An American Hero

An immigrant's tale for father's day

Today, as Father’s Day arrives in the midst of turmoil around immigration, I want to share the story of my best friend’s dad growing up. A refugee from Eritrea (one of the most repressive countries on earth), he barely escaped with his life, built a family in America, and shows more strength, character, and greatness below than any self-proclaimed Christian-values politician ever has.

I’ve told this story before, but with many thousands of new subscribers, it’s worth telling again, particularly today. If you didn’t have time to read it last time, it’s about everything America could and should be for the world, and what we are losing if we aren’t.

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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 included: 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 all 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 week in a row.

Learning Unlimited is also where I first 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.

To be real about it, Benyam’s mom, Turu, seemed like the badass of the house. I mean, 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 the collected old man 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 a man who had tortured his dad years ago in the home country was now a cab driver here in the US.

Tortured?! I asked, incredulous.

Yeah, man, it’s nuts. I had no idea, said Benyam. 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 obsessed over 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. Well except, his dad, of course.

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, thinking it would be a fun all-American immigration story for the Fourth.

His parents 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 another photo of Tesfai with a live lion. She talked about how her family and Tesfai, who she was only dating at the time, had encouraged her to escape seek a better life during the wars. How a relative of Tesfai’s in Missouri had eventually gotten Turu 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, and was able to get to Kansas City through work, so they could still occasionally see each other.

Ultimately, as the conflict in Eritrea intensified, Tesfai decided to give up his job and come to America to be with Turu. But 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.

Back home, however, the story took a dark turn. Before Tesfai could depart, he was snatched for questioning by local police. If not for a family member seeing it happen, he would have simply disappeared and no one would have known.

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. Tesfai had just been unlucky. 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 Tesfai 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. Just dumped back on the street. He made his way back to family and tried to put his life back together.

From then on, 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. Tesfai couldn’t leave, however, unless someone was willing to sign an attestation and vouch that he would return. He couldn’t ask someone to do that, because he knew what would happen to them when he didn’t come back.

An older gentleman, barely an acquaintance, a friend of a friend, heard about Tesfai’s plight when they were all at a bar commiserating about what life had become. The old man approached Tesfai and calmly and simply told him that he would vouch for him.

Tesfai, in shock, refused. He couldn’t put this man at risk. But the 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 and the man was a government agent. But Tesfai wouldn’t have another chance and, as he had learned, danger lurked around every corner.

When the day arrived, Tesfai 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. In his mind, every sound was the sound of armed guards pushing through the crowd to carry him off. Once airborne, every shift in the sky was the plane turning back to take him back in. The delay during his connection was because security was coming to grab him.

But, then, just like that, 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,” Tesfai 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