By Lemma Nathan
“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” – Matthew 2:18
His name was Herod, but latter they called him Herod the Great. The contemptuous referred to him formally, as Herod I. He was born in Jericho. His father was a high-ranked Idumaean officer. At the age of 25, he was already appointed Governor of Galilee. Although “gentile” by origin, he publicly confessed to adhere to Judaism. But most never considered him as a true Israelite, specially the scribes; and that created in him a consuming feeling of rejection with which he had to fight all his life – half a century ago, the Edomites were forced to Judaism (or leave their place) when the Maccabean John Hyrcanus conquered their regions. Since then, it was never easy to judge whether an Edomite had truly converted.
In 43 BC, his father conspired to murder Caesar. The young Herod, a shrewd mathematician, decided to collaborate with the Romans and poisoned his own father -– with a professional aloofness. His own life had been sought by so many, by friends and by enemies alike, but he plied the troublesome tides of Near Eastern politics with uncanny success. Josephus describes him as a mad man, “a man … of great barbarity towards all men equally, and a slave to his passion … for from a private man he became a king; and though he were encompassed with ten thousand dangers, he got clear of them all.” [F. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book 17, chapter 7].
Perhaps he was notoriously known to mankind as the monster of the first Christmas -– for the murder of the children of Bethlehem, according to Matthew 2:16. But in his record of murder, the list is endless -– his wife, her mother, her grandfather, two brothers-in-law, three of his own sons, and uncountable foes as well as subjects.
Among his people, he was vicious and lonely, often depressed and paranoid. But for the Romans, Herod was an extraordinary leader, a crucial bridge between the Jew and the gentiles; an indispensable ally…
But Herod was also a colossal and passionate builder of highways, fortresses, palaces, temples, and aqueducts — in Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, and beyond the river Jordan. He built the magnificent port of Caesarea; and renewed the great temple of Jerusalem (Herod’s temple).
It will be unfair to compare this monstrous figure with contemporary tyrants, including our own Meles Zenawi. To do so will be an overstatement. But I have been reading lately a book written by W.H. Auden [W.H. Auden, For the time being, Faber and Faber, 1964]. In this book, Auden tries to fathom what threads of reasoning were woven in the mind of Herod at the eve of the Massacre of the Children of Bethlehem. To my own great surprise, and quite involuntarily, I was unable to discard the image of our own “Prime Minster,” the present day tyrant of Ethiopia…
On this fateful day, Herod begins his reasoning thus:
“Because I am bewildered, because I must decide, because my decision must be in conformity with Nature and Necessity…”
Then Herod, as if to clear the way for a clean confrontation with his own ambition, begins to honour the people who were most significant in his life – his father, his mother, his nurse, his brother, his professors, and his secretary.
Why should someone die tomorrow? Remarkably, thoughts flow like a river. Herod sums up the situation soberly, like a seasoned politician, I mean, like our Meles, when he was confronted by the decision to kill innocent people with live bullets and sharpshooters. Herod counts his achievements, not to praise himself, of course, but to justify his case for staying on power.
“…The highway to the coast goes to straight up over the mountains and the truck-drivers no longer carry guns. Things are beginning to take shape. It is a long time since any one stole the park benches or murdered the swans…” [W.H. Auden, For the time being, Faber and Faber, 1964].
Then he tries to imagine what will happen if he let go of power:
“…if this rumor is not stamped out now… Reason will be replaced by Revelation …Idealism will be replaced by Materialism… Justice will be replaced by Pity as the cardinal human virtue, and all fear of retribution will vanish.” [W.H. Auden, For the time being, Faber and Faber, 1964]
Herod does not stop there. He knows that fear of disorder, real or imagined, is not a necessary prerequisite to hold fast to power. This time, he tries to count the unfinished work. If everything were accomplished, then there would be no need for a transformer:
“In twenty years I have managed to do a little. Not enough, of course. There are villages only a few miles from here where they still believe in witches. There isn’t a single town where a good bookshop would pay. One could count on the finger of one hand the people capable of solving the problem of Achilles and the Tortoise…”
Unfinished work gives him purpose in office. And an excuse not to process one’s own guilt. But in the end, Herod has to return to himself.
“I have worked like a slave. Ask anyone you like. I read all official dispatches without skipping. I have taken elocution lessons. I have hardly ever taken bribes. … I have tried to be good. … I am a liberal. I want everybody to be happy…” [W.H. Auden, For the time being, Faber and Faber, 1964].
As much as I dislike comparing Prime Minster Meles with Herod the Great, I cannot escape the images I picture in my mind as the Prime Minster stares out of the window on the eve of the massacre of Addis in that fateful November Day, 2005. Besides, I find great and irresistible parallels between the two men. It is common knowledge that many Ethiopians do not consider Meles as one of them. Secondly, Meles feels rejected by the intelligentsia, notably by the Addis Ababa University.
The unconcealed bitterness reveals itself in his manifest contempt to and rejection of the intelligentsia. As if to compensate the void, the last two decades have seen world class intellectuals and Nobel laureates in Addis giving lectures and seminars at a high cost to our leaders. Several American and British scholars have been invited to drop by just for tea on their way to India or South Africa.
Josephus tells us Herod was choleric in temperament. Any one who has been with Prime Minster Meles for a while knows his choleric temperament. Moreover, psychologists tell us that many tyrants are choleric in temperament. According to Tim Lahay, choleric leaders have a remarkable ability to see their destination, but they don’t know how to reach there [T. Lahay, Spirit controlled temperament, Tyndale House Publishers (Revised edition), September 7, 1994]. Well, one needs little to add to this statement, as far as the leadership in Addis is concerned.
The TPLF leadership has been, and deservedly, proud of its construction. For the killing of the innocents; the imprisonment of the multitudes; and the ruthless dealing with opponents, the relentless justification is its hard work. And this has been most gladly and thankfully taken by our diplomats in Addis.
Most important of all, Herod had no real friends. The people he counted as friends were remote, in Rome, and he sees them only occasionally. As if to purchase their love, his gift to them was always expensive and rare. But truly speaking, these were not his friends. Once a friend who knew our Prime Minster well told me that he has no real friend. He has his TPLF comrades, for certain. And he has his “friends” in the West. But “ordinary” Ethiopian friend, he has none. That is unfortunate and that is the cost of the road he chooses to go through.
Josephus tells us that Herod was suffering from an excruciating pain. He describes his illness as “fire glowing”, “which did not so much appear to the touch outwardly, as … inwardly”, “ulcer”, a pain in the “colon”; “an aqueous and transparent liquor… in his feet and at the bottom of his belly”, “his genitals were rotting, and produce worms”, etc.
Based on these descriptions, some medical experts believe that Herod had chronic kidney disorder, potentially complicated by Fournier gangrene. Others report that the visible worms and putrefaction are likely to have been scabies, a contagious ectoparasite skin infection characterized by superficial burrows and intense itching [H. Ashrafian, Herod the Great and his worms. Journal of Infection, Volume 51, Issue 1, Pages 82-83]. Scholars also believe that Herod suffered throughout his lifetime from depression and paranoia.
Since we have little access to the private life of Our Prime Minster, it is hard to say much about his illness. But recent report about repeated treatments to different counties cannot be ignored. For many are longing for change.
“Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.” Matthew 3:20.
Should this be the only way we Ethiopians in the Diaspora get back home?
(The writer can be reached at [email protected])