fissaha

The book titled “To have nothing”, written by Adel Ben Harhara, is one I found very fascinating and did not stop reading until I finished it.
 
The storytelling and how it drew me into the writer’s childhood is something I loved. His mother was a fifteen-year-old girl and his father was a fifty-year-old retired British soldier who became a businessman. Reading about the struggles around his parents’ situation tugged at my heart. The author becoming a successful professional despite his childhood struggles is a story that everyone should read about.
 
The writer was born and raised in Ethiopia until the age of fifteen when he left for south Yemen has written a wonderful book to share his very unique birth, growth and later life in North America. His birth is unique because his mother was not only an Orthodox Christen and underage when she gave birth without marriage and from an Arab which in all circumstances wasn’t accepted not only in those days but to some extent in contemporary Ethiopian Orthodox culture. One of the best things the author did when he was writing this book is that he put together a team of experts who have deep knowledge of the Ethiopian, Arab, and North American languages and culture. That made this book very readable and attractive.
 
After reading the book, I without that Adel is one of the few lucky children who became successful after being born in such difficult circumstances including losing his father at a very young age. A striking fact about this book is not only the effort Adel put into writing it but also that the proceeds from the sales would go to orphans in Ethiopia and Yemen.
 
The other unique thing about the writer is that he got the opportunity to learn about the three most important Abrahamic religions in the world. Not only these, he was also thought to be an Atheist through Marxist Leninist ideology.
 
The writer has also understood the importance of humour in both Ethiopian and Yemeni cultures and has wove in to the stories in the book. Further, the writer mentioned that the Ge’ez language was confined to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, but history bookshoww that it was publicly spoken until such time that the church discouraged the public to use it because of its use in holy placess.

This forced the public to develop another language called Amharic which was born out of Ge’ez. Today Ge’ez is not only thought at universities in Ethiopia but also in Germany and Canada.