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

Preface

ix he above quote has stayed with me ever since 1998, when i read Harold scheub’s wonderful book about storytellers in southern africa. i had spent my childhood in apartheid-era south africa, so his words held special resonance for me. They reaffirmed the complexity of history i had observed in my home country and reminded me that while dominant voices try to control the national myths, they can never fully marginalize or suppress those other voices that challenge theirs. alternate stories have a way of floating to the surface and disrupting the status quo, and once again we find history undergoing reconfiguration. no single account of events can ever explain the past in its entirety, and each new or recovered narrative adds its own slice of truth to the multi-storied history of a country. given my background, it was no surprise to me therefore when, in the course of teaching african literature and advising students at the University of Washington in seattle, i came upon contradictory accounts of Horn of africa history narrated by local ethiopians, eritreans, and somalis. i felt tremendous sympathy for these storytellers who wanted their particular versions of history witnessed and, as importantly, their own lives acknowledged. They spoke with great passion and integrity P ReFa Ce History is a story that is never wholly told, never entirely true, but always at least partially true, always true at least in its parts. —harold scheub, STORY x PrEfacE when they told me their stories, and they often moved me to tears with their tragic tales of flight and loss. For most of them, there could be only one true version of events, and they objected vociferously to alternate scenarios offered by their “enemies,” who were of other Horn nationalities, ethnicities, or clans. They were convinced these others had lied to me. The more i got to know these communities, the more fascinated i became with their conflicting stories. my interest took me to eritrea in 2001 with two eritrean friends, Hidaat ephrem and Yosieph Tekie, plus UW colleagues gretchen kalonji and Richard anderson. The visit led to academic connections with the University of asmara, including an online course on life stories that brought me and my students into direct contact with young eritreans in that country. at the same time, members of the local ethiopian and somali communities started attending talks i’d organized on campus, and soon they, too, were dropping by my office to discuss relevant issues and inviting me to join them in celebrating their communal events. it became obvious that jobs, homes, and schools were not the only challenges facing these immigrants in the Pacific northwest. in addition to such basic struggles, they needed, as a matter of dignity, to persuade their american neighbors of the truth of their particular versions of Horn history. in order to satisfy their sense of themselves as communities, they needed to be able to say with pride, “This is who we are.” Unfortunately, their Horn rivals living down the road were equally adamant about putting their stamp on that same history. To make matters worse, the internet brought further divisive developments from back home. With a simple click of a mouse, online diatribes could inflame the diaspora communities and turn one against another. in no time, the internet became an influential but also destructive tool in the struggle for control of the word. The power of the diaspora communities to orchestrate change in their home countries also played into local cultural competition, complicating the picture and creating yet other stories to be either promoted or undermined. The Pacific northwest thus became the site of competing stories, some of which i decided to record as a way of marking a particular time and place in the history of these three communities in seattle and Portland, from 2004 to 2010. With conditions in the Horn of africa changing constantly, PrEfacE xi and with them the views of the local communities, i realized that details of these early immigrant days of contradiction and controversy would most likely be lost as new agendas wielded more selective narratives. While i harbored no wish to reinforce the divisive issues that now split these local communities into distinct social, economic, and political entities, i did want to capture them so that readers could appreciate the hold that events in the home countries maintain on those in the diaspora. The...