Ephrem Endale Contributer
There is this guy you know; not actually a friend in the real sense but someone you get together for a couple of beers. You meet on weekends and have some drink. Somehow you happen to be the one settling the bill most of the time. Then, all of a sudden, that hand-to-mouth is swimming in money! I’ll tell you how you know; He states pulling the hundred Birr bills everywhere paying for everything.
His favorite line would be, “This one is me.” You guys have jumped from two to three beers at a time to nine and ten. Nice, maybe they have given him some monster of a raise.
Maybe he has changed jobs and he is getting half a wereda’s budget for monthly payment. Maybe he won the ten million Birr lottery and managed to keep his name a secret.
He’s all of a sudden tired of beer and you guys join the whiskey crowd; not your kind of crowd. (They make drinking whiskey easier than drinking bottled water!) Still, you’re having the time of your life.
He even takes you to five star hotels you never expected to see in your lifetime. You used to dream “I wonder what the beer testes in those places. It tastes the same! You’d have liked to ask, “What is five-star about this beer?” You don’t. He’s paying!
Then suddenly he disappears. His phone is not working! No one knows if he has been ‘swallowed’ by some time warp or something. Maybe he has left for America, like everyone but you seems to be doing these days. No, he’s still here, but a different place. Someone who knows you both breaks the news;
“How is that friend of yours working in…doing?”
“I’m not sure. I phoned him repeatedly but his phone doesn’t seem to be working.
Maybe he has gone abroad.”
“You mean you haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
“You should have been the first to know. Your dear friend is in prison.”
“What! What did he do?” What could he possibly have done to end up behind bars!
“They are accusing him of taking huge bribes and embezzling hundreds of thousands.”
Why does that sound so, as writers would have put it, ‘plausible?’ Then like flashback scenes in some your mind is filled by your own flashback scenes, the real ones this time! So that was the reason the guy was so generous. I must have known, you say to yourself. You did! The only thing is you tried to quite the voices within you. No one not even a guy who hit the million dollar jackpot in some lottery would have been generous.
Ok now be a nice guy and visit him in prison. “What! I go and visit an embezzler?”
Believe me, that’s what will happen. People stick to you as long as your hundred birr notes don’t dry up! Once they do, the sequel would be a completely different plotline. When sharks close in and disaster comes knocking you are on your own. No one would take your phone calls even!
Now admit it, much of the so called bribes and embezzled money passed through your bloodstreams, and also travelled through those large and small intestines of yours. (Quite a ‘sobering’ thought, wouldn’t you say!) Are you an indirect accomplice? Well…hmmm…maybe. “But how the hell could I know the guy was full of dirty money! Am I my brother’s keeper?” In fact I’ll tell you what you’ll say; “They should have stronger laws for embezzlers. That’s
why there are so many of them.” Ha!
After several months the guy is out on some technicality or other. You have never visited him in prison, never sent him a “Be strong; this, too, shall pass.” message! Say, you run into him somewhere.
And what in the world will embarrassed you do? Lie the lie of the century! “Where have you been so long? I thought you went to America to visit you brothers.” Cut it out. In the first place his brothers are in South Africa not America. You never know at which point you stagger and stumble when lying. The guy was away for seven eight months and that is the best you can do!
Say there is this best friend of yours. You were the best man at his wedding. You are in fact family friend. Then someday he introduces to a lady who is not his wife, his sister, or one of the many ‘daughters’ of his aunts. (There are so many ‘daughter-of-my-aunt’ brought up [in emergency situations!)
Privately he tells you he is having an affair. You the family friend, you the best man at his wedding, you the closest confidant of him and his wife should have been shocked! You should have goggled for the appropriate Freud literature to find out why supposedly angel-like people do such things.
“What! What do you mean an affair?”
“You know, I met this beautiful girl at a wedding ceremony…”
No! No! No! She is not your girl! She can’t be YOUR girl! She could have been your fourth child and your first daughter! You say none of that. You take it just as he told you he bought a new pair of shoes.
Then before you know it word goes out his wife filed for a divorce. The story is that she caught him red-handed, almost, as they say, with his pants down. Now you should
have been the one trying to calm the storms before any Security Council sort of talk begins making the rounds. After all, you are close to them as close can be.
As the news gets into more ears people, understandably, see you as a reliable source.
“How can he do this to her! Weren’t they supposed to be the perfect couple?”
I’ll tell you what you’ll probably do; turn on your best friend in of the innocent wife.
“I really don’t know what made him do that”
“Had I known about it, it wouldn’t have gone this far.”
It did, and you know! Yes you do know that the reason was even at his advancing age your friend hasn’t managed to control his overflowing testosterones. And you are also as guilty as him! Yes, you are! You never tried to talk sense into him.
You never told him that was the biggest mistake of his life. You didn’t try to warn him his reputation as ‘Husband Number One’ would go down the drains! You even covered for him: They never phoned on each other’s phone. You were the conduit! You encouraged him to act like the man of one wife and a hundred concubines and now you throw him to the wolves!
Unfortunately that seems how this world seems to be working; from politics to professions, to social life and family matters and so on the ones who cheer you on when you run on the wrong tracks are the ones who will say “Look at that sorry guy!”
The “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is preventing us from protecting each other not to run on the wrong tracks of life. How about that for some philosophy in the making!
The Ethiopian Herald February 14/2021