Abstract
In Senait Mehari’s Heart of Fire, the legacy of childhood maltreatment is reproduced in the relationship between the father, Ghebrehiwet, and the daughter, Senait. A former victim of atrocity, Ghebrehiwet is a broken man with an identity that makes him transfer his traumatised childhood and his dissatisfaction with Eritrea’s political system to his family members. Because of these psychosocial issues, he gives his three daughters away to the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) to train and fight as child soldiers. Drawing on trauma studies, postcolonial theories as well as current research on child soldier narratives, this article examines Mehari’s depiction of her experiences with her father and, later, with fellow soldiers during the Second Eritrean Civil War. Specifically, it examines the concepts of unhomeliness and liminality, with reference to Mehari’s depiction of her anxiety in the tension-filled space of her parental home and the contingent ‘homes’ of the various ELF camps where she stayed as a child soldier. To that end, the article considers Mehari’s unending phobias as a recurring motif in Heart of Fire.
Highlights
In ‘Being young in Africa: The politics of despair and renewal’, Jon Abbink makes a sober assessment of youth and conflicts in Africa
Authenticity and the limits of representation In Heart of Fire (2006), a witness narrative that aroused a lot of public debate about its authenticity because of charges of false witnessing, Senait Mehari recounts her experiences in the Second Eritrean Civil War of 1980–1981 in which she ostensibly participated as a child soldier
Mehari’s depictions of her anxieties in the tension-filled space of her parental home and the contingent ‘homes’ in the various Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) camps where she stayed as a child soldier need to be understood in terms of contemporary debates around what constitutes a ‘home’
Summary
In ‘Being young in Africa: The politics of despair and renewal’, Jon Abbink makes a sober assessment of youth and conflicts in Africa. I propose that even though Mehari admits to not fighting on the war front, she qualifies to be called a child soldier because of her experiences at the war front.
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