Re: A philosophical approach to understanding Tigay's win by the famous Eritrean philosopher, Yosief Gebrehiwot
Tigray, you did it!
By Yosief Gebrehiwot
Well, Tigray, you did it!
You did it when the whole world said it couldn’t be done.
You did it even when those of us who love you were racked in self-doubt.
You did it all on your own when many of us were pleading for all kinds of help from the outside world—help that never arrived!
How on heavens did you do it, Tigray?
You did it by turning into your inner self—yes, deep into your inner self—and pulled out a miracle:
• a miracle as majestic as the chain of mountains of Gera’alta, that Olympian seat of Gods of Tigray;
• a miracle as enduring as the Tekeze River, wistfully rolling away from you, on its way to an alien land;
• a miracle as ancient as the obelisks of Axum, standing tall among ancestral memories of a distant past;
• a miracle as lofty as your age-old monasteries perched high up in the sky—from Debre-Damo to Waldeba—carefully distanced to be stepping stones for the Gods;
• a miracle as ingenious as your rock-hewn churches, cleverly built to lure the Gods down to earth and trap them for eternity, never to leave the Sacred Land of Tigray;
• a miracle as magnificent as your illustrated brannas, with strange yet familiar faces peering in between the pages as if to decipher the mysterious scripts under their images;
• a miracle as harmonious as your fantastic landscapes from kolla to degua, with their gifts—from dagusha to taff—ending up gathering your people around meadi;
• A miracle as constructively ambiguous as the keboro: with guaila as with Zema, with watta as with tsenatsil, with incense as with kerbe, with peace as with negarit;
• a miracle as intricate as the braided hair-do of the mischievous girls of Ashenda, shamelessly flaunting their beauty;
• a miracle as complex as the Awris dance—with all its tricky ‘qoretsas’—in none other than in Kolla Tembien.
Again, let me ask you Tigray: how did you do it?
You did it by drawing from your ancient, inexhaustible wells of wisdom:
• wisdom as righteous as that of the House of Ewostatewos, a movement that insisted on the independence of man from slavery and of monasteries from State and Church authorities;
• wisdom as subversive as that of Dekike Estifanos, those sons of yours who dared to put the rule of law and the nature of divinity above emperors, and to free knowledge from the shackles of religious dogma;
• wisdom as radical as hateta of Zera Yakob, that heretic debtera of Axum who miraculously made the Abrahamic Gods give up all their miracles—turning you, Tigray, into a Land of Enquiry, into Midre-Hateta;
• wisdom as wonderous as the chants of Yared—that magical son of yours who was born with tsenatsel in his hands—who gleaned it all from the chatter of the colorful birds flying high above you, as from the graceful movements of your women below;
• wisdom as omniscient as the Geez fidel, that alphabetical feat of ingenuity the ancient Axumites invented to trap whatever they uttered in stones, in coins and in brannas for posterity, with the ultimate hope that one day your children would audaciously write, ‘Tigray tisi’r!’
Yet again, Tigray: how did you do it?
You did it by delving deep into your spiritual self, and invoked all the spirits that ever walked on your sacred land:
• spirits from the dawn of time that still haunt the ancient ruins of the Temple of Yeha, when a pantheon of Gods wisely ruled Heaven and Earth in a celestial division of labor—the Moon-God Alemgeh, the Sun-God Zat-Batar, the Venus-God Ashtar, the Sea-God Behr, the Earth-God Medr and the War-God Mahran;
• spirits deeply embedded in the sanctuaries you provided since the days of antiquity, when the ship-wrecked Gods who arrived on your shores were still young and confused—as Abba Selama would truly testify:
• spirits enveloping entire mountains that the nine saints audaciously claimed for their abode, from Debre-Damo to Abu-Yemata-Guh, from which the daring wash and tickle the feet of the Gods dangling from Tigrayan skies;
• from the sanctuary in Negash, where the earliest Muslim refugees from across the sea were made to reside, when Islam itself was still in the midst of a birth pang—at a time when much of Arabia was still pagan.
• from the cathedrals of Axum, Christianity’s first foothold in the land, so early in time that they had to force the new Gods to cohabit with the old Orishas within their four walls in a diplomatic feat that must have rankled the Deities on both sides.
Once more, Tigray: how did you do it?
You did it by reminding your people of their inner strength:
• the strength of your kahnat who saw the suffering of their parishioners through the thick wafts of the church incense and heard the wailing of women over the loud beating of the church koboros;
• the strength of the mothers who crawled on all their fours in prostration like Arbaitu Ensisa—invoking a ritual as ancient as you, Tigray—to resurrect you from the dead;
• the strength of the parents who upgraded an old tradition of the ‘children of Abba Kiros’ to fit the times to shave off their young daughters’ hair and dress them up as boys to ward off the new Melake-Mot from the North;
• the strength of your peasants who prevailed despite the horrors they have experienced to be a formidable dejen of the resistance;
• the strength of your young women who raised their clenched fists in defiance, with blood still fresh in their skirts;
• the strength of your sons and daughters who, with rage in their hearts, flocked to the fastness of your formidable mountains in their tens of thousands to defend you, Tigray, from the barbarian hordes of the North and the South.
For the last time: how did you do it, Tigray?
You did it by leading your children to follow in the footsteps of their heroes:
• in the footsteps of King Kaleb whose war ships from Adulis crossed the Red Sea to conquer the old Sabean kingdom in Arabia;
• in the footsteps of King Ezana whose army marched over the vastness of deserts to conquer Meroe to make a vast empire out of you—the glorious Axumite Empire;
• in the footsteps of Michael Sehul, Sebagadis Woldu and Wolde Selassie, those formidable princes of Zemene Mesafint who managed to harness the chaos of that era to protect you;
• in the footsteps of Emperor Yohannes who defended you, Tigray, from foreign armies—Egyptian, Derbush and Italian—and died at the border forever marked with his blood;
• in the footsteps of Alula Abba-Negga, whose aser starts in Tembien, his birthplace, and goes all the way to Asmara, the city he founded;
• in the footsteps of weyenti of old and recent types, whose footprints all over the Tigrayan landscape—trodden over and over again— are too bold to miss.
… I almost forgot … about your children, Tigray; yes, about your children—now grown up, yet so young—carrying guns above their weight ...
And why not?
• how can she not, with all the wishes and prayers of her mother and aunties tied up in entangled love knots—maiteb, meskel, tsebel, lihtit, digham—dangling from her neck;
• how can he fail with such a heavy name bestowed to him by his father, to pay an old debt to Man or God, to Heaven or Earth;
• how can she fail with all the surreal stories—nebere-ya-nebere, hinkel-hinkilitey, enka-azghineni, deki-hedirtina—whispered in her young ears again and again by her grandmother;
• how can he fail with all the love dripping from his mother’s fingers as she kept massaging his head, many-a-times stopping his bawling long before it started;
• how can she fail with all the church incense soaking her Sunday dress that no water can wash away, however hard she scrubbed;
• how can he fail with all the blessings—all the miriq’as—heaped upon him as he did his errands for the old and infirm in his village;
• how can she fail with all the revelry—the wattas and koboros, the dances and songs, the screaming of the crowds and, oh yes, the flirting—in Ashendas of years past etched in her memory.
Well, well, Tigray, you kept your word; you remained true to the covenant you entered with your people thousands of years ago to protect them, dignify them and preserve them; and for them, in return, to protect you, dignify you and preserve you.
Amen!
https://www.facebook.com/tedros.menghis ... 2560296713
By Yosief Gebrehiwot
Well, Tigray, you did it!
You did it when the whole world said it couldn’t be done.
You did it even when those of us who love you were racked in self-doubt.
You did it all on your own when many of us were pleading for all kinds of help from the outside world—help that never arrived!
How on heavens did you do it, Tigray?
You did it by turning into your inner self—yes, deep into your inner self—and pulled out a miracle:
• a miracle as majestic as the chain of mountains of Gera’alta, that Olympian seat of Gods of Tigray;
• a miracle as enduring as the Tekeze River, wistfully rolling away from you, on its way to an alien land;
• a miracle as ancient as the obelisks of Axum, standing tall among ancestral memories of a distant past;
• a miracle as lofty as your age-old monasteries perched high up in the sky—from Debre-Damo to Waldeba—carefully distanced to be stepping stones for the Gods;
• a miracle as ingenious as your rock-hewn churches, cleverly built to lure the Gods down to earth and trap them for eternity, never to leave the Sacred Land of Tigray;
• a miracle as magnificent as your illustrated brannas, with strange yet familiar faces peering in between the pages as if to decipher the mysterious scripts under their images;
• a miracle as harmonious as your fantastic landscapes from kolla to degua, with their gifts—from dagusha to taff—ending up gathering your people around meadi;
• A miracle as constructively ambiguous as the keboro: with guaila as with Zema, with watta as with tsenatsil, with incense as with kerbe, with peace as with negarit;
• a miracle as intricate as the braided hair-do of the mischievous girls of Ashenda, shamelessly flaunting their beauty;
• a miracle as complex as the Awris dance—with all its tricky ‘qoretsas’—in none other than in Kolla Tembien.
Again, let me ask you Tigray: how did you do it?
You did it by drawing from your ancient, inexhaustible wells of wisdom:
• wisdom as righteous as that of the House of Ewostatewos, a movement that insisted on the independence of man from slavery and of monasteries from State and Church authorities;
• wisdom as subversive as that of Dekike Estifanos, those sons of yours who dared to put the rule of law and the nature of divinity above emperors, and to free knowledge from the shackles of religious dogma;
• wisdom as radical as hateta of Zera Yakob, that heretic debtera of Axum who miraculously made the Abrahamic Gods give up all their miracles—turning you, Tigray, into a Land of Enquiry, into Midre-Hateta;
• wisdom as wonderous as the chants of Yared—that magical son of yours who was born with tsenatsel in his hands—who gleaned it all from the chatter of the colorful birds flying high above you, as from the graceful movements of your women below;
• wisdom as omniscient as the Geez fidel, that alphabetical feat of ingenuity the ancient Axumites invented to trap whatever they uttered in stones, in coins and in brannas for posterity, with the ultimate hope that one day your children would audaciously write, ‘Tigray tisi’r!’
Yet again, Tigray: how did you do it?
You did it by delving deep into your spiritual self, and invoked all the spirits that ever walked on your sacred land:
• spirits from the dawn of time that still haunt the ancient ruins of the Temple of Yeha, when a pantheon of Gods wisely ruled Heaven and Earth in a celestial division of labor—the Moon-God Alemgeh, the Sun-God Zat-Batar, the Venus-God Ashtar, the Sea-God Behr, the Earth-God Medr and the War-God Mahran;
• spirits deeply embedded in the sanctuaries you provided since the days of antiquity, when the ship-wrecked Gods who arrived on your shores were still young and confused—as Abba Selama would truly testify:
• spirits enveloping entire mountains that the nine saints audaciously claimed for their abode, from Debre-Damo to Abu-Yemata-Guh, from which the daring wash and tickle the feet of the Gods dangling from Tigrayan skies;
• from the sanctuary in Negash, where the earliest Muslim refugees from across the sea were made to reside, when Islam itself was still in the midst of a birth pang—at a time when much of Arabia was still pagan.
• from the cathedrals of Axum, Christianity’s first foothold in the land, so early in time that they had to force the new Gods to cohabit with the old Orishas within their four walls in a diplomatic feat that must have rankled the Deities on both sides.
Once more, Tigray: how did you do it?
You did it by reminding your people of their inner strength:
• the strength of your kahnat who saw the suffering of their parishioners through the thick wafts of the church incense and heard the wailing of women over the loud beating of the church koboros;
• the strength of the mothers who crawled on all their fours in prostration like Arbaitu Ensisa—invoking a ritual as ancient as you, Tigray—to resurrect you from the dead;
• the strength of the parents who upgraded an old tradition of the ‘children of Abba Kiros’ to fit the times to shave off their young daughters’ hair and dress them up as boys to ward off the new Melake-Mot from the North;
• the strength of your peasants who prevailed despite the horrors they have experienced to be a formidable dejen of the resistance;
• the strength of your young women who raised their clenched fists in defiance, with blood still fresh in their skirts;
• the strength of your sons and daughters who, with rage in their hearts, flocked to the fastness of your formidable mountains in their tens of thousands to defend you, Tigray, from the barbarian hordes of the North and the South.
For the last time: how did you do it, Tigray?
You did it by leading your children to follow in the footsteps of their heroes:
• in the footsteps of King Kaleb whose war ships from Adulis crossed the Red Sea to conquer the old Sabean kingdom in Arabia;
• in the footsteps of King Ezana whose army marched over the vastness of deserts to conquer Meroe to make a vast empire out of you—the glorious Axumite Empire;
• in the footsteps of Michael Sehul, Sebagadis Woldu and Wolde Selassie, those formidable princes of Zemene Mesafint who managed to harness the chaos of that era to protect you;
• in the footsteps of Emperor Yohannes who defended you, Tigray, from foreign armies—Egyptian, Derbush and Italian—and died at the border forever marked with his blood;
• in the footsteps of Alula Abba-Negga, whose aser starts in Tembien, his birthplace, and goes all the way to Asmara, the city he founded;
• in the footsteps of weyenti of old and recent types, whose footprints all over the Tigrayan landscape—trodden over and over again— are too bold to miss.
… I almost forgot … about your children, Tigray; yes, about your children—now grown up, yet so young—carrying guns above their weight ...
And why not?
• how can she not, with all the wishes and prayers of her mother and aunties tied up in entangled love knots—maiteb, meskel, tsebel, lihtit, digham—dangling from her neck;
• how can he fail with such a heavy name bestowed to him by his father, to pay an old debt to Man or God, to Heaven or Earth;
• how can she fail with all the surreal stories—nebere-ya-nebere, hinkel-hinkilitey, enka-azghineni, deki-hedirtina—whispered in her young ears again and again by her grandmother;
• how can he fail with all the love dripping from his mother’s fingers as she kept massaging his head, many-a-times stopping his bawling long before it started;
• how can she fail with all the church incense soaking her Sunday dress that no water can wash away, however hard she scrubbed;
• how can he fail with all the blessings—all the miriq’as—heaped upon him as he did his errands for the old and infirm in his village;
• how can she fail with all the revelry—the wattas and koboros, the dances and songs, the screaming of the crowds and, oh yes, the flirting—in Ashendas of years past etched in her memory.
Well, well, Tigray, you kept your word; you remained true to the covenant you entered with your people thousands of years ago to protect them, dignify them and preserve them; and for them, in return, to protect you, dignify you and preserve you.
Amen!
https://www.facebook.com/tedros.menghis ... 2560296713