Tewres Berhane cannot eat or sleep some days when she thinks about the bitter border war that is ravaging her African homeland of Eritrea.
She works overtime at a downtown parking garage to pay for the three phone calls a week she makes to her family back home, wondering if her brothers and cousins are still alive after fighting the Ethiopian army for more than two years.
But the conversations do little to ease the helplessness she feels. In the end, the only thing Berhane said she can do to calm her mind is pray.
Each Sunday she dons her netzela, a white, gauze-like shawl, and joins about 40 other Eritrean immigrants in the spare room of a North Side Lutheran church for Orthodox mass in their native language of Tigrinya.
As the fighting has escalated, so has the number of worshipers who attend the service.
“None of us understands this war or why it’s even being fought, why it is killing our children,” Berhane said. “Our country has been fighting so long, we’re begging for peace now. I want my cousins to be able to put down their guns and go back to school.”
Some worshipers chanted hymns on a recent Sunday, while others lay prostrate on the floor as a priest melodically invoked the names of 12 saints to send the country peace. After the service ended, the congregation gathered to break holy bread and share a meal. The talk inevitably turned to families left behind.
“Every week I go to church and pray that my two brothers won’t die in the fighting,” said Yireame Tesfamrama, a senior at Niles North High School who left Eritrea three years ago. Another brother was forced out of Ethiopia when the war began, separating him from his wife and three children. “People of both countries are suffering so much, and for what I don’t know. God must answer our prayers.”
The war raging in the Horn of Africa is considered the most deadly and brutal in the world, a fight over a disputed border between two countries that formerly worked together as allies.
Once subjects of Ethiopia, Eritreans fought for 30 years alongside Ethiopians to overthrow that country’s corrupt Marxist regime in 1991. Two years later, Eritrea won independence for the first time with help from Ethiopia’s new rulers.
But what has pitted the two countries against each other now is not land, money or religious hostility but the struggle to forge their identities as strong new nations. Since a small confrontation in May 1998, the countries have amassed huge armies, lined up tanks and dug trenches along their desolate borderline, both sides treating the war as a source of national pride.
Indeed, as the city’s Eritreans filed in early Sunday to pray for peace, they were still groggy from a raucous Independence Day celebration the night before.
The community struggles with such conflicting emotions, frightened that the war still rages but honored to have family fighting for the new nation. Some send money to help the war effort.
“The old wars for independence are still felt among the adults, and the young ones are eager to fight for a young country,” said G. Michael Girmai, who fled from his Eritrean town 10 years ago. “Honor in battle is very important to us, but that doesn’t mean we want the fighting to continue.”
Almost every Eritrean family, whether in Africa or Chicago, has a relative who rushed to join the war.
So far the fighting has killed an estimated 70,000 people, and almost 9 million in both countries face severe food shortages started by drought and worsened by conflict.
Hope grew last week that the war would end when Ethiopia announced it would withdraw its troops from Eritrean land it had invaded and engage in peace talks. Still, violent skirmishes continue.
“It’s a hard situation to be in,” Girmai said. “Even though we beg that the wars end, we would not for a second hesitate to die for Eritrea.”
Even the Eritrean Church is a symbol of newfound national identity. Begun two years ago, it now has its own patriarch. Previously the country’s churches were run directly by the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt.
A traditional mass in Eritrea starts at 4 a.m., can last up to five hours and needs at least four priests to be done properly. But because the Chicago community is small, about 350 people, a two-hour service and one priest on vacation from Eritrea must fit the bill.
For now, a different worshiper each week makes the hourlong drive to Wheaton to bring the priest to the church. One member donated the sacred and expensive golden cross the priest must hold holds throughout much of the mass.
“It feels like when Eritreans worship together, their prayers reach higher to God,” said Elsa Tewelde, who worries about her mother and sister as fighting edges closer to the capital of Asmara, where they live. “Going to someone else’s church is fine, but it’s special to be together praying for one thing.”
When no priest is available, Eritreans attend Greek Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox or Catholic services.
Some Eritreans even attend Orthodox masses with Chicago’s much larger Ethiopian population.
Though relations between the two communities have cooled because of the war, they have strong religious bonds and their friendship here has been strong.
“It’s more feeling discomfort than anything else. This is a war between governments, not people,” Girmai said. “I don’t hold anything against Ethiopians. They’re hurting just as much as us, and they are praying for the same thing.”
