Getu Berhanu Tewolde never intended to take advantage of Pittsburgh's hospitality suites at the Allegheny County Jail. When he boarded a cross-country bus in Washington, D.C., for Denver, the Ethiopian immigrant didn't even know Pittsburgh was one of the stops along the way.
As fate would have it, what was supposed to be a 12-minute layover at the Greyhound station Downtown on the morning of Feb. 1 became a six-week stay in the psychiatric ward of the county jail.
Held without benefit of either psychiatric examination or legal representation until the final week of his internment, Getu -- who has never read Kafka -- became the embodiment of the author's fictional character in "The Trial." Like Kafka's Joseph K., Getu was accused of terrible things in the vaguest way possible.
When Getu was released on bail on March 16, it was because of the activism of the Free Getu Coalition, a local group that had organized on his behalf.
The image of the 35-year-old, sporting a newly minted black eye, his wrists bound behind his back, made an indelible impression on those who watched the 10 o'clock news on Fox that night as he was unceremoniously escorted to a waiting paddy wagon.
For those who assumed that Getu was obviously guilty of something that imperiled the nation, or else he wouldn't have been forced to do the "perp" walk on Fox 53, it was confirmation of the value of stepped-up vigilance against terrorism in the wake of Sept. 11.
For others, the expression of helpless puzzlement on Getu's face was proof that Pittsburgh -- like much of America -- was in danger of becoming a place where an unwary soul with an alien name can land in jail by simply not fitting the local profile of what constitutes an "acceptable" stranger.
Getu, like Kafka's Joseph K., was about to find out what happens when civil liberties are jettisoned in favor of shifting definitions of guilt and innocence when the state deems it expedient.
"I didn't expect this from a big, civilized place like USA," Getu said in broken English when I interviewed him a few weeks ago. "Being called a terrorist doesn't fill me with confidence," he added wryly. It was a sign that six weeks of confinement hadn't deprived him of a sense of his situation's innate absurdity.
The refugee camps of Yemen where he spent nearly a decade before immigrating to America are more humane than a modern prison cell in the heart of Pittsburgh, Getu insisted.
He was so relieved to be released from 24-hour lock-down in a 5-by-4 mental health pod where he was fed anti-psychotic pills and mood-altering drugs all day, he said he felt like hugging even his jailers.
Freedom tasted so good to him that he said his heart was big enough to accommodate the evil he believes was done to him by police and Greyhound officials on Feb. 1, when he was accused of making "terroristic" threats at the bus station.
Getu's sojourn into Pittsburgh's criminal justice system began when he reboarded his bus after its layover. Due to the narrowness of the center aisle, Getu inadvertently brushed against a female passenger who happened to be the bus station's night manager.
"The lady right away complained something which I didn't understand and retreated [from] the bus," Getu said. Moments later, an agitated driver ordered Getu off the bus, a request he complied with immediately.
Back in the terminal, Getu was surrounded by several of the woman's angry colleagues. The only thing he understood for sure in all the shouting was that they believed he was a criminal of some sort. Minutes later, a man approached the group and ordered Getu to sit in a terminal chair. This time he refused.
"I was upset because I wasn't guilty of anything," he said. The man, later identified as a Pittsburgh police officer, moved quickly to disarm Getu of the pen he was holding. At 125 pounds, Getu struggled to keep his pen and his dignity, but was no match for an officer who had yet to identify himself. How he got his black eye and into a heap of trouble that landed him in a mental ward will be explored over the next several columns.
Tony Norman's e-mail address is: tnorman@post-gazette.com
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