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The Wire
08-05-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
A Novel Once Banned in Ethiopia Sheds Light on Why the Mildest Truth Is Unpalatable Sometimes
Menu हिंदी తెలుగు اردو Home Politics Economy World Security Law Science Society Culture Editor's Pick Opinion Support independent journalism. Donate Now Top Stories A Novel Once Banned in Ethiopia Sheds Light on Why the Mildest Truth Is Unpalatable Sometimes Gautam Bhatia 13 minutes ago I read the translation of Baalu Girma's 'Oromay' with the circumstances of its publication at the back of my mind: its banning and pulping, and the persecution, abduction, and murder of its author. Real journalism holds power accountable Since 2015, The Wire has done just that. But we can continue only with your support. Donate now The Derg during the Ethiopian Revolution in 1974. Photo: Unknown author/Public domain (Wikimedia Commons). In 1983, the Ethiopian writer Baalu Girma published his sixth novel, Oromay. Within the week, Oromay was banned in Ethiopia, Girma was fired from his job at the Ministry of Information, and copies of the book were pulped at a sugar factory. Six months later, Girma disappeared, never to be heard from again. It is now common consensus that the writer was murdered on the instructions of the Derg regime, which ruled Ethiopia as a one-party state at the time. Oromay, Baalu Girma, translated by David DeGusta and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu, MacLehose Press, 2025. Four decades on, Oromay – which grew to be one of the most famous and well-loved of Ethiopian novels, not least because of the circumstances around its publication, and its circulation underground through samidzat – now has an English translation, rendered from the Amharic by David DeGusta and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu. My own interest in contemporary Ethiopia was sparked when I came across Hiwot Teffera's difficult-to-find Tower in the Sky. Tower in the Sky chronicles the rise of the left-wing student movement that toppled Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, and which was then either co-opted or violently destroyed by the Derg, the very government/regime that it helped bring to power. The events of Oromay take place a decade after Tower in the Sky: the Derg, led by former military officer and now President, Mengistu Haile Mariam, is firmly ensconced in power, and is engaged in a bitter conflict against an armed struggle aiming at the independence of Eritrea (then a province of Ethiopia). The story is set around the historical ' Red Star Campaign,' initiated by the Derg in 1982, designed to militarily stamp out the Eritrean armed struggle. For a period of a few months, the Ethiopian government was effectively moved to Asmara (now the capital of Eritrea), and the military operations conducted from there. The Red Star Campaign was unsuccessful. The Ethiopian army eventually had to retreat. The retreat severely dented the Derg regime, which would fall a decade later, with the triumph of the Eritrean War of Independence. In Oromay, fiction and reality are blurred from the outset. Its first-person narrator is Tsegaye Hailemaryam, who – just like Baalu Girma – is a senior official at the Ministry of Information, and is despatched to Asmara to run the propaganda wing of the Red Star Campaign, in support of the military operations. Specifically, he is in charge of communicating the events of the Campaign in a manner palatable to the Ethiopian public: by broadcasting from the 'frontline,' interviewing the Campaign's protagonists (including Eritrean defectors), and – more directly – jamming the rebels' radio stations, to prevent them from communicating with the public. In the process, Tsegaye finds himself sucked into the febrile and dangerous atmosphere in Asmara, a city on edge, navigating his way through military officers, spies, and double-agents. He also falls in love with Fiammetta Gilay, an Asmaran woman – a complication, as Tsegaye has a fiancee back home in Addis, awaiting his return from the Campaign. Eventually – in an early instance of embedded journalism – Tsegaye accompanies the Ethiopian army on a violent – and doomed – operation to occupy the strategically vital Peak 1702, an event that compels him to reckon with the consequences of war, and of his own part in the destruction around him. 'Words possess a charge' I read Oromay with the circumstances of its publication at the back of my mind: its banning and pulping, and the persecution, abduction, and murder of its author. I finished it bemused. Nothing in the novel seemed particularly incendiary, or something that would drive a regime to murder. Tsegaye is no rebel, defector, or even a dissenter. For much of the novel, he is indeed a regime man: not a fanatic, but a man who is broadly on board with the goals of the Red Star Campaign, and certainly not a man who questions the legitimacy of the regime he is serving. His experiences at the frontline make him question the futility of war, but scarcely radicalise him. And while, at various points in the book, questions are raised, both about the Campaign and about corruption within the Derg regime, these are raised in the course of debate and dialogue between regime officers (including Tsegaye) who are, at bottom, committed to preserving and maintaining it: an immanent critique, at the highest. Hardly something, you'd think, that would shake a regime! But then I remembered Vaclav Havel's famous speech, ' Words on Words,' where he notes how in more directly repressive or authoritarian states, words possess a salience and a charge that may be very difficult to comprehend for an outsider: more power than 'a whole train of dynamite,' in Havel's memorable words. Of course, we do not need to look to the 'designated' authoritarian States of the past and the present to understand this. Havel delivered his speech to the German Booksellers' Association, and drew a distinction between the 'considerable freedom of speech' enjoyed by the West Germans, and the repression in his own land. Now, anyone who has been keeping up with recent events will be aware that in this same Germany (now unified Germany, for better or for worse), the most innocuous speech that comes close to hinting at the truth of the State of Israel's genocide of the Palestinians has been met with bans, deplatforming, police violence, and – most recently – attempted deportation. Words, thus, can be more powerful than a whole train of dynamite just about anywhere – as long as they are wielded – in the words of Steve Salaita – 'at the point of occlusion.' Palestine was thus on my mind as I perused the secondary literature around Oromay, trying to understand what exactly was it about these mild words that had infuriated the Derg so much – to the point of killing. And it seems that what infuriated the Derg so much was precisely what infuriates the more modern-day variants of the Derg, that is, the governments of countries like Germany and the United States. Telling the truth, even in its mildest and most inoffensive form, is unpalatable when it occurs at the point of occlusion. For the Derg, thus, the success of the Red Star Campaign, and its own moral integrity, were the pillars of its legitimacy and its claim to rule. Tugging at one strand of that web, even the lightest of tugs, threatens to unravel the entire structure. And so, one does not have to be a radical or a militant to attract the wrath of a Derg: one question hinting at the truth is enough, as long as it is asked at the point of occlusion. So it was that Girma had to be murdered, and so it is that modern-day governments unleash the full range of their repressive arsenal against those who seek to tell the truth about Palestine. The Derg is long gone, but Oromay has a more lasting significance, because it tells us that the Derg is never truly gone. In some places it is better-hidden, until you find the point of occlusion, and then – as Marx wrote about the June Revolution of 1848 – it turns out that you have 'bared the head of the monster by knocking off the crown which shielded and concealed it.' And what of the novel itself? I finished Oromay in a morning and an afternoon. The novel is 400 pages long, but it is immensely readable. The narrative is linear and the events propulsive. Much like Tower in the Sky – a similar work of autobiographical fiction – Oromay avoids the peril of turning itself into a tedious, didactic sermon from a pulpit. If that were the case, its value today would be little more than that of an important historical artefact. It is, however, more than that. That said, one of Oromay's significant weaknesses is what one review calls its 'unreconstructed sexual politics.' The two women in the novel – Fiammetta Gilay and Roman Hiletework (Tsegaye's fiancee) – are almost entirely seen through Tsegaye's eyes. Fiammetta's role – and exercise of agency – does become more poignant towards the end of the novel, but this is too little and too late. For a while, I wondered if Girma was demonstrating fidelity to the actual social structures and gender relations that existed in Ethiopia/Asmara in the 1980s, without inserting his own views into the narrative, but the more the book went on, the more difficult this illusion became to sustain. I also think that there is even less of an excuse for this when you read Oromay alongside Tower in the Sky: the protagonist of Tower in the Sky is a woman (a thinly fictionalised version of Teffera herself), and although that novel's protagonist is brought into the struggle via a charismatic older male student, she discovers herself through the course of the story, and is unrecognisable by the end of it (there is, in fact, an entire scene involving a woman's prison, where women militants at the frontline of the struggle have been incarcerated). So clearly, this is not a milieu where the grammar of emancipation and liberation is unknown. Girma's depiction of his women characters is a choice, and one that renders his world a narrower, more crimped version of what it could have been. On finishing Oromay, my overwhelming emotion was that of a dimly-felt grief. Tower in the Sky is a tragic novel, a novel of death, of political unraveling, and the destruction of dreams. However, the world of Tower in the Sky is a world in which schools and university campuses are awash with dreamers, idealists, and militants (sometimes all three embodied in the same person), the horizon of another world has not yet been entirely closed off despite immense violence and repression, and there is hope for salvage out of an imminent wreckage. In Oromay, however, all that is gone. It felt hugely significant, for instance, that the novel has not a single mention of the student movement, even though 1982 is only eight years removed from 1974. The erasure feels absolute and irrevocable. If Tower in the Sky felt like an elegy that carried within it a single, chrysalis-ensconced note of a melody of resurrection, then Oromay feels like the music has, at last, died away, and all we are left with is a desolation called peace. This article first appeared on the author's blog An Enduring Romantic (stylised as 'anenduringromantic') and has been republished with permission. Make a contribution to Independent Journalism Related News Indian Economist Bina Agarwal Receives First Global Inequality Research Award What Queer Professionals in Leadership Roles Face in India Vincent van der Merwe, Cheetah Expert Who Advised India on Project Cheetah, Dies World Leaders Have Usually Made Their Mark in 11 Years. Modi is Running Out of Time. A Journey to the Abode of Guru Nanak in Kartarpur Where Faith and History Converge India, EU Set Year-End Deadline for Free Trade Pact, Back 'Just' Peace in Ukraine Shiromani Akali Dal Leadership Held Guilty of Religious Misconduct, Sukhbir Badal Stripped of Power Booker Prize 2024: Six Shortlisted Books, Reviewed Delhi Coaching Flood Row: How This Student's Complaint Was Ignored View in Desktop Mode About Us Contact Us Support Us © Copyright. All Rights Reserved.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Blue Nile is 2025 Restaurant of the Year Classic
For introducing metro Detroit to Ethiopian cuisine, The Blue Nile is the 2025 Detroit Free Press/Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers Restaurant of the Year Classic, awarded to an exceptional establishment that has been under continuous ownership for at least 10 years. Seifu Lessanework, the 78-year-old owner of The Blue Nile in Ferndale and Ann Arbor, is scrolling through old photos of dignitaries he's served throughout the span of his career. He reaches across the table at the center of a small booth to place the screen on his book-style foldable phone in my line of sight, and points to photographs signed by late and living rulers of various nations. There's President George Bush — both H.W. and W. There's President Barak Obama and Ronald Reagan. There's former President of Uganda Idi Amin and Ethiopia's last emperor, Haile Selassie I in 1972. 'And you know who this is?' he asks, pointing to a figure standing behind the Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam and leaving little room for a response. 'Me,' he says, beaming with pride. Today, the restaurateur is recognized for laying the foundation for African cuisine in the Detroit area — a commitment he made more than four decades ago. Lessanework walks me through an oral history of his life in hospitality and the notable people he's encountered along the way. As a head cook for Hilton Hotels, he opened hotel restaurants across the globe, including branches in Beirut, Jerusalem, London and Nairobi. In Montreal, he worked as a cook at The Queen Elizabeth. A native of Ethiopia, Lessanework returned to his home country for a new job opportunity in the early 1970s and remained there during the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974. Amid the unrest brought by the Revolution, he sought peace in the United States, first in New York City, where he accepted a job as head chef at Windows on the World, the former glass-enclosed restaurant that occupied the top floors of the World Trade Center's North Tower. And in 1982, he relocated to Michigan, where he was hired as a regional manager of the C. A. Muer Restaurant Group. Lessanework helped the late restaurateur Chuck Muer open restaurants in metro Detroit, as well as locations throughout the Midwest. He developed a closeknit relationship with Muer and considered him a mentor. When he got the idea to open his own restaurant, he remained loyal to the restaurant giant. 'I wanted to open an Ethiopian restaurant because that was the only thing that didn't compete with Chuck Muer,' he tells me. He saw Muer as a generous manager and appreciated his trust in him as one of the only Black individuals to hold a leadership position in the company during a time when diverse management teams were rare. Lessanework opened the original location of The Blue Nile in Midtown Detroit. He dressed the Woodward Avenue restaurant in Ethiopian garb and served spiced stews with tangy injera bread. The experience, he says, was positive. The environment surrounding the restaurant, however, was concerning. 'I was doing very good, but the crime was so bad,' he says. He recalls times when customers would enjoy a lovely meal, only to return moments later to report that their vehicles had been broken into. 'Everybody complained about security and safety, but bragged about the food.' Lessanework credits Coleman Young for offering a solution. The former Detroit mayor pointed him to Trappers Alley Shopping Center, the former mall in Detroit's Greektown neighborhood. When it opened in 1985, The Blue Nile became one of Trappers' first tenants, serving Ethiopian dishes from Lessanework's own family recipes to a bustling crowd of mallgoers. But only for two years. Though he'd signed a 25-year lease, Lessanework's efforts were interrupted by new ownership with long-term plans to open a casino at the old Trappers Alley site. The venue would become Greektown Casino in 2000. When he reopened The Blue Nile in 2002, it would be in Ferndale, where the restaurant remains today. The Ferndale location honors Lessanework's Ethiopian heritage and his pride as a Detroit immigrant. For more than two decades, the space has donned Ethiopian prints as table cloths and fabrics wrapped around lampshades. Paintings of East African landscapes hang in the dining room, juxtaposed against artifacts from The Blue Nile's old post in a former office space at Trappers. Most of the ornamental wood — cabinets and wall pendants and a massive mantle — are ghosts of Trappers' past. With restaurants like Baobab Fare, Yum Village, Maty's, KG's African American Grill, Saffron De Twah and Warda Patisserie; metro Detroit is home to a host of establishments that showcase the depth and diversity of African foodways. Lessanework looks fondly at local Ethiopian kinfolk like the operators of Taste of Ethiopia in Southfield and the pop-up Konjo Me. 'I'm so proud,' he says. 'These restaurants all add value for Ethiopian food because they give base for comparison.' But as he was getting his start, Lessanework did not have the same advantage. The Blue Nile, with the same dishes served today — meats cooked in niter kibbeh, or clarified butter infused with herbs, and various preparations of split peas and lentils — had the duty of delighting and informing unfamiliar customers. 'I had to adapt the recipes to the tastebuds of the Americans,' he says, noting that he moderated the heat on especially spicy dishes. Low-to-the-ground tables and chairs added an allure to the space and he encouraged diners to sweep up their stews with tears of injera and their bare hands, another dining concept that still takes some getting used to among new customers. 'A fork can fall on the floor, but you trust that more than your hands?' he asks incredulously. Lessanework says sharing is central to Ethiopian dining, and an idea he's tried to enforce at The Blue Nile for more than 40 years. 'If you don't like to share, I'll bring you separate plates,' he says, 'but that's not the culture. The culture is, you roll up your sleeves, and dig in. When you eat together, you're sharing.' The latter sentiment, I interpret as a collective sharing. A sharing of food, yes, but also a sharing of culture and of self. The key to educating people on a cuisine, he says, is targeting children, a lesson he learned from McDonald's and the corporation's tactic of creating Happy Meals, including toys with meals and building play gyms into restaurants. 'When you work on the kids, forget about Mom and Dad. Like it or not, the kids will bring them to the restaurant,' he says. Lessanework connected with local schools to incorporate dishes from The Blue Nile into lunch menus. The Blue Nile went on to becoming a family affair. Lessanework runs the Ferndale location with his wife Fetle, and his children and grandchildren have all served the business in some capacity over the years, on their way to becoming doctors and engineers. His sister Almaz and brother-in-law Habte Dadi operate an Ann Arbor location. After 50 years in the hospitality business, this year will be Lessanework's last as he heads into retirement. He looks back on the customers who've celebrated milestones at The Blue Nile and the children he's watched grow into adults with their own families. Before he retires at the end of the year, he intends to serve his most loyal customers like the dignitaries who hang on the walls in his home office. He'll set up tables for six in their homes and serve them with his own hands. These are the true kings and queens of The Blue Nile. The Blue Nile, 545 W. Nine Mile Rd., Ferndale. 248-547-6699. 221 E. Washington St., Ann Arbor. 734-998-4746; Save the Date: On Tuesday, June 10, The Blue Nile, the Detroit Free Press and Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers will host a Top 10 Takeover dinner. Stay tuned for ticket information at For a chance to win five $100 gift cards to dine at restaurants on the 2025 Detroit Free Press/Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers Top 10 New Restaurants & Dining Experiences list, visit Subscribe to the Eat Drink Freep newsletter for extras and insider scoops on Detroit-area dining. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Restaurant of the Year Classic brought Ethiopian traditions to Detroit
