When I was about 12 years old in the beautiful city of Asmara where I spent the first nineteen years of my life, I used to take long trips on the dangerously twisted roads of Massawa on hand-built, four-wheel carts. They simply ran downhill propelled by the wind and the slope, and the driver's only function was guiding the wheel and maneuvering the brakes. The carts were usually used to transport vegetables and sacks of grain. When the carts were filled to the brim, and there was no space for the driver, the driver would stand on the top of the sacks holding on to a long rope attached to the front wheels, which is how he would brake.

Every Sunday my friends and I would plan a trip on those carts toward Massawa. We looked forward to those eventful trips that we performed with great enthusiasm. For my friends the trip was unambiguously joyous, but to me it was always a blend of pain and joy. The event was joyous because I was young and reckless, painful because I would be forced to do things that I did not want to do only because I wanted to fit in. For me, it was a choice between being alone and having friends, and at that age I thought that it was better to have friends.

After dangerously long rides on the carts we would stop at strategic corners insulated from being hit by fast cars. It is during these stops that the group would sit on the curves facing the deep ravines. I dreaded these moments, these inevitable moments of mischief. I had no way of avoiding them, unless I were to condemn myself to utter loneliness, which I occasionally dreamily preferred to the company of bad friends. But so rare were these dreams of my heart actualized. I was condemned to immerse myself in the culture of the group. No one in that group ever sensed my unhappiness, my dilemma, and the ambiguities of friendship.

First we would all standup in unison to engage in the hunting of "Agames". We would shout from the top of our voices to scare the long lines of the laborers carrying huge baskets on their heads filled with figs. They had been picking all night long. Typically, they would have to travel on bare feet through many kilometers of desolate ravines, through meandering paths, and numerous twists and turns, half a mile deep to collect their figs. They gathered the figs from dusk to dawn. It is on the Agame’s way back toward the city that we would locate them deep inside those paths. From the very top of the mountain we would aim rocks at them and scream our heads out.

Every time we hit one of them, celebration would ensue, and we would say, "we just hit one of them." These were my friends' games, over which I pained, and about which I was voiceless. The Agame's collecting would be followed by lifting the heavy baskets on their heads, and walking back the long way to Asmara where they would sell them for nickels. They would sit on poverty drenched city corners collecting nickels from customers of limited means. As soon as they are downloaded from the head, the figs are immediately displayed on the streets. The figs take many colors. Some are deep green with a watery luscious look. Others are yellow with reddish spots and barely noticeable thorns.

While others are green, yellow and red with penetrating thorns that the customer must avoid, a few are dark red and ripe looking they make you feel like gulping them whole. Crowds of people wait for their arrival, fresh from the wild. Customers come to purchase them and form long lines. Some dip their hands in the baskets and choose the figs they like, and prefer to be served while standing. Others, the hurried kind, quickly purchase unpeeled figs and take them home. On exceptional days, some customers would buy the whole basket of figs, and disburden the seller of anguish, gushing rain and scorching heat. But those days are very rare.

The sellers would often cover themselves with cotton scarves to protect their bodies from the scorching heat and would work the whole day hoping to sell a basket full of figs before they spoil. At the end of the night, the remains are sold for pennies. What is left is the seller's dinner. For days the Agames live exclusively on figs, without other supplements. Eating one a day is a rare treat. To make matters worse our mischief would follow them whenever we would see one in the city. We’d rudely point at him or her. We’d call out loudly and clearly with an offensive name. We’d giggle and laugh at an angry reaction. The Agames walk with their notorious canes attached to a beer can with which they pluck the thorny figs. The long cane with the can hooks the figs. The cane, however, is also used to heckle boys who dare to challenge a harassed seller who is busily making a living. Boys are boys though. Some are worse than others.

So it happened one day. A sharp-eyed boy sits a few feet away from the vendor’s domain. While busily attending to a customer, the boy who had been waiting for the right moment, moves with a startling speed and seizes money that was piled on the floor. By the time that the poor Agame had noticed the criminal, he disappeared in the labyrinth of the crowd, and with an equally stunning speed, the Agame pursued the boy. He ran with such ferocious determination, sweating profusely that all those who witnessed the scene could not help but show their reaction. Some people looked genuinely sorry for the laborer, for they had guessed what might have happened others were so furious that they wanted to join him and run with him a few drivers on their fancy cars were irritated over the fact that they had to stop afraid that if they did not they would hit the runners while some just went quickly back to business.

The Agame ran until he couldn’t move anymore. Shortly before he collapsed, he heckled the frightened boy with the cane. Both of them drop to the ground like a bomb, and breath heavily. The idlers around have never seen anything like it before.

A bystander said, "Look at that old Agame. I swear to God that rogue is at least seventy. But you can never tell with his kind. Mind you all that they eat is figs. Ha! All that energy." Another says, "You may be right. Who knows how old he is. He himself does not know." They walk away. In the meantime, the Agame lifted the boy by his arms. With what little energy he had, he shook the boy’s head, and searched his pockets, where he finds his money. He recovered every penny and threatened to beat him up. He did not. Meanwhile, a witness had run to the police station, and reported the event.

A tall, cruel looking policeman, who had a reputation for being an Agame hater, arrives at the scene. He indicts the Agame with a mere look, a glance. He concludes that he is guilty, and that no matter what the boy has done, an Agame is absolutely disqualified from laying his hands on a boy.

He savages the Agame, who insists that he be addressed by his name, and that it is the boy who is guilty.

"In a normal country" said Tadesse (that is his name), “I would have a proper name, and I would not be indicted for being in the right". The policeman would not hear a word of it. Instead, he pulls him by the arm close to his huge body and slaps him so hard that he falls on that very ground that a while ago absorbed his tired body. He smashes his face with his big feet several times. He lifts up and stomps on the ground again. By this time Tadesse begins to bleed, and he is dragged like a slaughter bull from the ground into an old police car

I was there when it happened. I saw the tons of people congregating in a crowded area nervously chatting. I got closer to the scene. I saw that right in the middle of the street an ageless man was being dragged on his feet, like a wounded bull, silently resisting the push and pull, without a word, in spite of the dramatic showdown, by a huge policeman twice the size of the victim. I witnessed the victim resist him, and the policeman slapped his face, kicked at his knees, pulled his arms, tore his shirt, pulled his pants down as if he were about to quarter him. Twice the victim stood up to defend himself, but was beaten down by a stick severely. He took two deep breaths, and was finally, violently shoved into the car. His head bumped hard against the roof. Many years have passed since I have witnessed that event, and every time I remember it, I am taken back to my day of birth, the way I have been told it happened. I am forced to ask questions. Born to comfort, waited onnursed and lulled to sleep. I am reminded that I must confront my comfort.

When I was born, my father ebulliently drove through the city of Zaila with his buddies for half a day blowing the horn, displaying little flags, announcing, after years of trying, the birth of his very first boy. The birth of boys is a major event in Ethiopia. That was how I was welcomed to this world, on a beautiful summer day, when bees and grasshoppers were hopping from flower to flower, visibly happy over their tasks. I remember the elaborate ceremony that followed on my first birthday. Everybody noted how beside himself my father was for having me, how much he bragged about having his first boy. The ingredients that go in to the production of our local honey drinks, the aromatic spices, cardomen, coriander, cumin, hot pepper, tons of garlic were subtly mixed to produce the internationally acclaimed Ethiopian pepper, months ahead, for that first party.

My mother remembers my birth to have been a very difficult one, partly because she had me very late in life, since she kept on trying to have a boy, at my father’s request, and did not succeed to have one until her late forties. She fondly remembers how desperate my father was to have a boy that there is no person, whether qualified or not, whom he did not consult.

He accumulated loads of advice. Some would advise him to avoid eating sweets, since sweets are supposedly girl friendly. Others would advise him to have stiff drinks before encountering my mother. Some others suggested that he consume our local honey drink called "Tej". He tried all of them devotedly. None of them seemed to work. But he kept on trying them in various permutations. Only when the time was ripe, did my parents manage to have their baby boy. My father decided that it had been the Tej.

The maids love to recount the stories as well. My mother took many long and arduous walks several times a day to keep herself fit. She never tasted any alcoholic drinks, but ate substantially, for the sake of having a very healthy boy. She would dance very slowly so as not to disturb the natural location of the body inside. She would regularly talk to me, so as to have a ‘smart’ one. While pregnant, she knitted four baby sweaters, made two pants, and over thirty pairs of underwear and socks out of pure Ethiopian cotton. All the neighbors spoke about her skills, how fine the sweaters looked and felt, the elasticity and sheer elegance of the baby socks and underwear. I like to imagine Tadesse as a child. He was born in a tin shack one cold winter morning. His mother had labored the night before from dusk to dawn.

She had bled profusely, her husband had pronounced her dead, having witnessed the blood that came out of her, and the fact that the midwifes had cried bitterly while working with her. The neighbors congregated around her, and prayed through the night. Some slept around her. Others went home but remained awake. The local priests led the prayers. Beggars outside, who had been cared for by her stood in the bitter cold night chanting and recounting her deeds. Many spoke about her free Sunday breakfasts, her free reading and writing classes, her bible study group, and her numerous free classes for the needy.

An admirer, having cried bitterly said, ‘If anybody should live, it is you Madame. The many useless ones live, so that the exceptional few can die. It is not fair.’

I imagine. The cattle are asleep in the barn at the far end of the laboring woman’s single room. Squirrels cautiously watch the scene from darkened tree trunks. The hyenas in the deep dark are waiting to devour cattle. The nocturnal beasts are howling and crying. The night is becoming steadily dark. The candle lights in the tin shacks are fading. The laboring woman is screaming. Every scream is causing tears to drop like light rain. The priests chant and pray. Children run and hide inside their mothers’ skirts.

For many years to come those who witnessed her toil thanked God for listening to their prayers, and keeping her alive. Tedasse's parents too, celebrated his birth in their own way, far differently from the way my own birthday was celebrated. A cow was slaughtered on the day of his birth, followed by a sheep a week later. Visitors danced for two weeks non-stop. He, like other children in the world, did not choose to be born, but his birth was a momentous event. Still, he had no choice in the matter.

Here he is as a grown up, a detested Agame, without rights, to be scolded and chased like a wild animal. I imagine him with the baskets on his head, walking up and down those ragged ravines, those thorny bushes, fighting the dense growth filled with deep green, ripe red and watery yellow figs, preparing themselves to be gently and safely picked by the magical cane. I imagine him resting after a full day’s labor, contemplating his return, which would take a night-long walk, and would go directly to the city, without sleep and without food, so that he could sell his figs when they are young and fresh, because they wither and die so quickly. There he sits in those filthy corners chasing flies from the hard-earned figs lined on intricately woven, labor-intensive baskets made by women in the countryside.

I imagine him in prison, after his beating, carrying flasks of water tied to his bowls, struggling to run at the officer's command, weighed down by the flasks, trying and repeatedly failing to recover from a violent fall on the ground. He is whipped, whipped again and again, for no reason other than his identity, which provokes the officer to beat him violently. The officer reminds him again and again that he has committed a sin for beating a rich man’s boy. The officer screams, and says, "Agame, do you understand? You are not a human being. You rogue. You dirty scum. You filthy house of fleas."

He orders another officer to hand him a bag, filled with white powder. He opens the bag, empties the contents on his gloved hand. He spreads it on Tadesse’s body. It is DDT.

As if he knows what he is doing, he adds, ‘We give that to animals like you here.’

He laughs, as he continues to spread the DDT, and the other officers join him in the spectacle of laughter. They laugh their hearts out, as they see Tadesse feathering away the powder that has invaded his underfed body, and the officer piles more powder on his face. Tadesse gives up fighting. When the powder intruding into his eyes, he cannot control the pain. He screams like a wild animal. The officers cannot control their laughter anymore.

They collectively shout, "Listen to that animal’s shout. He sounds like a hyena."

Tadesse finally collapses on the ground, to the officer's delight. The same officer, who violently shoved him to the police car, after the fight with the boy, drags Tadesse’s body on the floor towards the prison cell. The cell is exactly the size of a large dog’s house. There is nothing in it, except for a toilet right next to a filthy mat on which his body rests. The mat is so thin that it must feel like a rock when his abused body sleeps on it. It must hurt him even more, which is why he is so uncomfortable walking even after a whole night’s rest. His daily food consists of water and oatmeal for breakfast. Injera (sorghum), lentil stews for dinner. There is no lunch. These foods are eaten throughout the year. On Christmas and Easter, he is treated to lamb and chicken dishes. He showers once a month.

I was told, years later, after I became a people's lawyer and thought of working on his case that he died from TB exactly five years after he entered prison. The prisoners remembered him as tall, thin like a feather, with bulging big round eyes, and old but sinewy body. He died at the age of seventy-five. Needless to say, I was heart broken. Ever since I witnessed that fight and the manner in which he was treated, I had wanted to study law, and a year after I began practicing, I had resolved to become a poor people’s lawyer. In vain I resolved to help Tadesse, but it was not meant to be.

I still remember him. I cannot take him out of my mind. I've wondered many times, how could I redeem this noble fellow, whose birth was as precious as everybody else, but who died so quietly. I thought of indicting the policeman for the death of a fellow. Long after Tadesse’s death, I saw him in my dreams, and I began talking to myself. I imagined myself talking to a Judge and telling him that I was about to do something extraordinary.

I am going to defend a dead man, an exceptional man, who would be alive at this very second breezing, playing with his grandchildren, who up to this day cannot mention his name without a stream of tears. His name was Tadesse. He was seventy-five years old at the time of his death. If he did not divulge his age, nobody could have guessed. Tall, thin, with full and lanky hair, soft-spoken, mild-mannered, he walked around quietly.

I spoke to some of his best friends. No one had anything but high praises for the quiet man. He was the most hardworking man they had ever known. He is known to have begun working at the age of five, as a local mail boy, who delivered newspapers from house to house. He was the youngest employee in town. Cute, fast and full of smiles, he delivered those newspapers, heavier than his body, tirelessly and consistently. The neighbors compared him to their five year olds, who could barely carry themselves from bed in the morning, who reported sick most of the time, to this energetic child who never failed to deliver their newspapers.

I kept telling the judge everything I knew. I knew the man's life like my own. He performed that task until the age of twenty. He fell seriously ill, contracting polio, and was bed ridden and supported by his three children, who did much better than he. Two of them were car mechanics, and one was an engineer. His polio stabilized, although it left him with a limping leg.

Soon he decided to employ himself as a fig picker. That was all that his condition could allow him to do. The limping was barely noticeable, against an otherwise beautiful human body. Self-employment had always been his ideal, and for that, picking figs was a very becoming occupation.

So his life in his new employment began. It stretched over thirty-five years. He picked figs for over thirty years every singled day, rain or shine, winter or spring. Even in the winter, late in age, he continued to wear his Khaki shorts, self-ironed, never wrinkled, and fought figs and people with them. He never complained to anybody about the doom and gloom of the job. He would simply suspend his sharp cane into mid-air, with a measured speed, trap the targeted fig, and place it with a perfect move right into a large basket, to join its sister figs. He would take two deep breaths after each successful catch. And then start all over again.

By employing himself this way, this man raised three kids, two mechanics and an engineer and became a grandfather of four. He made himself comfortable. Throughout these years he held himself with dignity, respected his job. I could not contain myself in the presence of my imagined judge. I would not rest until I had made my case.

Can you imagine how indignant he must have felt, to be chased and scolded by a boy. No wonder that he beat the boy. As if that is not enough, he had to be savaged by a prejudiced policeman for doing the right thing. Your magistrate, our police system must be so corrupt to mistake justice for injustice, and imprison and torture one of the most just men I have ever own. I demand that we try the officer who arrested and tortured Tadesse. I saw some of his closest friends howling over his unjust death.

`Many years have passed. Every time I sit by myself, Tadesse's image pervades my soul. Each of us is born and celebrated- in so many different ways, and yet long after that celebration- some of us are born in order to suffer.