By Mezemir Girma
Saturday, December 18, 2021
Do you see it this way? The poorest country against the richest one? Ethiopia with America? Ethiopians would call it David against Goliath. Who would emerge victorious? It seems crystal clear to you now.
You know how battles were held in those olden days. Be it held like that and let us talk about the outcome. am I clear to begin with? All the Ethiopian fighters will march led by their leader. And all American able men, and women for the sake of equality, would face them. The Ethiopian side would demand the leaders fight first and that determines who wins. You get me? It would be an old man facing an adversary thirty years younger. A slap would suffice. It would be like the Adwa Victory, when more than half the Ethiopian army came home without fighting as the battle ended shortly. What else would I wish their sinister acts - a slap in the face.
I would add a third or fourth scenario for that matter. An Ethiopian would ever imagine defeat. You know it in your history, not us. Uh, a great time to brag and satisfy my quench for it.
When we were children there were scenes of fighting in the vast open meadows. Equals would fight. Big men don’t fight if it were not for real reasons. But children wrestle. How would the day of keeping cattle and sheep pass without fighting and playing? There are some big boys who do rude things though. These big boys know nobody defeats them. They invite their little brothers to slap one of the big boys. That little one comes and slaps you. You bear it, you tolerate until he lashes you in the eye with a little stick. You pinch the little creepy creature. Then the real war starts. That big boy prances and starts the real fight. You wrestle, wrestle, wrestle and he emerges victorious. You lie down on your back and he sits on your belly. Punch, punch, punch, he makes his day. Why does this come to my mind at this time? I will tell you. Await.
“You tasted it once,” my conscience challenges me.
“No, that was just a battle we lost due to unforeseen circumstances. We emerged victorious in five years. How do you become such a traitor,” I scold it.
“Have you ever thought about your future postwar life? What do you think you take along? Do you know where you would be? Do you understand?”
“Don’t ask me if I understand! I may be underground!”
“What do you mean?”
“You know it. Just for the sake of this reader let me say it. You know your friend in those university days. He used to say underground to refer to death. He was thinking of the landed gentry when he thought death.”
“Some think it is in the sky that the dead are. Wherever they are, you would be one of them in the postwar era.”
“I take the challenge. But this night seems the longest one in my life except for a few exceptional ones. What do you mean? It is! Be it Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein, whomsoever you mention, you never convince me about the state of time here,” I say out loud.
“Calm down. What is all this gibberish about! Do you know what time it is now after all?!” responds my conscience.
It fears that the neighbors hear what I say at this time past midnight. As you might know Debre Sina has all the types of local liqor, Arake, in store. Last Ethiopian summer I was there. Yes, the summer when Ethiopia held the sixth national election. It was just a coincidence for that matter. I had experienced what some call writer’s block. I was really blocked and I couldn’t produce anything at home, at the hotel I frequented or at the Debre Birhan University lounge for that matter. How could they betray me when I trusted them the most? Ethiopians would not read books if it is not for their July and August breaks. Nothing could come out when I squeezed my mind. The only viable option seemed Debre Sina. What place in Ethiopia would be safe for me to edit my two books that would be published in July and August consecutively? Nowhere else. The reason is ethnic politics. If anything erupts, it would mean death. I fear because people may know me for the previous book.
“Who are you writing all this to?” asks my conscience.
“Anyone among those people from Ethiopia, Europe and America who may enjoy reading a late night scribbling. Anyone that the Google statistics on the map showed me last night”
“Do they care for a glass of liqor?”
“Not sure! If they just don’t opt for an imported whisky which is more or less like Arake. I’d treat them if they came. They could not be like some eccentric locals here who say they don’t drink Arake but keep it at home to booze when no one sees them. Whites are your Gods – read that Amharic poem of Mengistu Lemma’s. The reader, yes you, you will get it down below if these people are at all better than the local population. What do you think yourself before you read my take?”
It is me who is asking and answering myself. Are you confused? Confusion is good at times. We hold meetings and discussions at this place which is the right one for inner talk. It is not meditation. You know, you don’t meditate when you drink liqor.
“But why do you booze?”
“Excuse me! Let me go to the source of it all first of all. Ah! Am I using this local cliché of first of all? Pardon me”
I went to Debre Sina one morning. I rented a room which was a recommendation of one author of an Ethiopian English novel. Zemarkos Hotel was a real writers’ haven. Look how I entitle myself writer, author, poet … Anyway! I stayed there for four days. When I was bored with writing and editing at my room there I would go out to visit the town, libraries, schools, shops, and hotels. It was a real writing retreat. The titles of the two books were found written on the wall of the hotel while I meditated one rainy afternoon sitting in that old sofa. Look at the English language! How do you say in a sofa, in a bed! When one says in a bed it comes to me that he is hiding in the bed - that four-legged table-like bed we had in the country. Be it for whatever reason, I was wring in my language then. I didn’t worry or hold an Advanced Learner’s Dictionary as I am doing now. I should not type all this all again. It is there on my memoir. At least Amharic people can get it from that book – a memoir of an aspiring library leader. Do you need it? Then, learn Amharic. I learned yours. Pay back. That little pride I had that the American agent told me one day when we disagreed. Yes, she said we Ethiopians have it in our hearts. For her, it should be squeezed out. She would repeat it if she read this. Me aspiring to teach or force learn others to learn my language. One singer prophesied that President Obama would play the Diversifieid Visa Lottery to come to get an Ethiopian citizenship and live in Ethiopia. It is then that you have to learn Amharic. If you ask me about other Ethiopian languages, you are also permitted to. You know your trap!
“Man! Why didn’t you state what you want me to know as a thesis at the beginning so that I go to other activities!” you scream. Yes! You the reader. “This is not an essay first of all,” I yell! Why don’t you go find an essayist in Achebe! Oh this guy! He always holds my hand. All my examples and lessons are about him. Be it Ethiopian Literature, African Literature or the Short Story – every course I gave. My student once wrote about him in the exam and came to me afterwards. “Teacher, I wrote Chinua Abebe instead of Chinua Achebe. Can I correct it now taking the exam sheet back? Does it matter?” Everyone misses African names. In this case he confuses him with an Ethiopian name. I better say he mistook an African novelist with the first African to win a gold medal at the Olympics running barefoot. How could one confuse someone who was famous through his hands for one who wrote history without shoes! Exam sheet. But how my student says it is exam shit. We die with our funny accent. Incorrigible!
Before I finished my four day’s stay at Debre Sina I had to kiss the town goodbye as Joel Osteen preaches. Yes! One evening, I went to the little iron-made shop. It was next to the Daniachew Worku square. You know Daniachew? Yes, the writer! He was really famous for his Amharic and English fiction. (When I refer you, it could be you or another you. You know it! Deixis' advantage.) One was of the Fascist Italian times and their injustice at his birthplace of Debre Sina. I am famous at that town. Not because I write, but because I teach. A teacher from the newly renamed Daniachew Worku High School accompanies me everywhere I went. He was my former student at the university in Debre Birhan. I taught him Communicative English Skills in the summer program. We are like brothers for ten years now. On that evening I told the liqor shop owner that I am heading back home to Debre Birhan. It was a liter of water that I wanted to buy. The owner was unshakable. He said he would treat me the water. But he brought out a glass of Arake and put it in a bag. Arake in a whisky bottle. Look at how Ethiopia packs her liqors in Europe’s bottle. How Debre Sina convinces you is unimaginable. The shop owner was really friendly and I liked his approach because of the information he gave me about the internally displaced people from Ataye, a fault line between the Oromia Special Zone and North Shewa. How that town suffered six times due to the terrorist attack! Now the seventh passed two weeks ago. They turned it to ashes! Aye, my people! Shopkeeper you market it I murmured with the word I kept intact the longest – shopkeeper. I don’t remember it which early grade I grasped it.
The agents made all this possible! If not all, half. I thought they make me tremble because they did all the right thing for America and everything wrong for Ethiopia. The agents who were staying there a few years ago could be why my people are dying now. They had cover jobs, but they were agents.
“Why do you say agent agent while you could be an agent for your nation yourself even now,” says me.
“I know my capacity”, responds my conscience.
Do you respond my conscience?
That Debre Sina Arake I hesitated to buy does its work at times. Either when I get home early and do not have anything to do or when I get angry at times, I sip and get tipsy. The kids from the neighborhood come by, see me sip and drop their jaws in astonishment. They frown thinking of the taste. Instead of drink it in the mornings and leave home, I found it impressive to do it at night. The cold night.
Time to close. To close everything. If you wonder what that is, please go back a few days and read the blogs I posted for your hungry consideration. Everything has a phase. A starting or a closing phase for that matter. When I was at Debre Sina, it was election time as I said. America was really worried about it. A number of United Nations resolutions were presented on Ethiopia. And my country survived from brinks of failure and the election was held peacefully. Election was followed by the publication and selling of books. When I did those, I had to contact television personnel and give interviews – with all my social phobia, man! What could I do? Ethiopians are there watching their TVs and I had to send the show hosts as middlemen and women to help me get the books across. I have cool ideas both in the memoir and the book of fasting.
And this America is there every week and fortnight reminding us that this Ethiopia project that Robert Skinner came to tell her about for the first time as the envoy of President Theodore Roosevelt is not to last long. They don’t say it in black and white though. Yes, they think we remain enslaved by a minority dictatorship as we did for the last three decades. And all this until this time of Hashtag No More. #NoMore that has been started by a member of that ethnic group that ruled us with iron fists. She was their activist first. She seems to know little about the national politics because she left Ethiopia as a child. When she discovered the reality she really felt pity for us Ethiopians. She empathizes with us and joined forces. A plight even the member of the minority group understands, America fails to.
I publish my books, I sell, I reprint. And did all that until the New Year which is on September 11 here.
I await class to begin at Debre Birhan University, but it doesn’t. The reason? It is the war that is sponsored by the USA. Yes, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front staged the attack on the Northern Command a year ago and the nation has bled ever since.
I am getting you to the closure. The things at my home that I kept for years have to be checked. I am checking everything. If I need certain items, I keep them with me. If not, I find a solution. The books, handouts, exercise books, diaries, … everything paper should be checked and I need as little material as I could. I consider only paper things as my property. The softcopies in my old computer were damaged by a virus. The house if getting tidier and more orderly day by day. And this deafening silence. And the highland chills - the disadvantage of living in Africa's highest city. You taste highness with all the consequences.
You know, these U.S. backed terrorists almost made it to where I am in their journey to the capital, Addis. They covered two thirds of their march when the government opened counteroffensive and they started their backward marathon. Poor Woyanay! So, if the worst comes, shouldn’t I prepare myself? Do I know who else the U.S.A sponsors? I really don’t; you don’t; the U.S.A. doesn’t seem to either. Their leadership is acting like a mad dog. They bite everyone. They lost their mind. Who trusts their social media bawl or the TPLF spokesperson’s for that matter. They may agree to terrorize together or no to part.
It is said that that Debre Sina where I spent four sweet days for my writing retreat has been turned to ashes by the pro-U.S.A. TPLF. Would anything of that sort touch my town, the industrial hopeful, Debre Birhan. Just ju….st in case, I must drink the Arake and finish it tonight. My home should get empty and await Doomsday. Little was left from the liqor I feared. I fear drinking it because I eat once a day and that is in the mornings. To booze without food, could be like swallowing a blade. Yes, at this time of war I talk in terms of sharp items. Everyone is looking forward to using anything sharp if America comes. Those who didn’t enlist for the civil war covet to kill a foreigner in the ensuing battles.
The radio drama I wrote, modules of literature and English language teaching, Addis Ababa University undergraduate and graduate materials, photo albums, electric and water bills, bank vouchers, different papers, similar papers, government or university propaganda training materials, everything that I gathered from my life, everything that reminds me of my life has been reordered this week. I am organized by nature. This week seems to make me more organized. From every one of the times I arranged my things, the current one seems organized. I did it! Japanese housekeeping or obsession? Or fear? Fear overwhelms.
When we prepared ourselves for the worst a week ago, I put all my documents in an envelope. It was all. A few clothes and a few other things in a little bag and …. I know what to pack for times of emergency, but I am getting more careless these days.
“You know you don’t survive this time”
“Oh, no! I do. Who else would?”
“You die”
“I survive. The town survives. The nation survives. Our civilization does.”
“Which civilization! Look at you! Only you are made in Ethiopia. Everything you wear and use is from China.”
“What about Americans? Are they not all from elsewhere?”
“Yes, they came together from everywhere, melted in the melting pot, and want us who are together dispersed.”
“Another disaster for the world. But look at how we melt if we have to cross the Sahara Desert.”
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Albert Einsten. Einsten misses one point here as he did with how he made way for his cats. By the way – this famous phrase. It is really famous in Ethiopia. People start even their Amharic sentences with it. By the way, I regret about Einsten. We read the s as SH in German or Deutsch. Café Einstein they call it. I regret not drinking a cup of tea there. It was at the Goethe Institut, Addis Abeba. Yes., mark the spelling. Institut without an e and Abeba not Ababa. We students did not have the stamina to order and stay at such places as Goethe’s because we thought it would be a dollar price. Or who would sit face to face with a German or a Swiss and….
The fourth World War? Let me come back to it. Be the third as it may, the third is my issue anyway. Whites quarrel amongst themselves and call it a World War. Now it is going to be a real World War. A World War in which Africa is really engaged head to toe. Stones and sticks would be in use. Soil and mud would too. Yes, you splash it on their stone faces. Eyes closed they scream, you club their head. Real barbarians you would be. We would not spare clay jars and stools. Ropes, Dung and pebbles, fists and nails, headers and slaps, everything that doesn’t involve technology shall be employed. We won’t even employ sharp materials.
“They think I am joking.”
“Yeah they do. If you don’t tell them”
Listen, oh, excuse me, read. I tell you. Oh, sorry I write to you.
The university staff, all sorts of teachers, just eighty of them, live in one compound. A few weeks ago we started our guarding duty. Guarding our compound in turns. I better call it awaiting. Awaiting the war to crawl our way. This clumsy war. Awaiting that little boy sent to slap you. Many of the teachers left for other towns and places within the city. They feared reprisal the terrorists said await us. Reprisal for nothing. A waste of golden words. Who is left? I think a quarter of us.
“Do you dare to tell them that?”
“Why not, my dear!”
My dear? Look how my conscience takes care of me. How would I be a dear without a weapon at this time? No weapon of any sort. It is not only me. Every teacher had or has no weapon. I am sure. If they had they would brandish it to show their superiority or state of guardianship for all of us. My relatives called me at that time. I call it this time. It was just two weeks ago.
In that little town, my relatives said everything stopped because of the war. Every technology stopped. No power. No water. No businesses. You know what happened? They decided to spare their lives for those two weeks. They crushed cereals to make food using stone, the traditional hand held mill. We are level one civilization. Would it be a little better than hunter-gatherer life? And who are we fighting? The mighty the United States of America! Wouldn’t it be a shame for her to fight with such a little creature? Would it be a victory to defeat the poorest country as the richest country? Would it make her proud to! You know how I fail at their trap? Who is rich? Africa is! They eye our place only to rob us.
Professor Mesfin once said when he was a child that bigger children would fight with smaller ones. When the big one’s hold the small ones and start hitting them, the small ones would plea. "God would peer from the sky and see what you are doing. Amerikish is not my accent. Just this way I state my fear of what tomorrow has in store for me. Tonight when I came from the library, I heard that some sort of resolution passed. Would this resolution, which is being called the second Scramble for Africa, be a call for the Fourth World War? I wait.
“You finish the liqor.”
“I wish I didn’t”
“Schmeckt es gut?”
“No, I had more to say”
“Then say it!”
“The liqor says better. I have an empty bottle and I am cleaning up everything including my mind.”
I write to the last drop of my liqor. This war time is making me fearless. And you the reader wish you edited and sent me this story back. Why don’t you write your own! Who has time to take your grammar correction? Tell America to correct herself rather. Nebir ayegn bey!
ምንም አስተያየቶች የሉም:
አስተያየት ይለጥፉ