Table of Contents
Intro
Entry 1
Entry 2
Entry 3

From: Heran
To: Fasil
Subject: Lisann’e Quanqua

Savory delights across the cyber-space arrived unannounced some days past.

And always in between, the grand tentacled arms of Seleda fanned the flames, goading. Wasn’t there some story of how Seleda had come by the patent of the amazing Mobile Margebgebya from the original creator (ArogitE negere gotitE) who had discovered its application quite by accident (isatun iif bey izyaw witiff bey)? The word in certain circles is that Seleda editors have since celebrated an annual event to honor the old lady’s predicament and gifts of anti-histamines, prunes, Liquid Drano and other things that unplug, are reverently offered at an undisclosed location. Secretive Seledawian, diros!

My margebgebya musings are interrupted by the radio announcement that Fasil’s gimb in Gonder had indulged in its rare shiver and shake causing the usual shibbir all around. People had looked for doom or bloom in the skies, and cliff-hanger prophecies clinging to the crumbly sides of coffee cups. Once again thwarting the conspiracy theory that he never fell but was indeed pushed, Habte DamTe (Humpty’s GonderE counterpart) had leapt his limber self from the wall to the more stable doorway, which had passersby worried of precedents that would make the sacred décor of seven ostrich eggs atop church roofs terribly secular.

And there by the doorway you stand … aynafar by a bit … but with the prowess of your gaddemizenhower imagination so casually unleashed … the kind of imagination that would need all the space and colors of Mary Armday’s "Semayin yemyahil biranna tefiqo / Abbayin yemyahil qelem tebeTbiTo …). She still has me in her grip, Mary. So does Maritu. Here’s my small confession why — you see, when overly eager gentlemen insist on asking me my name, (which inevitably leads to the Herald/Hewan approximation), I would say, "Maritu." This bewilders them, but would evoke her searing Ambassel rendition in my mind, and the vision of that mysteriously stoic, dark chocolate, neatly afroed woman accompanying her on the masinqo. What a rush!

GuramaylE qiNit has people talking … Is it the language of the hyphenated Ethiopian, that made-up-slap-dash-funky Esperanto Ethiopian mix that rolls and rhumbas off the tongues of learned Seledawians …or the deep bottle green of Lakech’s beautiful niQisat against the dazzling white of her teeth and warm earth of her skin … Gigi certainly doesn’t help with her "Lijju…(Guramayle)… QuanQua..." and the guy who mefokers in German… maybe it’s the breeze of Yeneta’s bass murmurs under the guramayle sparrow’s wings in flight …

….

Aaaah yes … the lulling cadences of Yeneta’s voice coming around and around the bends of those letters and lines … circular rhythms matched only by the asra-arat zoor TimTam on his head … .

Seasons and separations later …

"Let us try this again," the group leader said, a note of frustration creeping unwittingly into her voice.

The setting was the back room of an unlikely evangelical church in San Jose, California, where my mother and I had been ushered in with suspicious enthusiasm. We had been invited by concerned fellow Ethiopians we barely knew to visit the church and pray for my father’s failing kidneys. Our hosts had disappeared shortly after the sermon and the moving choir hymns, leaving us alone to ponder the one question raised by the pastor: Which one of us knew Jesus?

This was not the only time I would be faced with this (yechibo amlak yimeskir…) question which would again catch me unawares. Who’d have thought that in the dusty aqwaraCH backroads of Kazanchis gebeya I would encounter a shy gubil modestly covered in her neTela, softly inquiring, "Iyesusin tawqiwalesh?" I briskly called upon my own floundering sense of direction and with concerned urgency responded, "Iyesus ma?" Her eyes filled with disbelief bordering on reproach, which worsened with my every effort at comeback. "Iyesus yeGna? Yelay betu Iyesus?" and, weakly, "Iyesus Igziabher???"

Well …

My family and I back in San Jose felt that day, as most other days, that we knew Jesus some, and stood up to so indicate, little advised that this was church-speak deployed to weed out the presumptuous from the pious. Called to the front of the congregation, we stood before the swaying audience singing us an imparting hymn with renewed vigor … abet anjet meblat sichilubet

As their last lingering note faded, no nonsense church staff emerged from the shadows behind us to organize the most efficient path to our salvation. My mother and I were placed in a group of five others with a cheerful but firm group leader whose task it was to teach us to speak in tongues.

"All you have to do," she instructed with assurance, "is open your mouth and make ba-ba-ba sounds with your eyes closed. The spirit will take over from there."

Always game to try something new at least once, my mother and I joined hands with our group members in an unexpected feeling of team spirit, and bellowed a rousing round of ba-ba’s. As if on cue, our group leader took off on an improvised albeit alarming solo, her voice one octave higher, weaving a fantastic path with unintelligible but enigmatic lyrics. Some moments passed, and she stopped to catch her breath and offer ecstatic encouragement for our second round.

A third and fourth attempt came and went with no liberated lisan in sight. I felt personally miffed. Was I not the girl who was determined to finish reading the Bible at fifteen, who memorized the palm-sized version of "Peace with God" given to me by my friend Haimanot (her real name, inne limut!), who would recite this same text in low meandering melodies to the delight of my parents? So amazed were they that they once asked for my (shortened, 20 minute version) recitation before a small gathering of their friends. With all the authority my 10 year-old self could muster, I began. "God be merciful to me a sinner …Lord save me …" Encouraged by the appropriate mTs in all the right places, I double-paced my way through the prayers and arrived, eyes closed and headlong with the same serious solemnity, at the ending. "For more copies, please write P.O. Box 9438, Kijjabe, Kenya … Printed in Canada, 1976."

An hour and some bleary ba’s later…

"Let’s try this again." The group leader was getting hostile. In the split second distraction when she looked away, my mother turned to me with her trademark fierce resourcefulness signaling a plan of action. "When I squeeze your hand, do as I do, and DON’T laugh."

The group held hands and began again. My mother’s voice soared above the background ba’s, rivaling the group leader’s as she raced her vertical path down rows of fidel ... "halehame…"I quickly caught on. "Aa ... bugidahewizo…"I paused with shock that my diagonal zig-zag that was weaving a lovely pattern with my mother’s path, was about to come to an abrupt and frightening end …from the misty past Yeneta’s voice steadied me, "Misten wesedat wezwizo…" I ended quite pleased to have hit house, chanted fidel and flirted with spirit all at once. …Wait until Yeneta hears about this! … What with him thinking I paid him no mind all along …

"Stop!" our group leader’s eyes had grown wide with excitement, the twin moustaches over them (as my Eritrean friend once so eloquently dubbed eyebrows), forming perfectly perched arches.

"Again!" she commanded breathlessly.

The signal hand grip from my mother dropped the flag at the starter’s line. "Halehame …/Aabugida…" We swirled and swelled in chorus.

The group leader thanked the good lord for his endless miracles, as did we for the leap and limbo of our own lisann with which to navigate life.

bicha min yadergal … Ms. QumNeger has left the building …

Yih albeKa bilo, the goose that lays the golden egg is now so passé, long replaced by the goat that lays the golden currants, and the Made in India fabulous Fire Firafire basket in which you could nestle such precious matter has been surpassed by the plush Polish Fire Fersiki packaging

And all the while … I am undone as Yeneta’s TimTam… by the whimsy of a kiss in his palm…

Iij Iyenesahu,

Heran


From: Fasil
To:Heran
Subject: Intin’na Bualt

Heran, do I know this Arogite, negere gotite? I am talking about the old lady who, you allege, bequeathed her skills of fanning the flames of neger to the Seleda folks. Is she that stringy widow, the one whose late-blooming scandalous flings with a decrepit old goat by the name of Aya Mulat inspired the azmari to mezref the following lines?

Yezendiro fiQir miniNa deneffa

Yigremachihu bilo Emahoyin deffa

Qobachew tegeNe, meQuTeriachew Teffa.

The rumor goes that Aya Mulat, a quintessential gefi who had long since buried his contemporaries and yalageru, yalewogu, outlived even his wife, was seen sneaking in and out of Arogite’s shack bemaleda while the birds darted about twittering above the steaming turds of yelemmaN a’r. The neighbors, the church-going, arb-rob-fasting, priest-worshipping, tsebel-guzzling, imnet-rubbing busybodies who knew this Qillet for what it was — a harbinger of the end of the world foretold in Fikare Iyesus: "BesiminteNaw shih, beQlo tiwoldalech, menekuse Qobuan Tila tamaneziralech" — they lapped her up with baleful eyes and flung curses at her. "Yansash!" "Yizosh yihid!" "Besterjinna melkeskes!" But what do they know? True, she had toyed with defiant thoughts at the start, something along the line of "Whose fault is it if the decades failed to quench the fire in my loins?" But didn’t she take a humbler view of things later, in light of the fact that her earthly days might have been numbered for all she knew? And what did she do to lighten the burden on her conscience? She headed to the church of Tekliye to cleanse, with nissiha, the acrid stench of sin that still clung to her guyya in the aged lion’s spoor of Aya Mulat’s Teren.

"Mindinnew haTiatish?" asked the handsome priest, about ten years her junior.

"Yenatih Qil enkuan manTelTeya alew, ant amedam! Qes batihon noro, lik likihin enegrih nebber," she fumed inwardly, belibua, as she began to part with her secret.

"Semay midiru sayilaQeQ meTTana…"

"Man?"

"Mulat yemilut yizo muach newa."

"Beje.."

"Meskotun kua kua kua

Gud ayalehu biye zim

Berrun kefto dirgim

Gud ayalehu biye zim

Kalgaye gebto giddim

Gud ayalehu biye zim

Zoro kangete TimTim

Gud ayalehu biye zim

Tekenafire giTTim…

"Ere bekash silefeTTeresh!" pleaded the celibate priest waging a losing battle against the same demon who, in the guise of yegorebet lij with fuddling eyes and trembling lips, cheated Yeneta out of the promise of heaven. The starkly lewd confession of the old lady had stung him with a sudden urgent desire to witness her transgression with his own eyes, from within the shoes of her early morning visitor.

"Ahun arba sigejinna Qeriwun nege Tuat initesaseballen," he had quipped with a horrid smile of the newly fallen, revealing beredo Tirsoch which she was powerless to resist.

Taken aback yet flattered at the apparent power of her charm that was still alive and potent despite her age, Arogite cast her eyes down in fake penitence, stifling a fountain of laughter that was bubbling in her chest. You see, she was thinking: "What if that besotted Mulat catches me in the act with this wolf in a sheep’s cloak?" And the very thought of tumbling for a few blessed moments with this priest and his odor of sanctity (exuding myrrh and frankincense) was enough to send shivers of expectant thrill down her spine. As her forehead touched the hallowed ground of the church, she could no longer contain her laughter and she shook in quiet mirth, prostrated, and the priest, towering above her, mistook her agitation for a burst of passionate contrition.

The moral of the story: the rkus menfes that has snared Yeneta is out to trap a hundred more cross-wielding wolves in sheep’s clothing, and the Devil knows who is next.

Correction: Heran, it is true that Seleda editors have indeed honored the old lady. But I have heard, from reliable sources, that the gift they chose for her contained no such thing as prunes or Liquid Drano (God knows what that is). What she got was, I found out, a mere corkscrew. Brutally practical, you might say, but even prunes and what you call "drano" (sounds like a super-strong anti-clogging solution used by industrial plumbers) are no match for bowels that have simply quit moving after decades of service, elishalehu.

Esti esu andiye kesterjinna QillEt yiTebiQen

Mejemeria gin, yekermo sew yibelen, anchin, enen endihum the praiseworthy movers and shakers of Seleda.

Bemakber,

Fasil.

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