Seeking Salaam: Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Somalis in the Pacific Northwest

Conclusion: New American Narratives

227 hen david makonnen expressed the above views to me, we were sitting in a Renton coffee shop speculating about the future relationships of the three east african communities in seattle and Portland. at this point, although it was clear that some somalis, ethiopians, and eritreans still flailed within the past’s haunting cobwebs, it was equally obvious that many more were valiantly striving to push aside its sticky threads. not that they wanted to forget what had happened to their countrymen and countrywomen, but they were ready to move forward and create new and more inclusive stories for the future. They reasoned that if their communities wanted to attain the american Dream, they needed to let go of past hatreds, work together, and embrace their lives here in the Pacific northwest. Cooperation, unity, and teamwork were their keywords, and they not only employed them n eW ameR iC an n aR R aTi Ves i don’t have any illusion that we’re going to be living happily ever after, at least in my generation. We’re more likely to continue to see people who are entrenched in their beliefs and their own interpretations of the way it should be. However, i am also optimistically clear that harmony will occur through more and more interyouth, interfaith, interculture relationships that provide opportunities for looking beyond our past pains and finding ways to deal collectively with shared problems. —david makonnen, seattle, 2005 conclusion 228 concLUsion within their own communities but projected them outward to incorporate relations between the various Horn groups and even beyond that, in some cases, to include the african american community as a whole. These voices of the future come from all walks of life, but they share a common empathy. Because the speakers interact out of the security of their own national, ethnic, or religious convictions, they can afford to “hear” what an erstwhile “enemy” has to say without losing their own certitudes. sofi, an ethiopian, opens her mind to the other’s story. “Teach me,” she says to an eritrean freedom fighter she meets in seattle and “feels for the first time” what his story means to him and now what it means to her. if people like sofi and the eritrean People’s liberation Front vet are able to mentally change places and perceive through the other’s story how the whole fits together, they hold out hope that others may yet do the same. such voices as sofi’s and David’s grow louder with time. They are fortunate perhaps in that schools and colleges or socioeconomic positions provide them with the platforms that enable them to be heard. These help them lead their communities forward by example and in so doing to create the beginnings of new cooperative american narratives, which in turn begin to shape communal identity in yet other developing configurations. dreams of return at the Yatana music shop, a couple of middle-aged eritrean men flip through the CDs. You can find all kinds of music at Yatana’s, but the men gravitate to those with pictures showing tegadelti on the covers. On some, the fighters carry machine guns and move in single file along mountainous paths, while on others, they relax in their mountain strongholds smoking cigarettes or listening with eyes closed to a krarplaying member of their group. “no one can sing like this anymore,” says one of Yatana’s elderly customers, who holds up a CD by the legendary vocalist Haile ghebru. He passes his finger down the list of cuts at the back. “Here’s ‘alewuna.’” His friend hums a couple of bars, and they both close their eyes. Farther down the aisle, another man listens to “shigey Habuni” (give me my Freedom), a well-loved independence song written by Tewolde Redda. nEW amErican narraTiVEs 229 The man stands erect as he listens and stares into the distance across the miles of ocean to a place called home. What’s in his head, nobody knows, but it is clear that all three men feel great longing and nostalgia for this little country on the Red sea that has endured so much bloodshed. most eritreans living in the Pacific northwest out of necessity feel that longing, too, as do ethiopians for addis and somalis for mogadishu. almost everyone i spoke to nursed nostalgia for the nation and had long dreamed about going home. “it is...