He’s going to surprise, your beautiful fiancé. It has been some time since you treated her to one of your surprises, sweet or tasteless. And she deserved some. Yes, he isn’t the model would-be husband some family planning group would love to use for a poster boy. Even his mom who believes you’re created with all the blessings no one on earth enjoyed chooses to differ on this point. She doesn’t think he’s any close to the kind of husband any girl craving for a good family life dreamt of. Yes, he has his faults. But then, who doesn’t?
His fiancé was that little soul whom God created to show mankind how nice He can be when He felt like it. One word missing from her vocabulary is ‘no.’ Let alone her future hubby, no one remembers any event where she said, “No.” And our guy loved her even more for that. (Just imagine yourself in his place. A guy whose better half never says “No!” If that isn’t a blessing, what is?”) I mean come on, you can’t think of a more suitable partner than who thinks using the word “No,” is sacrilege or something. And she was living with him!
So that fine early evening he has the smartly packaged gold necklace in his pocket lest to make sure nothing out of the ordinary happens. In times when they say,” the thieves are so smart they can steal your tattoos from your arms,” you can’t blame him for being alert. The moment he takes it out the sun which by now was all the way down would resurface while dancing with joy. That will be one time when without any fireworks on anything like that on display the night sky would be bright as if it was a couple of hours past noontime.
She comes in not very smartly dressed; he was in the wrong to expect her to glide into the room dressed like ah Hollywood star on Oscar night. How could she? As far as she is concerned it was business as usual. She appeared she was back after an early evening workout. The only thing is that much of Addis, teeming with crowds as it does, is the last place where you could have an early evening workout.
“Honey;” he never, not even for a second his grumpy voice would sound so melodious. “You look tired. Is everything alright?”
“Yes; Dear, there’s something I want to tell you,” she says.
“Oh, there’s something I want to tell you, too,” he says smiling with all his sixty-four teeth and counting.
“Honey; I’m leaving you.”
“Who…what…what did you say, honey?”
“Sorry, I’m leaving you. May god be with you.” with that she just walks out into the early evening to whoever was waiting for her.
“Why? Why, Oh why did she do that?” that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? Now I told you he wasn’t the model would-be husband. Here is the story as it later came to light. The guy had two other girlfriends! And I’m not talking about the ‘blind date’ kind of girlfriends; I mean full-time girlfriends, the only difference being he lived with neither of them. His fiancé was fed the information through someone no one, not even she herself, knew. A video showing her hubby-to-be in the most uncompromising positions appeared on her telegram channel. That was it.
Barely a month or so into the breakup a friend calls;
“What’s going on?”
“What’s going on about what?”
“What’s going on between you and you fiancé?”
“We…we broke up. I think we’ll work it out.”
“Work it out! There’s nothing to work out! She was married last Sunday.”
This story happened four or five years back more or less as written with me the nice guy throwing out more intimate details it would be intrusion into the very private lives of the couple. His surprise, never g saw the light of day. Well I’ll tell you another surprise; with both of in the US now we were told a year or so back they run into each other in a D.C Ethiopian restaurant. They exchanged greetings, hugged, bade farewell and that was it. No bitterness.
I brought this up after some talk with mid-twentyish guys a couple of weeks back. These were youngsters who seem to be living at up while their limbs are strong and their wallets beefy. I mean there is nothing wrong with having good times. The only thing is how you go about it. By some curse of nature having a good times around here mostly means get so drunk that the next morning you wake up with splitting headache and the question to end all questions, “How the hell did I come home last night?
They were telling me and a couple of friends with not so strong limbs about girlfriends and all that. And I have to say though we used to hear a lot of things going after hours in this city their candid revelation that there was nothing wrong with having multiple girlfriends or sleeping with the spouses of others. Now I’m not you’re “the guy with the heart of gold” candidate but their mater-of-fact tone and the confidence in their demeanor was disturbing. Disturbing because they weren’t telling us about personal preferences but trends!
Should we be worried? You bet we should.
SUNDAY EDITION 30 JANUARY 2022
