I am a bibliomaniac of a first degree type; and wandering all through the streets and second-hand bookshops of Addis for many a good years. One Sunday, while I was searching for the old Amharic books, I bought the first edition of ‘Ar’a’ya’ by Girmachew Teckle Hawariat. On the Dedication Page, just below, there is a very beautiful calligraphy that can fix your eyes unconsciously, written in 1944 E.C. The book was a prize award by Emperor Haile Selassie, for the then grade six Hagos G. Yesus who stood first, probably in the whole country. I will be very much pleased to send this book for Hagos, if it gives him a sort of mental excursion through trail of time in his intellectual odyssey and make up; though I still love and value it much.

Sincerely,
Getahun Shibru

Our search for Hagos had also raised the worries of Weyane and certainly also of the CIA. One TPLF mouthpiece asked why we were searching for Hagos who, he wrote, was a Weyane enemy and a Derg collaborator.. That is precisely why we search Patriot Hagos to join us in the battle against the banda mercenary masses that pullulate in these years, and receive handouts from imperialism.

So finally on Sunday May 20 I phoned Hagos and talked with him for more
than an hour. No need to say I was happy to rediscover an old friend. Hagos calls me with both my names :. “Aleme Eshete endemneh etc.” Hagos was happy too. It must be a rare event in the life of a person like Hagos who has systematically been avoiding socialising and living alone for years on end, perhaps more since 1996. At the end of the conversation he said: “You have made my day!” We were good friends with Hagos both of us sharing a deep commitment to keep Ethiopia free from imperialism and recover her great glory of ancient times. Hagos told me all that has happened to him 11 years ago, in 1996. . At the age of 60 he had decided to stop lecturing at the University in Montreal and retire .For that person he had moved to Halifax where he built his library and was about to start his new life of reading and writing to the Ethiopian public.

But before starting he wanted to have his eyesight in good shape, removing the cataracts in his right eye that reduced the proper functioning of his eyesight.. Because it was a simple business, removing cataracts, I guess he took the first eye doctor at hand – a Canadian.

The operation on the right eye was performed in February 1997 with local anaesthesias and the operation had taken half an hour.The doctor left him after plastering the operated eye which thus remained for a few days. Hagos was sure to recover a better eyesight once the cataracts were removed and to be able to start his reading and writing project with more facility than before. You will therefore understand the huge shock Hagos had to discover when the plaster was removed that he had lost his right eyesight which had become completely blind. The eye doctor had destroyed and broken his eye nerves beyond repair. Hagos hoped to still recover his lost eyesight and five more operations were tried with the most valid doctors around. But there was nothing to do . The right eye sight will remain permanently destroyed. Hagos is bitter with the Canadian eye doctor. This is my life, reading and writing; he has killed me by destroying my eye-sight….

I asked him if he had denounced him in court. Hagos said no because medical errors in Canada are in thousands and thousands, so common that it was not worth contesting the doctor in court. I was not convinced. I asked him, given his strong political enemies ( the Weyane, the CIA…) who would not see with a soothing eye his settling in Halifax to write and agitate against them he said he had no suspicion. But even for that, taking the case to court would have elucidated the situation to a great length.. If you want to have an idea of how imperialism and the regimes in power in Ethiopia feared Hagos since the days of Haile Selassie this story which Hagos himself told me during our telephone communication is very revealing. Around 1970 Hagos had decided to visit Rome and by some coincidence Emperor Haile Selassie was also visiting Rome at that that time. Hagos was detained at the airport for three days and was not allowed to leave until Haile Selassie has left Rome.

It is not only his right eye sight that Hagos had lost through that criminal operation but the unending constant headache, migraine that the operation has left behind tormenting Hagos everyday. He told me he cannot stoop down without feeling his whole head is falling down. Hagos refuses to take pain killers because he told me pain killers are drugs to which you become dependent and which become a habit, and gradually end up by killing your brain instead of killing the disease. So Hagos faces the migraine as it comes every day and the amount of pain he suffers is clear as he tells you. As a layman in the field I wonder if our compatriot ophthalmologists may enlighten us on whether it is possible to completely neutralise the right eye of Hagos which has become blinded and completely useless, so that it does not become the source of his unending torture. Is it not possible to completely neutralise the useless right eye so that it does not cause Hagos any more pain?

All the same Hagos reads slowly with the help of his left eye which does not compare with his former astounding reading capacity. Hagos has problems too with the modern technology. He tells me throughout he years of university lecturing, reading and writing, he has been writing by hand using the post office for spreading his knowledge. He is particularly unfamiliar with the computer and still less with the Internet, which have revolutionised the profession of writing, reading, spreading and receiving knowledge in real time by clicking on a button. With the computer and the internet you are never alone. You can talk, you can chat, you can exchange views. It is the best friendly technology for people like Hagos who are committed to spread so much needed knowledge. Hagos will always be busy with the internet.. I do not know if that will help to reduce his pain. But it will surely revive and animate his life by seeing the popular reaction to his works. Therefore to facilitate his reading and writing work I suggested that Hagos should accept to use the computer and internet. He has not refused and I am contacting friends in the vicinity to arrange to install a computer and internet system at Halifax for Hagos.

Hagos is a native of Agame. Although I had no idea of their relations Hagos automatically reminds me of another person. They look so much alike, and not only physically. Hagos reminds me of Zer’u Kehshen : Hagos told me they are very close relatives. I guess if I have understood well they are sons of two brothers. Given his deep aversion to EPRP, Hagos had no liking or respect for the late Zer’u – an EPRP leader. My telling him that Zer’u had changed in his final years would not move Hagos an inch.

Regarding the book which the Emperor offered to him, Hagos thanks Getahun Shibru for his offer and recommends that he should keep it himself with due care. Of course in the old days such precious souvenir objects would have been better deposited at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies but my suspicion is that under Weyane with Enderyas, the OLF and their likes as President of the University, and the allegedly sold scholars at the History Department as we read in our paper on Efrem Yeshak, the Institute of Ethiopian Studies shares the fate of other Ethiopian institutions. … ie. they cease to become Ethiopian.