Yes, Chef (32 page)

We were traveling in an old Toyota Land Rover. That’s what all the expats drive, but even a Land Rover can’t protect you from the waves of dust. An hour after we’d gotten into the car, we knocked on the door of the compound. There was a guard at the gates and he was dressed in old military gear from some long-ago war. It was a hundred degrees, but he had the full regalia: military pants, jacket, shawl, boots. It’s the way every guard in the city lets his power and importance be known.

I walked in the door and the first person I met was Rahel, the woman who got us the information about my father. Rahel worked at the agency that handled Linda’s and my adoption. But in a country with 75 percent unemployment, she took a great risk to let us know our father was alive. In fact, she and Linda had been in touch for years before we finally learned the truth. Rahel waited until three months before she retired to make this introduction.

There was an older man sitting next to her. Rahel gestured to him. “This is your father,” she said.

My father. Not Lennart, fair skinned, Swedish, muscular, born of the sea, with a love of the land. This man had dark skin and gray, thick, long hair. Right away, I was impressed. To be eighty in a country where the majority of men are lucky to see forty is nothing short of a miracle. “He is a farmer and a priest,” Rahel told me. I sat in silence as my birth father began to pray in these beautifully melodic chants. The whole thing was so overwhelming. I was holding it together, but then I started crying. Once the tears came, they never really stopped.

———

M
Y FATHER JOINED
our group, we got back into the Land Rover, and we headed toward his house. It was a two-hour ride. In that car ride, we had to get to know each other. We both knew that once we got to his house, his wife would be there, as would his other kids. The time in our car—it was our only real moment.

What to say?

I knew I didn’t want the first thing I said to be, “Why did you give us up for adoption? Why did you let us think you were dead?” It couldn’t be a blaming game. And that, in and of itself, was its own challenge. There was a part of me that wanted to jump out of the Land Rover and to run away from my father, the mystery, all of the questions for which I feared I would receive no real answers.

We passed the Haile Selassie palace. There was a brand-new tower. Always, always, there was the contrast between the luxe Mercedes-Benz sedans and the impoverished kids on the street. It is Harlem times twenty. I looked out of my window at the street vendors selling pictures of Usher and Tupac. The smell of
berbere
was everywhere. We zoomed past a Starbuckks with two ks. We zipped past a Mariott with one
r
. Men and women were eating out at a restaurant called Burger Double King. I stared out of the window to avoid staring at my father’s face.

He started by asking me questions: “How’s Anne Marie? How’s Fantaye?”

He knew that my older sister Linda remembers more about Ethiopia than me. He remembered her more vividly as well. He said, “I have a very clear image of her.”

I began to ask nervous, peripheral questions: “How was the harvest this year? Is it difficult to get water?”

I’ve talked to other Swedish Ethiopian kids who’ve met their parents. “It’s just a money war,” they told me. “They just want money from you.” But I wanted to be open, I wanted to build a relationship. I wanted to sweep away the dust and swat away the flies
and find something beautiful in my newfound family. I just didn’t know how.

I was looking out of the window and after a while, there were no roads. The red clay caked my face and I coughed. I began to see more giraffes and fewer people. Kids were running toward us because they were so excited to see a car. Dried-up mud was everywhere. We were in the savannah of Africa and everyone was yearning for shade: Animals curled up under trees; families slept under the trees; everybody and everything were swatting flies.

I wondered, Is this the road my mother walked with us?

I wondered, When can I ask about my mother?

I couldn’t wait to tell my sister Linda. When it comes to our life in Ethiopia, both before and in Sweden, Linda is my truth teller. I tell her things and I know that they are real. She tells me things and I know that I am hearing the truth.

I thought, Petrus, Linda’s son, would go crazy if he was here. He is so much like his mother. He longs for Ethiopia, too.

My father talked about his firstborn son, my older brother, who died in infancy. He wept openly at the loss. I cannot gauge, or begin to imagine, what he has felt about losing Linda and me all those years ago.

Luckily, just when I was sure that the reunion was too much for me to handle emotionally, we arrived in my father’s village. It looked like the same patch of dried-up mud that we had been scaling for hours, but my father knew where he was. He directed the driver to take a right.

I remembered being out in the ocean, in Smögen, with my uncles. They would say, “Stop the boat here,” and we would find all these fish. As a child, I wondered how my uncles could see markers in the big blue sea. My father saw markers in the red clay, in exactly the same way.

We turned again on an even smaller dirt road and there were maybe sixty kids running toward us. All the kids in the neighborhood were jumping on the car. My father waved them away with a stick the whole time. We stopped the car and got out.

A woman ran up to me, wailing with joy. This, I would later find
out, was Kasech, my father’s second wife. She was closer to my age than his. She held my face in her hands and kissed both my cheeks again and again, then took me by the hand to lead me through the throng of spectators and into the yard. She walked me into their hut, gesturing for us to sit on the benches lining the wall while she and another woman performed the coffee ceremony. In Ethiopia, this is one of the greatest displays of hospitality: roasting, grinding, and then brewing fresh coffee for your guests. Burning frankincense is part of the ritual, as is a bed of grass strewn on the floor, a suggestion of luxury carpeting the parched earth. While you wait, you snack on popcorn, unsalted and cooked in front of you.

My father’s home consisted of two clay houses—one with a roof, one without.

The one with no roof was where they went to the bathroom. There were two oxen walking around the compound. One skinny goat.

The house was all of forty square feet, with a small oven for making injera. The walls were decorated with beautiful clean pictures that Linda had sent—of Jesus, Petrus, me, my mother, Linda, even Zoe. There were eight people in the family and even without all of us visitors, there was no way everyone could fit inside at the same time; I saw the rolled-up mats in the corner and I knew that every night, some of the kids slept outside with the animals.

The clay compound shook me more than anything I had ever seen in Ethiopia because it wasn’t just a place, it was my family home. I could have grown up here, in this shack, in this poverty—and how drastically different my life could have been. I want to believe that despite the challenges of war and famine and the way that even weather is an enemy, I would have made a happy life—the way my brothers and sisters have found their own glimmers of joy. But it is hard for me, as deeply connected as I feel to Ethiopia—the people, the history, and the culture—to see past the telethon-like images. I am distracted by the flies. There are flies everywhere. There are so many flies on the faces of the children, they don’t even bother to swat them away. And in the end, it’s the fly-covered faces of the little ones
that have me beating back the tears. If only my love was a net that could keep the flies out. If only my love was a net full of food for all the hungry bellies. I understand why so many people have given up on Africa—no one wants to say we are leaving a continent of people behind to tough it out in a hundreds-of-years-old war of survival, but we are, and the reason is because the level of change it would take to make a difference, to heal past wounds and chart a new path is mammoth, gargantuan, almost unimaginable. But one of the things I have learned during the time I have spent in the United States is an old African American saying: Each one, teach one. I want to believe that I am here to teach one and, more, that there is one here who is meant to teach me. And if we each one teach one, we will make a difference. I cannot give up on my family, on this village, on this country, on this continent. So although I feel them coming—the pitying tears of a Westerner, I do not let them out. Instead I reach for my younger sister Ashou, who is five, but looks as if she is three. I pull her closer to me and I let her sit on my lap. I let the flies that cover her face also cover my face. And I do not swat them away.

I
HAVE RETURNED TO
E
THIOPIA
at least once a year since, sometimes with Linda, sometimes with Maya, and sometimes on my own. I have met all eight of my siblings, four boys and four girls, whose ages were between three and twenty-two when I made that first trip. I feel deeply connected to them, deeply invested in helping them live better lives, and that has turned out to be one of the most complicated undertakings I’ve ever faced. We are family, and yet we are separated by not only an ocean. We are separated by language, culture, religion, and class. When I discovered that the ten of them lived on $200 a year—this, remember, is a country with a 75 percent unemployment rate—I began to wire money. It started with $150 a month, less than a car payment. The impact of that money has without question changed their lives. It has provided more food and better education. But from time to time—especially in those moments when it seems
that they risk becoming “Western Union waiters,” people who count on connections from the West to solve every problem and be their sole source of income—I’m not clear if it’s all been for the best.

When I first met my father, none of my half sisters—Zebeney, Salam, Ashou, and Tigist—was in school. In rural Ethiopia, to educate girls who work so diligently on the farms and become wives so young is seen as a luxury. I had to bargain with my father for his daughters to go to school. I not only needed to cover their living expenses at the boarding school in Addis, I had to compensate my father for the loss of income that their labor represented.

“Fine,” I told my father. I would pay him.

And still my father said no. Even if I sent extra money, the loss to his farm would be too great.

“You can send one,” he said. “But not the oldest, as she is ready to be married soon.”

Zebeney, at thirteen, and Salam, at eleven, were already being groomed to be wives. Their dowries would bring not only pride to my father, but financial comfort.

“I want Zebeney in school,” I said, negotiating, the way Lennart had taught me to haggle with the fishmongers when I was a boy. But these were not fish, and my father was not a fisherman selling his wares. I struggled to keep the judgment out of my eyes and out of my voice. If I overstepped my boundaries and insulted his way of life, my father would shut the negotiation down, just to show me who was boss. I had to remember that he loved my sisters and, in his mind, training them to be hard workers on the farm was a guarantee of future happiness. It was this strange, uncomfortable chess game. I felt like my sisters were the pieces on the board; how was I going to get at least one of these little girls all the way across the board so she could go to school?

Eventually, my father relented. Zebeney, the thirteen-year-old, was allowed to go to school.

I sensed an opening. “It’s not good to send her off to Addis by herself,” I said. “Salam should accompany her.”

At this my father half smiled, pleased to see that despite a lifetime spent abroad, I still had some of that Habesha hustle inside of me.

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Salam must take on Zebeney’s chores.”

I knew it was a good idea to send the two oldest girls away to school together. They would need each other for support, I said, and eventually my father gave in.

The joy that my two oldest sisters felt at being given this rare opportunity was mirrored by the heartbreak in the two youngest girls. Tigist was not even five yet, and although she too worked on the farm and was up at dawn, she had only a vague sense of the opportunities she was missing. Ashou, at seven, was preternaturally sharp, and when I saw the look on her face when she learned she was staying home, the way the rejection hung above her like a cloud, it was all I could do to blink back the tears. How many orphaned children had that look when Linda and I were adopted and flown away to a fantastical land where warm water ran in the bathtub and cold water ran in the kitchen and a treasure chest doled out food every time you opened it?

I held Ashou close and whispered to her, “Don’t worry, it will be your turn soon.” The look on her face was disbelieving. Not only was she being left behind, but despite the extra income, Zebeney and Salam’s departure meant that her life was about to go from difficult to nearly impossible. Her days would begin at four a.m. when she walked miles to get water from the village well, and would not end until well after dark, when the last dish was cleaned and everything was put away. She was seven years old and her shifts were longer than those of any of my restaurant staff.

I
T TOOK ME ANOTHER TWO YEARS
to get Ashou into school and another year after that to get my father to part with Tigist, the youngest. Tigist is now the happiest of all of my sisters. She has been in school since she was seven years old and, with every passing day, farm life feels more like a distant memory. Ashou, who is now going into sixth
grade, is also thriving. She is the one who never quite believed me when I told her she’d get out, too, and her skepticism, as well as the years she spent on the farm after the oldest two left, has given her a sophistication beyond her years. She is the one who reminds me most of myself. Ashou is the one who is always going to match one shot of luck with two shots of hard work.

The additional financial responsibility of my sisters is nothing compared to the way that the revelation of my father has complicated my own emotional life. In the absence of real communication, it is hard to know what to believe. Did my father abandon my mother? Did he abandon us? He told Maya on one visit that he came for us within weeks of our mother’s death, but was told it was too late, even though we were still in the country, staying with Ayem. If that’s true, was it just a miscommunication or did the person he spoke with decide that Linda and I would be better off where we were? In his grief, my father has said, he went off to live in the northern mountains, hermitlike, for ten years. When he came back down, he had a religious epiphany and became a priest.