Dear Emanuel [Asrat]:

You may be dead. That is what we hear, that is what those who know whisper about you, in the container, in the heat, in the darkness, he may be dead. Of the illness that comes to the body and the mind in airless isolation. You may be dead of the violence done to your innocent body, your young man’s body that once moved and danced in a room full of people, smoke and laughter, living sound.

I look out the window, a view of field and highway, openness in every direction. Emanuel, what do I see? I see my freedom, these fields, this road that runs both ways, the sky and trees beginning to turn the colours that sing autumn in my country, the colours of the sun in yours, red and orange and yellow. And I remember that you studied agronomy. Agronomy. You studied the earth, the science of planting crops, growing plants, that human art, one of our oldest, of coaxing life out of the ground.

But you knew another art, too, also old and human, the art of writing down the truth as you saw it, the difficult truth, the truth as hard as the ground, as hard as a gravestone, that truth which is always dangerous to those in power, to those who lie, to those who are afraid of openness in any direction.

You may be dead. But I will believe you are alive. Emanuel, I believe you are alive in order to give you life. You are listening for a message, which I send to you through stars that you cannot see though you know they are there. I send you this message underground, through the fertile darkness of the earth we love, on the cool back of wind, in the grit of sand, I send this message: Emanuel Asrat, you are not forgotten. We have not forgotten you.

Karen Connelly