by: Fasil

"YiftuN Abba!" said Admassu, tears welling up in his bloodshot eyes; his hair shaggy, his shirt filthy and his mouth rimmed with milky gunk. "YiftuN sile Mariam!"

He hadn't slept for nights, and lately, he had lost his desire to eat. A sin he had once committed had come to haunt him, and it had been torturing him mercilessly.

"Igziabher yiftah lije. Min haTiat sertehal?" asked the priest, fingering his lush beard and salivating to hear the secret, no doubt a sordid one, that had turned the young man into a frightening sight like one raised from the dead; and then to impose a fitting penance.

"Hamus let yezare sost wor…" began Admassu to unload his guilt, weeping copiously.

On that Thursday, Admassu had left work early. He had just found out that his superior at the post office in Addis Ababa, where he worked as a clerk, had passed him and promoted a colleague two years his junior. Outraged, he had then stormed into his boss's office where he had ranted and shed a few tears. After quietly watching him, the boss had told him point blank that the promotion had been given based not on seniority but on performance; that his work had not been up to snuff lately, and that unless he strived to do better, his future at the post office seemed rather precarious. Admassu had walked out angry, hurt and humiliated.

He was utterly humbled, and in no state to wait until the end of the workday. He wanted to get away, to lick his wound in the privacy of his home and to try to erase from his memory the blatant contempt his boss had shown him.

As he was staggering homeward, impaled to the crucifix of his disgrace and contemplating a slew of fantastic acts of retribution, a beggar's insistent plea for alms caught his ear.

"In the name of Saint Mary!" said a man again and again with outstretched hands, his eyes searching for signs of sympathy in the faces of the passersby. There was nothing unusual about beggars in Addis Ababa sitting on the sidewalk. The city teemed with them. But something in the man's plaintive refrain latched onto Admassu's attention, and he approached him.
"For the sake of Saint Mary," lilted the man again, hope brightening his sun-scorched face.
"Are you new to the city?"
"Yes, sir."
"I can tell, you see? Is he your son?"
"Yes, my own son."
A boy of about seven or eight with emaciated limbs and a belly bloated like a tout balloon sat beside him wearily munching on a piece of dry bread. Chronic hunger had turned his hair red and his large, haunting eyes vacantly stared at Admassu.
"The only one God has left me," the man said raising the edge of his earth colored, tattered ghabi to his eyes.
"Did you have other children?"
"I had three. Two died in the famine and their mother went after them. We were left all alone in an empty house surrounded by death, and no one to bury us if we died. When I knew there was no hope, I carried him on my back and went to Dessie."
"When did you come from Dessie?"
"Five days ago, sir."
"Why did you leave Dessie? Is it better here?"
"Yes, it is. It is much better here. All those escaping the famine in the north have gone to Dessie. There are too many there. More than the town can feed. It is not easy to get enough to keep body and soul together."
Admassu thought that the man might be in his forties, although he seemed older. Hunger had chewed him up and the shriveled muscles of his arms and legs clung to his bones under flaccid skin.
"Where did you live before you went to Dessie?"
"Lasta, sir. A land of God-fearing Christians."

Lasta! The land of abject poverty and religious fanaticism! No other land in Ethiopia is as hopelessly infertile as Lasta. Hilly, denuded, and long since badly stripped of its soil, the rocky expanse of Lasta exacts revenge for the unabated plunder it has endured for centuries by swallowing emaciated human corpses killed by the inclement aridity of its bosom. When a zealot emperor by the name of Lalibela made Lasta the seat of his government, he had littered the land with numerous churches, and fierce piety has since then become the defining character of the folks there. The region has been settled on for thousands of years and the land has been ransacked to utter exhaustion. Whenever there is shortage of rain, Lasta is often hit the hardest, and its people, malnourished even in relatively better years, starve to death.

"Why would God send a famine to a land of God-fearing Christians?"
The question had the man taken aback and he looked at Admassu quietly for a few seconds.
"Who can question His wisdom? He made us, He takes us as He wishes," he mumbled as though talking to himself.
Admassu sniggered staring at the man's massive feet and his gruesomely cracked heels.
"Very truly said! Very true, indeed! Well, I have nothing much to spare, but if you want, you can come to my house and I will give you something to eat."
The boy, who till then had been chewing bread listlessly, came to with a flicker in his eyes and was the first to rise to his feet. The man heaved himself up leaning on a stick, and holding his son by the hand, followed Admassu.
"God will pay you tenfold, kind sir. The soul of this boy's mother will pray for you."

Admassu walked a few paces ahead of them, turning back every now and then to make sure they hadn't lost him. As they approached the house, he slackened his pace and let them catch up with him.
"Do you like lamb?" he asked the man suddenly.
"Who doesn't like lamb, sir?"
"There is roasted lamb and beef stew in my house, left from yesterday," he said and noticed how the boy's stony face became animated.
He opened the door and walked in, while the two squatted on bare earth by the door. Admassu then piled up on a metal tray a cold mess of leftover: charred strips of roasted lamb mixed with broken pieces of injera soaked in beef stew, a royal feast for the famished father and son. He put the food on a table and asked them to come in.

Admassu had never given anything to beggars. Countless times he had, without the slightest qualm, smugly walked through a swarm of desperate panhandlers clamoring to win his pity. He wouldn't have noticed the man if the degrading event at work hadn't made him feel like a worthless, dispensable nonentity. Because he had been belittled, he was desperate for a means to redeem his trampled on self-esteem, a chance to resuscitate his battered ego by wielding power over another human being. Not until the hungry father and son left the sidewalk and followed him lured by his promise of a sumptuous dinner did that painful sense of powerlessness crumble inside him and vanish.

"I believe this is a Christian home, sir?" said the man following his son to the table. Admassu grinned. The moment of vengeance had come. Where is the thrill of power if not in using it to crush those at your mercy? He replaced the humble, hesitating, lanky figure of the man with the well-fed, toad-bellied bulk of his superior's, and a cold glint of malice crept into his eyes.
"I am afraid not," he replied. "I would have told you earlier if I had thought a starving beggar would care much what kitchen his dinner came from."
The man's face darkened instantly and he stared aghast at Admassu for a long while. "But why, sir? What have we done to you?" he asked hollowly, his lips trembling.
He then roughly pulled his son away from the table and quietly left without looking back. Admassu stood at the door and watched them till they vanished from his sight. Then, he sat down with a ghost of a smile, nibbling on a piece of meat and exulting at his triumph. The evil lie he had used to humiliate the beggar had miraculously freed him from the grip of impotence. Or so he had thought for a moment.

"YiftuN Abba! YeQum siol worsoNal !" he groaned wringing his hands.

The priest was speechless for quite a while.

"Igziabher yiftah lije!" he whispered to him finally, and this time, he meant it.