Ephrem Endale
Contributer
Sometimes saying “No!” to a friend for life is difficult. I mean for whatever reason “No!” didn’t feature in your vocabularies. But then that unexpected time of reckoning comes and you’re thrown into a world you never imagined was so scary.
That’s exactly how a lady we know found herself recently In fact they were a trio who has survived more than two decades as the world around them went into turmoil after turmoil. They have seen friendships which seem to have been made in Heaven go down over issues which, in normal times, no one cared for.
Now the lady we are talking about had a sort of belief. She thinks, come whatever, she’ll never turn her back on the two friends. “If we ever split, it‘ll come from me, but from them. Quite a determination that is! If she thought that belief would never be put to the taste she had a rude awakening. Well things are as of recent times look they are going into detours she never knew existed further down the road.
between her two friends, something not nice she couldn’t lay her finger on. When the three of them were together the mood wasn’t as lovely as it used to be for so long. The two rarely saw eye to eye or even responded to each to other’s comments or even smiled at their jokes. Both turned to her, and her only! More than once she almost said “What’s the trouble between you two? You are acting like strangers who never met.” But she never went that far. What if one of them confronted her with something like, “What do you mean acting like strangers?” What if she was imagining things? She can’t face the embarrassment of her angel-like friends disagreeing over something without. But the two have done her favors at different times, favors only true friends and no one else would make! She should have said something the moment she noticed those behaviors.
One day friend ‘A’ asks her, “When are you going to see her?” ‘Her’ being friend ‘B’.
“In fact we’ve an appointment tomorrow to go shopping. I didn’t tell you because I knew you were busy these days.” You see, that was one of her dilemmas. Every time she is with one the other might think she has jumped ship to ‘the other side.’
“I’d have loved to be with you. But you know I can’t.
“The lady didn’t have to think twice. “Of course, I will! Do you think I’ll refuse your request?”
A sheepish smile; “No I didn’t mean that. I was just joking.”
“So where is the paper?”
What paper?”
“You asked me to take her a message, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but it’s not a written message.”
“Oh; Ok, tell me what you want me tell her?”
Then friend ‘A,’ very unlike her goes into some rage just dumping all the four-letter words that came to her. Mind you, all this was part of the ‘message.” The lady we’re talking about is expected to say their very words to friend ‘B!”
What comes after was nothing less than surreal, according to her.
“Tell her I’ll not the two of them be together. If I ever find her with him or near him I’ll…I’ll…”
What in the world is going on! What’s she talking about. She sounds like a high school girl whose very first boyfriend has been snatched away from her by someone close.
“What are you talking about? You’re confusing me.”
Friend A’s eyes narrow. (A thousand authors would have sued me for copyright violation for using a phrase found in ten thousand books. Why, there’ll always be some hero or villain whose eyes ‘narrow’ at some point in the story.)
“Me confusing you!” the sarcasm is not lost on the lady. “You mean you really don’t know what I’m talking about?”
“How could I know? None of you told me!? Gloves off; ready for bare-knuckled sparring!
“Ok, then I’ll tell you.” Aha when after being patient over something you should never have been patient about the only thing you have to do is take your gloves off. It will do you wonders. The only way some of us know the quite ones we treat with contempt could really mean business when they decide to do so is when they take the gloves off.
“I’m waiting.”
“She is having an affair with my fiancé.”
Oh no! OH NO! This couldn’t be happening to the three of them! Such things happen to others and not to this trio which is the town’s reference point when issues about friendships are discussed. “The journalists should have presented them on TV!”
The lady is hurled into the pitch black hole or something. .
At one time you’re having it…friends all around you. She doesn’t know what not to say and what to.
“Sorry, but I really don’t understand what Y you’re telling me.”
“You don’t have to now. Maybe, I’ll tell you in the future.”
What future is she talking about! It’s all crumbling before there before your very eyes. The future has come and gone without them noticing it! The world as they know it has ended and they’re in another one! A member of the trio snatching the man of one of them was bound to happen, if it ever did, in the future when the world ends and one of them is left on earth with the man of the other friend of the other!
“You’ll tell her what I just told you; I mean everything; won’t you?”
(Yes, maybe the world has ended and the lady we’re talking about is too naive to notice!) Without giving a definite “Yes,” or “No,” answer she gets up, bids friend ‘A’ goodbye and leaves. That’s where things now. Maybe she’ll say “No,” after sleeping on it for a couple of nights. In that case the dialogue could probably go like…
“Look, it’s me who said it; not you! Since you are a friend to bother of us you’re only the messenger! I didn’t want others to know.”
“Still I can’t say that to her.”
“Oh…” And that won’t be a nice “Oh…” It’ll probably be the final; one. No more “Ohs…” as friend ‘A’ brings down decades of friendship. God save the friendship!
I mean when you’re sent to deliver some oral message of something the people don’t want to say themselves then the messenger would probably end up in troubled waters. As the messenger of not-so-nice things you’ll be expected to take sides! And you being someone with still some tight principles left in your veins refuse to take sides take sides. Believe me, it’s going to be very lonely world for you. ‘The man in the middle’ position is almost obsolete, non-existent
The Ethiopian Herald 18 April 2021