I should try my hand at writing short drama; who knows, maybe the big bucks and the fame might make life easier! Here we go;
The setting is a house where your Character A is hosting some guest making every effort to make the guy feel at home. The guest practically got anything and everything; the only thing he has to do was ask. Our Character A thought things were nice and dandy when flashes of strange behavior on the part of the guest begin catching his attention. The types of behavior one doesn’t expect from a well-provided guest who should have been nothing but grateful. Character A keeps his cool with the belief that sooner or later the guest would realize he was breaching too many lines and start watching his steps; but no! Watching his step is the last thing on his mind. (You could swear on all the money left if your wallet that you saw him making a pass at your better half! His excesses become so bizarre and so offensive Character A had to decide. He humbly asks him to leave. Then what happens; well me, the dramatist-to-be will tell you what happens. Some character who appears nowhere on the script barges his way in out of nowhere and shouts at our Good Samaritan host;
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“What are you talking about?”
“What do you think you’re doing by kicking out your guest?”
“Oh! Ok just to be nice he was up to very unfriendly things and the peaceful air in my home was being compromised.”
“I’m not asking you that! Who gave you the permission to kick him out of the house in the first place?”
“Well, it’s my house, and I don’t need anyone’s permission.”
“That’s what you think; Put it in that thick skull of yours that only we call the shots.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You can’t decide who comes in and who goes out your house unless you get the green light from us.”
Character A is visibly furious, and the next thing he does is… (To be continued)
I’ll keep on working on the script.
Look the above might have been an innocent attempt from someone aiming at some sort of stardom; but then, maybe I needn’t torment my hopelessly overcrowded mind trying to create storylines and situations when the real ones are playing out under our very eyes! We have been told we don’t have the right to expel expatriates who have not only been on the wrong side of the country’s laws but were also engaged in activities detrimental to national security of the country. “You have no right to expel them!” we were told. The behavior of some sections of the international community has become so randomly bizarre that there is no wonder this world of ours is neck-deep in messy waters!
Each passing day you can’t help it but be become even more confused by what really is going on. UNSC came under that same roof to ‘talk about our internal matters’ about ten times in a few months’ time! And not a single agenda from them all warranted such intrusion into the very internal affairs of a sovereign nation. I mean, really, what sort of a reality show is going over there? How come they are making statements, statements we don’t recall being made about other countries, with impunity and whistle their way to the next dinner or whatever?
Some sections of the so-called int’l media have sharpened their pens with such inconsiderate, deliberately unbalanced, and even racially-tinted bias you never through journalism could be disfigured so badly by those who think of themselves as game changers. At times, when things just don’t logically and plausibly add up to give us the real, unadulterated (or Photoshoped!) picture we try to give them the benefit of the doubt just for the sake of not muddying the waters more than they already are.
“You know, they must have been misinformed.”
“They haven’t been talking to reliable sources.” Being the victims, being the ones put in the crosshairs that is as nice as we could be. But then things get too much to take in and you’re forced to think a little beyond the usual borders. “Aren’t they acting as actual combatants rather than media bodies? Are they out to prove the pen is mightier than the gun on us?” A lady journalist seems so determined to take some top spot in the Ethiopia bashing game, she is sounding more ridiculous by the day. And, of course, the fact that she, and her ‘commanding officers’ could have more than a couple of sinister agendas is not lost on us.
And then there’s Facebook! Aha, good old Facebook which has been blocking posts and messages which try to explain the Ethiopian position to the world while giving the green light to messages of violence and ethnic profiling has one again been set on the frying pan! Didn’t we say that? Didn’t Ethiopians in the Diaspora make their voices heard through multiple means about the preferential treatment of Facebook and open hostility against our country! Well, the Whistleblower lady said it publicly that Facebook is fanning ethnic violence in Ethiopia! What more does anyone want? What more do the self-declared Godfathers of human rights want? Where are the condemnations!
Think about it on the flip side; What if it was a statement sounding like “Facebook is fanning hatred against the whites in the US?” Have you ever thought of that? The Zukerberg fellow might already be speeding for the nearest South American border. (Hey, wouldn’t that be an interesting concept for some ‘The Social Network’ sequel?)
So, advice from a writer-to-be, don’t tire your mind trying to create storylines while the weirdest ‘reality shows’ are playing out in the open, and in the big places, too.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD OCTOBER 10/2021
