When Fikru Maru (MD) returned to Addis Abeba in early May, he carried with him the resolve of a man who had spent decades building bridges between two worlds. Thin but upright, he greeted guests himself at the gate of the new eight-story hospital on Libya Street, a few blocks from Bisrate Gabriel Church.

The project had been years in the making, evidence of his vision and persistence.

On the eve of the opening, Fikru paused in the pediatric ward. He turned to the head nurse and said, “No child should ever be turned away for lack of money.” Then, reaching into his pocket, he pressed 1,000 Br into her hand for the ward’s first patient fund.

It was a simple gesture, colleagues recalled, but one that captured his character as a decisive and humane person allergic to fuss.

The following day, he embarked on a tour of the hospital, walking every corridor, greeting nurses and porters by name, then embracing former trainees who now head cardiology units from Mekelle to Hawassa. They affectionately call themselves “Fikru’s Children,” a sobriquet he accepted with shy pride.

It was to be his last public appearance.

An Ethiopian-Swedish cardiologist who founded the country’s first heart clinic, Fikru, oversaw some 1,200 operations a year. He leaves behind a legacy of bold action and quiet compassion, as well as a memoir of his five years of captivity in a prison.

Born on the outskirts of Addis Abeba named Gurara, in 1951, Fikru was the fifth of nine children in a family battered by Ethiopia’s political storms of the 1960s and ’70s. Quickwitted and ambitious, he opted to join the Air Force rather than attend university. By the age of 27, he was one of the youngest jet squadron commanders under Emperor Haile Selassie’s government.

The cockpit offered speed and a modest officer’s wage, but it also came with a sidearm, one he would later lose. When the Emperor fell in 1974, the military Marxist regime known as the Derg seized power and purged perceived opponents. Two of Fikru’s brothers were among those executed. The loss confirmed his decision to seek life elsewhere.

His friend from the academy, Fekade Mamo (Lt.), recalled that cadets “shared everything.” One day, Fikru announced he was renting his own room, a luxury unheard of for trainees. He stunned friends again when he arrived in a battered 1973 Opel, defying expectations but undeterred by obstacles.

After his gun disappeared, likely misplaced, he began borrowing weapons from colleagues. That raised suspicions until one cadet reported him. Grounded by his commander and troubled by student unrest, he chose to go into exile. He walked across the border into Sudan, then made his way to Sweden.

In Sweden, he traded cockpits for medical school. He qualified as an interventional cardiologist and specialised in pacemaker surgery at Danderyd and St. Göran’s hospitals in Stockholm.

But, his thoughts remained on Ethiopia, where children with treatable heart defects died for lack of care.

Brook Lakew (PhD), a NASA scientist and fellow exile, remembered Fikru as a man, “continually remade himself to meet life’s challenges.” On a road trip through France, Lakew’s lack of a driver’s license led to a police stop. Brook stammered in Swedish; Fikru kept up the ruse until officers, perplexed, waved their Volkswagen minibus on.

“To this day, I don’t know if they let us go out of pity or sheer confusion,” Brook chuckled.

By the mid-1980s, Fikru was a respected consultant at a Stockholm clinic. He saved the life of a Swedish prince by implanting a pacemaker that others would not attempt. Yet, he never forgot the gap back home.