Liz-On- The Storyteller's Beads

The Storyteller's Beads, by Jane Kurtz, is a young adult novel set in Ethiopia during the 1980s. I finished most of it in one sitting on Sunday morning. I vaguely remember hearing about the events in the novel, the airlifts of Ethiopian Jews (or Beta-Israel) to Israel during a time of famines and wars, but this is a much more personal and detailed account of what was happening on the ground in Ethiopia at the time; Jane Kurtz says in her afterword that she based the book on first-hand accounts from people who lived through it.

Sahay has already lost all of her family except her uncle when they begin their journey to leave Ethiopia; Rahel leaves behind her parents and beloved grandmother to set out with her older brother. Eventually the girls both join a larger group that has hired a guide to lead them to the Sudan, a journey that takes them over mountains and across dry rivers and closer to each other. Along the way, Sahay slowly discovers something I have been learning for myself recently - that you can come to love someone who is very different from yourself.

Sahay and Rahel end up alone together in the refugee camp in the Sudan, and when word spreads to Rahel that there will be a way for some of the Beta-Israel to get out of the camp, she decides to tell people that Sahay - who is from a different ethnic group - is her sister, so that they can leave the camp together. Sahay thinks about this, and then tells Rahel that her people, "knowing all the things that can happen to a person's family, have ways for people to make new kin, not of one's own blood," and that this is called mahala. I couldn't help thinking of my adoption as a form of mahala, of making new kin not of each other's blood.

Of course, lately I see anything I read about Ethiopia through the filter of my adoption, and there were a couple of themes in The Storyteller's Beads that hit home for me about this. One was what Sahay's uncle repeats to her over and over, first when they are leaving their home and then several times as they are on their journey, "I must find a safe place for you. You are our family's only hope for the future." I kept picturing someone saying this to a child that is being given up for adoption, and imagining the circumstances that would lead a parent or other family member to decide that it was best for their child to leave their country of birth.

The second theme was loss, not just the obvious loss of family and country, but the small things that were lost along the way. First, Sahay must leave behind a basket that they had packed with food before she and her uncle set out on their journey; once the food is gone, there is no reason to keep carrying the basket, and every reason to leave it behind to lighten the load. When they reach a treacherous mountain trail that will be difficult to cross, Rahel must discard a clay pot that her grandmother made for her, to remind her of the land she is leaving behind; her brother fills a pouch with dirt to replace it, and Rahel is able to bring the pouch of dirt out of Ethiopia with her. These examples, and others, remind me that even the smallest thing can take on huge significance when it's all you have left to remind you of the people you love, and I hope that my future child will have even something small to remind him or her of birth family left behind.