By Essayias Lesanu
I was banished from home and went from fairy-tale fortune to bare and continual poverty. I had spent a decade in Germany before I came to US; and now I am earning my daily bread in pettiness. To be frank, I am working any job to get nowhere. Why?
How long have I been here?… emh… a good while, a year and half. It is not big deal. What is the difference between yesterday and today? Ugly enough, time is recorded on my face, in my muscles; I see its shadow moving across my childhood friends. I suspect there would be many areas in which I wouldn’t grow; my spirits remain childlike.
Not long ago, I traveled to Washington D.C by Greyhound bus. We were driving on a free way. Life would be interesting if there were such kind of free way for each of us.
My mind is always filled with different questions that need to be answered. I like simple questions, though. Do I like it here? How can I tell myself how I should like it? The passenger who was sitting beside me on this bus stared me up and down.
Pretty soon, he turned his face away as if he thought I didn’t realize he was staring. The fact of the matter is he saw my cloth. I never wore fancy clothes because I am not a person who wants to conceal his true self. Why do you judge a people by their clothes?
Do you have time to think about your life? Who said ‘life is too short’? I have plenty of time to contemplate my life.
I am like a boat which starts sailing without an engine or boat-hook. Even now I don’t know who placed me in the middle of this big ocean, nor who put my head into the lion’s mouth.
Can you imagine a person who doesn’t have the slightest idea where he is heading? After all, nobody knows where he is going or whether the worth of his actions are worthwhile. Why?
What have I gotten from life? I couldn’t say I have gotten money, house or authority. My conscience needs something totally different. Of course, until the age of 26 I didn’t know specifically what I really wanted. I was too ambitious to pursue a profession.
Once in a blue moon, my voice burst with joy, then life and death mingled together; that is why I love life.
I always listen my inner voice as if someone is there. I have been told that there is a drop of hope that keeps our lives going. Only God knows how long we should hope.
To be honest, this idea was shaped for me as result of a conversation that I had long ago with an old woman in church. She was 90 years old, but looked young, energetic and healthy. I believe that something other than medicine has enabled her to live such a long life. If I were her, I would be bored. You know? I went to church to prepare myself for life after death. She was praying aloud, and her loud prayers attracted my attention. She was praising and thanking God; I couldn’t see what this woman could possibly have to be thankful for. I wondered whether she had been promised a place in heaven. I had asked myself – did she get promise to have a place in heaven?
“Why do you thank God?” I asked her. Interestingly enough, she smiled at me.
“Because he has given me what I wanted!” she responded.
“Did you get money, a house, what?” I asked.
“I don’t have all those things, but my son, I am a happy woman!” she said.
Why?”
“My son” she said, “don’t equate my happiness with material possessions. I have never asked God to give me money!”
“So what did you ask?”
“I asked for pure conscience!”
Her words convinced me, and have been instilled in me ever since.
The bus stopped somewhere for an hour layover, and I was brought back to the present. As did many of the other passengers, I went to the bar and ordered a beer.
Why do I drink beer?
I wanted to get drunk, not to forget, but to tell the truth if there is such a thing. I sometimes deliberately try to create misleading impression of myself; because I want to rise above depressing, wretched facts of life.
Do I sound pessimistic? I am and proud of it. If anyone examined life realistically he would say the futures will be darker and worse than today. You know what makes some of my friends blind to the reality? Hypocrisy! They see themselves the end of the downward progression. These hypocritical delusions can be perilous.
After my second beer, I ordered some food. Hey! … why do you eat alone!? Because I was born alone! Of course, if I had true love for any one, I wouldn’t have eaten alone. I have both material and spiritual poverty. The most disgusting thing in this unjust and unfair would is that there are families who have no food as well as those who have food no community. Both cause me great pain. One is the copy, the other is the original. How could the family eat together if secret police knock at one’s door and taken away one’s daughter or son to God-knows-where. In my lifetime, I have seen both dying mother giving her last bits of food to her children and desperately poor parents selling their daughter into prostitution. Both are a daily reality.
Are your bored?… me? Yes! I am sorry… mankind is bored! Perhaps this is the principal cause of all our problems. We no longer know what to do with ourselves.
Am I really a man? I am like the character Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoveskey who wanted not a million dollars but an answer to his question.
I would be better off to turn a deaf ear to any question.
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Written in Ohio, June 1991