Today is the 50th birthday of my name. It was the exact midpoint of my life in my mother’s womb. A few weeks earlier, my parents traveled to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) for vacation and business. My mom (mama) returned home to Asmara (then part of Ethiopia) two weeks earlier than they planned to attend the funeral of a close relative. But my dad (baba), who worked as an independent accountant, stayed behind for two more weeks to file the financial statements of one of his long-time clients. The day before his travel, he sent a telegram to another of his clients in Asmara. He does not remember the exact wording now, but it was terse and said something to the effect, “I am done with the business. I will arrive tomorrow”.
Baba remembers the morning of December 8, 1972, the day he was scheduled to fly home, being an ordinary one. The pre-flight atmosphere was similar to the dozens of flights he had taken. The Ethiopian Airlines Flight 308, a Boeing 720, was scheduled to fly to Paris, with stops in Asmara, Athens, and Rome. He remembers going up the plane’s stairs while chatting with a young Eritrean woman, Martha Mebrahtu, who was also flying to Asmara. She was covered in layers of traditional cotton shawls (ghabbi) and appeared ill. She told him she was on leave from medical school at Addis Ababa University, going home to recuperate. His seat was in the back of the plane, which was only half full in anticipation of more passengers boarding in Asmara. Baba was carrying a small, round-bottom, traditional clay pot that mama bought as a souvenir in Addis Ababa. He kept it between his feet to prevent it from toppling during the flight. The prominent Eritrean linguist and author Musa Aron was seated next to him.
The real story of the day started with a sudden burst of loud shouts from the back of the plane thirteen minutes into the flight, at 28,000 ft over the Ethiopian highlands.
After announcing that they had hijacked the plane, five men and two women hurried toward the cockpit to force the pilots to divert the aircraft to a foreign country. Unbeknown to them, the Ethiopian government deployed undercover armed security because the group comprised well-known activists and sympathizers of the Eritrean Liberation Front. Within minutes the hijackers and the security agents were shooting each other, and bullets were flying in all directions. When the hijackers realized their mission had failed, one of the women threw a hand grenade. An American professor, returning home after exploring an exchange program for Ethiopian college students, kicked the grenade to the empty front end of the plane, where it detonated and damaged the fuselage and parts of the flight control system. By this time, the plane had already turned around and was flying to Addis Ababa.
The confrontation quieted when all the men and one of the women hijackers—the one with the grenade—were killed. Nine others, including the American professor and baba, were wounded. Baba’s feet were resting on his heels, his toes pointing upward with mama’s souvenir clay pot resting in between. A stray bullet struck baba’s left foot through the sole of his shoe and got lodged inside. He believes the pot helped temper the damage. As a child, I remember rubbing the pot, which was kept in a prominent place in our living room, and thinking that somehow it saved baba. If it was not for the pot, I imagined, he would have been oriented differently, and maybe the bullet could have struck himworsey.
After neutralizing all the known hijackers, the agents instructed everyone to stand up and raise their hands. Baba was in pain and wanted to sit and check his foot. He remembers begging Mr. Musa to inform the agents that he was hit. But Mr. Musa, who understood the gravity of the situation better than him, helped baba to remain calm and on his feet with his hands raised. A wounded agent locked his gaze on baba and gestured his colleagues toward him. Baba’s memory of some of the details has faded now, but I remember hearing that the same agent or another pointed a gun toward him. He may have shot him and missed or run out of ammunition.
When the plane landed, about half an hour after it took off, baba was immediately apprehended by police, who waited at the bottom of the stairs. By then, he was frazzled and numb that he forgot he was wounded. He was taken to the Addis Ababa police headquarter for interrogation, where he was held for hours. It turned out Martha Mebrahtu was the woman hijacker with the grenade. She wasn’t ill at all. She wore the layers of ghabbi to hide the weapons she strapped to her thighs. The security agents were focused on baba because they noticed his interactions with her when they boarded and suspected he was a hijacker too. Their suspicion thickened when they discovered the telegram he sent to his client—a Muslim Eritrean businessman—because Ethiopian authorities believed Muslims dominated the ELF. They held baba for hours, trying to get a confession.
At home in Asmara, mama and all our relatives heard about the incident soon after it happened, but they had no information about what happened to baba. My uncle—mama’s brother— who dropped baba a short while earlier, was back at the airport. But he could not locate baba. Although he was in the manifest of passengers, he was not listed with the survivors or the dead.
Several agonizing and terrifying hours later, the police realized the blood flowing from baba’s shoes and took him to a military hospital, where the bullet was surgically removed. He was also allowed to call family after the surgery. My parents’ memory of what happened next has faded, but I remember hearing that one of my grandparents started the conversation about naming the child that mama was carrying—me.
Baba was kept in the hospital under custody for several days before he was allowed to leave after my uncle and another relative agreed to sign on his behalf that he would not engage in any political activity and leave the capital immediately. He was put on a flight to Asmara with two security guards. In Asmara, a local security official of Ethiopian Amhara descent was instructed to receive him and keep a close watch.
The official burst into laughter when he realized the dangerous man the security agents handed over to him was baba. He knew him well enough to recognize that baba was the farthest from being a threat.
Besides his accounting practice, baba also owned two small buses. He traveled extensively around the country to resolve one problem or another that his drivers would encounter. In the process, he developed a friendly rapport with lots of people. He had met this particular official when he was low-ranking traffic police. He knew baba was not politically engaged and was mainly concerned with taking care of his extended family. Sympathetically, he told him in Amharic, an Ethiopian language, “ኣንተኮ ሞኝ ነህ። ሊገድሉህ እኮ ነበር” (“You are so naive. Did you know they were tempted to kill you?”) and set him free.
Back to my name. I was named ተኣምራት (Te-A-m-Ra-t), a miracle, to mark baba’s survival on the day that could have had a tragic end. Baba’s younger brother also called his newborn son ኣድሓኖም (Adhanom), which loosely translates to “he saved him.” One of the books authored by baba’s seatmate on the flight, Musa Aron, is a dictionary of Tigrigna and Tigre names (two major Eritrean languages). He defined Teamrat as:
Definition from “Names in Tigre and Tigrinya” by Musa Aron, 1994
The weight of the name
I do not remember not knowing the story behind my name. From a very young age, I have contemplated the many alternative ways the story could have ended. The outcome that haunted me my entire life is a world where I could have lived without meeting baba or my three sisters, whom I love so dearly. Writing this piece has allowed me to reflect on how the weight of hearing this story retold countless times in my family and my head shaped my psyche. Although I cannot be sure how much this story caused it, I have always been filled with a deep-seated fear and worry about the safety of everyone in my life—my family, relatives, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and students. Several of my fifty stories will reflect on my lifelong obsession with the many ways events, and things can go wrong. But I do not mean this as a burden; it is, in many ways, a gift. One of my all-time favorite Amharic sayings that I learned in high school captures this succinctly: እግር ያለው፡ ጫማየ አለቀ ብሎ ያለቅሳል, which translates to “someone who has feet (or can walk) cries because of worn out shoes.”
I do not think I have ever taken the presence of my family and loved ones for granted. To have people in your life that you care for and love so much that the worry of their safety causes you pain is a priceless gift. In addition, the irrational fear of what could have been on this day fifty years ago has allowed me to empathize deeply with people who lost parents or siblings at a young age.
Baba, I am so grateful for the miracle that spared you. I am thankful that you have been around these past fifty years and are still going strong at ninety. My sisters, how could I have been me without you and your love?
Notes
The following are the best contemporaneous accounts I could find. The NYT article published the next day mistakenly reported that both women hijackers were killed. The second one survived, and I have seen accounts that she was alive as late as a couple of years ago.
The New York Times, Saturday December 9, 1972, Page 2
The New York Times, Saturdy December 9,1972, Page 2
7 Hijackers Killed on Ethiopian Airliner
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Dec. 8 (Reuters)—Seven hi jackers, two of the women, were killed by Ethiopian secur ity guards in a mid‐air gun battle aboard a crowded Ethio pian airliner today.
One of the 94 passengers, a professor from Philadelphia, had seized a live hand grenade dropped by one hijacker and had hurled it to an unoccupied part of the cabin where its explosion blew a hole in the airliner. But the pilot managed to bring the Boeing 720‐B down safely.
The hijackers were under stood to be from the northern Ethiopian province of Eritrea, though an official statement by Ethiopian Airlines said the line had not determined where the seven had come from. A num ber of previous hijackings in volving Ethiopian planes have been staged by members of the Eritrean Liberation Front, a guerrilla organization with left‐wing ties that seeks to sep arate the province from the na tion.
Nine Are Wounded
The professor, Dr. Roderick Hilsinger of Temple University, and eight others—four other passengers, two security guards, and two stewardesses — were wounded in the cross fire of bullets and grenade frag merits. The Associated Press reported that Dr. Hilsinger, 40 years old, was in serious, con dition at the American Seventh Day Adventist Hospital in Ad dis Ababa.
Six of the hijackers were killed on the plane, including a woman shot as she flung her self across a wounded male hi jacker, apparently to shield him. The seventh, the other woman, was wounded in the battle on the plane and died in a hospital. The airline said in a statement that the entire band of hijackers had been wiped out.
The plane was bound from the Ethiopian capital for Paris, with a stop scheduled in an hour at Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. Thirteen minutes after take‐off, a man with a gun and a grenade appeared at the divi sion between the economy com partment and the first‐class compartment. “This is a hijack,” the man said. “Stay in your seats.”
Guards Open Fire
What followed was related by Dr. Richard Wylie, 30, also of Temple University. He and Dr. Hilsinger, with whom Dr. Wylie had spent a week in Ethiopia arranging student ex changes, were in the forward‐ most seats of the economy sec tion.
“No sooner had he said it was a hijacking,” Dr. Wylie said, “when one of the security guards opened fire, wounding the man. He staggered, but man aged to pull the pin from the grenade, which he dropped right at the feet of Dr. Hilsinger who had the aisle seat.”
“Dr. Hilsinger, with great bravery, immediately picked up the grenade and threw it into the opposite corner where the seats were unoccupied. It ex ploded there, tearing a great hole in the plane’s side. Dr. Hilsinger took most of the force of the blast, receiving shrapnel wounds in the face, chest and legs. His action surely saved many others from injury.”
Woman Hijacker Slain
It was then that the woman hijacker threw herself across her comrade. Security guards shot them both. [United Press International said there were six security guards on the plane.]
“For the next few minutes it was like a nightmare,” said Dr. Wylie. “Bullets were fly ing everywhere. The plane was full of smoke from the ex plosion. Blood was all over the place. After the explosion, the plane dropped like a stone. We thought it was the end.”
The pilot, safely locked in his cabin, wrenched the plane un der control and, with one engine dead and rudder control temporarily lost, brought the jet safely down to Addis Ababa 25 minutes after he had taken off.
The wounded included S. J. McCullum, an American oil ex ecutive, injured by grenade fragments, and a Swiss busi nessman, Paul Mueller. Most of the uninjured passengers were flown out of Addis Ababa later today.
2 Held Hijacker Down
ROME, Dec. 8 (UPI)—A pas senger who had been on the Ethiopian plane said today that two British bird watchers, Dun can Macintosh, 70, and his wife, Mary, 67, of Oaksey, England, had held down a hi jacker with their feet to keep him from shooting. The Mac Intoshes, the passenger said, “kicked him and kicked him and wouldn’t let him use his gun until he was eventually killed with a whole magazine of bullets.”
“One did what one could to help,” said Mr. MacIntosh him self. His right eye was swollen shut and his knapsack blood stained.
TIME December 18, 1972 | Vol. 100 No. 25
TERRORISM: Brief and Bloody
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 708 was 13 minutes out of Addis Ababa last week, en route to Asmara, Athens, Rome and Paris, when a grim, familiar sequence began. Five men and two women stood up in various sections of the Boeing 720-B jet’s passenger section, pulled out guns and began shouting orders in Amharic. Their skyjacking attempt turned out to be brief, bloody and singularly unsuccessful. Ethiopian security men, who have been aboard all the airline’s international flights with orders to shoot to kill, also jumped up and commenced firing. Six of the skyjackers were killed outright and the seventh died later in a hospital of wounds sustained in the shooting.
One of the group had been holding a hand grenade from which he had pulled the pin. As he fell, the grenade slipped from his hand. Passenger Roderick A. Hilsinger, a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, snatched the grenade and lobbed it toward an unoccupied part of the cabin. The grenade exploded with a muffled roar, wounding Hilsinger and six others. The blast also damaged an inboard engine as well as the plane’s rudder controls; as acrid smoke filled the cabin, the jet went into a dangerous dive.
The pilot finally regained control of his plane and flew it back to Addis Ababa’s Haile Selassie I airport. There the skyjackers were linked with the Eritrean Liberation Front, which has long been fighting to free Ethiopia’s northernmost province. In 1970 two other Eritrean rebels attempted a similar skyjack. They were subdued by security men who neatly tucked towels on the seats behind the culprits and then slit their throats.