Dan interviews EPLF field commander, now president, Isaias Afwerki in underground bunker,
Nakfa. (1979) Source: danconnell.net

Isaias or bias? 

In the hassle of tussles about life’s puzzles


there seems to wallow a wonky architecture

like a stage to ponder an image of the uncertain future

if there be one,

kind of ensconce on earth or heaven far from hell.

Isn’t it wonder for life to look alike a venture?

However for the bigger target to emulate an independence structure

 a mystic culture termed  war or you name it whatever

may snatch proficiently religious sanctification rituals

from churches, mosques or temples

so that martyrdom to bless its beatification.

Daringly  -war-  a specialty process of killing and annihilation

 proselytize change, peace, agriculture and manufacture

 where everybody will prosper

albeit its destructive nature.

Moreover in the dreams of post-war

future to arrive to history and to the Eritrea of now

the name ‘Isaias’ of a leader for life

vivacious at war time

 who in his 70ies frequents short sleeved street walks

perhaps to look jovial

head of a country that fans hostilities in serial,

 has evolved gradually and incredibly

into a seemingly incurable chronic disorder

kind of professional mind-absentia

or a bias of mass paralysis of ideas.

Simply or mainly confused by phobia

about a notion of cohabitation

with history’s renowned kingdom of Abyssinia.

Consequently like sleepwalking to Utopia

an island may be across Mediterranean

 or somewhere underneath Lampedusan waters

 awaiting UN demarcation and GPS location, regardless

of the millennium of transparency and  the era of globalization.

Accordingly Eritrean men- women, young-old follow each other

 in a style as primitive as evening stars foretell

about tales of crossing the Red sea

or the biblical voyage of Moses across the Sinai deserts

through the scary modern Bodewin cottages

that harbor boxes of human kidneys and hearts, indeed

to be traded in black markets of organ transplants.

All happening for nothing but to verify how genocide reigns

per independence and self-reliance fantasia

by inducing catastrophic dose of patriotic anesthesia

that facilitates national euthanasia.

God forbid as if final outcomes

of tussles to resolve life’s puzzles

mismatch expectations of an emerging nation

the end in sight may look like Tasmanian fight.

Where national insecurity of no fertility, no morality and no prosperity

becomes kind of mass ambiguity in bright day light

which is clear and white of a systemic twilight.

Daniel Teclegiorgis (10/15/14)