One thing about holidays is the well wishes directed at you. But life doesn’t always work that way!
Your smartphone buzzes. It is a number you aren’t familiar with and certainly an overseas call.”
“Hello!”
“He…lo!” You are guarded not knowing on who is at the other end.
“Hello, isn’t this…”
“Yes, who am I talking to?”
“You don’t recognize my name! I don’t blame you. It has been a long time.”
Who is this dummy anyway! The last species you need on holidays are dummies.
“I still don’t know who I’m talking.” You give yourself that almost-VIP tone. Let the dummy shake in his boots. That’s what happens to us defenseless souls when we hear those VIP tones, acted or real; we shake in our boots.
“It is ….!”
What! Did you hear the name right! Or has the Areke you gulped on empty belly already reached upstairs! Believe me an ICBM smashing into your ribs wouldn’t have impacted you any more painfully! That name! There is no way you’d forget it. But after all it’s a holiday and you keep your cool.
“Oh, it has been a very long time! How are you doing?”
He dives into those long-distance narratives where you’re supposed to believe what you hear since there is no way you could see for yourself. “Well work on two or three jobs, and they pay me quite good.” Now such narratives are not meant to leave you wide-mouthed with admiration but to put you in the place the guy has reserved for you…with the unfortunate ones jumping from one low paying job to another even lower paying job; living in the most destitute Kebele houses which still stand because of some mysterious work of nature! Nature playing on the minds of the Kebele officials, “tear them down, and you’ll be accused of being responsible for rise in the number of the homeless!
“I’m married to a beautiful woman. I have got a four-bedroom house and a four-wheel drive…” he goes on narrating his own rip Van Winkle or something. Ok, since we still are in the holiday season I’ll be nice and fill you in with what he didn’t tell you. For one thing the two or three jobs he told you about pay so low outstanding bills on everything are piling up and the wolves are out of the forests to get him. About his wife she has left him months back and has already filed for divorce. He tried to convince her to come back swearing in the name of angels most of which no one, even the clergy, knew ever existed. His repeated unwelcomed visit to her mother’s house where she was staying has come to a screeching end when he was served with a restraining order.
As to the four-bedroom house only four days remain before they come and throw his belongings out into the street. Then there is the car; as he was calling you his four wheel toy was being towed away as the dealers decided it was useless giving him any more extensions to settle his outstanding payments.
Now as ‘the conversation’ continues, with you practically mute all this time, he asks you about YOUR life; the guy has the guts to ask you how you’ve been doing! Believe me only the patience of Job saves you from flying off your handle! After all it’s a holiday, so you still keep your cool. Of course, letting out some compressed steam might do your anatomy good; but not on a holiday. The only steam you’d want to see that day is that which comes out of the coffee pot.
The guy is asking you about the very life he once almost destroyed. The story is that you weren’t the kind who plays political rugby, ethnic or otherwise. He on the other hand would sleep with the devil if the political price is right. (Why do I feel it’s exactly that we hear these days from quarters who would go “all the way to hell” to see Ethiopia splintered into many fragments.) So you were doing well professionally and the road ahead was full of mouth-watering promises. But this guy wasn’t going to let that to happen! And this guy charms the boss, a fellow politically pushed upstairs, that you’re a threat or something like that. Mind you, the fact that you have drawn a clear line between your professional and personal life isn’t lost on anyone. But the ‘ultimate throne’ of your organization is occupied by the most insecure boss who believes his ears more than he does his eyes. So one fine morning you arrive at your office and find the door sealed! The referee has produced the red card!
You didn’t need some queer-looking lady with her everything overdone and a crystal ball in her hands to tell you what was happening. It’s a game you have seen played out on others over ad again. It is a humiliating way of saying “Ciao!” in the most unceremonious manner. And you can’t forget those horrendous months spent looking for some organization to take you ion. Your family would have broken up had it been for a spouse who was determined to stay in the boat with you through the storm and all the way to the shores. And that’s despite so-called friends and relatives pushing you to walk out on your marriage. And now the very guy who was behind it all asks you “So how’s life with you?”
When someone who has made deep dents into your life tries to bulldoze into it for a second round decisions how to react wouldn’t come easy! If your overseas nemesis was there with you things would have been easier.
“What do you think I am? A moron or some retarded guy who thinks “Z” is the last word of the alphabet because of its crooked shape! (Yes, why does “A” look so majestic and “Z” so undecided as to which way to move!) You think I am a fool or something! It’s shocking that you have the guts to come to me again after all you’ve done! The only reason you’re still on your two feet because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life locked up! So, beat it! Get lost and pray I don’t set my eyes on you ever again!” That is the talk of a macho guy whose fists have been inactive since that day in junior high when all his punches missed and every one of his opponent’s landed! It’s not because you are a violent person. But it just isn’t that easy to forget let alone forgive the suffering you were put through by such people. Now why am I talking about this just when another holiday is a week away?
A lady we know got the most depressing call from somewhere in South East Asia on New Year’s Day and she still hasn’t recovered from the shock. The story is that the caller used to be her childhood friend with whom they have been inseparable all the way through high school. Then this lady we know decides to work for a few years before joining college as her parents lived on the breadline. Within a few months she was so successful visible changes started being witnessed in their house. One day she fell seriously ill just like that. So severe was it she had to be rushed to the nearest hospital in the dead of the night. Once the diagnosis came the world has never been the same again. Some kind of unidentifiable poison was discovered in her system! Someone has tried to poison her! A few days later, word came in from another friend of theirs who decided to talk that the lady’s best friend did it. However, that time she was already out of the country. That was the person who called the lady I am telling you about. I’ll tell you how she handled the situation once she realized the identity of her caller; she hung up!
“Sorry, the wrong number!”
Ephrem Endale
ETHIOPIAN HERALD 19 SEPTEMBER 2021