Volume 8, Issue 1 / Tevet 5765 / January 2005

Home at Last

"I waited for years for my son to come back. But he never did."

"The sky is white," Ulegar Bero states with confidence. "So is the sun."

Ulegar, 80, was born in a small village in the Gondar area of Ethiopia. Like the other young women in the village, she married young. Not long after the birth of her son, her husband passed away. She didn't remarry, but devoted herself to raising her son.

One day representatives of the army came into the village. They picked boys off the street and took them to serve in the army. Ulegar's only child was one of the boys taken. She never saw him again. "He was 18 years old," she says. "No one even told me where they were taking him."

Consumed with grief, Ulegar refused to eat or drink. Recalling the incident, she covers her face with her hands and sighs, a terrible, sad sigh, over and over again: "I couldn't stop crying. I cried for hours each day, until I went blind from crying." With no doctor to treat the simple inflammation, the infection grew worse, until Ulegar's eyesight was lost forever.

Over the years, the villagers left for Israel, one by one. Her brothers and friends wanted Ulegar to come with them, but she refused to go. "I had to wait for my son," she says. "I couldn't just leave him there, in the army. I waited for years so that he would come back to me. But he never did."

Eventually, Ulegar, too, left. She could not remain in the village all alone, blind and old. When the last families left, they forced her to come with her, fearing she would die otherwise.

"I remember my son, running and laughing with his friends."

While waiting in Addis Ababa, Ulegar was able to rent a small room and hire a woman to help her with her cooking, thanks to her brothers in Israel who sent her money. "I used to cook so well when I could see, my son always loved my food," she recalls, crying. After six years of waiting, she was finally able to come to the land she had longed for, in prayers, tales and songs passed down from one generation to the next. But by the time she finally set her foot on the land of Israel, she was empty and broken.

The Jewish Agency brought her to the Nurit Absorption Center in Beersheva, where she now has a small apartment. The translator walks in with a familiarity that suggests that she spends many hours here. She picks things up, folds them, and puts them away as she translates what Ulegar is saying. She gives her a glass of water and reminds her to take her medications. As we walk out a little girl who live close by enters the room and greets Ulegar happily. While the child is chattering away in Amharic language, I see the shadow of a smile on Ulegar's face.

"What is the last thing you remember seeing?" I ask. "I remember my small garden," she responds. "I remember my son, running and laughing with his friends."

Written by: Edith Sharon
Photo by: Aliza Orbach

To download this file as a word document, click here.