My friend…

I am writing this to you because I am spiraling down into depression. I just read yet another article about the AIDS epidemic in Ethiopia. I have been doing a lot of reading these days. And with each article, a piece of me is squashed. Is this a pogrom? Is this that sign that’ll usher in finality? It seems so… insurmountable… so horrific that we are all slowly dying… physical death for those who are suffering from it, and mental death for those of us who just shake our heads, kenfer memTeT and then go on with life.

Seb… what the hell are we doing here? By here I mean away from home while this crap is burning the land. How could we possibly sit back and watch? What will our children say about our well memeTeT-ed but silent lips? Seriously, if anything, shouldn’t we worry about the yluNta of leaving such a crappy legacy?

I know. I know. You tell me all the time to only fix what I can. But here I am feeling so… helpless and crazed and immobilized by fear and guilt.

Help me.

Debrewerq.

nefsaE,

remember when we used to have those marathon sessions vilifying the red terror generation? Be seferut qunna, my friend. Someone once told me that our generation was suffering from "red terror envy." Niiiice. (Justifying my argument that once you reach 40, whatever brain cells were left from the 70s.. poof!… I used to be accused of suffering from penis envy, but this is… it’s not even mildly appealing.)

Narcissistic and parasitic as it might appear, AIDS is our generation’s burden, girlie. Ah… glory gained via disease… salvation through pandemic… no greater glory, bay-bee.

yaa… what are we doing here!??

i’ve always vehemently hated two things - predictability and passivity.. and I have become both. we, us, you, me… those of us who are silent through this fire (……yes, pogrom) will be the pathetic post scripts of history……..

Am I making you feel better?

Ihitish,

Seble

Seb:

Never let is be said that you weren’t all fuzzy-cozy. Sew mababel esti temari!

Gosh, we have become what we’ve been condemning from our teshkerkari zufan. They killed people, we watch people die. What separates us is bad hairstyles.

I forwarded you that article my sister sent me. I got to the part where the little orphan girl being taken care by her grandmother finally succumbed to AIDS herself and died in their one-room home. The grandmother had no money to pay a taxicab to take the body to the grave.

How is it even possible for us to remain passive?

The case of children being orphaned by AIDS breaks my spirit… CHereseN, Seb. It seems so colossally unfair to burden these kids with this death sentence when life had already pummeled them into no-man’s land. There are kids 7 years old who are heads of families… who are shunned by society again and again and now, again.

So, what’s my role? What do I do to avoid being that p.s.?

Sometimes, I feel like I am hanging on by the skin of my teeth. I am a broken woman, guilty of being a conspirator in the Great Ethiopian Silence.

Debrewerq.

Lijit,

Guilt is probably the best gift God has given us…. jump-starts so many dead veins. so, i say, first off… celebrate that you can feel guilt… means there is still some shred of humanity in you. so wallow in that guilt… let it break your neurosis and attune your sense of priority. like rage, guilt is the acid that will finally blow a hole in our teflonized, contented hearts.

Ayzon.

Guilt, if all goes well and you don’t go mad, with soon burn down our egos and from those ashes, maybe we will rise like…. OK… like that damn phoenix, and mend our ways. u and i have talked about identity and this is an extension of those conversations. like you say, there is a whole lotta us who have deadened veins when it comes to ethiopia. We are in our little corners, doing little cornery things and inching towards getting bigger corners and doing big corney things….. perilous as that is, that’s not the problem…. the problem is that we start getting comfortable with corners and not see the bigger room we’re in.

i hate it when that happens.

i cried last night after reading that article you sent me…. and I went scuttling back to MY corner.

Ihitish,

Seble.

Seble:

So yesterday I took a tiny step away from my corner and became a member of an NGO working with AIDS orphans in Ethiopia. I owe it, as I do so many things, to you and the way you manage to crystallize what is fermenting in my mind.

So, the membership is twenty dollars a month and I’ve been thinking what I’ve spent $20.00+ on just in the past week…

My hair…
A bottle of wine…
A magazine subscription…
Breakfast…
Having my car washed…
Christmas presents for a needy family my office is sponsoring…
Flowers…

How close was I to becoming a p.s.?

On his last trip back home, my brother started a small family mehaber where we all pay monthly dues. Nothing big… started with $20/month I think… (I will have you know that voodoo economics has inflated that amount to something significantly higher, thank you very much.) And now, a couple of years later, just contributions from us has made an impact on someone’s life back home…

And therein lies my belief that if each one of us started that small… just 10 people in each group and set out to take the tiny steps that will make bigger strides possible. 10 people, 10 dollars a month… all over these United States… can you imagine?

You are right. Guilt is good. And my veins have been jump started… And I owe it in large part to you. I don’t want to end up a post script.

Ihitish,

Debrewerq

My friend,

dang. sure HOPE you spent more than $20.00 on your hair…

…i love your spirit.---….

I love the way you think…

10 dollars from 10 people… think i like that logo more than "i wanna be like Mike." i know you’ve been in pain the last few weeks, but it is all within us to heal. and you do it so beautifully…. sometimes the only way I know i am alive is when i feel pain, and the only triumph i get is seeing if i could descend into deeper pain. it’s still so chic.

you, on the other hand heal yourself so carefully and thoroughly. i love the way you love life and relish it….. i love that you can believe in changing the world and the way you skip up the windy path of life to that bucolic world of optimism. it’s so inspirational and unencumbered.

been thinking a lot about my role and responsibility. Debri… i am so overwhelmingly angry at the adults who are so careless with other people’s lives and spread this disease with ease and without culpability... i am ENRAGED at the intellectuals and AIDS "experts" who dine at the Sheraton and comeback to the World Bank, the UN and to all those thoroughly obsolete and inconsequential bureaucracies to present hollow papers and a million statistics… i am heartbroken that a five-year old boy with AIDS is abandoned by his family and has to live on 20 cents a day... i am sickened by the way we don’t speak about AIDS… it drives me crazy- wild crazy.

Debrewerq, rage is immobilizing ME. at least yours, guilt and sadness, seems noble. Mine is this volcanic, blinding, visceral, unabated RAGE that engulfs me and takes me to the edge of ibdet.

...HOW could we have let this happen, you ask? easy. we’re not feeling love. i feel so vengeful. i am revolted and horrified…

… and then I read about that $20 you’re sending that is making a kid in Ethiopia so happy and loved and cared for. That little gesture is feeding a kid’s roaring stomach and maybe clothing him/her.

U are somebody’s angel out there. there is some kid who is feeling love because of you.

In that instance my rage left me…. all that fabulous comfortable rage I’ve been using as a cozy shelter and excuse to kenfer memTeT and feel safe. Damn you. i, too, want to skip with you and make merry and smile and hold and talk to a little boy or a little girl who will die with a smile on his/her face. instead of painting my corner with blood and scratching the walls until my fingernails turn white… i want to hang yellow wallpaper and decorate in pastel colors…bring in cute Pottery Barn chachkis and play around with a nautical/French country theme. Ygebashal?

So… me… i’m going back home…. i mean, literally. been thinking about taking a trip back home for Christmas, and yesterday you made up my mind for me. i’m going home to do the little i can to make someone else feel loved.

No, I owe yU.

In the end, all we can offer is hope. for them… and certainly for us.

Akbari ihitish,

Seble.

Anchi!

Seriously… you are f***ing goin’ home?

/d

DebriyE,

Don’t hate the playa. Hate the game.

Dear Seble:

Afer biyi!

…

…

…

Demmo nautical theme!

Sister girl, you amaze me.

d.