27/2/00

Daddy didn't come home

    She might be the saddest happy person in Safed.

    Uvanish Desta survived the great trek from Ethiopia, leaving behind a comfortable peasant life for the brusque city. Farming people, the Destas are now holed up in a third-floor enclave; strangers live below, above, on all sides, and confined within her own walls are her five children. They are well-behaved, because their mother is Uvanish.
    She worries about her ailing mother, who lives in her own apartment but has not adapted to urban Israel, and cannot speak Hebrew. Her divorced father lives apart; neither can he speak the language. Uvanish is responsible for eight people in three apartments.
    She needs so much help, but that is not her way; instead, she helps others less fortunate.
    Life is harsh, but Uvanish is grateful. The people of Safed are too kind, she says.
    She is happy.
    She is very sad.
    The ninth Desta, her husband Aganyo, might be dead. Or he might be alive. She doesn't know. He might be somewhere between, desperately hoping Uvanish will come and save him -- that's how she sees it, which is why after a harrowing 10 years of not knowing, she is still trying to rescue her husband.
    Aganyo was snatched by the Ethiopian army the day before he was to immigrate with his family to Israel. It was no longer his country, but the army didn't mind: there was a civil war going on.
    Uvanish knows, but she cannot say it: in that war, Ethiopian soldiers were supposed to fight until they died.
    It is pointless to ask the military authorities for information, because they don't keep records of such things as who died.
    So Uvanish ignores all common sense and continues to entreat the Israeli bureaucracy to help find her husband. Of course, there is nothing they can do, and she knows that, and she appreciates that sometimes they are sympathetic.
    The life of one Aganyo Desta is not important to people behind desks.
    And so the devoted wife traveled back to the land she left forever, leaving behind dependents both very old and very young, to sift through the postwar rubble for her man. Funded by the generosity of the Committee for Ethiopian Jews in Safed, she took her father, a retired policeman, and they went, and they found nothing.
    She is despondently, achingly sad. "I have no more tears, just blood," she says, but somehow, her innate nature shines through, and she smiles.

HER SON Demesu is about to graduate, but he wants to quit school. "I asked him why, and he said, 'because I want to go back and find Daddy.' "
    Demesu is 18, army age, and his mother dreads the inevitable: "I am so afraid for Demesu," she whispers, fingering the edges of a photo of her other soldier, Aganyo. He mailed the picture with a letter in 1991, so she knows he survived the first year. He wrote about how tough it was to try to stay alive in a brutal war zone; in the photo, he is holding a machine gun. His clothing is ragged. He looks tense, grim.
    When she imagines her son in the army, she pictures this last image of her husband. Yet Uvanish has faith, in both God and goodness.
    She nurtures her children on faith, and self-assurance, and social conscientiousness. She contains her sadness because, she says, children thrive on good humor. They learn from her that it is better to give than to receive, because they see her helping frail, lonely people. "They call me, and I go. If they need shopping, or cleaning, I can help them."
    Her son and four daughters fully accept that there is no money for anything but the essentials. They do not feel deprived. "We make do with whatever there is," Uvanish says. Provision always seems to meet need, such as when she returned to Ethiopia.
    She got the airfare thanks to a guardian angel. "Thank God I've had Yehoshua," she exclaims, "he has always helped me." Yehoshua Sivan, of the Committee for Ethiopian Jews in Safed, rallied donations for her trip.
    Kindness helped her again in Ethiopia when she ran out of the little money she had. "I was stranded, so I begged a shopkeeper to save me, so I can get back to my children. He wasn't a Jew, he was a complete stranger, yet he gave me $200. He said either you pay me back, or when I get to heaven, I'll be paid back then. Maybe he wasn't expecting it, but I managed to return the money."
    She loves Safed, loves her neighbors, loves her children's teachers. She doesn't have much, but she's grateful to everyone for every bit. In appreciation to Americans for helping rescue Ethiopian Jews, she displays a US flag in her living room. Thank God I'm in Israel, she says, and smiles at her mother sitting nearby. Her mother was completely blind when they arrived, but the doctors here restored her eyesight.
    There's just one thing, and her thoughts always return to that. Her bright eyes dim again, and she sighs heavily.
    Sometimes, Uvanish is tired, tired of helping others, of being the only parent for her children to turn to. She cannot call upon her husband to spot her a break.
    Her children need to understand, and she can only say, I do not know.
    Daddy went to war and didn't come home.
    Mommy is very tired.
    And so the Desta children's new Israeli instincts take over, and they trot off to watch TV. Whatever it is they are watching, it has them laughing merrily, which makes sad Uvanish happy.