsewhere’ while being ‘there’ without really being in the here and now.

Since its inception, this is the recurrent phenomenon that has impacted the ‘Eritrean’ identity both in the physical and psychic sense.  It can be located but not in the ‘here’ sense of the word.  It is as if not only the idea but the very need for ‘settlement’ has become, just like the city of Asmara, an alien concept to the inhabitants of Eritrea at large. 

The search for the centre of gravity is never located under their two feet.  They [Eritreans] seem to have developed this capacity to turn this ‘urge’ to a way of life or a culture on how to disable the collective self called Eritrean identity. 

It wouldn’t be surprising if the question, “What are you doing here?” is a universally applicable mode of entrance to a door of an Eritrean mind anywhere – as if he/she were supposed to be elsewhere and the reply would naturally be, “It is a long story”.

Maybe that is why a lot of people cannot locate Eritrea either – it is as if it is nowhere.  It wants or would have liked to open the door and invited a guest but doesn’t know how – anymore.

Is it probably because there is no one inside able to open the door other than to escape through the backyard and come back and pretend as if they are the new occupants – years later?

Let’s explore another dimension in this recurring theme of displacement and relocation or migration.  It happens like a knee-jerk response to any crisis or threat.  The other dormant response is not reacting at all – a kind of paralysis.  There is no middle ground at all.  No compromise either.

The 30-year liberation struggle is a case in point.

 Why and to liberate what?

Although it is not wise to ignore the untimely and unregulated ‘interference’ from outside forces, in hindsight, it looks like it was an overreaction (from the Eritrean side) to a crisis that could have been resolved – given the current outcome – through less coercive means.  The evidence is in the age group who were born in Asmara in the late 1930s and ‘40s and who attended ‘proper’ schools – a privilege their parents dreamed of and would have died for.  These new breed of colonial cancer came to adulthood stage in the mid 1960s with borrowed ideologies for which they didn’t have the ‘intelligence’ to adjust to organic cultures and from which they evolved.

This is not even a case of the native-stranger. 

This is a case of a strange native. A tiny minority, with a half-baked educational background which had no relevance to the concerns of the majority other than to the usual and terminal and malignant Asmara-infected complex, took the responsibility (if one could call it that) to liberate a nation.  Immersed in and emerging from a global soup of international communism, overzealous about a mission to liberate a country from ‘occupiers’ and hell-bent to sacrifice or forfeit their lives and those of their yet ‘unaware’ brethren – just another format of that endless cycle of conscription to die for ‘heaven’ later. 

That ‘heaven’ is, beyond any reasonable doubt, none other than Asmara.  It assumed that status of a dream worth dying for and did they die for it?  Oh, Yes… and in their thousands!

This consistent inconsistency – moving from the sustainable to the unsustainable – has a way of ending elsewhere and nowhere but never where it is supposed to be.  It is an indication that something has gone terribly wrong – an outcome of an unstable and disrupted way of life that seems to have somehow duplicated and perpetuated itself by decades of strife.

Current and reliable sources report on the living conditions in Asmara as deteriorating at an alarming rate.  The city itself is a reflection or a silent witness of events unfolding like a painting on canvass exposed to the elements gradually fading away into meaninglessness.  The irony is Asmara has, yet again, become the barometer of the state of Eritrea – the good, the bad, the ugly and the extremely horrible that lies hidden behind the façade. 

How is it possible for a country that has paid so much, too much in fact and for far too long, that it is impossible to put a price on it… and lose everything unless there is an underlying and fundamental flaw in the very idea called Eritrea?

Displacement

If planet Mars were to be air-conditioned and fully refurbished in the near future, Eritreans would try to board the interplanetary spacecraft by any means necessary.

Don’t worry Eritreans – you are not alone!  The human race might be doing just that in a couple of a hundred years.  The questions is – why the hurry?

In its 125 years of ‘existence’ – from its formation as an Italian colony in 1890 to present – migration, dislocation, relocation and displacement have been, as if they are part and parcel of its ‘birthright’ or right of passage at every stage of its growing pains, the most consistent and persistent features that framed its ‘disability’ to settle in relative peace within its own borders.

Why?

First and foremost, there was no such thing called Eritrea before 1890.  Secondly and more importantly, present Ethiopia looks exactly what it looked like in 1890 – by virtue of the new colonial borders that defined Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti and, of course, Eritrea.  In other words, the colonial borders of the Horn of Africa make more sense if they could be perceived as tectonic plates that, every time they rub against each other by powers in their respective centres, a tsunami aftermath is experienced that tends to rise to a further build up for another episode.

But we all know that – albeit from different angles.

The central themes however, remain to be power, resource and control of denominations – three deadly and heavy elements that, if not stabilised with care, have the potential to destroy the very foundation of, and among other things, sensible co-existence.

Those were, by the way, the three main elements that informed the colonial mission back in the 1880s and in what was later to be labelled as ‘The Scramble for Africa.’

Most African nations – so-called independent and as if the term itself makes any sense – have managed to have the ‘power’ in whatever form it may be while not at ease in ‘colonising’ their newly acquired resources – as if they were only assigned to disown their own people.

What is wrong with resource distribution? Now, that is a tiring and outdated argument – and we all know that!

Back to Eritrea!

Eritrea gained its political independence in 1993 – the second last in Africa before South Sudan.  The irony is that they are both behaving like failed states already simply because they failed (again) to learn those simple lessons from their neighbourhoods about handling heavy elements.

Fragile - This Side Up – Handle with Care – do come to mind.

As one former Eritrean liberation fighter put it, “… it took 30 years to liberate the land and it will take another 30 years to liberate the people”. 

Was it not possible to do both at the same time?  How about strategic thinking while alive – so to speak? What if there aren’t any people left after the land is freed? What is the point of ‘free’ land if it cannot be seen as a resource base to share among those who live on it?  How on earth are they supposed to ‘own’ it?

It puts the whole idea or the mission of ‘political independence’ into question.

Anyway, let’s go back to the beginning – to Analyse Asmara.

A first time visitor to Asmara, even in its progressively dilapidating condition, would ask themselves, “Where am I?”  I would ask myself, “Where is this place?”

Feel free to fabricate your own.

Now imagine a newly designated subject ‘Eritreo’ (Eritrean in Italian) in 1936 and just about the time Asmara was fully functional as the future metropolis of the Italian-kind – La Piccola Roma.  Little Rome was like a gem – as if it has the potent ingredients of a magical spell to incarnate the ‘unholy’ Roman Empire.

There are more traffic lights in Asmara than in Rome – some Italians would boast in those days.  So they said.  Some Eritreans also used to say, ‘… if you want to see heaven, go to Asmara.’  So it has been told.

Asmara would probably feel like a spacecraft that landed intact out of the blue from outer space. 

Now imagine the impact of the meteoric kind but on a part of our planet with aliens on board and walking around the neighbourhood, after landing of course, as if they had possession of the land for ages?

Shock Waves!

Prior to all that however and before they are blown out of perspective, there are events that need to come forward and present themselves in their own rightful places.

We are talking about people who have no idea what hit them.

Soon after Eritrea was ‘officially’ mapped for colonisation, Italy had Ethiopia in mind as the next ‘intergalactic’ station to outbid other European superpowers of 1880s.  And who was the cannon fodder for the invasion of Ethiopia then?  Hundreds of thousands of soldiers died from all sides and it is the communities they belonged to that lost more.  They all paid the price.

We are talking about the Battle of Adwa of 1886.

Having failed on the Ethiopian front, Italy went for Libya. 

Cannon fodder, please?  Eritreans again!

These are not Eritreans per se… by the way.  They are subjects, objects and slaves from wherever who can be taken and be led like cattle to the battlefield – with no rights or acknowledgment whatsoever.

There is a story of what happened in the late 1920s.  Italy, under Mussolini, came up with the idea of showcasing its conquest and demanded some Eritrean villages to hand over the beautiful and the handsome to travel to Italy – the early days of catwalk, perhaps?

What makes Eritreans any different now?

There is this difficult to comprehend and ever-recurrent tendency about Eritreans: the tendency to harden their hold on anything they come in contact with – immaterial whether it is of any benefit to their well-being or survival.  This inflexibility is manifested in all sorts of socio-cultural, religious, linguistic or political spaces or social activism.  This rigidity, whether it is a side-effect of a colonial past or a desperate attempt to recover from, demands some examination.  However, one thing is for certain.  Whatever that space may be, there is a correlation with that displacing and blinding effect which pulls ‘all good intentions’ to an undesirable outcome and begin the cycle of defending the indefensible to the end and, come what may, ‘travel’ the world against their own (national or not) self-interest and resource-base.

But that is for another time!

Settlement

Home is where the heart is, so they say.  Eritreans are losing, if not already lost, the capacity to feel at home almost anywhere.

The long trodden road to Asmara has come to an end and no wonder Eritreans are ending up altogether elsewhere.  This prison, migration, conscription and state-sponsored displacement must have, at the end of the day, some roots in a collective state of mind that has lost its ability to settle or, to achieve some semblance of peace.

What could be the mental roadblock then?

Everyone, except those who have gone unknowingly and visibly blind, knows the Eritrean ‘dream’ has turned to a nightmare – and not the familiar kind of nightmare.

An Eritrean migrant in Canada is mentally in Eritrea and feels displaced in Canada while an internally displaced Eritrean in Eritrea imagines or rather longs to be in Canada so as to feel at home there.  This is probably true for most Eritreans in diaspora and in Eritrea.

If this could be understood or taken as an issue of a state of mind rather than ‘love of country’ or pure and simple homesickness, the road to some kind of settlement could be charted.

When the top brass of Eritrean ‘freedom fighters’ arrived in ‘liberated’ Eritrea back in 1991, one of their excuses to rebuild Eritrea was: the Eritrean social fabric has been destroyed and that it has to be constructed from scratch.  They didn’t have the intelligence or common sense to acknowledge or make an official and painful admission that they had a hand in contributing towards the destruction of the so-called Eritrean social fabric.  In the name of free Eritrea and those who ‘sacrificed’ themselves (dead or alive), all was forgiven and forgotten until, reality being reality, came out to do the haunting here and there.

The road back to sanity is not necessarily political.  There is more than enough of Eritrean politics out there to pave the road to hell.  Are we not there yet?

In hindsight, the asking for one’s precious life for what the idea or dream of Eritrea has turned out to be is at the root of the current nightmare. 

Back in 1999, a former ‘freedom’ fighter had said that it took 30 years to liberate Eritrea and it will take another 50 years to liberate the people of Eritrea. That, in total, will come to around 80 years of ‘struggle’ and should one be surprised if someone starts asking: why?

Surely, there could have been some other way but it seems it is the martyrs’ factor which hold the cards and perpetuate that skewed sense of justification or judgment.

The 30-year struggle for the independence of Eritrea was an overreaction – plain and simple.  There is one thing (there is no other way of putting it) most Eritreans are terrified to open their eyes to.  It’s always been there right in front or at the back of their heads but would not even dare entertain the thought. 

Was the Eritrean liberation struggle and the death and destruction that followed in vain?

Was the Eritrean liberation struggle and the death and destruction that followed in vain?

It had to be asked and read twice and an honest response to that question determines the way out of this quagmire Eritrea finds itself in.  By the way, ‘it depends’ doesn’t lead anywhere. 

Candles for ‘martyrs’ and a torch for Nacfa

Let’s keep the flame burning, so they say.  The way things are, it should be for none other that for the dead and the dying.

The State or the idea of a sovereign state embodies three simple components: borderlines, currency and a government.  Eritrea seems to have deliberately held these three ‘pillars’ in a permanently precarious state to perpetuate a sense of discomfort, threat and uncertainty.

There is a sinister game at play here.  Eritrean officials pretend to be fluent on issues of national security but do suffer from financial illiteracy and insecurity.

Eritrean ‘martyrs’ gave their lives to put Eritrea on the ‘sovereignty’ map – on a pedestal, so to speak.  Nacfa is the Eritrean currency named after the a God forsaken place out in Sahel and a deadly stronghold that could have marked the end of the war for independence back in 1983.

Asmara, the place around which the fate of Eritrea is always sealed, has this tendency of reflecting the ‘nature’ of the successive regimes – including the current one – by the names given to the streets, roads and avenues.  Names of the main avenue have changed from Vittorio Emanuel to Hailesselasie 1^st through to another name (Abyot Avenue, perhaps) during the Derg period and now to Harnet Avenue.  While the first two somehow represented the names of who was in charge of Eritrea, the current one – Harnet (Freedom) Avenue – reflects the opposite of what is going on in Eritrea. 

Slavery Avenue would be more appropriate.  Try texting your ideas from diaspora to our Eritrean residents and see what happens.

In a way and in its progressively deteriorating and dilapidated condition, Asmara reflects the state Eritrea finds itself and to top it all, the residents of Asmara are beginning to look like Asmara itself – rundown, tired and resigned to their fates – together with the human resource that is in the business of running away from the country itself.

In the end, the key elements that defined Eritrea over 125 years are: rural to urban migration, generation after generation of wars and conscriptions, successive internal displacements with a culture that has established an intricate way of life on how to waste resources. 

It is probably not a bad idea to start thinking or entertaining the thought when streets, roads and avenues in Asmara are renamed from a long list of names of Eritrean villages.  Asmara is gradually fading into the background anyway and that would reflect the true nature of its make-up.  Even the Eritrean ‘freedom’ fighters themselves were probably fighting to ‘liberate’ and occupy Asmara and, having done that and not much later, they started migrating to Europe and North America.

New name for Harnet Avenue?  Why not begin with Abeyto Avenue and settle down!  

If only someone could figure out what Abeyto means?

Talking of Abeyto and names of other villages, Asmara could probably represent the current state of Eritrea if all the street names were to be changed to names of villages of Eritrea and people would at least associate or identify themselves and figure out where they came from instead of trying to die-hard elsewhere.

Just a thought!

Eritrea is a paradox – a country in which the idea of settlement is an alien concept… to be an Eritrean means to migrate and settle elsewhere and wish you hadn’t.  The rest is a memory lane of sorts that begins and ends nowhere and therefore, why would one be surprised if Eritrea’s fate is decided by external forces?  The 25 years of celebrating ‘independence’ have been spent and wasted to re-create and re-establish that very cycle and Asmara is the embodiment of that history – a blighted history being unrolled by crude and newly refurbished post-colonial masters of the native-kind accountable to no one with a Torch of Nacfa and candles for the dead.

There is something not right about the Eritrean identity.  It has to be questioned and put under the microscope until every bit of it is shredded and analysed to come up with an alternative view that embraces some kind of settlement.

It should be obvious by now that the current Eritrean regime has a vested interest in provoking conflict and instablility that renders the idea and practice of settlement unacceptable.

Judgement Day

A lawsuit brought by Meseret Bahlibi (an Eritrean) against Mirjam Van Reisen (Dutch professor and human rights advocate) and in whose favour a Court in Amsterdam ruled deserves some attention here.  It ‘upgrades’ the Eritrean identity to a higher resolution.

The judge found that she was not guilty of libel and slander and that the youth party of the Eritrean regime can be seen as a means of collecting intelligence abroad. The decision comes as a huge relief not only for the Dutch professor, but also for the Eritrean diaspora across Europe. (Reinhardt Jacobsen | IDN-InDepthNews Report )

To start with, Meseret Bahlibi, an Eritrean whose name in Tigrinya literally means ‘foundation of gladness of the heart,’ filed a lawsuit against Professor Mirjam Van Reisen by taking full advantage of the Rule of Law in his adopted European country – a right no Eritrean can exercise in their country of origin.  In fact, the crucial element of a social contract without which there won’t be any hope of restoring a semblance of peaceful existence in Eritrea.  Its visible absence is actually the very cause of all this turmoil the country is going through.

The ‘Eritrean’ has become a byword for an uprooted and blinded identity that prevents one from looking after oneself or at oneself.  After the ruling, Professor Mirjam Van Reisen who also   defends the right of Eritrean refugees in Europe is reported to have said, “Now I now know what it feels like to be Eritrean.”

Helpless, perhaps?

What Meseret Bahlibi did without knowing is that he probably projected his own displaced state of mind unto Mirjam.  It wouldn’t be surprising if she felt displaced in her own country. 

He (Meseret Bahlibi) should probably consider changing his name to Meseret Hazen’libi simply because that is what he became.  Meseret Hazen’libi means ‘Foundation of Sadness of the Heart’.

If you don’t feel displaced, you are not Eritrean and hence one of the key objectives for the Eritrean project (not nation, mind you) must have been on how to destabilise Eritrea by holding external forces responsible so as to avoid or deny personal or collective responsibility in working against one’s interest.

That, unfortunately, seems to be the common thread that runs through the Eritrean journey – if it can be called just that and it is the journey Eritreans have been sleep-walking all along creating and updating conditions that reflect and sustain a displaced state of mind.

In short, the so-called Eritrean identity is allergic to the idea of settlement and it is about time it is seen less on grounds of conscience and justice or in terms of political dimensions and more on issues of mental health, social well-being and a culture of decency without borders that includes the need to provide the basic necessities for the living or what Eritrean movements love to call the dignity of the social fabric.

Martyrs can wait and in a way, Eritreans have, by sheer association and by way of a never-ending cycle of displacement, become martyrs themselves – rootless and restless like a ghost.  It is the Eritrean theme of digging one’s own grave and running for cover and rescuing all at the same time.

The irony is that there was no need for all that… and it’s still going on, regardless.  Maybe it is about time Eritrea should go through another psycho-geographic evaluation and seriously consider the idea of rebranding or relocating its identity all over again.

Analyse that but don’t start from Asmara!

Gabriel Guangul

26 February 2016

Related: Analyse Asmara - Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4