aqumada

By Wegesha

The details become hazier as the years pile up and my own memory starts failing me but I must have been no older than 10 or 11 at the time because I clearly remember having plenty of leg room in the back seat of the tiny sedan my parents proudly considered a transportation vehicle. That by itself is another indication of the time which has slowly started to fade away - a time when anything that outpaced a donkey was considered a transportation vehicle, a time when any metallic container was a cherished automotive spare part and a time when I had started counting my age in double digits.

That afternoon, after mom picked us up from school she stopped at a grocery store to collect a few items to complete the weekly shopping. As it was the highlight of my day, I stepped out of the car and followed my mom into the store and immediately started prancing up and down the aisles unit I came across a rack that had a stack of pacifiers. I stood in front of the rack for a while pondering what my mom's response would be if I asked her to buy me one of these plastic gizmos and then, without hesitation, I decided it would be better if I took matters into my own hands. Thus, a pacifier inexplicably found its way into my pocket before I joined my mom near the cashier's booth. I was just seconds away from a clean getaway when a store clerk who had apparently waited for me to return the plastic doohickey finally gave up and asked for the pacifier back in front of my mom, at the same time securing my fate.

Now, if you are a non-abesha person you should know the deeply ingrained abesha belief that everyone needs physical punishment every now and then. Even if you haven't done anything wrong parents and teachers will give you the occasional whipping as if it is a vaccine intended to boost the effectiveness of the previous shot you had a year ago. But I knew what awaited me was the Ethiopian version of the Spanish inquisition. I pleaded to god through a torrent of blasphemy hoping he would change me into a pillar of salt like Lot's wife but it was the mid 80s and god's network was jammed by requests from Wello and Tigraye. To make matters worse, all the belts hanging in my parent's closet boasted a "Made in Italy - Genuine Leather" imprints (where the hell was China with their vinyl imitation knock-offs ready to stuff my dad's closet who had a special appreciation for matching government enforced khakis with brand name Italian belts). All I could count on to save me intact was my mom's fitness which I figured would force her to quit the beating in less than one hour. The moment we got home I was disrobed of everything, my arms were tied to the bed post and my mom went to work putting hide to skin only to fall short of the predicted one hour mark by about 20 minutes.

My parents can hardly be considered strict disciplinarians by any measure but there were two rules of the house that were set in stone and deviating from the set path never proved to be a wise choice. "Do not steal" was the first rule which always seemed crystal clear to understand but the second rule said "interpretation of the first rule is left to parents" and through trial and error we discovered "do not steal" also meant "do not lie", "do not cheat", "do not talk back when spoken to" and many more things. The funny thing is, whatever the impressionable young mind had absorbed at a young age, it would have to unlearn at an older age when the brain realizes the existence of a double standard for judging everything. Such were my college years.

Many incidents have happened in those years allowing me to observe conflicting judging standards of many sorts but it is always things that personally affected me that have left the lasting impressions. A final exam in calculus is one such instance. I finished the exam with ample time to spare but remained at my desk ‘cause I had noticed an abesha friend of mine struggling with one of the questions. The professor, having noticed the commotion between the two of us, kicked me out of the exam (I am sure my dreadlocks didn't portray the best of images either) but puzzled while grading the exam papers he decided to give me an "incomplete" for the class. It turns out I had gotten an "A", which the professor thought I was incapable of until I presented my transcript so he can check my past grades. I had been caught cheating red-handed and while I deserved an "F" I was spared by the grace of my past performance. I had done nothing special to be the recipient of such a lenient judgment and I had simply moved on saying "the world works in mysterious ways."

School has never really been my thing which is probably why I religiously adhered to the common abesha expression "tackle school with the same measured pause you would an uphill climb." School was also a privilege that cost a mighty whopping sum and hence provided its own measured pauses regardless. During those unenviable days when school was the furthest thought on my mind and pride had kept me muffled, I found myself dead broke, without a dime to my name, and constantly wondering where the next meal would come from. Limited by options and a system I wasn't too familiar with, I resorted to stealing. The item I stole - Food. For all the punishment my parents had meted out as a deterrent, I neither felt remorse, nor compunction nor shame but instead became keenly aware how much dependency existed between memory and food. It was almost comical. The memory of the beating I had received from my mom crept up from the depths of the subconscious only after my growling stomach had been satiated with stolen food. Easy it was for those whose vision shows them things as black or white to pass judgment but to my parents, who were capable of seeing the grey of situations and didn't always believe things had to be strictly either good or bad and nothing else, the best action they could take was to reserve judgment. Once again, I had done the unthinkable, a crime that would have had my arms chopped off in Saudi Arabia, and yet my harshest critics had let it slip by with the all too casual "shit happens" attitude.

The slack response of my parents is not uncommon and I am slowly starting to become familiar with it. The variable factor, I am finding out, is how you tell the story. The proper self introduction makes or breaks the story so I ease into it by saying "while I was in medical school......... blah, blah, blah" followed by the story of my thievery days. The first statement has never failed to take the shock out of the second one. It almost seems safe to assume one's current social status has a nullifying effect on past deeds. I am certainly not the authority on this since there are millions out there who believe confession to a priest is what nullifies past deeds and many more who believe (rightfully so I may add) money and power accomplishes the same feat. Those who believe in luck also manage to score occasional success. Whatever the mojo may be, it is not a bad idea to have a little bit of it because to err is human and we all inevitably will need to be bailed out at some point - like when summoned by a disciplinary committee during your junior year of undergrad. There had been a scholarship offered for minority students who had taken a certain number of credits and have maintained their GPA above a certain point. There was only one catch; the recipient had to be a U.S citizen or a green card holder. So there I was, facing the disciplinary committee, to answer for my actions, for having benefited from false claims. Gone were the days when I could give anyone who questioned me a glazed look and simply stutter out "me... understandingness... little... little... English" and everything used to go back to normal. "...it was the only way I could continue to go to school" I answered the committee with a resignation of one who had already used up his last lucky card. In a weird recurrence of déjà vu a secretary was asked to produce my transcript while I sat and mulled over the possibilities of the outcome. The transcript was passed around, studied, flipped over and whatnot before the final verdict was passed - ‘Please don't do it again.' I left the room not knowing exactly what to make of that. I had lied to take advantage of what was not intended for me and those responsible for penalizing me used a different measure to determine my sin's worth in the end deciding to show me the way out of the office.

My own list is long and I could go on and on forever but it is perhaps wise to acknowledge that it is in the nature of humans (the same ones that make up governments, states, monetary institutions etc...) to use a double standard when casting judgment about everything and it has always been the quest of the judged to find themselves on the favorable side of the judgment.

In unrelated story, I remember when I was a medical student and the intensity of the curriculum and sleepless nights ............blah, blah, blah............I stole the hearts of two unsuspecting women. Care to judge me now?