The golden generation of “Tower in the Sky”

Hiwot Teffera, the main “character”
of the book comes from the city of Harar to Addis
Ababa to join the then Haile Sellasie I University, Sidist Kilo, Campus in
1972 when she was only 18.  She was
an innocent and cheerful young girl who seemed to enjoy all the
“modern” styles available in her home town in those days. As a
teenager, she didn’t see student demonstrations and class boycotts to be
any different from a sort of picnic walks and she had never missed those
riotous walks. It was apolitical for her and she enjoyed the commotion like any
teen of her age. However, having landed on the hot spot of the student
politics, Haile Sellassie I University, she was
recruited to the secretive study circle under the mentorship of Getachew Maru, a highly
sophisticated student activist who was also a young man himself but well
equipped with Marxist Leninist Philosophy and the ideas beyond.

Getachw who was an engineering student brought Hiwot to a different being indoctrinating her with Marxism
and elevating her world view and imagination to a higher level where she devoted
her entire life for a cause. That was the cause of a society. That cause had no
an egoistic foundation. Nor it was aiming at a minuscule transformation. It was
about radical change they fantasized afar the horizons. They wished a brighter future
where democracy, justice, equality and prosperity would reign. They dedicated
their entire being to the realization of an idyllic world where each would
contribute according to his ability and each would reap in return according to
his needs.

Hiwot was a member of a circle which initially operated
under the auspices of Abyot,
a clandestine movement that largely embraced younger intellectuals and ran by
the same until later they merged with Ethiopian People’s Liberation
Organization (EPLO) to form the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party
(EPRP).

  My impression

To my sense, the book is, written with a captivating power in a way that
one never dares to close the pages unless forced by circumstances. I personally
felt I was passionately reading a novel, not a true story, which the very
person who wrote the book had gone through. For a while I felt I was reading an
adventurous story full of ups and downs, rather intentionally crafted by a good
imaginative author. It is full of suspense and worries where a dreadful demise
is playing a cat and mice game with life. Throughout the leaves I was thrilled
when the main “character” Hiwot and her
comrades escaped traps, hunt downs and executions.  I sometimes wondered how the
“angles” cared for Hiwot in those
perilous missions she was assigned to.    

 “Death was the list
price we could pay for the noble cause; for the people. Our comrades’
unmarked mass graves were etched in red. ‘I will wash the path to freedom
with my blood so that you can live happily ever after’ was their oath.

Hiwot describes that oath as ‘a statement to the
heights to which the human heart could soar’ a statement that they lived
to with a determination of ‘we must perish
in order to make room for the people fit for a new world’.  

Hiwot defines that spirit of dying for a cause putting it
up in heavens as they thought they were not like the Jews whom ‘Moses led
through the wilderness.’

They dubbed themselves as if they were
the new generation! “We did not think we were to be surpassed. We chose
to perish because we believed in the cause, not for glory or gain immortality.
We surrendered our lives out of pure dedication to the struggle. It was a sublime, even a holy act” (Tower in the Sky, p 264).

That was the generation-the generation which believed it had an honest cause,
a cause that had been flagged up high in the sky. Hiwot
and her likes were in such a state of mind, excited to the limit to move the
gears of the revolution affront, though not all the steps the EPRP generation
had undergone were to be ascribed to the same inspiration.

What inference
can be made?

Though, Tower in the Sky is an account of Hiot
Teffera’s real life story and that of her
friends, it is an account of a critical era in Ethiopian history. The book has
got a detailed account of events and personalities too. It has recorded a good
deal of the Ethiopian students’ movement, its motives and mottos before
the 1974 revolution and the power struggle, skirmishes, plots and entanglements
during the early days of the revolution. It gives specific analyses of the
paths that the “progressive forces” sought to pursue to bring about
communism for the good of the people. It also depicts the atrocities committed largely
by the military junta and considerably by the “comrades”
themselves.   

I was really enthused, captivated, disappointed, laughed and at times
wept as I went through the leaves. I saw heroic deeds, dramatic events and
tragic ends. In fact, amidst all the trying and hasty circumstances I come
across in the book, I also shared with them all the tricks and humor that Hiwot and her friends enjoyed as youngsters. I laughed with
them; I frowned with them and scoffed with them too.

The sorrow is
aching

Indeed, I couldn’t bear
the loss of some of Hiwot’s friends. I wept
bitterly when I learnt Azeb was executed. I burst
into tears upon hearing Semegne’s execution. I
mourned with a deep rage when I learnt Getachew Maru, a
genius young man was executed in the hands of his own friends (comrades) for
holding a different view and condemning the shortsighted policy of the
“comrades”-the comrades whom he had trusted until they betrayed
him.

In Tower in the Sky, we see love entwined with a heightened drive, two
souls tied together one believing in the other, until things torn apart in a
tragic pitfall.

Moreover, one can easily realize the interplay of passion vs. disgust,
anguish vs. hope, and agony vs. respite in the swiftly changing circumstances
of those testing days-the particular moment of the early revolution era.

 I have read many books that
directly or indirectly report an account of the period of the revolution
including the fictional ones such as Kasa Hailemariam’s Zekre Seba (Memoirs of the 70s). However, I have never come
across a book like Tower in the Sky, which is written by the victim and
survivor of the predicament of the political conflict.

The bearing it
has with today

It is a pity that Ethiopia failed to treasure those super genius minds
of the golden generation.  
Yes, as Hiwot strikingly put it in the book,
those were not people of low prestige or spirit.  “They were indeed tragic heroes.
No matter what their flaws, they were the ‘golden generation’-a
generation of shameless idealists’ with a great vision and altruism. They
killed and died for equality, freedom, social justice and human dignity.
Ethiopia always remembers them with weeping eyes for their selflessness and
vision and with a forgiving heart for their follies. Alas! She was orphaned of
children, in the twinkling of an eye. The curtain fell on her. She receded into
darkness. The revolution ‘froze’” (Tower in the Sky p. 295)

In fact, one may not necessarily buy the idea of killing persons to
ensure freedom and justice. 
However, one can certainly appreciate the cause for which that huge
sacrifice was paid. It should definitely teach us a lesson that bloodshed and
elimination cannot bring solutions to our political differences. The book also
gives us a good lesson how collective thinking overrides individual rationality
leading to committing malicious damages like the one the EPRP suffered from.  

As intensely detailed in the book, having suffered a great misfortune,
EPRP’s structures were crushed in the cities and towns. Its leaders
including Hiwot were stuffed in appalling custodies (Kebele and Kefitegna offices)
where many of them faced awful tortures and executions.  The “fortunate” ones, who
survived the mighty force of the military junta, were thrown to formal jails, Hiwot being one of them. In the Kerchele
(main prison in Addis Ababa) Hiwot also shares with
us her experiences of eight years’ pain, where she depicts suppression,
brutality and human plights through different personalities. More importantly,
in the gloomy atmosphere of the Kerchelle life one
could see unbeatable hope, unreserved kindness, mysterious behavior and solid
cooperation. Here is where Hiwot wonders how
sophisticated and furtive human nature is.  

Unsolved
puzzles

Having read Tower in the Sky, I came to question why the problems we
experienced three or so decade before are still unresolved. Why obstinacy and
notoriety, hateful and uncompromising attitude is still baffling in the
political circle of ours?  
Dialogue is, hitherto, the dearest thing one can hardly expect among our
elites.  Opportunism has remained to
be a deadly syndrome in the Ethiopian politics. With no illusion, I am tempted
to guess if it is a generational curse that we lack a culture of tolerance and
compromise. I still wonder if we are able to respect, appreciate and tolerate
views that are different from that of ours. I am not sure if we could give the
Ethiopian public the chance to decide for itself, to choose the type of
“ideology” it wishes to be guided by, instead of imposing on it our
own hegemonies. It seems the shadows of the pitfall Ethiopia endured about four
decades ago have not yet fully evaporated from the public mind.

In
conclusion 

Finally, I appreciate the memory of the author that she recalls all the
miniature incidents, like dates, names and actions of specific persons after
such a long time. I hope other persons who were close to the issue of the
“golden generation” will also be motivated by Hiwot’s
work and share with us their version of the story.