CANNOT SUPPORT . W AIT UNTIL YOU ARE MARRIED.
Conversation over.
My sister Mehret? Ha! One afternoon, the poor girl got spanked because she was stranded three miles away at her high school and she accepted a ride home from one of my church friends. My dad was right there to see her get out of the car, and he almost went crazy when he saw her alone in a car with a guy.
G ESRET ! S IDEE !
W HO IN YOUR MOTHER’S NAME ARE YOU GOING TO SAY TAUGHT YOU? I F I EVER SEE YOU ALONE IN A CAR WITH A BOY AGAIN , I WILL MAKE YOU LOST !
Truth be told, the only way we could attend school dances was by appealing to our parents’ deep respect for all things educational. We assured them that school dances were highly educational events, that all our classmates attended them, and that we would be left behind if we did not go. Convinced that the dances were vital to our education, our parents let us go — sometimes.
Only one subject was more taboo than sex. It was full of homesickness, displacement, and harsh, harsh separation.
We never asked, sensing the layers of nightmare that asking might uncover.
We always wondered, though. Why had Papa left us in Adi? How did we find him again in Sudan? What problems did we encounter on the road? How had we survived?
As we got older, my parents gave us the answers. But as kids, we had only one way of piecing together our past: the coffee tales.
When three or more of my people come together in a home, the woman of the house usually asks the other adults if they want
boona,
or coffee, and they usually say no. Not the least bit fooled, the woman asks again, and the guests usually say yes.
The process of brewing
boona
is different from the American coffee-making process. The woman pours the
boona
beans into a skillet and heats them over a stove until the powerful aroma of coffee invades the entire house. Sometimes the cooked beans give off too much smoke, and the smoke detector goes off.
After heating the beans, the woman scoops them into a filter, runs water through, and serves the coffee in small, fragile white cups decorated with bright Oriental designs. The cups are small enough to fit between your fingers, so small that one gulp could empty them. But no one gulps the coffee — everyone sips slowly. The
boona
reaches in and uncuffs their tongues, allowing them to discuss memories they would otherwise leave untouched.
Sometimes, they recount stories of adjusting to life in America.
Of Fisoom, who mistook his apartment’s refrigerator for a clothes dresser. He organized his trousers and shirts on the shelves, even placing his underwear and socks in the pull-out drawers on the bottom.
Of Gebre, who upon arriving at the airport saw a darkskinned, uniformed airline worker and panicked, thinking that the worker belonged to the Dergue army.
Sometimes, the adults even tell stories of why they left their homeland. Of how a rebel group hunted them, and how they fled across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia and spent months in a Saudi prison. Of how they somehow made it back across to Port Sudan and then to the States.
The adults in my house would sip slowly and resurrect their pasts. Even my mother. And whenever we could, we kids hid behind the stairs and listened.
When we were in our country, we were doing well. Tewolde, Selamawi, Mehret, they were all born there.
We lived in our own home, with three rooms and a long hall and made of cement — not like many of the other homes. My husband had set up a small clinic and practiced there. We had a pharmacy where we sold pills, penicillin, and soap.
Many village folk came to my husband with malaria; many came with snake bites but died before my husband could treat them; village folk came to my husband on mules and took him back to their villages to help their women give birth.
In those days, many women died as they tried to give birth, and their children died, too.
Sometimes they would bleed to death after they gave birth. Village folk did not
Conversation over.
My sister Mehret? Ha! One afternoon, the poor girl got spanked because she was stranded three miles away at her high school and she accepted a ride home from one of my church friends. My dad was right there to see her get out of the car, and he almost went crazy when he saw her alone in a car with a guy.
G ESRET ! S IDEE !
W HO IN YOUR MOTHER’S NAME ARE YOU GOING TO SAY TAUGHT YOU? I F I EVER SEE YOU ALONE IN A CAR WITH A BOY AGAIN , I WILL MAKE YOU LOST !
Truth be told, the only way we could attend school dances was by appealing to our parents’ deep respect for all things educational. We assured them that school dances were highly educational events, that all our classmates attended them, and that we would be left behind if we did not go. Convinced that the dances were vital to our education, our parents let us go — sometimes.
Only one subject was more taboo than sex. It was full of homesickness, displacement, and harsh, harsh separation.
We never asked, sensing the layers of nightmare that asking might uncover.
We always wondered, though. Why had Papa left us in Adi? How did we find him again in Sudan? What problems did we encounter on the road? How had we survived?
As we got older, my parents gave us the answers. But as kids, we had only one way of piecing together our past: the coffee tales.
When three or more of my people come together in a home, the woman of the house usually asks the other adults if they want
boona,
or coffee, and they usually say no. Not the least bit fooled, the woman asks again, and the guests usually say yes.
The process of brewing
boona
is different from the American coffee-making process. The woman pours the
boona
beans into a skillet and heats them over a stove until the powerful aroma of coffee invades the entire house. Sometimes the cooked beans give off too much smoke, and the smoke detector goes off.
After heating the beans, the woman scoops them into a filter, runs water through, and serves the coffee in small, fragile white cups decorated with bright Oriental designs. The cups are small enough to fit between your fingers, so small that one gulp could empty them. But no one gulps the coffee — everyone sips slowly. The
boona
reaches in and uncuffs their tongues, allowing them to discuss memories they would otherwise leave untouched.
Sometimes, they recount stories of adjusting to life in America.
Of Fisoom, who mistook his apartment’s refrigerator for a clothes dresser. He organized his trousers and shirts on the shelves, even placing his underwear and socks in the pull-out drawers on the bottom.
Of Gebre, who upon arriving at the airport saw a darkskinned, uniformed airline worker and panicked, thinking that the worker belonged to the Dergue army.
Sometimes, the adults even tell stories of why they left their homeland. Of how a rebel group hunted them, and how they fled across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia and spent months in a Saudi prison. Of how they somehow made it back across to Port Sudan and then to the States.
The adults in my house would sip slowly and resurrect their pasts. Even my mother. And whenever we could, we kids hid behind the stairs and listened.
When we were in our country, we were doing well. Tewolde, Selamawi, Mehret, they were all born there.
We lived in our own home, with three rooms and a long hall and made of cement — not like many of the other homes. My husband had set up a small clinic and practiced there. We had a pharmacy where we sold pills, penicillin, and soap.
Many village folk came to my husband with malaria; many came with snake bites but died before my husband could treat them; village folk came to my husband on mules and took him back to their villages to help their women give birth.
In those days, many women died as they tried to give birth, and their children died, too.
Sometimes they would bleed to death after they gave birth. Village folk did not
Similar Books
