America's Masculinity Crisis Ch. 1

The Power of Forgiveness

In the 1950’s, America faced a crisis of courage.

Our politics were fueled by hate. Government employees were under siege, including by a government run Loyalty Review Board. The “Red Scare” was at its zenith. Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy—a man whose unimpressive early Senate career included defending Nazi war criminals, allying with holocaust denier and KKK member Pastor Wesley Swift, calling America’s military brass “mental midgets,” and railing against corruption while engaging in more than his own share of it—catapulted himself to fame by launching witch-hunts against political rivals and government employees by denouncing them as communist or homosexual.

In the midst of this crisis of courage, Senator John F. Kennedy published Profiles in Courage, eight historical examples of US Senators showing what he believed to be courage in the face of adversity.*

Today, in similarly divisive times, we often hear about another American crisis. A crisis of masculinity.

There are real issues there, and I addressed the political ramifications of some of them of during my campaign. However, there is so much more beyond the political side of this crisis. For example, the men that our society has chosen to elevate, both in social media and in the mainstream media, and the things that they label “masculine.”

So, today, I’m going to begin a new series of profiles. Rather than focusing on famous and powerful men, like Kennedy did, I’m going to amplify just a few of the thousands of acts of common strength and resolve that play out across the fabric of Missouri and our country every day— quietly holding us together while our leaders seek to rip us apart. Examples that could dig us out of this masculinity crisis if only they got the attention or recognition that has instead been lavished on others.

Since I highlighted my wife’s immigration story last week, I can think of no better place to begin than another immigration story. The story of my best friend’s dad.

The Power of Forgiveness

Growing up, my mom had to get creative looking for cheap or free ways to keep us kids entertained during the summers. The standard strategy was swimming lessons at the public pool, long hours at the public library, and attending every single vacation bible school in town. And when I say every single one, I mean Every. Single. One. Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Disciples of Christ, Southern Baptist, you name it...

You’d think this diversity of faiths and locations would have kept things interesting. However, the truth is that you did basically the same thing at every single one of them. The same coloring sheets. The same songs. The same parachute games. The same ten stories.

Once a summer, however, we got to do something special. Lincoln University, right down the street from our house, hosted a program called Learning Unlimited, where you got to do all sorts of cool stuff. Write plays, make pottery, cook exotic food, play red rover, learn integers...

Well, ok, maybe it wasn’t ALL cool, but it sure beat coloring in a cutout of Daniel in the Lion’s Den and pasting it onto a popsicle stick for the tenth time.

It was at Learning Unlimited that I met my friend for life and future best man, Benyam (whose Washington Post op-ed about running black in America I featured in a previous substack). His parents, refugees of the Eritrean war of Independence against Ethiopia, were drawn to mid-Missouri because they had family here and because Lincoln University, as an HBCU, was a welcoming environment for them. Benyam’s mom graduated from Lincoln and his parents worked there until their retirement.

In all the years growing up learning how to eat injera and dance like a habesha at his house, Benyam’s dad was quietly in the background, always supportive and entirely encouraging, sometimes funny, but never standing out in any way. Certainly not as your macho-masculine tough guy.

Shoot, Benyam’s mom, Turu, seemed like the badass of the house. She smashed spiders with her bare feet and ate ground beef raw out of the package! The hardest thing we ever saw Benyam’s old man do was gargle rubbing alcohol, which is admittedly pretty fierce, but not exactly worth any street cred with the other kids. And the most interesting thing about him was probably that his toes were kind of crooked.

Well, that or maybe his weird name: Tesfai (which is pronounced tess-fi, with the fi like the fi in wifi).

Benyam and I are still friends, and a few years ago, when I was stationed at the Pentagon, Benyam called me upset. One of his uncles had gotten agitated at a family gathering and told Benyam that the man who had tortured his dad in the home country during the war was now a cab driver here in the US.

Tortured?! I asked, incredulous.

Yeah, man, it’s nuts. I had no idea. Absolutely crazy. Apparently Pops was thrown in a black hole and nearly tortured to death for who knows how long back in the day. And now we know that the guy who did it is here, just living the good life, like it’s nothing. I can’t just sit here. I gotta go after this guy. Expose him. He’s a damn war criminal. I’ve at least gotta confront him. How can I be a man knowing that this guy is out there just living free in America after what he’s done?

Benyam locked in on the idea of confronting the man who had tortured his father. He dug into whatever details he could find. He interrogated relatives in pursuit of more information on what had happened. He talked to just about everyone he could except, of course, for his dad.

Time went by. Benyam and I mulled over ways to approach the man who had tortured Tesfai. Get into his cab. Ambush him on a podcast. Report him as a war criminal. But first we needed to know more.

Then, in 2021, we were at Benyam’s parents’ house in Jefferson City for the Fourth of July. Sitting in their living room, with Benyam’s two little girls and his parents, someone asked Benyam’s parents to tell us how they came to America.

They talked about growing up in then-Ethiopia in the 50’s and 60’s. Benyam’s mom showed us a picture of her being honored by the Emperor of Ethiopia at her high school graduation and one of Tesfai with a lion. She talked about how her family and Tesfai, who she was only dating at the time, had encouraged her to escape the war and seek a better life. How a relative of Tesfai’s in Missouri had eventually gotten her to Jefferson City where she attended Lincoln and worked at the Hotel DeVille’s restaurant to make ends meet. At the time Tesfai worked for Ethiopian Airlines, work that brought him to Kansas City, and so they could still occasionally see each other.

Ultimately, Tesfai decided to give up his job to stay in America to be with Turu. He needed to take one last trip back to Eritrea to get everything in order. It was a classic love story intertwined with the American Dream. From the way they spoke, you could feel the light that America held for the rest of the world during those years.

On his trip home, however, the story took a dark turn. Before Tesfai could depart, he was taken for questioning by local police. If not for a family member seeing it happen, he would have simply disappeared.

As Tesfai spoke, Benyam was riveted to his seat. This is what he had been wanting to hear for years but never knew how to ask for. He wanted all the details. We quietly bribed his little girls to go to the other room with their tablets while Tesfai continued.

It was a common story in Eritrean Ethiopia at the time. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He was taken into captivity and accused of political crimes he didn’t even know had happened and wasn’t in the country to commit. They accused him of being a revolutionary. They locked him away, hidden from the world, and without communication. They tortured him to get a confession. He described some of the terrible things they did. One relentless man in particular. We learned how he had gotten his crooked toes. We heard what it was like to break, to get to the point where you would say anything or do anything to make the pain stop.

Turu talked about how her dreams disappeared when he did. About what it was like, being in America, such a safe place, surrounded by prosperity, while Tesfai was locked away. She didn’t know what he was going through, she wouldn’t have even known why he hadn’t come and why he wasn’t writing her if that relative hadn’t been lucky enough to see him taken and let everyone know. She talked about how overwhelming it was not knowing if he was alive or dead, or if she would ever know.

One day, Tesfai said, nearly a year later, he was simply set free. With no explanation, no direction, no nothing. He made his way back to family and tried to put his life back together.

Everywhere he went he was terrified, looking over his shoulder, waiting to be taken again. Travel out of the country was restricted, yet his old boss at the airline secured him a flight to America, an incredibly risky thing for him to do. He couldn’t leave, however, unless someone was willing to sign an attestation and vouch for him. He couldn’t ask someone to do that, because he knew what would happen to them when he didn’t return.

An older gentleman, barely an acquaintance, a friend of a friend, heard his story when they were all at a bar commiserating. He approached Tesfai and told him he would vouch for him. Tesfai, in shock, refused. He couldn’t put this man at risk. But this man, who was ready to risk his life for a stranger and a love story, insisted. Tesfai asked him to sleep on it. The next day the man signed the papers.

Tesfai was too afraid to call Turu and tell her, in case someone was listening. His anxiety grew as the day of his flight came closer. Tesfai had second thoughts. Perhaps it was a set-up. But he wouldn’t have another chance and, as he had learned, danger lurked around every corner.

When the day arrived, he made his way to the airport. He was sure he wouldn’t make it onto the plane and expected that tap on his shoulder at any moment. Every sound was the sound of armed guards pushing through the crowd to carry him off. Every shift in the sky was the plane turning back to take him back in. The delay during his connection was for security to grab him.

But, then, finally, he landed in America. And he was free.

The rest, as they say, is history. His grandchildren were called back into the room. Benyam’s parents told us about re-uniting, marrying, and having their two boys. How they raised them as Missourians, and worked full productive careers in America before finally retiring a few years ago.

Benyam was speechless. This was his moment to dig, but he was frozen. I stepped in and told Tesfai what we had heard. That the man who tortured him was living in America. That he would likely never answer for what he had done. I asked him what he thought about that.

Tesfai looked at us like we were two schoolchildren.

“Let him have peace,” he said calmly and without hesitation. “I made peace with it a long time ago. If I had chosen hate, or resentment, or dwelled on what he had done, it would have ruined this beautiful life we made here in America. I would have lost even more than he had taken. Jesus showed us the power to forgive. I follow his example.”

He took Turu’s hand and they smiled at us, the sound of their grandchildren playing in the background, gearing up to watch the fireworks over the Missouri River that night and celebrate 245 years of American freedom with their grandpa, an American hero.

Lucas

* Acknowledging, for the history die-hards, that Kennedy’s book was ghost-written by others, that the likely reason he wanted to publish it was a sense of political foreboding for being too cowardly to vote to censure or even speak out against McCarthy (something that cost him Eleanor Roosevelt’s support), and that he included some questionable Senators as being courageous in order to shore up political weaknesses