Eritrea Quotes

“So I close this long reflection on what I hope is a not-too-quaveringly semi-Semitic note. When I am at home, I will only enter a synagogue for the bar or bat mitzvah of a friend's child, or in order to have a debate with the faithful. (When I was to be wed, I chose a rabbi named Robert Goldburg, an Einsteinian and a Shakespearean and a Spinozist, who had married Arthur Miller to Marilyn Monroe and had a copy of Marilyn’s conversion certificate. He conducted the ceremony in Victor and Annie Navasky's front room, with David Rieff and Steve Wasserman as my best of men.) I wanted to do something to acknowledge, and to knit up, the broken continuity between me and my German-Polish forebears. When I am traveling, I will stop at the shul if it is in a country where Jews are under threat, or dying out, or were once persecuted. This has taken me down queer and sad little side streets in Morocco and Tunisia and Eritrea and India, and in Damascus and Budapest and Prague and Istanbul, more than once to temples that have recently been desecrated by the new breed of racist Islamic gangster. (I have also had quite serious discussions, with Iraqi Kurdish friends, about the possibility of Jews genuinely returning in friendship to the places in northern Iraq from which they were once expelled.) I hate the idea that the dispossession of one people should be held hostage to the victimhood of another, as it is in the Middle East and as it was in Eastern Europe. But I find myself somehow assuming that Jewishness and 'normality' are in some profound way noncompatible. The most gracious thing said to me when I discovered my family secret was by Martin, who after a long evening of ironic reflection said quite simply: 'Hitch, I find that I am a little envious of you.' I choose to think that this proved, once again, his appreciation for the nuances of risk, uncertainty, ambivalence, and ambiguity. These happen to be the very things that 'security' and 'normality,' rather like the fantasy of salvation, cannot purchase.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“For a start, people who traveled for so many miles through such horrific conditions in order to find work cannot accurately be portrayed as lazy benefit-scroungers”
― Patrick Kingsley

“Eritrean people are strong and caring. And despite all that we had been through we were brimming with optimism. Our country was on the verge of huge change.”
― Abeba Habtu, Become Courageous Abeba: A Story of Love, Loss, War and Hope

“I love you so much, Sahra. You will do wonderful things. Have courage and believe in yourself.”
― Abeba Habtu, Become Courageous Abeba: A Story of Love, Loss, War and Hope

“Do you really suppose history will remember him, this foot soldier? Not really. Yes, battles will be chronicled, and from that history will be written. It will be in the news, on television and even in books. People will talk about it in bars and coffeehouses. However, the focus will be on the progress of the war, the strategy and tactics, with maybe a mention or two of the commanding officer and how bravely, courageously and strategically he coordinated his troops to wage the battle. But when it comes to the regular people, the foot soldiers, it is a different story. For them, history is unforgiving and merciless. Who do you think will even care to know who Captain Gasha was? His acomplishments on the battlefield, his aches and pains? No-one will caer, history does not bother about minor details. Captain Gasha is only too aware that he is a fleeting speck in the annals of history, his name remembered by no-one.”
― Baalu Girma, Oromay