“There are still teachers that beat their students,” interrupted the skinny man sitting next to him who had been shielding himself with his newspaper, hoping that his interruption would mean that the old man would stop this trek down memory lane.
“In our time...” the old man continued, “the teachers used to beat the students severely. There was one teacher who used to amaze me. If a student was bad, he would make them select the very stick that they would be whipped with. What a guy, Teacher Chekol! I will never forget what he did to me once. He told me to go and get the stick I was going to be whipped with. Oh, beautiful youth... I said okay and left the classroom.”
The old man paused and studied the passengers, who were suddenly turned toward him in anticipation, fully engaged by his story. He was shocked. He knew that the story did not have an ending that warranted either interest or laughter. He regretted that he had even begun it, and looked for some excuse to stop. He began coughing, resting his head on his son’s shoulder. But then his coughing fit would not subside.
“Pops, quiet down your hacking, we’re trying to listen to the radio,” said the weyala.
The passengers who had been saving their laughter for the old man’s story released it instead at this snide comment.
The fat woman’s phone rang in the backseat. She answered it and began talking in English: “Hello, yes, I am inside this taxi. Yes, inside that minibus. You are inside the minibus also? Yes, we can see each other tonight.” While the fat lady was talking, she threw angry looks at the other passengers. She suspected they were judging her questionable command of English. “Stop the taxi please!” she snapped.
“Stop,” said the weyala. “Stop for her,” he repeated. The passengers watched her quietly as she got out of the taxi.
“I also had difficulty with English.” It was the drunk. “I’m telling the truth; when it got too difficult for me, I hired a hopeless Indian guy to teach me for four hundred birr a month. A year later, the Indian had learned perfect Amharic and then we began to communicate really well.”
The student sitting in the front passenger seat had remained quiet after the young woman’s mention of her boyfriend. When he heard laughter from the people in back, he thought they were making fun of him.
The young woman was in fact on her way to visit her boyfriend, who she saw once a month. He would meet her at their usual café and then, just like the month before, treat her to a slice of cake and a macchiato; after that they would start talking. What they had to say to one another would be over in the span of a few minutes, and then they’d stare at each other. Because silence freaked him out, the boyfriend would ask for the bill. To fill in the silence while they waited, he’d pull out the newspaper he had rolled up in his back pocket and begin reading. She would pull out her organizer and mark the day of the next lottery drawings and the beginning of her next menstrual cycle. A few minutes later, they’d get a room and hurry to the bed. Another few minutes and he would turn on the television and begin watching a European football game. Lying beside him, she’d count the pimples on his back.
Sitting next to the student in the taxi, thinking about her life, it all seemed as bland as an old silent movie. “Why are you so quiet?” she asked the student.
“I was thinking about something,” he answered, perking up.
“What about?”
“About your boyfriend... If a woman is desired and liked by many, her partner should be happy. A musician would not write a great song and then insist on being the only one to hear it. When a guy has a beautiful girlfriend and buys her huge glasses like yours to shield her eyes from onlookers, it seems a shame to me.”
The young woman tried to think of some way to contradict the student but the radio was blaring, “Last week saw the passing of St. Valentine’s Day...” She decided to just listen to the student talk about love.
Encouraged by her silence, the student was about to continue when one of the passengers in the back said, “There is no such thing as St. Valentine! Only Christ Jesus is blessed!” It was the short skinny man hiding behind the newspaper.
The weyala turned to the short skinny man and was reminded of the sermon in which he’d learned that the flesh is the dwelling of the soul. This skinny guy’s soul must be homeless, he thought to himself.
The driver now turned around and joined the fray: “The Holy Mother has the power to plead!”
“Good point! But I prefer not to talk about things that are not written in the Bible,” answered the man without meat on his bones, preparing for a good debate.
“What are you implying about the Holy Mother?” said the man in the tattered rags enjoying his free ride. All eyes turned to him; the beggar wanted to repay the driver’s kindness while at the same time participate in a discussion that would allow him to be forgotten as a beggar and remembered as a spiritual debater. He saw the opportunity rolled out before him and jumped on it. “I don’t think you have read what Prophet Isaiah said. He said, um... Isaiah said—”
“What did Isaias Afwerki say?” the weyala interrupted.
Most of the passengers laughed, but the beggar with the free ride was immediately forgotten.
The student sitting in the front was not happy with the turn of this spiritual debate. He was afraid religious talk would make its way to the front and hinder his attempts at getting the young woman’s number. His fears quickly came true.
“You’re suggesting something God wouldn’t like,” said the young woman with a frown.
He didn’t want to have to backtrack now; he had learned from the story of the Queen of Sheba that love is the art of deception. He understood he would not be able to get rid of the religious air that had surfaced in the taxi. So he attempted to use it to his advantage. “I don’t know much about the Bible,” he said humbly, with a smile, “but I read that David took Absalom’s wife even though he had many of his own.”
“You’re wrong, it wasn’t Absalom’s, it was Uriah’s,” she said.
“You’re right... Anyway, no Bible forbids the exchange of phone numbers. Will you give me yours?”
Without hesitating, she gave it to him. He then gave her his number, which she saved on her phone under a girl’s name before leaving the minibus. He turned to look at her after she stepped out and noticed that as she got farther away, she grew more beautiful. He wished the cacophony of the minibus would disappear so he could keep her voice in his head, but the debate in the backseat was heating up.
“The Lord is the driver of the universe! For example, you drive this minibus; we trust you and ride in this minibus; you take us where we want to go. In much the same way, the Lord is the driver of this earth. In the end He will come; let us make ourselves clean and wait for Him, my brothers. Let us not be faced with what the proverb says: The wedding guests are here, begin preparing the berbere.”
The driver was flattered to be compared to the Lord by this backseat preacher and so kept quiet.
“Yes, my brothers,” the preacher continued, “let us make ourselves clean and wait for Him. ”
“Say what you will, the price of berbere has nothing to do with me,” said the drunk who had been half listening. “The doctor told me to stop eating it while prices are still low.”
From there, the discussion turned to berbere, salt, and other goods. When the student heard this, something occurred to him. Spending four years on the university’s campus, he never once worried about the price of goods. He had forgotten that the market existed at all; he had even forgotten that injera came from tef. The institution where he was spending four years was a place of knowledge. Yet he did not even know who Angelina Jolie was.