OROMAY By Baalu Girma A Study Imagery and Meaning Simon Lowe May 2003 Introduction “Roman before him, Fiametta Gilay’s grave behind him, and between them he was left standing. In the end man is alone; he is lonely. He feels loneliness. His heart sings a sad lament. Might there be someone whose heart does not sing a sad lament? Yet we do not want to listen to it. Why? We want to be joyful. To hope is better than to despair and even though we don’t find it, forever we seek it. Everlasting hope; of sadness and of melancholy. What is man without hope? We must inspire hope in our hearts, whether or not there is hope anywhere else. I want to cry tears They wrestle with me Yet from where on earth can tears come! The bags under my eyes have dried up Laugh! And laugh again! I’m told Having laughed, my teeth won’t laugh Having laughed, crying My wretched spirit. The sun has set. The horizon has become red. He stepped on her ring and pushed it with his shoe. Really it was not her ring that he stepped on and 2 pushed, it was his own life. “Ciao, Fiametta,” he said, from the heart. Her grave was tranquil. Beyond the tranquillity of the grave he heard the gunfire of Nacfa. As he heard the screams of the blood of heroes his heart went there. You love everything; and in the end you lose everything. C’est la vie! Oromai.” (Pages 371-2) This is the image with which Bealu Girma leaves us as we read the end of his book, Oromai. Oromai! This is the end: “nothing more can be done; all is useless;”1 or as S’egaye himself defines it: It means: it’s happened, it’s finished, it’s over. (Page 288) The sun is setting for the end of his story, just as it was early morning at the beginning of the story: Monday daybreak. 19th Tahsas2 1974, a cold and misty morning. (Page 7) Also the horizon is red. We now have clarity: we can see the horizon, which we could not 1 Dictionary definition of ‘Oromai’. Amharic-English Dictionary, Kane, Thomas Leiper: Otto Harrassowitz. Weisbaden, Germany. 1990 2 Approximately December 3 do on that first misty morning. The horizon has become red, which reflects the bloodshed that we have been shown throughout the story. Fiametta’s grave was tranquil. S’egaye remains standing, still, by the graveside. On the first page the author warned us that we should not hurry: Don’t rush. What is there in the world that makes one rush? Even without rushing, life itself is short. (Page 5) However from the very beginning of the story everyone is in a hurry: As if doomed to it, I woke late. (Page 7) Now though, we have come to the end of the story and we have come to a halt; so now we have time to reflect on what we have seen. We can no longer hide behind our wish for joy. We must listen to S’egaye’s heart as it sings its sad lament. We have read the three hundred and seventy previous pages and so the images of S’egaye left standing between Roman Hilletewerq and Fiametta Gilay’s grave, the discarded ring, the gunfire of Nacfa and the screams of the blood of heroes, are all meaningful and evocative for us. So if we want to explore the message that Bealu Girma is trying to convey by means of his book Oromai, we must investigate these images. Who is Roman 4 Hilletewerq and what does she represent? What does the ring represent? Why is S’egaye left alone, lonely, standing between them? What is it that S’egaye has lost? Who is Fiametta Gilay and what does she represent? What does Fiametta’s death represent? What do the gunfire at Nacfa and the screams of the blood of heroes represent? These are the questions that I shall try to answer. Oromayis a fantastically exciting and evocative book and I hope that this essay will be just a brief introduction to further, more extensive research of this novel in English. There are many themes and sets of imagery that can be explored. Language use, humour, and narrative perspective are three more areas for potential research. This book has been described to me by an Ethiopian as the cultural equivalent to George Orwell’s Animal Farm in English literature. Its being so important to the Ethiopian psyche adds extra urgency to the call for further study. 5 Overview Before I start with a detailed examination of these questions I shall give an extremely brief overview of the two principal and concurrent story lines within the novel. Background S’egaye Hailemaryam is Chief of Propaganda for the Red Star Multi–Faceted Revolutionary Campaign which has been launched to solve, once and for all the social, economic and political problems in Eritrea. The final stage of the campaign is a military operation to dislodge Eritrea’s secessionist rebels from their final stronghold at the town of Nacfa, a mountainous natural fort. First Storyline S’egaye leaves Addis Ababa for Asmara. He works very hard and the campaign is ostensibly a success. He then accompanies the military to cover the battle for Nacfa. The mission of the battalion, which he chooses to join, is to take the strategic Hill 1702. Initially they take Hill 1702, although with great loss of life. However, the next day, the secessionist rebels counter-attack and the battalion is faced with either withdrawing from Hill 1702 or 6 being surrounded and wiped out. S’egaye leaves but the rest of the battalion remain to fight to the death. S’egaye feels disgust at the horrors of war. He feels guilt and disgust that the battalion had sacrificed themselves for the increasingly hopeless ideal of a united Ethiopia and that he had abandoned them. Second Storyline S’egaye leaves his fiancée, Roman, for Asmara and the Red Star Campaign. He meets Fiametta Gilay and they fall in love. She behaves strangely and they argue. He finds what he thinks is proof that she has betrayed him. In the end however she sacrifices herself so that he might not be killed. Roman leaves him when she sees that she has lost his heart. He feels sickened and betrayed by Fiametta’s apparent dishonesty. He feels guilt that Fiametta sacrificed herself so that he might live and disgust at a state of affairs that could lead to her death. He feels that his vows to Roman were worthless. Comparison There are obvious parallels between these two storylines, which I shall explore in detail. However, to summarize, the first storyline deals with S’egaye’s allegiance to Revolutionary Ethiopia and his belief in the Red Star Campaign. The second storyline deals with his allegiance to Roman and his love of Fiametta. The first deals with philosophical conflict; the second reflects an equivalent emotional conflict. Both conflicts end in disillusionment and revulsion. 7 S’egaye’s Vows Roman Hilletewerq Roman appears at the beginning of Oromai, when she goes with S’egaye to the airport. Then however we do not see her again in person until the end of the novel, when she comes to visit S’egaye at the time he returns to Asmara from the battle for Nacfa. However she does have a constant influence throughout the story on the main protagonists, S’egaye and Fiametta, whether it be through her phone calls or through a reference to her in a discussion or through S’egaye’s remembrance of her at different times. While S’egaye and Fiametta are driving to the airport, S’egaye tells how he met Roman. He said that he initially avoided her because she was too religious: Whenever I saw her, it was always the Bible, that never left her hand, which would chase me off from afar (Page 12) The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is central to understanding the identity of Ethiopia and so an image of Roman always with a Bible identifies her immediately with her country. Then, when Fiametta sees that S’egaye wears a ring and asks him whether he is married, S’egaye 8 describes Roman as an Amhara Rose (Yämähal agär s’ïgeräd1 (Page 231)). This image again identifies her strongly with a place, this time with the area around Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. The third image that defines Roman is of her performing the traditional Ethiopian Coffee ceremony (Pages 264-5). When he describes this, S’egaye is reminiscing about Roman, as he speaks to her on the phone, just after his relationship with Fiametta starts to crumble. These three very strong images would suggest that Roman represents a traditional Ethiopia and its values. So, with this in mind, it must be noted what Roman thinks of the Red Star Campaign. In the car on the way to the airport Roman shows her disapproval of any sort of campaign: With every dawn another campaign. A campaign calling for harmonious development. A campaign for warfare. An economic reinforcement campaign. A campaign to eradicate illiteracy. A discipline campaign. Also now, a campaign to solve the Eritrea problem. We’ve created a tradition of campaigns. When will the day come when we can live and die without campaigns?..... Don’t you reckon that all of Ethiopia’s problems have descended upon us in proclamations and campaigns like a thick fog2? (Pages 9-10) 1 This literally translates as ‘rose of the middle land’. The middle land refers to the Central Highlands of Ethiopia where Addis Ababa and the homelands of the Amhara tribe are situated. 2 Here we have another image which gives further meaning to the “hazy and misty morning” (Page 7). 9 Then near the end of the novel she tells of the affect the campaign has had on her: “When will this campaign be over?” she asked me. “Dunno; I really don’t know.” “It’s a mess, my love. Surely God is punishing me”, she said (Page 345) Why does Roman dislike this particular campaign so much? She provides us with the answer, at the beginning of the novel: Any place where you lay your head is your home. You get used to it. I’m scared that you’ll give my love away to someone else. (Page 15) And again towards the end: You’re at home in whatever place you go to. You take to wherever it is that you end up. (Page 347) She is afraid that S’egaye will get used to another place, and fall in love with someone else. He does. Her final words are: 10