Book Review: Borderless Love

Ethiomedia | September 5, 2006

The author is a 21-year-long veteran of the Voice of America Amharic Service who retired recently. The book, 199 pages, is a fiction based on a budding love between an Ethiopian man, Assefa Haile, and an Eritrean woman, Asmeret Seyoum, who both lived in the Washington, DC area at the height of the 1998-2000 Ethiopia-Eritrea War. The writer successfully and vividly shows how the conflict seriously impacted the social relations of the Tigrigna-speaking community on the one hand and the rest of Ethiopians, particularly the Amharas, in the Diaspora, who otherwise lived amicably.

Since the TPLF and EPLF ascended to power in Addis and Asmara, respectively, both Eritreans and Ethiopians suffered immeasurably under gun-totting dictatorships. Hundreds of thousands have been killed and the same number of people displaced from their lifelong dwellings due to a deliberate and shameless ‘ethnic cleansing’ policies perpetrated by both sides. When the entire people whose origin was from the South were kicked out of Eritrea, many of them were forced to walk hundreds of miles across the border under a simmering heat. The Meles regime reciprocated in the same manner by deporting over 75 thousand Eritreans who had lived their entire lives in the South to Eritrea and later confiscated their houses, businesses and other assets.

It is against this background that the suspicion, animosity and blind hate festered between those of Tigrigna speakers from the North and the rest of the Ethiopian immigrants, particularly the Amhara people. Consequently, it was so common to see broken marriages, friendships and sometimes outright confrontation between these two communities. The most affected were in the Diaspora.

The writer clearly presents the trial and tribulations of Assefa and Asmeret, the main characters of the story, what they went through to protect and nurture their love successfully against persistent opposition and rejection and even bodily harm to Assefa from ethnocentric extremists from both sides. The writer chronicles their love story from the day they met at an Ethiopian Restaurant in Washington DC, where Asmeret was a waitress, to the time when they had their second child and finally to the day when they received the rewards for bringing the two communities together through the forum they created for this purpose.

The writer concludes the story with a positive note where animosity between the two communities dies down. Back home, he writes, both “countries” have democratically elected governments that are jointly harboring the idea of a confederation as a viable political solution to the social problems of their two peoples.

The book is easy to read for its double space lines and filled with thrilling suspense. Its content is original and thought provoking. Although fictitious, the story tells a real situation that has been going on for over 18 years now. The writer must be commended to bring this social ill to light to provoke further discussion within the Diaspora community for both peoples are brutalized by two tyrants thriving on our ignorance and ethnic divisions.

The book is a must-read and we say ‘well done,’ and thank you Work Aferahu.

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Borderless Love is on sale at www.africanmarket.com. The author can be reached for comments at workkebede@yahoo.com.

Seleshi T.T. is Senior Editor of Ethiomedia.com, and can be reached at seltel05@msn.com.