"ምምላሰይ ኣይተርፍን፣ ናባኺ መቐለ": I Will Return to You, Mekelle: Amir Dawud’s song, a South Korean choir, and my yearning to return to a peaceful city

August 9, 2026

Getachew Assefa

There are songs we listen to, and there are songs in which we live.

For me, the late Tigrayan singer Amir Dawud’s song about Mekelle belongs to the second kind. It is difficult now to hear it simply as music. After everything that has happened in Tigray since November 2020, and with the possibility of another war once again entering our conversations, the song reaches somewhere much deeper.

It makes me want to go home.

Not merely to visit Mekelle. Not simply to land there, spend a few weeks and leave again. I yearn to return to a peaceful Mekelle: a city in which parents do not listen anxiously for aircraft; young people plan their education instead of another displacement; families abroad call home without wondering whether the telephone will suddenly go silent; and children learn the names of Mekelle’s neighbourhoods because they live in them, not because their parents describe a lost childhood from thousands of kilometres away.

Amir Dawud sang this longing long before the war.

Perhaps that is precisely why his song hurts so much today.

“How is Mekelle, the city that raised me?”

Amir begins with separation:

ነዊሕ እዋን ኾይኑ ካብ ዓደይ ተፈልየ

ዘዕበየትንዶ ኸመይ’ላ መቐለ

ነዊሕ እዋን ኾይኑ ካብ ዓደይ ተፈልየ

ዘዕበየትንዶ ኸመይ’ላ መቐለ

It has been a long time

since I was separated from my homeland.

How is Mekelle,

the city that raised me?

It has been a long time

since I was separated from my homeland.

How is Mekelle,

the city that raised me?

Then there is almost a sigh:

ኡኡኡ

ሁሁሁ

Ooh, ooh, ooh…

Hoo, hoo, hoo…

Those opening words contain almost the whole song.

ካብ ዓደይ ተፈልየ — I have been separated from my homeland.

Before 2020, many of us in the diaspora understood that sentence in the ordinary way emigrants understand it. We had left Tigray. Life had carried us elsewhere. We established homes and families in other countries. Yet a part of us remained behind.

But after November 2020, the word “separated” acquired another meaning.

Separation could mean borders.

It could mean displacement.

It could mean a communications blackout.

It could mean not knowing what had happened to relatives.

It could mean people scattered across countries and continents.

And, for some, it meant the terrible finality of being separated from people they would never see again.

That is why Amir’s simple question now sounds so different:

ዓደይ መቐለ ከመይ’ላ?

How is my home, Mekelle?

During the war, that was no longer merely poetic.

It was a question Tigrayans around the world desperately wanted answered.

A melody of longing

Amir continues:

ዘዕበየትኒ ወለሎ

ተናፋቒት ‘ያ ዓደየ

ዘይትምኖ

ዓደይ መቐለ ኸመይ’ላ

ዜማ ናፍቖት ኸዚመላ

ዛወለላ

mellifluous, where I was raised,

how I long for my homeland,

my incomparable home.

How is my Mekelle?

Let me compose for her

a melody of longing,

for my beloved Wolelo.

And he repeats it:

ዘዕበየትኒ ወለሎ

ተናፋቒት ‘ያ ዓደየ

ዘይትምኖ

ዓደይ መቐለ ከመይ’ላ

ዜማ ናፍቖት ከዚመላ

ዛወለላ

mellifluous land, where I was raised,

how I yearn for my homeland,

my incomparable home.

How is my Mekelle?

Let me sing for her

a melody of longing,

for my beloved mellifluous land.

The important Tigrinya word here is ናፍቖት — nafqot.

“Longing” is perhaps the closest English word, but even that does not completely capture it.

It is missing someone or somewhere so deeply that the absence seems to have weight. It is memory mixed with desire. It is knowing exactly where you want to be while knowing that you are somewhere else.

For a diaspora, nafqot becomes part of life.

Amir begins walking through Mekelle

Then something wonderful happens in the song.

Amir doesn’t give us a conventional description of Mekelle.

He doesn’t tell us that Mekelle is beautiful and leave it at that.

Instead, he starts naming places.

It is as though he closes his eyes wherever he is living and begins walking through his city from memory.

ዂሓ ገርገምበስ

ኣይናለም ዳየሱስ

ሙህሮይ ሃፀይ ዮውሃንስ

መይዳይ ሰውሒ ንጉስ

Quiha, Gergembes,

Aynalem, Da Yesus,

my school, Atse Yohannes,

my field, Sewhi Negus.

These aren’t names from a tourist brochure.

They are coordinates of memory.

Then he continues:

ሃፂፀ ክሪኦ

ጮምዓ ማይደገነ

ክሳብ ዝመፀኪ ተሃዊከ ኣነ

I am longing to see them.

Chom’a, May Degene—

until I come back to you,

I remain restless.

That word—restless—matters.

Anyone who has lived away from home for a long time understands something of it. You can build another life. You can become accustomed to another country. You can love the place where you live.

And still something inside you says:

Home is somewhere else too.

A map drawn from memory

Amir keeps travelling:

ዳ ራእሲ ማይ ሊሓም

ኣዲስ ኣለም መንደር

ሎምስ ናፊቐዮ

ዳ ጋብር ምስ ዓይደር

Da Raesi, May Liham,

the neighbourhood of Addis Alem

today I miss it so much

Da Gabir together with Ayder.

Then:

ዳማርያም ሓሊፈ

መስጊድ 04

ዘዕበየኒ መሬት ናይ 03

Passing Enda Mariam,

the mosque of 04,

and 03, the ground that raised me.

I particularly love this part of the song.

A church.

A mosque.

A neighbourhood.

The ground beneath his childhood feet.

This is how people actually remember cities. We don’t primarily remember administrative boundaries or statistics. We remember where we played. Where we prayed. Where we went to school. Where we met friends. The road we walked home. The corner where somebody always sat. The smell after the rain.

Amir continues:

ጎቦ ዓዲ ሓቂ

ሓወልቲ ዘትከለ ዓዲሓውሲ

ምስ ዓዲ ሽምዱሑን

ማዕሪጋ መቐለ

The hill of Adi Haki,

Adi Hawsi, where the monument stands,

together with Adi Shimduhun

the splendour of Mekelle.

The song has become a map.

But it is not a map drawn on paper.

It is a map drawn from memory.

“I will return”

And then Amir arrives at the line around which everything else revolves:

ምምላሰይ አይተርፍን

ኮሊለ ኮሊለ

ናባኺ መቐለ

I will surely return.

However far I wander,

I will return to you, Mekelle.

Again:

ምምላሰይ አይተርፍን

ኮሊለ ኮሊለ

ናብ ዓደይ መቐለ

My return is certain.

After wandering far and wide,

I will return to my homeland, Mekelle.

There is a difference between saying “I hope to return” and saying “I will return.”

Amir chooses the second.

There is certainty in it.

Distance has not cancelled belonging.

Time has not cancelled belonging.

Wandering has not cancelled belonging.

ኮሊለ ኮሊለ—however far I wander.

That may be one of the most beautiful descriptions of diaspora in the song.

You wander.

But somewhere remains the point from which all the wandering is measured.

For Amir, that point was Mekelle.

The song returns to longing

Again he sings:

ዘዕበየትኒ ወለሎ

ተናፋቒት ‘ያ ዓደየ

ዘይትምኖ

ዓደይ መቐለ ከመይ’ላ

ዜማ ናፍቖት ከዚመላ

ዛወለላ

mellifluous land, where I was raised,

how I miss my homeland,

my incomparable home.

How is my Mekelle?

Let me sing for her

a melody of longing,

for my beloved mellifluous land.

Then the refrain repeats.

The repetition matters because homesickness itself is repetitive.

You don’t miss home once.

You miss it again tomorrow.

And again next month.

And again when somebody sends you a photograph.

And again when you hear a familiar song.

The rivers, trees and childhood places

Amir resumes his journey:

ዘዕበየኒ ሩባ

ገረብ ማይ ዒላላ

ዓደይ ናፊቐያ

The river that watched me grow,

the river water of Ilala

I miss my homeland.

Then:

ላጪ ምስ ሞሶቦ

ኩላይ ፈለግ ዳዕሮ

ኢንዱስትሪ ማይዱባ

ኹፉእ አይርኸቦ

Lachi together with Mosobo,

and, Feleg Da’ero,

the industry of May Duba

may no harm come to it.

That final line now stops me:

ኹፉእ ኣይርኸቦ: May no harm come to it.

Amir could not have known how those words would sound after November 2020.

He was blessing his home.

Today I hear a prayer.

May no harm come to Mekelle.

May no harm come to Tigray.

May our people never again experience what they have already endured.

And now, when rumours of war circulate and political tensions rise, I find myself returning to exactly that simple sentence:

May no harm come to it.

He can still see everything

The journey continues:

ቡሩኽለል ገምበላ

ሩባ ገረብ ፀዶ

ይረኣየኒ ’ሎ

ዳ ጋፉፍ ኢንኮዶ

Buruk Lel, Gembela,

the river and trees of Tsedo—

I can still see them before my eyes,

Da Gafuf EnKodo.

ይረኣየኒ ’ሎ — I can see it.

That is diaspora memory.

You are thousands of kilometres away, and yet suddenly you can see the place.

Sometimes more clearly than the street immediately outside your window.

Then Amir comes even closer to childhood:

እንዳ ኣባ ኣናንያ

ጁብሩክ ከ ኸመይ ’ላ

ማይ ባሕሪ ሓሚዳ

ዓይደር ’የ ዓብየላ

Enda Abba Ananya

and how is Jubruk?

May Bahri, Hamida

it was in Ayder that I grew up.

And:

ካስትል ዳ ጡረታ

ቐላይ ቐላሚኖ

ሓመሳ ቑልዕነት

ዓደይ ዘይትምኖ

Castle, Da Tureta,

The deep water, Qelamino

the swimming of childhood,

my inexhaustible homeland.

And once again Amir comes back to the promise:

ምምላሰይ አይተርፍን

ኮሊለ ኮሊለ

ናባኺ መቐለ

I will surely return.

However far I wander,

I will return to you, Mekelle.

Again.

And again.

And again.

As though repeating the promise makes the distance smaller.

Then, remarkably, the song travelled to South Korea, and back to Mekelle

There is another chapter in the life of this song that makes it even more extraordinary.

Years after Amir recorded his longing for Mekelle, the song appears to have been taken up by musicians from South Korea.

The performance by the Gracias Choir & Orchestra, associated with the International Youth Fellowship (IYF), and took place during an IYF World Camp in Mekelle in December 2012.

There they are: foreign singers and musicians on a large stage, formally dressed, orchestra behind them, performing the melody of a deeply local Tigrinya song.

What must it have felt like in 2012?

Imagine sitting in that audience.

South Korean musicians begin playing a melody you immediately recognize.

Then you realize:

They are playing our song.

A song about our city.

About Ayder.

About Adi Haki.

About Quiha.

About the mosque.

About the church.

About the rivers and neighbourhoods.

About the places where people in that very audience grew up.

The foreign musicians may not have possessed those childhood memories, but by learning the song they were saying something simple and generous to their hosts: Your home matters enough for us to learn its song.

That is cultural exchange at its most human.

But we watch that 2012 video with knowledge they did not have.

This is where the video becomes difficult for me to watch simply as entertainment.

It captures Mekelle before the war.

The people on that stage did not know what was coming.

The people in the audience did not know.

Nobody watching Amir’s song being performed in Mekelle in 2012 could have known what November 2020 would mean.

They could not know that Mekelle would become part of the geography of another terrible war.

They could not know how many Tigrayans would become displaced.

They could not know how many families would be separated.

They could not know that communication with Tigray would become so difficult that the question:

“How is Mekelle?”

would cease to be poetic and become urgent.

And they certainly could not know how many Tigrayans scattered across the world would later look at images of home and wonder:

When will we finally have peace?

The Mekelle I want to return to

That is why my yearning today is not merely to return to Mekelle.

I want to return to a peaceful Mekelle.

I want the word Mekelle to make us think first about home rather than war.

I want Enda Gabr to evoke childhood and community.

I want the names Amir sings to remain names of neighbourhoods where ordinary life happens.

I want young people to worry about examinations, careers, businesses, relationships and tomorrow, not whether another conflict will destroy tomorrow.

I want the roads to carry travellers instead of armies.

I want aircraft overhead to mean people arriving home.

I want families abroad to telephone Mekelle without fear.

I want the diaspora to book flights because there is a wedding, a holiday, a reunion, a baptism, a festival, a funeral at the natural end of a long life, not because another emergency has begun.

I want us to argue about politics without turning our disagreements into another generation’s graves.

Above all, I want Tigrayan children to inherit Tigray, not merely stories about the Tigray their parents remember.

We have already lost too much

There is a danger when discussing another possible war that war becomes an abstraction.

It isn’t.

War eventually arrives at somebody’s door.

Behind every military map is someone’s mother.

Behind every territorial argument is somebody’s childhood home.

Behind every casualty figure is a person whose family expected them to come back.

Behind every displacement statistic is somebody carrying whatever they could pick up before leaving.

Tigray knows this already.

We should not need another lesson.

That is why I cannot hear talk of renewed war casually.

Whatever the political grievances, whatever the competing calculations of governments and armed actors, ordinary people know what another war could mean because they have so recently lived through one.

Peace is not weakness.

After what Tigray has experienced, peace is the condition that allows everything else to become possible again.

Perhaps that is why Amir’s list matters so much

At first, someone unfamiliar with Mekelle might wonder why a singer spends so much of a song naming neighbourhood after neighbourhood.

But perhaps Amir understood something profound.

A homeland is too large to love in the abstract.

So we love it in pieces.

A road.

A hill.

A school.

A mosque.

A church.

A river.

A tree.

A neighbourhood.

A childhood football field.

Someone’s house.

The place where friends used to meet.

The corner where we bought something on the way home.

These small things accumulate until eventually we give them one name:

Home.

Amir gives them another name:

Mekelle.

And the song makes another journey

There is something almost poetic about the path this song itself has travelled.

A Tigrayan singer leaves home and sings:

I miss Mekelle.

His song travels beyond Tigray.

South Korean musicians learn it.

They travel to Mekelle.

They perform it there.

Years pass.

War comes.

Tigrayans are scattered even farther across the world.

And now members of that diaspora watch an old recording of Koreans standing in peaceful Mekelle, performing a dead Tigrayan singer’s song about wanting to return to Mekelle.

The circle is almost unbearable.

Amir longed for Mekelle.

The Koreans travelled to Mekelle and sang his longing.

Today we watch them—and we long for Mekelle again.

“How is my home, Mekelle?”

There is one question running through the entire song:

ዓደይ መቐለ ከመይ’ላ?

How is my home, Mekelle?

I want the answer to that question someday to be uncomplicated.

How is Mekelle?

She is peaceful.

How are the people?

They are rebuilding.

How are the young people?

They are studying, working, creating, falling in love, starting businesses and imagining futures.

How are the families?

Together.

How are the neighbourhoods Amir sang about?

Alive.

And what do you hear at night?

Music.

Not war.

“May no harm come to it”

Of all Amir’s words, perhaps these are the ones I carry most heavily now:

ኹፉእ ኣይርኸቦ.

May no harm come to it.

What sounded once like an affectionate blessing has become, after 2020, something much larger.

It is my prayer for Mekelle.

It is my prayer for Tigray. It is my prayer for Bahr Dar, Neqemt, Asmara, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia.

And it should be the prayer of anyone who has seen what another war can do.

May no harm come to it.

Not again.

I will return

But Amir does not end in despair.

He returns to his promise.

Again:

ምምላሰይ አይተርፍን

ኮሊለ ኮሊለ

ናባኺ መቐለ

I will surely return.

However far I wander,

I will return to you, Mekelle.

Again:

ምምላሰይ አይተርፍን

ኮሊለ ኮሊለ

ናብ ዓደይ መቐለ

My return is certain.

However far I wander,

I will return to my homeland, Mekelle.

Again:

ምምላሰይ አይተርፍን.

I will return.

Those words mean something different to me now.

I don’t simply want to return to the geographical location called Mekelle.

I want to return without wondering whether another war is about to begin.

I want to sit with people without our conversation inevitably returning to who died, who disappeared, who fled, who has not returned and what might happen next.

I want to rediscover ordinary life.

I want to walk through the places Amir named.

I want to see the old and discover the new.

I want to hear Tigrinya around me not through a telephone or computer but coming from people walking beside me.

I want to see evening descend over Mekelle and feel that tomorrow is simply another day—not another uncertainty.

Perhaps this is what exile teaches us: peace is one of those things whose enormous value becomes clearest when it has been taken away.

Amir Dawud gave his longing a melody.

Gracias Choir and Orchestra carried that melody across cultures and sang it back to Mekelle.

History then gave the song meanings neither could have anticipated.

And those of us far from Tigray carry it still.

So when Amir asks,

ዓደይ መቐለ ከመይ’ላ?

How is my home, Mekelle?

I feel the question personally.

And when he promises,

ምምላሰይ ኣይተርፍን

I will return,

I want to make that promise my own.

But I want to return to a city where no mother waits for news from a battlefield.

A city where the next generation does not inherit our wars.

A city whose neighbourhoods are once again known primarily for the lives lived in them.

A city where visitors from places as distant as South Korea can once again stand on a stage and sing a Tigrinya song, and where an audience can simply enjoy the extraordinary experience of hearing strangers sing lovingly about their home.

I want to return to that Mekelle.

A living Mekelle.

A hopeful Mekelle.

A peaceful Mekelle.

However far we have wandered, may there come a day when we can go home without fear.

ኮሊለ ኮሊለ — however far I wander.

ኹፉእ ኣይርኸቦ — may no harm come to it.

And, finally:

ምምላሰይ ኣይተርፍን።

ናባኺ መቐለ።

I will return.

To you, Mekelle.

ሰላምን ሓጎስን ንህዝቢ!

Peace and happiness to people!

(The video in the link below is a recent rendition of the song by a group of Tigrayan artists uploaded at the YouTube channel setup by Amir Dawud’s family – subscribe and share to support https://youtu.be/GtopSH_Me58?si=CLbR3Gb_ipJIBkgR

See the comments section for Amir Dawud’s original version and the South Korean performance of the song)