EWENET BELAINEH, PA-C
January 20, 1966 - March 21, 2004

Tribute by Glenn Arbery - Senior Editor
People Newspapers

Ewenet came to Thomas More College in New Hampshire, where my wife and I used to teach, during the years when the Communist regime ruled Ethiopia. Of the many memories I have of her--our conversations about literature, her great archetypal dreams of Ethiopia, her tales out of a world that was both modern and as ancient as Homer-- one particular memory stands out from the spring of 1989.

Thomas More College has a Rome program, and in those days the students stayed for a semester in a 17th century convent in Trastevere. She was able to go to Rome that year-- the first time I had ever been myself. One day that spring, Ewenet came up full of mysterious excitement to invite me and Dr. Paul Connell and several of her classmates to the Janiculum, the hill above the Trastevere district that overlooks the whole of Rome. Her father, flying for Ethiopian Airlines, had managed to smuggle a meal prepared by Ewenet's grandmother out of Addis Ababa and into Rome's Fiumicino Airport. I'm not sure how it got from the airport to the convent, but Ewenet was moved by the daring of it and very grateful for this meal.

We all climbed the hill to a park with a lawn that slopes down to the road that goes around it in a semi-circle. Across the road was San Pietro in Montorio, an ancient church, and beyond it -- visible through the trees -- the domes and roofs of Rome, all the churches and monuments, and the hills in the distance. We sat near a low stone wall that she used as a table. I remember a domed bowl, elaborately decorated. We sat on the grass and she took some of the food in the Injera--a piece of chicken, a hard-boiled egg (I can still remember the taste) and fed us each the first bite. I know it's an Ethiopian custom, but it felt as though she had invented it. I remember it as one of the most beautiful and sacramental occasions of my life. Somehow, I have never felt so honored as on that day, during that meal, eating the food from her home, drinking Italian wine out of small white plastic cups we had bought somewhere. At the end of the meal, we looked up to see three cavalieri -- three horsemen gorgeously uniformed in red and black, with white plumes and epaulets -- riding by on that long semi-circle below us, as if in homage.

Most of the joy of it, of course, was what it meant to her -- this young woman in exile from her beloved home. Home -- the reality and meaning of it -- came to her in that meal. But what most struck me was the generosity she showed in having her home only by giving it away to us. I can't name how many times Ewenet began a sentence with the words "In my culture" and I think that she felt almost like a missionary to us. She was trying to give us a sense of the deep bonds of love and communion that she had known. She could be home in spirit only by being the hostess to us and sharing with us what the meal meant. That day she gave us her family, she gave us Ethiopia, and she also gave us Rome. I call it sacramental because it was the most striking instance I've ever had in my life of what the Eucharist really means in its natural symbolism: what it means truly to feed others -- what gifts really are.

Perhaps it's so memorable to me because it characterizes her whole life. She poured herself out; she turned what was hers into what remains ours and became the benefactor instead of the one in need. Instead of trying to have, she gave herself away.

In her final illness, that quality became even more apparent. She discovered how to make even her suffering into a gift. Back in November when she called us, my son spoke to her, not knowing quite what to say. He distinctly remembers her the exact quality of her voice, the exuberance of spirit, the word"magical" that she used. For two days after she talked to him, he felt a kind of glow. He still speaks of it with awe. I think that anybody who knows the vividness of Ewenet's soul and spirit knows exactly what he means. She was always giving life.

The reading from Mass on the morning of her death still strikes me with particular force because it's about eating and home. It comes from the Book of Joshua, when the Israelites have just crossed through the Jordan River into Canaan after their forty years in the wilderness. They have come to a place they have never seen, but that has been promised to them as their home. No longer now do they eat the manna that sustained them in their long exile, but for the first time they eat the food of the Promised Land.

While the Israelites were encamped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, they celebrated the Passover on the evening of the fourteenth of the month. On the day after the Passover, they ate of the produce of the land in the form of unleavened cakes and parched grain. On that same day after the Passover, on which they ate of the produce of the land, the manna ceased. No longer was there manna for the Israelites, who that year ate of the yield of the land of Canaan. Crossing the Jordan --like crossing the Red Sea -- has long been interpreted spiritually as symbolic of Baptism and the passage from this life into the spiritual kingdom. Ewenet now stands among those who have passed through and stand on the other side. I sense as I write this that, even now, she shares her new blessings and makes them ours.

Glenn Arbery
Senior Editor
People Newspapers

The above article was taken from www.rememberewenet.com with permission from her husband. To read more about this wonderful lady who was taken from us much to soon please visit the website set up by family and friends. Remember Ewenet

To make a donation to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Research Foundation in memory of Ewenet Belaineh,PA-C, click below.

Donation to Breast Cancer Research in Memory of Ewenet

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