Fitewrari Fessehatsion Beyn

Video: ERi-TV First Eritrean/ African Pilot (1923)
The story of Fissahazion Beyn, the First Eritrean Pilot who graduated in August 12, 1923. Merhaba is an Eritrea Television ERi-TV program from Asmara. Watch video for http://kemey.blogspot.com/2011/11/sketches-of-trip-eritrea-2011_1315.html

Its to recall that film maker and scholar Issyas’ Tesamariam once wrote this ketches of a trip : Eritrea 2011, as he said” One of the many things that I do in Eritrea is to dig more deeply into the story of my paternal great uncle, Fitewrari (a title) Fessehatsion Beyene. On this trip, I received some more pictures which I added to my documentary film. I had never seen some of the pictures before. Even though the documentary is still ongoing, I have a clearer picture about his life than when I started it in 2006.

While growing up, I had heard bits and pieces of stories about my late great uncle. Even though I’ve been asking off and on about the little pieces that I’ve heard many times, the replies were either not satisfactory or non-committal. I realized that I had been asking the wrong people or the wrong questions (some of the people whom I had asked were two of Fitewrari Fessehatsion’s late sisters. One of his sisters was in Italy in 1929, in Edinburgh, Scotland in the 1940s, London, England in the 1950’s and the U.S. in the 1960’s) until I got a positive and tangible reply from my good friend, Dr. Uoldelul Kelati. That’s when I started to seriously document my great uncle’s life. Pieces of the stories that I had heard included the information that he was a pilot (with a ballad to go with it), had many children from different women (during filming of a family gathering to discuss Fessehatsion, my colleague, Azmera from AVIE, commented that my great uncle was a “human multi-system”), was the best dresser of his time, that women fought over him (with a ballad to go with it), etc.

A couple of years ago, after I returned from a visit to Eritrea, I got an idea and decided to ask Dr. Uoldelul if he could look into the Italian archives and find out anything about Fitewrari Fessehatsion. He wrote me back and mentioned that his friend, Dr.Alessandro Volterra, author of Sudditi coloniali: Ascari Eritrei 1935- 1941, had written a few pages in the aforementioned book on Fitewrari Fessehatsion. I was thrilled to find out that my great uncle had received a pilot’s license from Italy in 1928. Finally the ballad about his flying was confirmed. From what I have gathered so far, he was a modern man (for his time), an intelligent and a very complex man. He was a musician, a cook, a speaker of many languages, a pilot, a “ladies man”, a driver, elegant dresser, etc.
There are many missing parts to the jigsaw puzzle, but let me give you some of the highlights of his life. I’m leaving out some juicy and intriguing parts for now. Some of the highlights were pointed out to me by Dr. Uoldelul. I would like to thank him for that. I would also like to thank Dr. Alessandro Volterra for sending me copies of Fessehatsion’s file which are housed in the colonial archives in Italy and Dr. Massimo Zaccaria for sending me the link for the history of aviation in Yemen.

•Fessehtsion Beyene was born in Keren, Eritrea in 1890.
•He spoke Tigre, Tigrigna, Arabic, Italian and Amharic.
•He moved to Asmara after working as a cook in Keren.
•In Asmara he became a driver for an Italian official in the early 1920’s. It is believed that there were only 4 or 5 Eritreans who had driving licenses at that time.
•In 1921, Fessehatsion went to Italy as a driver for the Montenero family.
•He went back to Eritrea on December 1923 (it is not clear if this was by choice or a necessity imposed on him).
•His son, Claudio, the product of a relationship with an Italian woman, was born in March 1924. One could imagine the scandal that ensued from public knowledge about this union.
•Fesshatsion went back to Italy in 1927 as a translator for Yemeni army pilot-trainees. This aviation connection was unclear to me until my good friend, Dr. Massimo Zaccaria , explained to me that it was the new policy of Jacopo Gasparini, the Italian governor of Eritrea of the time, who masterminded a regional policy based on good relations with Yemen, hence, the presence of the army-pilot trainees in Italy.
•In 1928, Fessehatsion obtained his pilot’s license.
Jacopo Gasparini, the Italian governor of Eritrea (1923-1928)
From the book “Italian Colonialism in Eritrea” by Zemhret Yohannes in Tigrigna.
•In 1929 he was sent to Somalia (though not as a pilot, but rather as a foot soldier) and remained there until 1936. By this time his son Claudio was 12 and, by virtue of his mother, an Italian citizen. Fessehatsion in the meantime had also married a Somalian lady in Somalia and had two sons with her.
•In 1937, he managed to have his son Claudio with him in Somalia, though he could not acknowledge him as his son (a colonial ‘subject’ could not acknowledge an Italian citizen). Fessehatsion was able to obtain residency for his son, but at the same time Fessehatsion was forbidden to go back to Italy forever. This seemed to be due to the embarrassment the Fascist government had in dealing with the fact of a black man having a son with an Italian lady. In fact, the military records of Fessehatsion do not mention any misdeed and, on the contrary, kept stressing his unusual skills, cleverness, etc. At a certain point, official records became silent on the fate of the two. But it seems that the colonial administration found it unacceptable for an Italian citizen (Claudio Ricucci) to live together, in a father-son relation, with an African man. This would explain why Claudio ended up in a boarding school, whose costs were paid for by Fessehastion.
•He was kicked out of Somalia and settled in southern Ethiopia where he died in the early 1960’s.
Next, Part Five. Posted by Issayas at 10:20 AM
– See more at: http://eastafro.com/Post/2014/07/16/video-eri-tv-first-eritrean-pilot-1923/#sthash.X0QdDGk0.dpuf
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Eritrea: An Extraordinary Love Story from 1920s
The Story of Fessehatsion Beyn (Beyene), the first Eritrean Pilot,
His Italian friend Girolama Ricucci and their son Claudio

SOURCE https://asmarino.com/

Fessehatsion and Girolama - circa 1922
Documents of the colonial era are sparse and incomplete, but they are also one of the written sources preserved in the post-fascist period.  By going over the documents available at the Archive of the Historical Office of the SME, Professor Alessandro Volterra, expert in History of Africa, reconstructed the story of Fessehatsion Beyn (Fessahazien Beienè), who had a very special life for a colonial subject of the fascist era.
Fessehatsion was born in Keren in 1890 and educated by the Catholic Mission.  He went to school with the likes of Lorenzo Tazaz and Dr Embaie Woldemariam, both important politicians under Emperor Haile Selassie.

Fessehatsion could speak several languages - Tigre, Tigrigna, Arabic, Italian and Amharic - and he put his language skills to use by working as an interpreter for the Italians.
After he moved to Asmara he worked as a driver for an Italian officer’s family; he then moved to Italy in 1921 with his employer. The mere fact that he had a driving license, which was rare in those days, not only for Eritreans but also Italians, speaks for itself; he lived a life out of the ordinary.  
Fessehatsion settled in Rome and worked for the Montenero family as a driver.  According to his nephew, his great-uncle was a modern, elegant, intelligent and a very complex man.  

While working for the Montenero family, he met a certain Girolama Ricucci, who was also, probably, working in the same household. The two began a relationship that ended drastically when she became pregnant in the summer of 1923.  Fessehatsion had to return to Eritrea in December of the same year. 
Il Duce – Benito Mussolini

It is not known whether the repatriation was forced or voluntary, although the circumstances lead us to believe that he was pressured to leave the country.  Most probably, people of colour, were not tolerated in Benito Mussolini’s Italy.  
At the birth of the child, Girolama gave her son her surname and then left him in an orphanage. Claudio Ricucci, son of an Italian girl and an Eritrean subject, spent the first twelve years of his life being moved from one orphanage to another.

Meanwhile, Fessehatsion returned to Eritrea and joined the Italian army as an Askari.  In 1927 he returned to Rome once again with a group of Yemeni trainee pilots.  He was designated as interpreter (Italian/Arabic) and overseer of the group’s needs. He took advantage of the opportunity and ended up securing a place among the trainees, obtaining a civilian license and a second military pilot's license within two years. There is no information, however, why he did not look for Claudio, his son, during those two years of training.

Fessehatsion (second from left) with Yemeni army-pilot trainees in Italy.
 In April 1929 he was transferred to Somalia, assigned to the Command of the Regio Corpo, where he remained in service until 1936. Presumably he did not use his aviation skills in Somalia. However, Prof Volterra extracted this piece of information from a file that General Luigi Frusci, the last Italian Governor of Eritrea and Ethiopia, compiled.

The report stated that Fessehatsion, during the period of the war against the Ethiopian Empire, "conducted himself with admirable tact and intelligence – he was able to provide remarkable and precise information, news that was highly appreciated and very useful to our military commanders." He continued praising the soldier's personal abilities as follows: "he inspires great confidence [in others] and appends intelligence, zeal and accuracy to all the cases that are entrusted to him". However, these qualities, which allowed him to have a brilliant career, did not save him from the absurdities of the fascist bureaucracy.
In 1936 Fessehatsion returned to Rome once again; this time to look for his son. He found him at the Colonie Giovani Lavoratori  

in Rome; the mother had remarried and given her consent to Fessehatsion’s request to take the child with him.  But there arose more bureaucratic complications: Claudio, recognised by his mother, had obtained Italian citizenship; and it was not permissible for him to live with his father who happened to be non-Italian.  Basically, the child/parent relationship was not ‘compatible’.   Fessehatsion’s rights were transgressed – he could not, therefore, raise his own son.  He could only name him as his heir, and he could provide for his needs. 

However, this was not enough as far as the fascist bureaucrats were concerned; a memo in his file informs us that “it was best for him to return to Somalia, and so the ban on returning to Italy was affixed on Fessehatsion’s passport.”  
The rest of story is confusing.  What happened to Claudio in the end? What about Fessehatsion himself?  Did they ever get together with Girolama? Let’s try to reconstruct it from bits and pieces that were presented by various sources. It suffices to mention though that the bureaucracy around rights, colour, identities was a big ball of confusion.

Fessehatsion went back to Mogadishu; presumably, with Claudio.  There he married a woman from Keren.  Claudio’s conditions are not clear after Fessehatsion got married. The last document in Fessehatsion’s file is from 1940: Caroselli, governor of Somalia, wrote to the Italian Africa Ministry asking for an explanation on the ban on returning to Italy, admitting that Claudio’s conduct "leaves much to be desired."  The wording (of the Italian text) is a bit confusing.  However, it indicates that Claudio was in trouble in Mogadishu.
  
On the other hand the article stated that this was not a consideration on the character of Claudio or on his behaviour:  the problem was always the same, the scandal regarding African families of ‘incompatible races’ – African and Italian.  Therefore, Teruzzi, Undersecretary of State for Italian Africa, replied to the governor citing the problematic nature of the case - for it was inadmissible for Claudio to live with his father, and not being able to entrust him to his mother. The undersecretary states the boy should have been entrusted to a third party (an institution).   His reply is dated May 12, 1940.
Subsequently, proclamation 882 was promulgated - "laws concerning mixed children". Article 11 established that "citizens of mixed heritage are considered Aryan” – basically, white.  This was the legal basis that denied Fessehatsion guardianship of his son. 

After this episode the only sources to reconstruct the story of Claudio and his father are oral testimonies. A friend of the boy, Vittorio, says that they studied together in the boarding school in Mogadishu.
Things changed when the British arrived in Somalia in 1941; Fessehatsion decided that Claudio should leave the country for his own safety.   It is believed that Claudio eventually went back to Italy. The exact date of his return is not known. The last news we have of Claudio is of 1953, when he enlisted as a soldier in Albenga (Italy).
T

his story raises many questions. What was Claudio's life like once back in Italy? When the war ended, the fascist regime was overthrown, the colonies lost, what would have become of boys like Claudio? In a country that wanted to forget its colonial past by dismissing it as an historical error, life would not have been easy for Claudio, son of an Eritrean soldier, would it?
Fessehatsion was a man who served fascist Italy with his multiple skills, he ended up discriminated against and totally ignored for not wanting to abandon his son; a colonial subject loyal to a state that discriminated against him throughout his life. Fessahazien and his son are part of a story that Italy has gladly forgotten.

BTW, what happened to Fessehatsion in the end?

Sadly, the story is not complete. We do not know what happened to Girolama, one of the protagonists of the story.  Again, we do not know what happened to Claudio. The story mentions that he was being looked after by his father in Mogadishu - lived and studied in a boarding school. He was then forced to return to Italy around 1941. He enlisted as soldier in 1953, then, he disappeared altogether from the scene. 

According to Fessehatsion’s youngest daughter who lives in Asmara, her father was deported from Somalia after the British took over. She said that her father was accused of working secretly for the Ethiopian emperor after the defeat of the Italians.  Again, we can only presume that he must have switched his allegiance (to Ethiopia) as soon as Italy was defeated. 
As a business man he lived around Moyale, border town in South Ethiopia, for a while before conflicts started arising with the local people.  His business (traditional stone milling and producing soap) eventually collapsed as he could not quell the disputes.  Although his efforts were somewhat ‘appreciated’ by the emperor he was never graciously rewarded for his war efforts.

He was given a military rank of Fitewrari by the emperor while he lived in Ethiopia. Fitewrari means Commander of the Vanguard; it can also be equated to a baron.
F

itewrari Fessehatsion Beyn died in the 60s in Ethiopia.