They called it the “Leaning Tower of Pisa”. They did not know much about the Tower. They did not visit it. The image came into their minds straight from a textbook and it was a picture of an artist who drew the tower and on top of it Galileo letting loose the feather and a pebble to see how they could be attracted by gravity. There must have been a formula for it, but it meant nothing to them now, i.e. when they are celebrating the 25th anniversary of their wedding.
Twenty-five years ago, she just graduated from a college in Gondar and was posted in Addis Ababa. She was young and beautiful. She attracted many a young man, but she knew beauty would fade and youth would disappear. So, she wanted someone who would love her until the end of time, not just momentarily: someone serious, as she used to think again and again!
Unlike her he was born and brought up in Addis Ababa. A few years had passed since he graduated from college. The thought of marriage never crossed his mind. As most young men are, he was interested in having a girl-friend, but not a girl-friend who could stick to him and divert him from his goal in life. He was serious, but not about marriage. He felt he had the entire world before him –travel, post-graduate education and success in a particular field in which he could achieve some sort of reputation.
Their lives’ journey began on a get-together organized to celebrate a holiday. Who meets who during such occasions is not
the business of the hosts? Their interest is usually in entertaining their relatives, neighbours and acquaintances. It used to be customary to invite neighbours and enjoy dinner together in the past. Those were the days when sheep and chicken were cheap and the cost of living was such that families never worried that much about how they would fare in future if they did not keep a portion of their income for what is known as a rainy day. It never occurred to them that a rainy day existed.
He and she or she and he sat across the same table after bringing a variety of food on their plates. Chicken and mutton stood significantly in their choices. Each of them had an egg, and if they had not been strangers, they would have cut a piece and directed it to the mouth of their partner as an expression of love. But they were complete strangers and did not even know what to talk about.
Both did not know how the dinner began and ended. But since everyone, except the two of them, was immersed in conversations centering on trivial matters, no one took notice of their feelings and attractions towards each other. No one knew how the so-called rendezvous was fixed, but on the week-end that followed, they met at a road-side in the country and walked slowly enjoying a light summer breeze towards a tree – the leaning tree.
Yet another week later, they came to the same place. The leaning
tree under which they sat and talked endlessly about everything under the sun
had fallen on the ground. It was a big heavy tree with very wide trunk and
long, twisted roots that went deep into the ground. Some of the roots stayed
partially inside the ground while the big ones have been uprooted.
A big hollow or pit had been created where the tree had stood. Part of the soil had stuck firmly on the fallen trunk, the image of which made sense only when it is looked from afar.
They both felt a sense of anxiety. What if it had come down on the very day they were sitting under it? The consequence would have been disastrous! They would have joined the majority as it is often said euphemistically when people refer to death.
They were immersed in deep thought. They tried to efface the image from their minds, thinking pessimistically that it did not augur well for their future. They knew people react to such phenomena differently. Some see them and attach no significance to them. Others come to believe that they had some hidden message that they should not view lightly.
Weeks passed before he phoned to her. During the interval, she wondered whether it had anything to do with the tree. She was curious and wanted to know what he was thinking. She was preoccupied with every idea that could potentially spoil, if not destroy, their relationship.
When family heads in remote villages try to consolidate their ties, they think of arranging marriages between their off-springs. They have no means of knowing if their intentions were good. So, they kill sheep or a goat, spread out some fat linings from the stomach and try to read the future – a superstitious practice that disappeared with time!
What is so peculiar about a tree falling down? A bad omen for two people who were dreaming about marriage! Without sharing their thoughts, they tried to convince themselves that such a phenomenon was natural and that the force of gravity was always at work pulling down trees.
Now, after 25 years of successful marriage which they find difficult to describe to others, except that they were both convinced that it was successful, they recalled the incident of the tree vividly. More important to them, however, was the first day of their meeting as guests to a home of relatives who had organized dinner to mark a holiday.
Was their relationship a product of deliberate fixing by relatives or simply an outcome of divine intervention? They could not tell. She proposed that they should go to the same place and lie beneath a tree and see whether a tree would fall down once again. He agreed. The scene was more or less the same. They wondered whether things would be the same 25 years after. They found a tree that was very tall, so tall that the sky seemed to descend to meet its branches.
They walked back to a small way-side inn where they drank yogurt mixed with some pepper-powder. It was delicious! The taste was as good as 25 years ago partly induced by its container fumigated by burning olive branches. The inn had been modernized. Instead of the tukul that it was before, it became a “ground plus one”. A terrace has been added. What surprised them most was that yoghurt could be sold at the same place after a lapse of two decades and half.
The sun was about to set down in the horizon. Colourful rays pierced through the clouds giving the impression that darkness is still far away. When they got home, they were pleased to see that their car was as polished as it was when they left for their trip by bus earlier in the day. The children often stay out late, and even though they were regarded as grown-ups on the verge of creating their own families, what shape their future would take is still a source of concern for their parents.
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday Edition 28 July 2019
BY BERHANU TIBEBU ZEWOLDE
