(A Short Story)
BY ALEM HAILU G/KRISTOS
After grappling with a heavy chapter on Abstract Algebra at the Science Faculty Library of Addis Ababa University, when fatigue set in, and when I began to get famished, I decided to head to a dormitory, I and a classmate share.
Back in the dorm, putting my notepad for jotting odds and ends in a drawer, as usual prodding my dorm mate Jegnaw, who after class, taking of his shoes, likes to flop on bed before lunch, I said,
“Get up man! Let us go to the dining hall and queue up.”
But that day as opposed to his tendency of happily jumping down from the upper echelon of our double deck bed, he said,
“Please leave me alone! I am not in a mood to dine! Go yourself!”
And covering it with his hands, he once more buried his face in a pillow.
As he was not willing to tell me what was wrong with him, I could but go to the dining hall alone.
Putting aside the bread normally students in the campus are served with spaghetti at lunch, and buying a soft drink from a shop by the university’s back gate, I once more nagged him to get and eat lunch and tell me the secret for his unaccountable chagrin.
It took me a few minutes of persuasion and soft words before he gave in.
Devouring the bread with the soft drink he painfully uttered,
“I am going to withdraw and go back to Merabete, my home town!”
“What for? Have you gone off your rocker! We are due to graduate this semester, what is it that makes you decide so?” I posed a question mark bearing face.
He simply gave me a rolled up letter he shoved into his chest pocket.
It was from his father’s friends. It goes like this.
***
Dear Jegnaw, Greetings!
How are you doing?
I hope everything is well with you. Praise the Lord, here we all are fine!
After my greetings, as a close friend of your father, I feel I would be failing in my duty, if I tarry in informing you that your uncle, who took to the forest after shading a farmer’s blood, is severely injured by a bullet presumably fired by the brother of the deceased. Your uncle has turned a cabbage. A count down on his days has started.
Your father, private Taye Zenaw, fulminating by the unfolding, which he took an affront to his dignity, has just taken to the forest vowing he will take even, despite my wisdom packed words that ‘Blood Cleanses Not Blood!’
As you know, your dad is on the wrong side of sixty. Though there is no doubt he is a daredevil, and while young, as was the dictates of the time, had demonstrated his valor shooting a lion ,and as such he is revered by residents of our town, he is no more agile…And he could easily turn a soft target to another vengeance.
The same is true with me.
This is therefore to inform you that you need urgently come to a nearby town and join us in seeking a peaceful means of resolving the problem.
As you know, as vestiges of the old custom, here some loiter carrying a rifle even when plowing. To be on the safe side, up on your arrival at the nearby town, send a messenger, we will welcome and accompany you home and discuss on what ought to be done.
Merigeta Tele Kibatu
***
Perusing the letter I felt pity for Jegnaw, who found himself cornered.
“Why don’t you report the case to police? The police together with religious leaders could settle the problem,” I tried to advise.
“You just read my mind. That is exactly what I am going to do,” he replied after a minute’s pause.
“How was the bloodshed started? Why did your uncle shoot the farmer?” I couldn’t hide my curiosity.
“Often when a niece of my uncle’s wife pick a fight with her husband, she used to run away from home and get sheltered at my uncle’s house till her husband sends elders, who broker peace. My uncle and his wife rarely quarrel, for my uncle adores her. And his wife, who took note of the peevishness of her husband, prone to unfounded jealousy, always tries her best to avoid any action intentional or otherwise that could in his eyes’ erode her devotion to him. All in all, it was a blissful life they were leading happily bringing up their five-year old daughter. According to their division of labour, tending cattle and growing vegetables on the backyard of their house, making dung from the cattle manure, fetching water and firewood and preparing food, were routines that devolved on her shoulder.
But my uncle used to spend most of his time on the farm, a ten minutes walking distance from their hut. Yet unlike other farmers it was dining at home that rendered him pleasure. At lunch break, after they together devoured the roasted pea, she normally prepares for lunch, drinking coffee, once more they engage in their respective responsibilities.
Famished, once my uncle got home early from the farm yard. As opposed to the normal way of things, he couldn’t find his wife home as before. When he headed to the backyard he got his little daughter chewing a sugarcane and asked her
“Where is mom?”
“I don’t know,” she shook the sugarcane left.
Mistrustful when he headed to the barn, to his shock he saw a man heaped on his wife on a pile of hays. On the spur of the moment, following the dictates of his impulse, he opened fire. A bullet pierced the man’s back while another his head.
At a loss what the heal happened, shaking off the man from whose two deadly pores blood was oozing out, jumping to her feet, the woman beneath the man, his sister-in-law but in his wife’s attire, dashing past ran into a nearby forest.
After seconds of shock and oblivion, when my uncle realized he had made a homicide, he quickly checked the impulse of the man he shot and found out the departure of the man’s soul to hell.
To efface any possible clue about the blunder, he ran back home and began to look for a hoe for burying the body in the barn.
Hearing about the bang, his wife, who was out to fetch water from a nearby spring, for theirs had run dry, came home half running half walking.
From afar when she saw her husband rushing into their barn with a hoe at hand, putting down the pot of water she carried on her back, she headed to the barn.
“What happened? I heard a bang! Are you alright?” she checked him all over.
Her husband, mortified like one who just received a verdict of a capital punishment in a court, with one hand on his head, with a pointed finger drawing her attention to the body on the pile of hay said
“I killed a man”
“Why?”
“Who is he?” she stared at him.
“I found him making love to your cursed sister there! It never crossed my mind, she could be the one he was making love to, and as she wore your dress, I mistook her for you. I got jealous, and blind as I turn when I get in such mood, I fired two bullets. When I shot the man, your sister got up and ran away. It was when I saw her face I realized I made a mistake,” he said.
“That rabbit, I shouldn’t have given her my dress. You see when I noticed her dress was soiled with mud, as usual reclining by tree shades with innumerable paramours, I lent her mine till she washes hers.”
“This was one of her undercover lover, the cause of a matrimonial discord between her and her husband. He deserves another shooting. Now hurry up we ought pile up a heap of hays on his grave,” she kicked his body.
“Make sure also no one comes by. If you are asked about the bang say chieftains abound in the dense forest and valleys. Find and tell your sister to remain tight lipped on the matter,” he added.
The disappearance of the victim, his relation with the sister of my uncle’s wife, the bang heard that day and the foul smell around the barn told on the secrete of my uncle.
Saying adieus, washed with the tears of his wife, he took to the forest for fear relatives of the deceased would shoot him. He spent a two years period of seclusion deep in the forest and valleys isolated from, his wife, children ,and relatives, but tragically now shot, he is on his death bed.
You see,occasionally, before the break of dawn he had made a habit of visiting his wife and children. Calculating for a favorable occasion for a tie, the deceased’s brother shot him. That is why my father took to the forest to indulge in a vicious cycle of bloodshed, for some society members there still cherishes the outmoded belief blood cleanses blood.
If a man fails to erase blood with blood, he will be ostracized and ridiculed with folkloric songs and witty remarks. His wife too could not stand the tongue lashing of women that gather at community taps. Being dubbed cowardice in our society is a kiss of death. That is why my father, revered a hero there, took the retaliatory measure as an affront to his dignity.
“Police, the elderly and religious fathers must handle the case.
I will mobilize fellow graduating class students and solicit money for you to go to the nearby town to discuss on the peaceful settlement of the case. I think Merabete is not that far from here.” I put my hands on his shoulder as a sign of solidarity.
He said “Thank you!”
I reflected life itself sometimes proves an Abstract Algebra
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 4 DECEMBER 2022
