'I've Selected a Wife for You,' My Grandfather Was Told. He Married Her Sister.
My grandparents’ arranged marriage that planted its feet and stood rooted for 67 years strikes me as something magical.
At mid-day, on September 12, 2009, a couple—an 80-year-old black man and an 83-year-old black woman, their hands clasped in a tight hold—walked into a doctor’s office in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.
Their names were Genanaw and Tilashwork (Tila in short).
Weeks before, Genanaw had been feeling off. He was tired all the time. Most nights he woke up shivering. He lost weight—unable to eat more than a few bites at a time. He couldn’t sleep. He wasn’t able to get up from his bed on his own. His legs were too weak. Every time he wanted to get up from his bed, he called his wife’s name.
“Tomorrow morning, we are going to Addis Ababa,” Tila said one night.
“This is just a symptom of being old.”
“No. Something is wrong. I can feel it. I’ve already called our daughter to make an appointment for us to see a doctor.”
The next morning, they hopped on a taxi from Tiya—a tiny town about 140 kilometers southwest of Addis Ababa. After two hours, they arrived in Addis and went straight to a doctor’s office.
Nurses took a biopsy.
“You have cancer,” the doctor said.
Genanaw’s big body curled onto himself. Tila’s face contorted into a grimace. Her eyes moistened. Her shoulders convulsed. A thick lump took hold of her throat.
How am I going to bear watching the love of my life with whom I have spent the last 63 years laughing, dancing, and hugging being attacked from within, Tila asked herself?
The doctor talked. Cancer is spreading through Genanaw’s body with a vengeance. The rogue cells are aggressively assaulting their host. The chances of survival are in the single digit.
Don’t say a host. You’re talking about my husband’s body.
Tila wanted to smash her hands on the doctor’s mouth to make him stop talking. Seeing her husband pale and sweaty with nausea—unable to sit still, his hands trembling like he had palsy—broke her heart. She pressed her lips together to stop them from trembling. Her breath froze in her chest—numbness spreading through her entire body.
Tears slid helplessly down her cheeks.
When a doctor told Genanaw and Tila (my grandparents) the worst news of their lives, my mom and I were waiting for them outside the hospital. After hours and hours of being poked at, we saw them walking slowly toward us.
Their mood felt dark and heavy.
Emama—I called my grandmother Emama like most Ethiopian granddaughters—fell into my mom’s hands.
“What did the doctor say?” I asked.
They averted their eyes from our anxious faces. Ababa (my grandfather) put his arm around my shoulder and hugged me.
We started walking toward my car.
“Please tell me what the doctor said,” I pleaded.
“Cancer,” he said, in a quavering voice.
I wept into his broad chest.
When we reached my car, Emama pulled me out of Ababa’s chest and asked my mom and Ababa to wait for us in the car.
“Let’s find the nearest church and pray,” she said.
My grandparents had talked about death. But they never imagined one of them would have to fight the assault of cancerous cells in their 80s while the other person had to watch as the love of their life painfully dies.
We will die a peaceful death on our beds, they thought.
And fervently wished.
When Emama and I reached the nearest Saint Mary church, my 83-year-old grandmother got down on her knees and placed her cheek against the ground, and then kissed it. She stayed there—her lips pressed to the ground—for a long time. To love is to pray for someone you love not to suffer.
My grandparents’ love for each other strikes me as something magical. Their love started with an arranged marriage. But their love was also a choice they made 63 years ago.
The day his father told him about his arranged marriage, Genanaw was plucking weeds from ensete, a false banana tree, in his father’s backyard in Tiya.
For generations, parents (mostly fathers) had selected a bride for their children. They research what kind of person the bridegroom is, who his parents are, and their economic status. They research what kind of person the bride is, who her parents are, and their economic status.
At 17, Genanaw was expected to get married.
His father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather were married at that age to a bride their parents chose. Genanaw’s father had spent weeks and months scouting for a potential bride.
“Let us go inside. I have something important to tell you.”
Genanaw followed his father to their hut.
“I’ve selected a wife for you from a good family,”
Genanaw’s father put a photograph on his son’s palms, pointing at a young girl who stood next to her big sister.
“She’s going to be your wife.”
Late that afternoon, Genanaw went looking for a glimpse of the bride his father selected for him.
A few kilometers away, near a riverside, she was filling a small water pot with water from the river and pouring it into a big water pot—her big sister standing next to her.
For some reason, the sister who stood next to the bride his father selected for him stole his attention. He stood there watching her from afar. She was wearing a long white skirt that reached her toes. Her hair was Afro and she was tall. When the sisters started walking away from the river—carrying their big water pots on their backs—he came back from his trance.
And ran back home.
“I want to marry the sister,” Genanaw said, kneeling in front of his father.
“Son, you can’t. Her sister is three years older than you
“I don’t care.”
“What?”
“Something in my heart is telling me to marry the sister.”
“What’re you talking about? You don’t even know this girl.”
“I can’t explain it, father. I want to get to know her, the sister I mean. What’s her name?”
“It’s Tilashwork.”
“Oh.”
“People are going to talk if you marry a girl older than you.”
“I don’t pay attention to gossip. You know that. Please, I want to marry Tilashwork, father.”
Two months later, on April 6, 1946, on a lovely Saturday afternoon, Genanaw and Tila were married.
The bridegroom walked out of his parents’ hut—wearing Serefer, a hand-sewn calico pant with Tibtab, a traditional belt made from cotton, and a shirt called Ejetebab—hopped on a horse, and galloped to his bride’s parents’ hut.
The bride walked out of her parents’ hut—wearing Habesha Kemis, an ankle-length, chiffon-made, long snow-white skirt decorated with embroidery, and her head covered with a white shawl called “netela”.
Tila and her sister hopped on a horse (a bride and a bridegroom ride different horses), her sister hugging Tila’s waist from behind. Making sure the bride’s face was covered was the sister’s main job. On a wedding day, in Gurage culture, no one—including the husband-to-be—sees the bride’s face.
The bride takes away her “netela” covering her face at night in a room prepared in the bridegroom’s hut behind a curtain.
On their wedding night, the bride and the bridegroom were alone for the first time.
Genanaw saw his wife’s face. He couldn’t speak. Her dark face. It was beautiful.
Tila saw her husband’s tall body. Her eyes widened.
Before this moment, he had seen her from afar. She had not seen him. Before this moment, their parents had spoken to each other and planned a wedding. Before this moment, the married couple had not spoken to each other.
“In the arranged marriage stories her mother and grandmother talked about, she never once heard about a wedding night without disvirgining the bride.”
Tila trembled.
“Don’t be afraid. I just want to sleep with you.”
Her eyes widened even more.
“I meant I just want us to lie on the bed and sleep. Nothing else.”
“You mean you’re not going to…”
“No.”
“But… it’s expected of us.”
In Gurage culture, the morning after a wedding night, the bridegroom is expected to show his family and the bride’s family the proof of his new bride’s virginity—bed sheets smeared with blood.
“We will pour wine on the bed sheets and that will be proof.”
She gaped at him in disbelief. Two months ago, ever since her mother told her she was going to get married, she had been praying every night.
Dear God, let my husband-to-be be kind, she prayed.
In the arranged marriage stories her mother and grandmother talked about, she never once heard about a wedding night without disvirgining the bride. Genanaw and Tila slept. On the same bed as husband and wife without physical intimacy. Just as he said.
The next morning, Tila found her husband reciting a bible in Geʽez, an ancient Ethiopian Semitic language.
“You speak Geʽez?”
“I do. If you want, I’ll teach you.”
“I would like that very much.”
After their breakfast, Tila prepared a traditional coffee ceremony. A fresh green grass on the floor (this is said to keep bad spirits). Identical handle-less demitasse cups on a wide wooden tray. Some incense on the fire the coffee was cooked, enveloping the inside of their hut with a nice smelling smoke. Washing the coffee beans not because they were dirty but because the skin of the beans needed to be scrubbed off. Roasting the coffee beans until they became black and shiny. Grinding the coffee beans with a pestle and mortar. Brewing the coffee in a jebena—a small pot for making coffee—over charcoal.
That morning, Genanaw stayed for two hours at home.
And, after that morning, he would stay at home for two hours after every breakfast for the rest of their lives.
His friends wondered. Their friend would spend two hours every morning spending time with his wife.
It felt odd to them.
“How do you spend time with your wife?” they asked him.
“I talk with my wife,”
“Talk?”
“Yes. I talk with my wife.”
In Tiya, men farm. They cut wood. They deploy cattle. They pluck weeds from ensete. They weave. They build huts.
Women milk cows. They knit mats with their hands. They prepare kocho, a bread-like fermented food made from chopped ensete pulp. They prepare bulla, dough made from the root of ensete. They prepare kitfo with gomen, traditional Gurage foods.
After their two-hour talks in the morning, Genanaw and Tila did their jobs.
They lived in a hut—a vernacular architecture built with wood and branches of trees. Inside their hut, in the center of the room, there were pots on a fireplace. Hanging on the walls, there were jebenas and tabas—small clays used as a dish and wooden bowls and cutting wood for kocho. Inside their hut, there was also a barn. Except for their horse—which slept outside—cows, calves, sheep, and oxen slept inside their hut.
In front of Genanaw’s and Tila’s hut, there were green grasses. On the right side of their hut, ensete plantation. On the left side of their hut, ensete plantation. On their backyard, ensete plantation. In Tiya, huts are scattered. You find a neighbor a few ensete plantations away. You have to walk for ten minutes or even thirty minutes to find your next-door neighbor.
Genanaw and Tila slept on the same bed without being intimate for one month.
And the next.
And the next.
He didn’t ask her for more.
Every late afternoon, he came home from his farming and said, “Let us walk.”
“You just came home. Aren’t you tired? Rest and I will bring you kocho.”
“We will eat our dinner together. I enjoy taking walks with you.”
“Why?”
“I’m getting to know you.”
They walked and talked.
One day, eleven months after their wedding day, Tila went to her sister’s hut, a couple of kilometers away.
They drank three cups of coffee.
“You don’t see what’s right in front of you!”
Tila whipped her head toward her sister at the hiss in her tone. Her sister raised her hands in surrender.
“Don’t you dare tell me you don’t see it?”
“See what?”
“I see a man who is in love with his wife. Your husband loves you.”
“She wrapped her arms tightly around her midsection, shielding herself from the odd shiver in her stomach. She took a few deep breaths, her cheeks puffing out with the force of her shaky exhales.”
That night, after Genanaw and Tila ate gomen with kocho for their dinner, they sat on the mat by the fireplace.
Tila kept glancing at her husband. She wanted to say something. You mean a lot to me, she wanted to tell him. I’m very glad you’re my husband, she wanted to say. Biting her lip, she looked at him and looked down at her hands on her lap—generations of women who came before her zipped her mouth shut.
Don’t tell him how you feel, they whispered.
“I’m grateful for getting to know someone so precious,” he said.
“Oh?” her brows knitted together.
He is sleeping with another woman, she thought.
“I meant you.”
She blinked repeatedly, lost for words. Those three words wiped the frown off her face.
She sat there for a few moments, unable to move a muscle.
I meant you.
It was the most beautiful declaration of love she had ever heard.
I’m grateful for getting to know someone so precious.
Her heart slammed so hard in her body she was worried it was going to give out on her. A swell of emotions jetted up her throat, forcing her to gasp. She wrapped her arms tightly around her midsection, shielding herself from the odd shiver in her stomach. She took a few deep breaths, her cheeks puffing out with the force of her shaky exhales. Quickly blinking a few times, she cleared the odd blur in her vision. She swiped her cheek, surprised by the wetness.
At this moment, being with her husband inside their hut, she felt at peace.
He stood and came to her.
When strong arms wrapped around her shoulders, she released a shuddering breath. A cool hand brushed her forehead and hair while whispered sounds of comfort filtered into her ear—not really words, more like hummed soothing sounds as her body was rocked back and forth on the mat.
That night, they made love for the first time—eleven months after their wedding day.
My grandparents have three children. Two girls (my mother and her sister I never met since she died while giving birth) and one boy (the youngest). My mom has two children (me and my younger brother).
In my 20s, no matter how full my schedule was, I visited my grandparents. Even in their 50s and 60s and 70s, my grandparents looked at each other with so much love that sometimes I visited them just to witness their special look from nearby. I loved hearing Ababa’s voice as he sat near the fireplace and told me stories that happened half a century ago.
My grandparents came to Addis Ababa to visit their daughter and grandchildren.
They never left the city without buying gifts for each other.
Ababa bought Habesha Kemis and shoes for his wife from Merkato, a large open-air marketplace in Addis Ababa.
Emama bought white cotton pants and shamma—a long cotton robe that doubles as a body and head cover—for her husband. She also went to a mill house. Most times, in Tiya, electricity goes off and does not come back for days or even weeks. The one mill house in Tiya goes out of business in those times. So every time Emama came to visit her daughter, she went to a mill house to grind the barley flour she had brought with her to the city.
Ababa’s favorite breakfast was besso, a solid food made from finely ground barley grain.
In 2000, their son, Dereje—who lives in Maryland, United States—sent an invitation visa to America to his mother only.
“I will not come to America without your father, even to see you, son.”
Dereje started the long process of inviting both his parents to America. It took five years until the Ethiopian Immigration Affairs office granted my grandparents a visa to America.
When I heard about Emama’s refusal to visit her son without her husband, I asked my grandfather, “Do you know what that is called, Ababa?”
“What, my favorite granddaughter?”
“It’s called co-dependency.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s when a husband and a wife do everything together.”
“But your grandmother and I do not do everything together.”
“Emama just refused to visit America without you. What do you say to that?”
“That’s because we always talked about visiting a new city or country together.”
“Okay. Then give me one example where the two of you don’t do things together.”
“Every Saturday afternoon, your grandmother organizes the women’s association in our town. All the women get together in one woman’s hut. Since we got married, I’ve never participated in her meetings.”
“And you never once were tempted to check up on her?”
“What?! Why would I do that?”
“To confirm where she said she was at.”
When I close my eyes, I can still see the disappointment on my grandfather’s face when I said that.
“Do you do that? Do you check up on someone you love to make sure what he says is true?”
“I did once.”
“That kind of relationship will never work.”
A few months later, my then-boyfriend and I broke up.
In 2005, I was getting my master’s. I was 25 and I had just started dating a clever student in my international business class. Those days, I woke up every morning with my heart full I didn’t want to eat or sleep or do anything other than see him.
Was it time yet, was it time yet?
Whenever I wanted advice on love, I never went to my parents. I went to my grandfather.
I talked about my new relationship’s possible future with my grandfather. Maybe not about “forever” yet but “my boyfriend and I are going to watch that movie next weekend” and “someday we will visit Spain because my best friend lives there and I can’t wait to introduce him.”
While I was talking, I was checking my phone constantly to see if my boyfriend had called or texted.
“Have you ever spent a single day without calling or texting each other?”
“No! I want to spend every minute of every day with him!”
I thought that was what a relationship was all about. You want to be with the one you love 24/7. Right?
“Listen to me, Mimi. You need to give each other space.”
“I still wonder how my grandfather knew giving space was important in a relationship. He didn’t have a master’s degree. Or a bachelor’s degree. Or a diploma. In his entire life, he had never once walked inside of a school.”
Leave your grandmother alone, give her space, Ababa would tell my brother and me on those days when Emama was in a “mood”. After some time she will be like her usual self, he would say when we tried to coax our grandmother into laughing and joining our conversations.
When she wanted alone time, Ababa stood guard over the solitude of his wife.
He spotted her cues. He could tell when she was stressed or socially tired. He respected her downtime. During those times, he hung out with his friends for an afternoon.
He never made her feel guilty for needing some alone time.
“He gets me,” Emama would say.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, in a letter to the trailblazing German expressionist painter Paula Modersohn, the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.”
I still wonder how my grandfather knew giving space was important in a relationship. He didn’t have a master’s degree. Or a bachelor’s degree. Or a diploma. In his entire life, he had never once walked inside a school. The only school he attended was a theology class in an Orthodox church. And yet. He knew something I—an educated woman—didn’t.
Giving space is the most romantic gesture you can give to someone you love.
On June 17, 1960, Genanaw hopped on a mini-bus carrying his wife’s weakened body. Tila was burning with fever. He was also carrying his dog’s severed head in a bag.
It was night time and it was raining heavily.
A few hours earlier, something was wrong with their dog.
Since that morning, the dog had become an enraged animal frothing at the mouth. Tila didn’t think it was a big deal. He is probably hungry, she thought. At one point, the dog tried to approach her while she was milking her cows. Tila shooed him away. The dog bit her right arm.
She screamed.
Hearing her screams, her maid found her wailing on the floor.
Calling out Genanaw’s name, the maid ran to the ensete plantation.
He came running.
When he saw his wife—wailing on the floor, their dog next to her, his mouth covered with blood—his legs gave way and he fell to his knees.
“Let us take her to our local clinic,” his friend who came running with him said, in a frantic voice.
“No. They are not equipped to treat a deadly dog bite. I have to take her to Addis Ababa right now.”
Genanaw scrambled from the floor and ran to his cabinet. Taking out his rifle, he shot his dog. He then beheaded the dog’s head and shoved the head in a bag. For one hour, rain poured on him while he galloped his horse—carrying his wife, her bitten arm burning—to the town’s mini-bus station.
After two hours, the mini-bus reached Addis Ababa.
After another forty minutes, Genanaw walked into Pastor Hospital—still carrying his wife.
Doctors tested the dog’s head and found rabies. Tila was given postexposure prophylaxis (PEP) vaccine.
“If you had not brought your wife on the day of the rabies exposure, she would have died a horrible death, screaming like a dog.” The doctor told Genanaw.
After the initial vaccine injection, Tila was given another injection on day three. On day seven and day fourteen.
Years later, when my grandfather told me about the night my grandmother was bitten by his dog, I was flabbergasted—my mouth open.
“Are you fabricating a story to entertain me, Ababa?”
“Have you ever known me to lie?” he said, closing my mouth.
“If I were living in a rural area that has no clinic to treat life-threatening diseases and my life was on the line, would my partner of 6 years carry my sick body in the rain until he reaches a bus station to take me to a city to get the medical treatment I needed? I wonder.”
The image of my grandfather riding his horse, carrying my grandmother—at night, while also carrying a dog’s severed head, because he knew a doctor would need to test it—for hours, in the rain, until he reached a bus station tears me up.
What an image to behold!
If I were living in a rural area that has no clinic to treat life-threatening diseases and my life was on the line, would my partner of 6 years carry my sick body in the rain until he reaches a bus station to take me to a city to get the medical treatment I needed? I wonder. Bless him. My partner and I have shared the pain of miscarriage and the sudden death of a dear friend during a pandemic and he’s a good man and I love him.
Still… I can’t help but think.
My partner and I have never been tested like the night my grandmother was bitten by a sick dog and my grandfather was tested—whether his love was made of fire or fantasy.
Love is all bunny kisses and rainbows, says love made of fantasy. It says love is waiting for a white knight riding on a horse to save someone you love.
Love is riding on a horse, in the rain, carrying someone you love to save that person, says love made of fire. It says I will do everything in my power to save someone I love.
Early in the morning, on September 29, 1962, Genanaw traveled to Butajira—a town 49 kilometers away from Tiya—for a local farmer’s gathering.
After breakfast, Tila called her three teenagers. Take two or three gulps from the whiskey, she said, pointing to a bottle she had bought the day before.
Her children didn’t ask why.
They did what their mother told them to do.
Using ashes and pen inks, she tattooed their names on the outside of their palms.
In some rural parts of Ethiopia, tattoos (mostly permanent designs on a skin) have been a part of the culture for years. They’re mostly done with a variety of sharp objects like a needle.
That night, when Genanaw came home, his children were holding their palms on their chests—crying in pain.
Unbridled and untamed words flew out of Genanaw’s mouth.
That night, they fought like they wanted to kill each other.
That night, for the first time in their lives, Tila slept on a mattress on the floor—alone.
“Let us walk and talk,” Genanaw said the next morning.
Neither of them talked for a few minutes.
“I’m sorry I shouted at you last night. I was angry. I’m still angry. Still… I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”
“Tattoo is a tradition in our culture,” Tila said, pointing at her left hand with her name tattooed on it.
“I know. But not every tradition is good. Now the tattoo will remain on our children’s skin forever.”
My mom’s beautiful hand has her name, Denenesh Genanaw, tattooed, in Amharic, on the front side of her left palm to this day. She never tried to get rid of the tattoo. My uncle tried once in Russia. We can’t remove your tattoo, he was told.
“In the home I grew up in, I never saw my parents sit next to each other without the television on. In Tiya, I saw my grandparents whisper to each other and get lost in each other’s eyes a million times.”
We have never fought like the night I found our children with permanent tattoos on their hands, my grandfather told me.
How he resolved their big fight in a discussion humbles me.
He put his arrow down. He didn’t dredge up their fight in the years to come. He believed in pointing out his perspective gently like turning someone’s face from a wall to a window and saying, “Look, see? See how it could be this way?”
Even though he was still angry he took a walk with his wife the next morning.
Even when he was angry at his wife he treated her with kindness, respect, and dignity.
My brother and I grew up in Addis Ababa. I’ve never seen my parents resolve their anger calmly. I’ve never seen them look at each other with love. Or with kindness. Certainly not when they were fighting. I’ve never seen them hold hands. Or whisper to each other. Or hug.
In the home I grew up in, I never saw my parents sit next to each other without the television on. In Tiya, I saw my grandparents whisper to each other and get lost in each other’s eyes a million times. He could tell what her eyes were telling him. She could tell when he wanted a hug. She could tell when he was upset. She could hear his frown speaking volumes.
You love when you don’t let crucial issues fester and you recognize that you and someone you love are both fallible and that you are not perfect and that you’re going to make mistakes.
You love when you don’t always wait for someone you love to forgive.
You forgive first.
My grandparents walked and talked and laughed and loved and kept their vows for years—63 years to be exact—until a doctor’s words, “You have cancer,” dimmed the light in their home.
In the Saint Mary church, Emama was still kneeling on the pavement, praying.
“Emama, we have to go. Ababa will be tired now.”
“I know,” she stood up and reached for my hand. She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulder. It was like she was bracing herself for the hard days that were about to come.
I held her arm with both my hands and we walked slowly to my car, where my mom and my grandfather were waiting for us. We didn’t speak. When we almost reached my car, she spoke,
“You know I will take care of him, right?”
“I know.”
Three days later, Genanaw started chemotherapy.
Following the treatment, awful side effects barged into their home.
Tila watched her husband struggle with his food every day. She kept their conversation light, patiently waiting for his response, not looking away from him, yet not acknowledging she’d noticed him spilling every bit of his food onto his lap. Once when he reached for his glass of orange juice and knocked it over, she just grabbed some extra napkins and sopped up the mess, refiling his glass without a word.
“Before cancer, his mind was a thing of beauty. He could tell a story that happened on the day of their wedding (63 years ago) like it had happened the day before. He was loud and full of light. After cancer, it wasn’t enough that his body betrayed him, his mind also betrayed him.”
He lost all the hair on his head.
His 85kg body turned into a skeleton.
Tila could barely recognize her husband. Worse than the physical pain, Genanaw’s mind went off. Before cancer, his mind was a thing of beauty. He could tell a story that happened on the day of their wedding (63 years ago) like it had happened the day before. He was loud and full of light. After cancer, it wasn’t enough that his body betrayed him, his mind also betrayed him. Most days and nights, Tila found her husband sitting on their bed, staring off into space for hours. It was like the disease had turned the light off in his brain. Is he thinking of the terrible disease that is slowly killing him? she would think. Not knowing how to help, Tila would step behind him and wrap her arms around his waist, resting her chin on his shoulder.
“I’m cold, warm me up,” she would whisper.
Genanaw would snap out of his silent brooding and he would lean back against her, a reassuring, solid weight—even though he had lost so much weight—in her arms.
One time, almost a year into witnessing her husband’s body slowly die, she jolted awake in the middle of the night.The next day, they had an appointment with their doctor to check whether the treatment was working or not. Her heart pounded and her breaths came fast like she’d been running. A quick glance at the bedside clock showed 1:00 a.m. and she’d only been asleep for two hours. The horror of the hellish nightmare she had lingered. She shivered. She looked at her husband, sleeping next to her. He was here and he was safe. He was not dead. In the nightmare, her love had been saying goodbye to her. I don’t want to suffer anymore, he had been pleading. She gave a small sob, then clapped her hand over her mouth when he stirred fitfully at the noise. She climbed out of their bed—being as quiet as possible—staggering on shaky legs, shivering in the darkness.
She walked to a prayer room and knelt in front of the picture of the Holy Mary holding her son, Jesus Christ.
Please God, let it be your will that we hear good news tomorrow, she prayed.
Dear God, please let him not suffer, she prayed for the rest of the night.
The next day, Genanaw and Tila stood holding hands at the entrance of the same doctor’s office they had heard the worst news in their lives a year ago.
Tila lifted their clasped hands to her lips and kissed his fingers before squeezing them in commiseration. He kissed her palm and then took her hand in his own and folded his fingers down, holding it for a minute longer before turning to go inside—an air of determination about him.
“Come on, my love,” he said firmly. “Let’s hear what the doctor has to say.”
“The cancer cells have not been defeated. You need another round of chemotherapy,” the doctor said with a grim face. “This happens to few patients. Sometimes the treatment does not work. Sometimes a sick body needs more aggressive and repeated radiation.”
“Tila agonized and raged against life—for making her husband sick and suffer in his last years.”
All the way to their daughter’s home, they did not speak a single word. Sometimes a heart that loves bleeds and bleeds and no words can express one’s grief.
That evening, Genanaw slowly walked around the green area in front of their daughter’s home looking at nothing.
“Come inside. Let’s talk.”
“No. Not tonight.”
Tila went to their bedroom and got under their bed sheets and waited for him. An hour passed. And two. When he came in and slipped into bed next to her, she pretended to be asleep. As he settled in behind where she lay on her side, muttering and punching his pillow as he tried to get comfortable, she listened.
Then all went silent.
She almost jumped when he pressed his lips to her shoulder. “You’re so strong, so patient,” he whispered. His words little more than warm puffs of air against her skin. “Ewedeshalew (I love you)”. Another soft kiss and he turned away with a heavy sigh. Before long, his rhythmic breathing filled their bedroom and lulled her to sleep.
After a week, Genanaw began another chemotherapy.
Their daughter’s apartment smelled like the inside of an oncology ward for the next year.
And the next.
And the next.
For three years, they spent more time inside the Black Lion hospital than they did in their daughter’s home.
Tila agonized and raged against life—for making her husband sick and suffer in his last years. She was old and tired and still… she fed him food, she wiped drooling saliva from his mouth with her hand, she stayed on the floor holding his weak body as he vomited most of his food, she changed the bed sheets and wiped down the bathroom, she covered his body with hers on the hospital bed, because he was always chilled, even though three or four blankets covered his body, she spent days and nights talking to him about their love, their children, and grandchildren even though most of the time he could only nod at her to continue talking to him.
She loved and loved and loved until one morning on October 25, 2013, she woke up by degrees.
She reached out for her husband.
His side of the bed was terribly cold.
He looked peaceful, as if he were asleep. But he was gone.
Her love had died in his sleep.
If she had known the night before was the last night she was going to hear him breathe, she would have stayed awake all night looking at his face, and feeling his warm presence beside her instead of drifting off into fitful slumber.
An hour before my grandfather’s funeral, I was talking to my grandmother.
“Remember your promise to Ababa. We will not wear dark clothes for a year.”
“I know. I will keep my promise.”
In Tiya, when someone dies, close family members wear dark clothes from head to toe. A year before his death, Ababa had written in his will, “I, Genanaw Kersie, don’t want my wife, my children, and grandchildren to wear dark clothes for a year.”
“Promise me you will not shave your head,” Ababa had begged Emama.
“Let us not talk about the end, please.”
“Give me your word and I know you’ll not break it.”
“I’m going to wear a dark cloth for a few months, but I will not shave my head. I give you my word.”
In Tiya, when someone dies, close family members—who are women—shave their heads and wear a black shawl over it.
My grandmother kept her word.
She did not shave her head.
My grandfather was buried on October 28, 2013 (three days after he died). Until families from America reached Tiya, his body was protected from decaying with traditional medicine.
On the day of the funeral, my grandmother wore a long dark skirt that reached her toes with Ababa’s winter coat draped over her shoulder.
“You’re going to get cooked in that coat,” I said.
“His coat is big and warm. It’s like having him wrapped around me.”
And I saw the most bizarre thing.
Even though tears were constantly raining down her face, her lips curved into a smile.
“Are my eyes deceiving me? Why are you smiling?”
“I remember everything,” she said, putting both her hands on top of each other on her heart.
She remembers the sound of his voice and chuckle. And the way his eyes crinkled as he tried, and often failed, to hold back a laugh. She remembers how he loved her mess. She remembers the nights he sat on the floor with her—for hours, without saying anything—when she lost her mother and father. She remembers how his silent presence lessened her grief. She remembers them cooking a simple meal. She remembers them playing with their children and grandchildren. She remembers his words when he gave her a gift, “For you, my queen.” She remembers his greetings every late afternoon when he came home after his farming, “How are you, my lady?”
You will always be with me, my love, through my cherished memories, she promised.
Please God, let my mind be okay until the day I die, she prayed.
Please God, let me always remember what my love meant to me, she prayed.
When I started writing this essay, I visited my grandmother.
“She walks for forty minutes and visits my grandfather’s gravesite in Saint Michael church where he was buried every Sunday morning.”
She’s 97 years old now.
She still lives in Tiya, but in a new hut, my mom and I built for her seven years ago. A fire had burned the hut she used to live with my grandfather and she had lost most of their possessions—photographs, documents that tell the history of Gurage people, his notebooks, his bible collections, his shield and spear, his fly swatter made with a skin of an ox, and Habesha Kemises he bought for her through the years.
My grandmother’s eyesight is not good and she walks very slowly. Still… she walks for forty minutes and visits my grandfather’s gravesite in Saint Michael church where he was buried every Sunday morning. Can you conceive of an arranged marriage that houses lasting love? That plants its feet and stands rooted for years and years?
I do
You look like your Grandmother’s twin!