A Mother’s Tears
The Pentagon trained Ethiopian forces- including the notorious Agazi Special Forces unit.
Jeremy Scahill, founding editor of the Intercept, and National Security Correspondent testifying before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee on December 9, 2010.
She looks much older than her actual age. One could guess she is sixty or even older. The truth is that she is only forty-four. “I was born two years before the military took power” she says referencing history. Her wrinkled face, discolored skin, and greying hair tells a story of a women who endured unimaginable tragedy. Living has been hard for her over the last decade or so. “I lost my first born 10 years ago, when we the opposition won the election and they refused to relinquish power” she says her sight disappearing into the horizon as if she is expecting someone to emerge from behind the hills.
“How did he die?” I asked following her into the house from the cool evening breeze outside where we spent the last fifteen minutes. “They killed him in a broad day light along with his best friend. They were killed at the same spot the same day in Addis Ababa.” She said, tears streaming over her wrinkling face. The depth of her anguish is too strong for words. I got up and sat close to her holding her hands. “who killed them?” I asked. She took a long pause, walked a few steps to close the door and whispered “Agazi, Agazi killed them” and handed me the pictures of her dead boys after kissing them couple of times. They were school graduation pictures. Smiling, aspirational and full of hope. The pictures were wet with her tears. Each drop spreading on the smiling faces of her children as if they were sharing a grief, crying together so to speak. I felt their presence in the room. May be the connection between a mother and child transcendence mortality, I don’t know, but their spirits were palpable in the house where they grew up in before their lives were cut short. I took a sheet of tissue paper out of my pocket and wiped both pictures gently. As I looked at them, with an imploring look, I thought they would have been my brothers, nephews, cousins even children. They looked so familiar to me; even if I have never met them. Perhaps, they reminded me of my own youth.
