It was some years back when I came across a group of pictures that the Ministry of Information used as an ad for a photography competition. Among the pictures there was one of a female ex-fighter. Whenever I saw that picture I knew I recognized her but yet, I couldn’t place her anywhere.

It wasn’t until the last day of September 2007 in Wia, however that I finally got a clue. After a tiresome day, I was lying down on my bed and reading when I heard my name being called. It was one of the trainers who had come with a message for me. He gave me two pieces of paper and said they were from Habteab Ghebrezgabhier, the paramedic of the Unit. “He came to see you earlier but couldn’t find you. Anyway, he wants to see you,” he said hurriedly and left.

I knew Habteab. We were together in elementary school and I had met him at the clinic. But I couldn’t figure out why he would send me the scraps of paper. So I took out my torch and looked only to find it was a newspaper cutting of that collection of pictures with the picture of that female combatant.

But the second, and very brief, letter held the answer to the question that had been bugging me for years. In the letter, Habteab wrote that the woman in the picture was Miraf Ghebremariam Ghebreyesus. At that moment I stopped reading and felt like a heavy burden was lifted off my shoulders. Miraf went to the same school as Habteab and me. At school, she was more known by her nickname ‘china’. She was charming and humorous. She always dressed in the same style and her physical composure was envied by everyone.

Miraf fell in battle in 1990 at the Dekemhare Front. I came to know of her martyrdom on June 20, 1994, during the Martyrs’ Day commemoration when a list of all martyrs of the Dekemhare and Adirosso fronts was issued in Dekemhare.

Now that I recognize her, whenever I see Miraf’s picture I remember her running in the mountains and valleys of Sahel. And last February, when I went to Massawa for the commemorations of Operation Fenkil, Massawa was full of posters with a color picture of Miraf (among others).

And particularly in the evening of Saturday February 14, as l looked at the people walking along the Segalet causeway, I remembered that it was Miraf’s and her comrades’ courage that allowed us to walk proudly today.


Translated By Mansour Nouredin
Source: Hidri , Issue 45
April, 2009