My Sister’s Keeper?
A Story
Mezemir Girma
I think it could be the hundredth time we laughed on this matter. Shawel asks Gashahun to narrate to us that story. We shared each other’s funny stories from our respective villages and laughed heartily. The story of that old man who enjoyed bones that every household gave him, the tale of the old man with mental illness who put dead chicken from the market on fire on the road and ate them, and the tale of that man who sent his naughty son to study with clever Gashahun. Gashahun kept avoiding the boy because the boy disturbs him laughing at academic issues. Exponents or the little numbers or letters above the base number makes him laugh. “How do they make them such small? Won’t they tumble down?” he remarked. The boy also laughed at the double had as in the sentence “She had had dinner”. He even goes as far as canceling one of the hads from the textbook. Gashahun, nicknamed Gash, tells us how he avoided the boy, how the boy’s father got mad at him and how the boy ended up a truck driver. And we keep comparing our poverty with the boy who got rich fast.
Shawel asks him to tell us the story of one boy I admired after I heard his deed. Gashahun didn’t hesitate when he started the story as if we didn’t hear it at all. We expect the laughter our eyes meet his small eyes glittering in the sunny outdoor place we enjoyed at this beautiful neighborhood of Tebase in Debre Birhan. We were having our second glasses of Tela. I was getting tipsy faster than before.
“In Dese,” he started the story by smiling. You know, as young people we enjoyed such stories about the relationships and encounters of opposite sexes. “In Agergizat, Dese, our area, there was a young man called Shambel, who was really bad mannered. He was well-known for his rudeness. People feared to talk to this infamous boy. Even people older than him didn’t want him to meddle in their businesses. He fought with his friends and he threw and hit older people with stones and run. No one wanted to be friends with him. He is known for doing strange things. One day he was walking with Ali, a friend who is his neighbor. Ali told him that he was spending the night with his sister because their parents went to a place far away to a funeral. That boy asked his friend to spend the night with them. Then, Ali agreed and they went home. Ali knew the naughty behavior of the boy, but he liked the idea because he feared to spend the night with his sister in the absence of his parents. While eating dinner, the guest’s eyes were moving here and there. He had something in mind.
They went to the bed and the two young men slept together. The girl slept alone in another bed. At midnight the guest stood up from the bed and started walking to the girl’s bed. Ali, the girl’s brother, was listening to every move of the boy. For this reason, immediately he switched the light on. The boy who was walking started snoring while he was standing. He acted as though he was sleepwalking. Afterwards, the other boy sent him out and the brother and sister spent the night peacefully.” We laughed more than before and discussed a few scenarios. As it was Saturday, we had to go home, spend a short time and meet in the evening to go to the night clubs.
Many anecdotes he shares with us and we shared with him in turn. We heard them all because we spent many years wandering and telling such stories. We also share each other’s memories and anecdotes from the villages and small towns we came from. The story of the drunkard woman who pied standing like men, the strength of the bandit who defeated government soldiers who fought with him for three days in row and my description of how I wore as a green scarf as a ninth grader when I came to town as a country boy to learn for the first time. Young university lecturers as we were, we spent our times walking, sitting at cafes and stores. Entertainment outweighed. Teaching, research, networking was at its infancy. The country was experimenting with the issue of university and we were enjoying the job opportunities we got. There was no one to mentor us. Our job was keeping the youth silent by giving degrees. We disliked the system, but we didn’t know how to curb Meles’ plans. We knew that after rigging the ballots and jailing opposition leaders the party was trying to silence the public by opening universities every here and there. Without proper mentorship and training, we had none other than chatting like that in our free time.
Years after my friends were transferred to universities in their places of birth as is the trend, I still remember the stories they used to tell me. They were stories of the common people. This one reverberates in my mind because I relate it to the phrase my sister’s keeper. I always feel sad at the abuse of the phrase when I hear it being misused by politicians and fake people. The people who are their sister’s killers and abusers misuse it. Those who kill their sisters in their sleep misuse it. By sister, I mean every girl and woman. As to me the real sister’s keeper is Ali, the young man of Dese who saved his sister from rape, isn’t he? There could be a few like him.
