A book launch & discussion with Catherine Dom, co-editor.

On the night of 3 to 4 November 2020, war broke out in Tigray. Soon after Mekelle was bombed, people were stunned: should they leave the city? How to protect their loved ones? Where to get supplies? For two years, the war redefined the daily lives of Mekelle’s residents; while the capital of Tigray was not the scene of violent armed fighting unlike the countryside and other towns in Tigray, every aspect of urban life was turned upside down.

In the book, twenty women and men residing in Mekelle tell us about their daily lives, day after day, event after event: how they coped with the shortages, the lack of health and communications services, the loss of income and the closure of schools. At the heart of these accounts of everyday life, they narrate how they resisted, despaired and struggled, and in which sources they did – or did not – find support. Some give numbers and dates, list the names of the places where they found refuge or fled to, and recall the most striking moments of their experiences of the war. Others describe the effects that fear, hunger, and their anger, hopes and despair had on them.

Mekelle Stories opens a small window on the war in Tigray, seen from within a city, with its well-known landmarks and its neighbourhoods. While the immensity of violence, suffering and trauma has yet to be documented, analysed and made known, this work reveals how the war affected and penetrated every part of the bodies and surroundings of the twenty people who tell their stories.

The book is available in open access from the publisher, OpenEdition: books.openedition.org/cfee/3812?lang=en

Catherine Dom, an independent researcher who has regularly been in Ethiopia since 1999 and a member of the collective of women who made and illustrated the book, will present it. Her colleagues will join through short videos in which they reflect on their experience.