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Great lovers experience harsh and silent conflicts on battlefields. As they resolutely and precisely strive for victories in the geography of wars, they may not be able to confront the battles of the heart in the other arena, which they know from the start may lead to certain defeat. There is a blurred line between the two battles.

Between winning or losing against oneself, and between struggling to achieve victory over the enemy, there is a page that is difficult to turn. Perhaps the fiercest fighter fears not the loss of ground on solid earth, fortified by arms and the justice of his cause, but rather that soft space within, which cannot be measured or its fluctuations predicted, open to both possibilities equally.

Saadia Tesfu, Virgin of the Revolution

In Eritrean history, there are victories and defeats that the 'revolution fighters' hold in their hearts and recount secretly as a parallel history to that published in 'war memoirs' and school curricula. Those narratives pay little attention to human weakness and the personal details of their fighters, especially when it comes to their relationships with loved ones. But there are other stories that are mythologically celebrated about 'heroines' who played pre-determined roles to entrap members of the 'enemy army,' where beauties are recruited to play the role of seductive lovers. Once the 'victim' falls into the net of passion, the mission is successfully executed.

That happened with Saadia Tesfu, the fedayeen who executed the plan as required and became a 'revolutionary icon' despite the heavy cost the mission later brought her, the most important of which was the revenge of the Ethiopian occupation army against her family and the killing of her father, Tesfu Nsour. This incident was documented in several history books, and it is also the narrative upon which Abubaker Kehal's novel 'The Scent of Weapons' is based.

Saadia did not bow to those horrors that ravaged her family, but continued the struggle, sacrificing everything precious. She neglected her private life and married the greater cause, the cause of liberation and independence, and rightfully earned the title 'Virgin of the Revolution' until she passed away in the summer of 2022.

Love may triumph sometimes

On the opposite side, there are stories deliberately omitted from the memory of the revolution, but they may find their way to mythification and the imaginations of poets and singers celebrating the meaning of love away from national vendettas and their usual determinants. Among them is a secretly told incident about a beautiful woman in her twenties named Viamita, recruited by Eritrean revolutionaries to entrap an officer from the Ethiopian occupation army as part of a series of operations they executed proficiently. To the revolutionary leaders, it seemed like a routine operation they had long executed with utmost precision, without needing to build bridges of caution, starting like a game with known results for a fedayeen going to execute the target.

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However, things may emerge and go deep beyond imagined control, and that is exactly what happened when zero hour struck, as determined by a commander in the mission monitoring tower. Viamita, the twenty-year-old girl chosen to execute the target, was no longer the same. Things turned her feelings to the opposite; the man was no longer a target to entrap, but a source of security and unconditional love, independent of the leaders' instructions.

The young woman did not hesitate to put the entire plan before the one who had been the assassination target, because love sometimes triumphs over other emotions, redefining things in a way that transcends previous logic. Thus, both parties belonged to a homeland beyond geography and the history of wars. They together divorced their previous convictions to build a beloved homeland, like two birds belonging to clouds unbounded by atlas lines, fleeing the map of battles to refurnish their memory in harmony with the call of the heart. The small details in their daily lives wove events differently from the larger event; marginal and minute things may, at a certain moment, eliminate the larger event and leave nothing of it.

Myth is the offspring of reality

Ethiopian poet Blainch Behon says she read Viamita's story in a small text published in a local newspaper and thought it was fictional, but after moving to the United States, she was surprised that it was real and that the heroine of the story lives there.

In her interview with 'Independent Arabia,' Behon describes the story as 'closest to the myths we read in fictional novels, not only because a fedayeen entrusted with a secret mission falls in love, but also because the army officer she loved also decided to side with love, leave his job, and flee together outside the map of battles.'

She points out that military service often imposes a strict and disciplined nature on a person, and may not pay much attention to love to the extent of driving them to leave their job and emigrate abroad in the face of an unknown and risky future, which gives the story a mythical dimension and makes it indeed appear fictional in nature.

The Ethiopian poet says she wrote a lyrical poem with the intention of presenting it to an artist, but the war that erupted at the end of the last century and the beginning of the new millennium between Eritrea and Ethiopia made her think that the common mood of the audiences of both countries would not easily accept documenting such experiences belonging to love.

She affirms, 'The story would have seemed to some Eritreans as a tale of national betrayal, but the lovers' exit from the battle as a whole, and from their homelands to create a homeland that resembles them, thwarted that preconceived notion of the story's outcome, and that is what makes the story closer to myth.'

Art may document what has fallen from history's memory

At the beginning of the new millennium, young Ethiopian artist Jacky Gossaye released a song titled 'Viamita,' which tells the story of an Eritrean girl and an Ethiopian boy, alluding to the famous story. At that time, relations between the two countries were extremely tense, yet the song achieved high viewership from the peoples of both countries, contrary to the general mood that was being portrayed according to the politicians' compass.

The song said a lot about human relations crossing borders and surpassing the will of politicians. Jacky did not say that his song documented the old historical story, but there is no doubt that he benefited from the interpretation that the general public of listeners adhered to, especially since the intersections are clear between his song and that famous story.

In his interview with 'Independent Arabia,' he explains that 'his song is based on a true story,' and admits that many have linked the two stories, especially given the identical name, but he keeps his own narrative, asserting that 'the audience has every right to interpretation and personal reading when receiving any creative work.'

He never denies that he was influenced by what he read about the character of Viamita, but at the same time he insists that every creative work has its own circumstances that may intersect with the present and the past. He adds, 'We must leave a blurred space for the recipient's imagination and interpretation, because the role of art is to address the recipient's memory and imagination, without any packaging or privileging of a particular narrative.'

After this song, Jacky became 'the artist of the two countries,' as he followed the same path that builds bridges and evokes what politicians on both sides of the Mareb River have neglected.