“Why Ethiopia stayed behind”

While discussing the temperament of Seattleites (kind of cold, kind of distant, kind of keeping to themselves in a way that borders Xenophobia) with a friend last night, I said something that I never knew I’ve formally thought of before. I said “I think the exposure to different cultures has made Seattleites unable to recognize and appreciate cultural diversity in a heart-felt way. If they knew somebody like you, they assume [I guess] they know all they need to know about you, which makes them less curious to [intimidated, chatty, inquisitive] folks in, say, little old Escondido which [true to its name] is hidden to the outside world except for the Mexican immigrants that cross into its borders by hundreds a day and the little black prostitute girls that come from the other end of the country to cater to their “needs”. When I say I’m from Ethiopia, the first response I get is ‘Oh yeah, I love Ethiopian food!’. And I’m like I’m more than my food, asshole”.

Or something to that effect.

That last phrase lingered on my mind long after the subject changed to the pleasant atmosphere in the coffee shop we were sitting. [Where books lined the walls, coffee machines work tirelessly to produce the unique aroma of that bean life in Seattle would have been harder without, where men and women from different walks of life talk and work on their laptops, holding their hip-ness with an easy grace you can't master if you were reincarnated as a manican.] The fact that I’m more than my food and how to get that message across to people I meet and deal with on a regular basis [people who can't recognize the source of my pain or pleasure if it sits on their laps and says "selam" to them] bugged me for a second or two. I wondered how I can make this friend of mine see my country/my culture as an outsider should/would see it. I asked how we, abeshas and abesheets [Ethiopians] appear to the occasional bystander. And in trying to think of an outsider who has seen us, lived among us, and written about us in a way other outsiders can understand, the name Timothy Kalyegria popped into my head.

He is the columnist who wrote the article “Why Ethiopia Stayed Behind”, in a series of dossiers he labeled “The Abyssinian Chronicles”. When the amharic version of his essay on why we stayed behind the rest of Africa first showed up on Addis Admas, back when that newspaper mattered, it showed up under the title “Menaded kalelegachu yihinin tsihuf atanibu”. It’s been a while since this article held the mirror to our faces and made us lash out at the guy holding the mirror. Gone are the days in which the writer was called names starting from “lemma”.. to boundless others on every media an Ethiopian was allowed to write his ill-spelled English on. Which may also be the reason why finding it gave me quite the run around. When I finally located it, I decided I gotta re-post it on my e-shoe box. Because it’s still relevant and useful. And there are those of you who still don’t know it exists.

The Warning Before The Warning

Weraj ale: Snow in Seattle

I am a “snow virgin”. And “like a virgin”, I got “touched for the first time” yesterday morning. Was on my way to work when I realized I had teeny tiny pieces of white particules on my heavy jacket. I looked up, wondering what it was they were dropping now, this building that serves as a 24 hrs. parking lot and has surprised me in it’s uncanny ability to sweat at the precise moment when I’m walking under it.

That’s when I realized the oil-on-a-frying-pan sound I haven’t paid attention to till now was accompanying the white particules that keeps falling on me out of nowhere. I have assumed snow comes with rain, despite having seen it fall freely in movies, and had dreamed to be in it [how, were I to go to America, I'd like to go there on Christmas time; with the roads covered in snow, trees decorated with lights, shopping-mall doors opening and closing to let in and out shoppers in warm clothes carrying shiny bags full of gifts]. But I have atleast expected some sort of wetness to go with it. I did not know it could come down out of the blue, or “the white” to be exact, and cover you lovingly in it’s shimmering wonderfulness.

And so I did what a virgin, who has been touched for the first time, and loved it, would do. I run out. I run in. I laughed. Almost cried. I took photos. I took videos. Deleted videos, they eat your phone’s memory, and went forth to the world and shared the Herald of it’s coming. Here goes:

Sunday at 7:56 a.m.
[Facebook post]
Got only three hrs of sleep. Am looking at a 13 hrs shift. Am covered in snow. And loving it. How much do i love thee [Seattle], lemme count the ways! 1 one thousand.. 2 one thousand.. 3 one thousand..

Saturday 15 January 2012
[Twitter tweet]
Covered in snow. And loving it. Life does indeed go on.

Sunday at 12:37 p.m.
[Facebook post]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Caption reads]: Momma, I had it made.

Sunday at 7:59 p.m
[Facebook question and answer]
Friend:
How do u find ur first snow experience?
Me:
Run out. Started snapping photos taking videos. Trying to catch flakes. Then I just stood there, bathing in it and sucking-in the surrounding when this colleague of mine gathered some snow and made me a snow ball. Was so much fun. Its even …more exciting when you walk on it after it has hardened, although perhaps not as fun to drive in. Ppl have been giving me all sorts advices. (Kowing I was a “snow virgin” brought about the parent in all.) I was told how and where to walk, not to help if asked to help push a car and to pee before I left the office.

This morning
[Part of a poem]
The clouds..
are coming down
coming down in tiny pieces..
The cars are clothed
in snow
and the buses
got ankle braces..

There is more to the poem, but it is about this guy who was farting infront of me while we were rallying in support of Hilton Seattle’s “workers’ right to job security” [holding banners and chanting with hoarse voice lines like "The workers. United. Can never be defeated". "No Justice! No Peace!" and, ofcourse, about us being the ninety nine percent. (Were helping out at a millionaire's party a few weeks ago, and I heard one of them "joke" how the other was "the one percent". And i thought "Aw. How adorable!! This is how the rich make jokes!")].

And, finally, the friend’s response to the above mentioned facebook question and answer:

Sunday at 7:59pm
I feel like ‘God’ sends snow for all those he love.

Sunday at 9:23am
‎’loves’ teblo yestekakel. lol

Couldn’t agree more, bud.

Face-deep in me humble-pie

Girl meets boy. Girl likes boy. Girl let’s boy do whatever he wants. Boy does whatever he wanted and one day boy decides to take girl out. Boy sounds happy and excited. Girl can’t believe her luck. Goes out and buys things. Wonders what to do about hair. Then boy disappears. Girl gets angry. Girl writes angry emails. Girl makes angry phone calls and sends angry texts. Boy refuses to respond. And then he calls girl crazy and manipulative. That girl should stop bothering him, or else.

Boys can be mean sometimes!!

But did he stop there? No sir, he didn’t. He continued by saying he decided not to come because he realized I was fucked in the head. Called me “a head case”, “a trip”, something else. No wonder, he added before signing off, my husband wanted out!

Girl knew I was fucked up. I knew there was something wrong with me. [Even warn them as much in the beginning. Suggest they read my blog to know the inner workings of my mind. "Wait and see", I say - when they start "majgodgoding" compliments, wishing the warning flags away. They never listen!]. I was also no stranger to being called names before being deserted. What I didn’t know was that I was the Crafty-Craftswoman he described me to be. That I was any more crazy than the next scorned [passionate] woman whose fury hell would be hard-pressed to match. That my corky-nesses were anything other than adorable qualities that sets me apart from girlkind.

So I went to me best friend, google!, and asked the question: “Am I manipulative?”. And to my shame, to my eternal disgrace [I do use big words and poetic language to get my point across too!], learned that although none of them were conscious decisions, or things I did to gain a specific/material end, I did and do all those things it says manipulative people do:

- I do pretend to be incompetent, play the victim, act helpless, or admit too often that I am stupid
- I did say “anything you want” when I don’t mean it or I lied about how I feel (but isn’t that what “the dating game” is all about?! The make ups, the eye shadows, the waxings, the clpings?! Aren’t we catering to “his” needs instead of ours? Saying “thy wish, sir, is my command”?!).
- I did say “promise me” (“we will remain friends even if we stopped seeing each other”. And meant it too.)
-I do not think I “act overly concerned” or “promise to change my behavior knowing perfectly well that I don’t want to change.”
- I do blame others (but myself too) for my problems.
- I do act ignored, forgotten, hurt, wounded, unloved, or uncared for (which is how I am or feel 99 percent of the time)
- I get angry or throw temper tantrums.
- I am always depressed or suicidal.

So what I thus far thought was “humility” or “being self conscious” was, infact, typical manipulative behavior.

Now for the “crazy” part.

“Mogn ena WereQet”

When we first got a video cassette player, or a “deck” as we called it back home, somebody told my parents that most of the actions in the movie (and they were mostly action movies, “First Blood”, “Five men Army”, “Django”) were done using “camera tricks”. The person didn’t explain further. My parents needed no explanation. And being the ultimate authorities over all forms of entertainment in the house (by way of the buying/borrowing of books, the turning on & off of tvs, rewinding/fast forwarding and translating or ignoring movies – in the case of a certain “f” word, for example. I was 9th grade before I knew what it meant), everything we ever saw on TV after that became the result of “camera tricks”.

The cars (or buildings) that got blown were toy cars or card-board model houses constructed on a table. The “kincha” were men “mawenachefing” their hands to the sound of banging bells and drums. Even the food, they argued, (that food “Wuti”, who end up becoming head “teshekami” for “Abba Billa Wefcho Bett” salivated over every time it came on, and left us discussing future possibilities of foods being delivered through TV-screens) was not really being chewed. All.. were part of the magic of “camera tricking”; lights and angles, sounds and illusions. Smoking mirrors.

And while they sat on the sofa that kids weren’t even allowed to rest their [filthy] arms on, explaining every extraordinary event away, we [sitted in our rightful places – the floor (which we mopped and waxed on Saturday mornings, fired by the promise of the “TalaQ film” that night; which may or may not be a Russian love story; and may or may not be cancelled by my dad’s need to go to sleep early, or some dumb “yeEgir kwas” program ETV decides to transmit at the last minute)] imbibed their outlooks and values along with it. “Rambo”, to my mom, was “Rambo wondu”. Men, [like the father on “The Champ” or little “Birju” on “Mother India”], who wept over the love of a woman or the loss of a childhood or, like the late Luelseged Kumsa, spoke English better than the natives would] were, according to my dad, “over-acting”. My older half-brother Israel called Bruce Lee “Yebir sini”, and not realizing how unpoetic that was, my younger brother Tagel and I made a song and dance out of it.

We watched, we listened, and we went out the next morning and faithfully imitated – the actions, the out looks, the values.

The one thing we watched silently and soaked, like a sponge, into our young psyche [and the one thing nobody told my parents was indeed a “camera trick” of sorts] was … the romance. The romance in movies! We ofcourse knew the hero and heroine can not be lovers, anymore than they can be dying or dead despite playing thus. We weren’t that imbecile—ish. We have also heard, from the authority that introduced the idea of “camera tricks” into the family, that kissing, in America, was like shaking hands. And sex… sex was a really bad idea that kids should scramble to get to the remote control for or denounce sternly as “Siyastelu! Balegewoch!!” if ever a movie was gonne be watched under those roofs.

However, what happened there, between the lovers, between those two, we expected to happen in real life. We assumed women reacted to a touch the way men did. That lovers run in slow motions, in green pastures or across bridges, with hairs blowing and dresses flattering, towards one anoother. That you don’t feel the rain coming down when being kissed by the one you love. That you would actually say a lame line like “Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed.” and the people, instead of commenting on how cheesy that was, would go “Awwwwww!?”

That’s how, we assumed, the magic of love and love-making went.

We still do.

Happy New European Year, y’all.

Of guys and hoes*

I am a whore. We are all whores after we hit 30 and there seems to be nothing for us in life except do the things we were supposed to have done and wait for menopause. Wrinkles. Old age. Death.

I’m a whore, an affection whore, because I lust after every man, after his affection. It doesn’t have to be a man I’d like to spend the rest of my days with. It doesn’t have to be a man I’d like to hold hands and watch a movie with. It doesn’t have to be a man who is single, in anyway likable, of age. If he’s a man and he’s talking to me and smiling, I start drawing all these scenarios in which he’d come again tomorrow, pretending to wanna buy something, stopping by my register to say hi, say “Remember me?”.

He’d leave me his number or ask for my number. Hang around till I am free to talk to him, to warm him with my rays [of intelligence, wit, sense of humor. The sunshine of my smile]. I imagine him going out and going to his car and waiting restlessly, to see me come out. I see him trying to “meet me accidently” at the store – down the street from where I work – where I stop-by every day, more out of habit than the refrigerator being less full. [Not that that's ever stopped me from carrying plastic bags after plastic bags of grocery which I take home, and consume, watching TV, reading an article on the internet, chatting with younger siblings back home.]

I’m a whore in that a five minute’s talk with a customer who seems to have found me interesting, smiled looking into my eyes, probably told me I have a cute accent/a nice smile/a singsong voice, would make me go without sleep. I toss and turn, on my futon bed, infront of my TV, toss and turn half the night wondering how he’s gonne do it. How he’s gonne appear in my life tomorrow. How it would feel like to kiss him, kiss that face of his which seems to have worn out from over thinking, appearing in and out of my vision – now clearly, now not. I keep rerunning our conversations in my head. I keep seeing how it would go when he comes next time. I start making up stories, stories that kept my imagination occupied and my ears full when, once…long time ago, my father was abusing my mother – both physically and verbally – all. through.the.night. Stories so well thought-off and so personal, so real I end up covered in tears in the telling of them. Stories of how a relationship would be built, how a budding lotus of love would sprout, how a mistake would be made, how somebody leaves, and then comes back — pulled by a memory, a dream, a heart-string.

I’m a whore because he doesn’t come the next day. Or the next. And when he does come, he’s either with his girlfriend, or his boyfriend, or pays at the next counter, or has completely forgotten me that he won’t even say “Heyyy, you are down here today!?”.

I’m a whore in that I never learn.

Another customer would come the next day. You’d start talking, because you are supposed to. Make them feel at home, comfortable, known – personally. And you’d think you got him until he throws his arm in despair to show why he’s hanging around the register. “She isn’t ready yet!” he’d say, smiling exasperatly. She would soon appear, all bustling, smiles and brown hair. Confident, demure, white. “Honey..?!”, she’d pout, as if the few minutes they’ve spent apart was an intentional desertion from him. She’d then walk to his side, seemingly unaware of the perfect picture they make, and show him something she knew, simply knew, would be perfect somewhere in their nest.

You’d continue to smile, say a warm Hi, comment on her light colored sweater, her Scarlett-O’Hara hair-do, little baby-blue in the trolley. When they have finally made up their minds [after one of them had run back and forth through the aisles to grab or put some piece of junk back], joked and laughed about her inability to resist temptation, his baseball card collection [a lost cause he's hoped little blue there would one day inherit and go to college with the profits from, until they started to manufacture them in millions or everybody was collecting them], you start punching the numbers.

You are folding their merchandize, taking the tags out and reaching for a plastic bag while the printer spits stringed piece of papers, when he says “Can you give me a bag please?”, motioning to where your hands are striving to reach. “Sure”, you’d say, instead of ask him what on God’s mother-fucking-earth he thinks you were trying to do. “Here you go,” you’d add cheerfully, handing the stuff out, “Thank you, sir. Mum. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Next!”

________________
* Disclaimer: The feelings depicted in this post are fictitious. Any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincidental.

Going down in history 4 DUMMIES

I’ve been hearing this song, hither and thither, for sometime now. If Shakespeare were alive and been walking down 5th avenue last night, and heard the Carolers the way i did (with their heavenly voices and unaffected-by-cold-weather-and/or-rude-gaffs faces) he’d go all “old Gowery” on it and recite how:

It hath been sung at festivals,
On ember-eves and holy-ales;
And lords and ladies in their lives
Have read it for restoratives:

Etcetera.

I am no world reknowned dead poet-ess, but I know people well. And the way i heard men with thick [country-sounding] voices singing it, there seems to be pride and joy in the telling of Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer’s, story. When I say heard, I am ofcourse not saying I have been able to hear and understand all the lines in the song. I never can with english songs (except for Tracey Chapman’s; and only because her voice isn’t dwarfed by bells and whistles of the music department at the back). Still my senses have scouted something “fishy” in it, a faulty sounding reasoning – so to say, a dangerous teaching masquerading as a soul-less all-is-well-that-ends-well story for one reindeer born with an unfortunately shiny glowy bright red nose.

A couple of minutes ago, i manned up and googled it: first the song, then the story behind the song and the person behind the story. And, sure enough, I saw my keen and reliable senses for bullcrap haven’t deceived me. This was one song Bertie Wooster would have labeled ”a stinker”. A bad apple that has been fed western kids (and some Ethiopian girls too) for generations. How you can’t be accepted by your peer groups, won’t be allowed to join in their games, or “go down in history”, unless you’ve been loved, courted or in the service of someone that matters. Like Santa Claus, for example!. And, yes, they call it a Christmas Song. And, yes, they force them wee ones to sing it along. And to think .. to think!!.. I’ve been wondering if “Santa Baby” wasn’t a little too graphic for a holiday “mezmur” meant to celebrate the birth of wittle-lil-baby Jesus!

Think about it!!!

The song (for those who do not know it)

Transition (?): My 1 woman show

“You are frightened of everything. You call it caution. You call it common sense. You call it practicality. You call it playing the odds, but that’s only because you’re afraid to call it by its real name, and its real name is fear.” – Mick Farren (Darklost)

Don’t care for home care.

People try to put u down in two ways:

1. They pretend they didn’t hear you when you say something good abt urself.
2. They suggest that u get an inferior job to their own (or ask why u won’t apply for food stamps, go to the church nearby on Sunday afternoons and grab yourself some free food, when u mention ur hrs are being cut). It is a sugar-coated insult, a dagger beneath the velvet glove; and usually comes not from a sense of superiority, but inferiority. Which is why when a colleague who washes dishes for a living, and wears a double extra sized large shirt and an extra large (male size) pants asked me why I wouldn’t do “home care”, I replied “leEdlem alasayew!” vechemently. While she looked at me as if she’s trying to figure me out, see something that’s of value that has eluded her notice, and while my heart beat against my ribs with righteous anger, I knew another blog post was in order.

Ofcourse, she isn’t the first person to ask me if I would like to do home care. I’ve been asked by those who saw it as the better option to starving; like Z, who has lived in Germany for 12 years, before coming to America, and seen it all. And I’ve been asked by those who saw it as a way to shut me up. When hearing my vechement objection, almost all of them have mentioned how “THEY” have or were about to do it. And if they have done it, they are saying, I shouldn’t be above it. But until this colleague asked the question, and looked at me like I was putting airs, their questions/suggestions hasn’t bothered me much. I do not put airs, infact I consider myself much more humble than many an Ethiopian men with half my IQ and ability to type like the wind. Still, I’m used to being seen like I was since other people, and not you, are supposed to know your values, and tell it to you. Even then, you are supposed to feign ignorance, protest against the compliments and shoot them down one by one to the best of your ability.

I said I am used to being seen like I was putting airs because, despite the many adversaries saying and trying to prove me otherwise, I’ve tried to hold onto my values and worth with firm, if slightly white-knuckled, hands. There were friends who couldn’t understand why I am refusing to play along in the games that women are supposed to participate in whether they liked it or not. Put that lipstick, they have advised. Do that makeup. Get that man! One has even screamed “this is Seattle, abesheet!” to indicate that the small number of straight men available in this cold place I’ve started calling ”my home away from home” do not go for women whose skin is spotted like liver. There was the mother. The Secretarial Science diploma. And the weight scale that told me, in no uncertain terms, that I wasn’t meant to be a writer, a wonderer, a dusty-foot “why”-sayer. (I wasn’t a size zero, I cared about what I wore and didn’t spit pieces of cha’at every time I opened my mouth to speak. So it was hard for many to accept as valuable my literary asteyayets and poetry-gimgeMas). And, above all, there has been America!

Through all this, that and that other adversary, I’ve tried to live by what I believed and fake-smiled only on professional basis. Values, I’ve told myself as would a Dickensian Banker “business”, values are what makes you unique. You are, after all, black and not a size zero and have none of the excuses that makes men like Sebhat Gebregziabher get away with living below their brains. I also know how those values can be compromised and put aside for the common good. There is a time, as the preacher would say [and usually a place ..  called "home") to think yourself too fine to do odd jobs that would, literally, get the hands dirty. And there is a time in which the damn rent [that’s too damn high!!] should be forked, cost what it might.

However.. why does home care has to be the Rome, the “rite of passage” to “Coming to America” that all abeshas need to go through!? Wouldn’t the vengeful gods who take down notes and do calculations to square what went around with what comes around, make shit happen, be all kismet-y, be content unless they see me deal in doodle?!

10 things I hate about you

Santa came to me this morning and asked if I’ve seen his elves.

Before you decide I’ve gone and done it, that close calls in the form of a drug-unrelated bust at my ex-employers’ that resulted in my having to give my social security number to and posing for a mug-shot for the local police, black-Friday car-accidents [that left none of the “teGechis”, three in total, none the wiser], and realizing life must be held lightly in America if one was to have a sane moment with one self have made me start hearing voices; I will have you know I’m in full control of my faculties. Gebriellin!!. And the Santa I’m talking about isn’t the north-pole dweller who keeps reindeers for company and uses sleighs to move from spot A to spot B, robbing himself of much needed exercise, but an average Joe. An average Joe, i mean to say, minus all things average (atleast 300 pounds, has a white hair that reminds one of the driven snows mentioned in either Isaiah or Jerimiah, and a curly mustache that would “masnaQ” curly mustaches of the 60’s). He comes around this time of year, I’ve been told, to have tourists and colleagues’ families sit on his lap and have their photos taken.

I wore a grave look and told him I haven’t seen his elves [my two female co-workers haven’t turned up yet, wearing greenish outfits and long faces that clearly say, despite the bad economy and the extra-pay the day would earn them, they would rather be anywhere else than in those ridiculous costumes], feeling sorry for the weight of his outfit, all the woolen heaviness of it, that he’d have to wear in our properly heated entertainment room before sitting himself in an arm-chair and subjecting himself to the agonizing duty of having to do a merry laugh, say “Ho! Ho! Ho!” and listen to kid’s endless requests for things he has no way of delivering. It’s a tough way to earn a living, even if you got to only do it for a month a year and there are worse things that could happen to you than be the center of attention and get paid for your looks!

I was gonne try to distract him by asking what his daily job was and if keeping himself a size 3XL to resemble Saint Nicholas won’t interfere with it [Mrs. Santa’s sex life and his health] when he lifted his hands despondently. “I need them to zip me up,” he said “it’s the one thing I can’t do”. I was about to comment anybody, save for a contortionist, would be hard pressed to zip themselves up all the way to the middle of their back [I can’t get to mine using a back scrubber as tall as my arm]; when he asked if I could do it for him. “Sure”, I said, perked at having been chosen to play a Santa’s helper. I zipped the man up, put a snap-button on the back of his neck and assisted in sewing a safety pin on his belt. I almost gave his shoulder a slap of approval when the striking resemblance to the real thing [you know what I mean!] made me withdraw the arm. I don’t know if you have ever heard your abro-adeg Tesfaye “BeQolo”, nick-named so due to the oddly-shaped front teeth, being referred to as “Teacher Tesfaye” by those who haven’t seen him “chiQa ma’aDat” and shoot with a “koba temenja” when Kiremt comes around. But that’s the sensation helping Santa dress gave me. As if I have “medfered” the illustrious toy-dispenser. Caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to do. Would get a “C minus” on the “tsebai” section of my report card.

Remember now, don’t forget for a minute, that this is a man I didn’t grow up with the belief of! I neither told him my secrets, nor hoped to be rewarded for my good deeds. [Egziabher was more of a probation officer than a friendly ghost]. This guy was as foreign to me as he is to all 3rd world country kids. Alas, here I was dancing in attendance of him and taking great pride in earning a genial smile in return. Not to mention how I kept feelig I should probably go ahead and refer to him as “Guad Santa”; which is what MenGye would have referred to him as, had he made his reverence-ness’ acquaintance before the local kids got dragged out to hand the old man flowers they’ve been holding for half a day [never understood that part, by the way, how seriously we take the little things we could do without. And how ridiculous our seriousness make us look. Teddy Afro, my once again favorite singer, once said, when handed one at arriving Dulles Airport before his arrest, “yeAger meri asmeselachihugn eko”. That made me chuckle with delight and recognition].

“Alright,” I concluded, respectuflly re-tracing my steps back to my office, “I will see you — at 12?!”. Then watched as Santa trudged the up-hills of our esteemed building’s stairs on his way to the clock card machine where he punches his hour-in and would stagger back after eight hours to punch his hour-out.

It ain’t easy beig a king, I remember Mel Brooks’ character saying on “History of the World”. Neither seems being Santa Claus!.

Breaking out – PG-32

A complete stranger, a real bad boy. He smelled of cigarettes. I don’t know if you have ever kissed a man whose lips have the hint of cigarette. And who had had a beer, Budweiser – the blue can, to calm his nerves down (he doesn’t do this often, he assures you; you don’t tell him you’ve never done this – ever. That you wouldn’t have thought you’d do this a year, six months, ago. That you’d stop being pissed off when a guy looks you up and down, “like he knows what you look like without your Shimmy”, as Scarlett O’hara would say. That you would start re-examining your childhood teachings: Why it is that you feel disrespected and not complimented when a man’s eyes say, “hey, I can go for that!”. Why it is you are no longer the girl you were as recently as a year ago, when you still believed someone would come, listen and wanna stick around despite your mediocre looks, despite your continuous self-awareness and self-criticism, despite your honesty. That you’ve been healed of your idealism through sweat, blood & tears). A cute guy with blue eyes, and dark circles around his eyes that makes him look fatigued and slightly menacing. A man with strong arms with bulging veins. He sits next to you, willing to bid his time. He takes your fingers in his hand, squeezes and kisses them reverently. He breathes nervously and waits while you caress those veins. You are feeling dizzy from the excitement of having him there (having actually allowed him to be there, having actually considered it and let it happen). And your fingers are communicating just that. He asks, quietly, while your shoulder pushes against his playfully; if he can kiss you now. “Can I kiss you now?” he whispers. And how can you resist? You let him kiss you. And he lets you kiss him back. Lips wrestle, tongues caress, teeth knocks against teeth. His breath is intoxicating, cigarette, beer, a male member of the human animal kingdom. Intimacy, warmth, desire. And the minted-gum you still have tucked underneath your tongue, the same flavor as his mouth-wash, which you’d almost choke on later. You whisper little nothings in between kissing and taking breath. He talks about how he liked the way your bra felt against his chest, you say how you missed being so close to another human-being, and wonder how you went for so long without it. Soon, you are tugging at the buttons of his shirt and he is trying to bring down the aforementioned bra. He wants only one thing from you. He’s never made it a secret. Yet, that doesn’t upset you in anyway. You throw all your teachings out the window, you kick caution outside the door (except, ofcourse, the cautious reminder to keep the rubber within reach), and let him take you where he’s been wanting to even before you met. You allow yourself to be led, willing and eager to follow. And then…

He is a stranger no more.

“Weraj ale”: Columbia city

There aren’t many smart things about the smart phone. And most apps are meant to make you an asshole. However, for the curious observer, there are boundless opportunities which these hi-fi tech gadgets [which i love the sound of ] provides. Easy to carry, cordless Cameras that you don’t need to carry to the printers every time you need to dossier your memories is one of them. Speaking of dossiers, I’ve been thinking I should “dossier” my Seattle experiences to my readers. So it can serve as a travel-guide, history mixed with smart ass [usually a first impression, stretched out of shape]. A “honey stop the car”, as npr would have it. I’d call mine “weraj ale”, for “driver, stop the bus” is a tad too long for a title.

Columbia city, then. It is a city within a city. Surrounded by trees and housing the columbia public library and the columbia city funeral home side by side [the dead can't read, i cleaverly thought when seeing it first, so the books gotta go]; it’s the center of contradictions. Like every neighbourhood west of Jackson street, Columbia city is known for being “black”. Its inhabitants live off beer and new port cigarettes; which they pay for using their EBT cards, $1.65 plus tax. But unlike most ghettos, it’s main attraction isn’t the golden arc of Macdonald’s burger joint. Neither does the smell of kentucky’s fried chicken draw you the map to where the poor and the obese commune. It’s black, yet places that serve beer out of bottles, and not cans, the overweight dog-walker and the white couple who always seem to enjoy each other’s company are as abundant as at, say, Queen Anne.

Once upon a time, people would tell you, Columbia city used to be the place where shit happened. Where the hassler, the prositute and the homeless lived by the rules that governed Rainier avenue. Expressions like “snitches get stiches”, were, therefore, not totally unfamiliar to most. Not anymore. It’s been cleaned, the inhabitants would tell you somehow wistfully, gone damn straight. The homeless are being evacuated, the prostitutes have become too old for the trade, and the hassler whose occassional girlfriend no longer pays for his Olde-English collects cigarette butts and offers his one good jacket [moping the floor, traking the trash out, anything] to pay for his pint. Thanks to rentless under cover cops and high-paying investors, and arty-shmarty-types [theatre groups, run-down cinema owners, anti-war and women's right activists], the neighbourhood is becoming more white than it is black. Soon, it’s old timers worry, there won’t be a trace of the colorful characters that used to roam it’s streets, like lost souls of yore. It maybe an oxymoron, therefore, that outisde one of the raws of cafeterias bearing names of foreign food: pizza, thai, wabi sabi [and Solom Ethiopian Restaurant, where we stopped by for the Sambussa, an avid reminder of our Timket days at "Jan Meda", where we chewed it to the last lentil before walking to the circle made around a harmonica playing young man and bashful girls that would not dance unless dragged to the middle]; you will step on this sign. “Cast of Cultures – 1999″, it reads. It then explains how the casts are meant to celebrate the diverse cultures dwelling in this city within a city.

There is the lotus buddha, two straw-hat wearing vietnamese farmers, a big woman with manly shoulders and a hair do that I can only imagine makes her a Simoane [and a bunch of wild animals representing cultures who call this part of Seattle "home"; the colorful attired Chinese dragon, a crow in flight and a proud rooster ready to do his Cocka-doodle-doo]. And then an ethiopian priest!; who doesn’t look like he would want to celebrate anything anytime soon. Infact, and if he is like every other Ethiopian that lives in neighbourhoods that aren’t swarming with abeshas, he will probably walk around with his nose in the air – the picture of [self] disgust and disapproval, calling the handicapped “ankasa”, and shaking his head solemnly when offered a free food sample.

I bet.

The “fat” question

After learning I’ve moved to Seattle and sensing all was not well in paradise, an ex-colleague of mine joined facebook and requested for a latest picture of me and my husband’s. “Chris looks good”, her comment read, “yekesa yimselal”. Half annoyed at being reminded that our values are evolving/devolving into values that used to not be ours and half interested (how is it that we seem to excel in catching up to the world on all things superficial; the airlines.. fiber optic broadbands.. the dishing of “peace keeping” squads for troubled neighbours when we can ill-afford to feed ourselves; how .. like all societies full of people with a low-self esteem.. we’ve always been over-eager to show the rest of the world that when it comes to the question of ‘who minus who’, ‘yabarere endemaiyzen’. Is there a wonder our only and consistent achievement seems to be in the field of “rucha”?!), I asked “Is that how ‘abatochachin’ talked about their dinbertegna/balaNtas nowadays? ‘Ahunima… min… Qetno amrobet..?!”

This colleague is a hard-core fan of the “healthy living” mantra; she tries to “eat healthy”, cutting a once a week 1.25 cents bag of potatoe chips from her meal, despite her weekly trips to “atkilt tera” which provides her with a more or less balanced diet of organic foods; despite her dodging animal and diary products twice a week (and “metsom metseleying”, “Qomo masQedesing” on those long seasons of fisleta and asra sidist), despite not owning a car and walking when she can’t get a bus; despite a family of 5 to feed and no serategna to help out and last, but not least, despite her inability to afford to buy meat as much as her kids and husband wants her to anyway [Chris was pleasantly surprised to observe, while he was living in Ethiopia, that this is the funny thing about the poor in America and the poor in abesha-land: we can't afford to eat unhealthy, and they can't afford to eat healthy]. Still, in her pursuit to look whatever it is she thinks being skinny would make her look like, the one thing she will probably not stop to think is: Why does she hate being fat so much? More importantly, why does she fear it? [For we hate what we fear, and we fear what we feel in our guts is what we are on the outside, right?].

The fact that we fear it, like some epidemic, some birth deformity, some ‘bemilas yimiders’ curse, there is no question. Cigarettes come with warning labels, anti-smoking campaigns and fines. They come - with cancer! Yet none of it would make you wanna reach for your Marlboro/Rothmans less. However, watch the movie “Feed” and see if you’d wanna go near food for a month to come. None of us are immune to it, either. Unlike race and stupidity, it’s something that can happen to any one of us.

Yet when it’s considered not a nice form for .. say.. whites to make fun of blacks [it IS, Uncle Sam would assure you; a defect/an absence, despite it being a presence and nothing to do with actual presence of color], or tall people at small people, or the ‘aynama’ @ the blind,  the sharp-witted at the dull-brained [unless for purely comical purposes); despite all these forms of acceptable social behavior, when it comes to fat people, the one struggle that makes most of us brothers and sisters [more sisters than brothers, perhaps! Metabolism - as everything else in this world- is kinder to men], we are merciless! The fat kid is the bully of the playground on Hollywood movies. A wallstreet banker is a “big fat” liar. It is the fat and the obese, ”Sostu tebdel sewoch”, that keep the “proletariat” in bondage [and the proletariat, the skinny mass, who is brave and selfless and who lives within its limits, has nothing to lose but its chains!!]. I’ve even heard a radio “tiri” to Los Angelons when I was there last that started with ‘are you wearing last years shorts? Please don’t make our beautiful city ugly by showing your fat”. An actual radio “lifefa”, I shit you not!

So why do we frown at this common disease, this mighty public enemy, this deformity in the form of a “disability” - of not being able to burn more than you eat?