All We Need is Excuse -(a Short Story)

All We Need is Excuse    

Tariku Abas Etenesh

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"The dustbin is outside for a reason,” he heard a voice. He looked back from where he bent. A girl walked in, passed two rows, and threw herself onto the red padded greying middle seat to the left and slowly squeezed towards the window – face away.  

"This isn’t what you think.” 

“Trash is trash,” she said without turning. 

“This is not a simple bottle,” he said and immediately regretted saying it. It made no sense; at least it would not make sense for her.  

“Step back, doors closing,” the train chimed. 

 For a second, he thought of remaining onboard to explain.  

“Step back, to allow the doors to close.”

“Good night,” he said and stepped out leaving the bottle rolling on the floor. 

When the train slowly slithered away, his eyes were locked with the girl through the window. No hint of accusation was on her face -just a mix of bewildered amusement cuddled by a shy smile. Maybe she was reading his face too.

Walking home, he was overwhelmed; his mind flashed through the past three months like a poem he knew well. A poem whose title aspired to strike a balance between chaos and routine but vacillated into Untitled. A poem with a theme of measured recurrence constituting normalcy. A poem where the only words designated to carry the mechanics of meter, diction, brevity, rhythm, and economy were alarms, waking up, walking, running, tapping, passing, boarding, standing, sitting, arriving, and getting off and repeating. It was just last week he had asked himself, “is this all there is to life?” Now that poem with the theme of recurrence felt for him an archaic word that needed nuanced redefinition. 

What if magic is just the mundane perceived in a context of awe. What if it was him who made his experience monotonous and what if there was no monotony in life after all? What if no one is responsible for his happiness?

It happened after the boarding routine of his day, on the way back home. The scene from inside the train was as usual. He knew all the faces. Tension filled, communication staved, blank starves, suspicion tattooed gazes, sternness hooded souls whose eyes artfully trained to avoid seeking one another as if one’s sins were written on the forehead of the other. The train that more and more felt like storage full of punctuations randomly crammed together deprived of the words, sentence and paragraphs they naturally needed to thrive.

A succession of receding scenes punctuated by momentary darkness, incandescent tunnel lights, views of meadows, parks, and skyscrapers begged for ephemeral attentions before they swished back like a just passed second cast into eternity with a lure of permanence yet mocked by the just born second. 

He didn’t notice his surrounding for much of the ride until the 14thstop. The crowd that was standing near the door, where he sat had thinned away one stop at a time. A girl about twenty stood near the door holding on to the pillar, her eyes too looking outside like many of the riders. In front of him sat stern-faced youngsters comparing pictures from Facebook on each other’s phones. Two women sat on the opposing side both looking outside. A young man in white short-sleeved shirt and a rainbow tie sat next to him, he knew him from their regular rides together but never had exchanged words. His eyes too stared blankly outside on the fading tunnel light swishing back as the train raced ahead. Tired with that he turned inside the old man to his left gave me the casual smile of recognition that dimmed before it was complete. He did the same and moved his eyes to the floor where he saw an empty water bottle at the corner of the door to his right.  

As he was looking, the train turned on a curve moved the bottle to the middle of the floor, right in front of the door - a few inches away from the girl.  He read the label on the bottle Purified drinking water500 ml. Feeling a sense of being seen, he looked up, one of the Facebook sharing young men were looking at him looking at the bottle, and they shared a smile. The bottle rolled again and stopped right under the girl’s legs. She looked at it. By now the old man the two youngsters and the girl were looking at the plastic bottle. The girl felt hesitant between kicking the bottle away or leaving it there. Then it started to roll, to the two young men. All eyes seemed to have found a spot to rest without feeling guilty. One of the young men raised his legs to step on it but as if manipulated by an invisible hand the bottle rolled to the old man sitting right in front of him who bent to grab it, but before he could, the bottle rolled out of his hand- generating laughter from everyone. 

“Looks like, it likes me after all,” said the older woman who found the bottle rolled down near her feet. But like a strange game of invisible hands, the train stopped at the right time and rolled it away from her hands. 

Everyone laughed. 

“Funny ha,” said the young man sitting next to him. Today marks their third month riding the same train, and no words except for smiles were exchanged between them.  

“Let's see who it prefers,” said the lady.

Suddenly, everyone waited for the train to start moving and see where the bottle would head. It was as if everyone was waiting for it to happen. For some excuse to tear down the wall of sternness. As if the missing sentence that made everyone sad punctuations locked in their self-meaning was miraculously found.

“I am going to post this thing on Facebook,” said one voice. 

The fog of suspicion that he knew to hover over everyone in his other rides was not there. 

"Good night folks," said the old man before he left. 

"Good night, night, bye, have a good one,” a chorus of voices replied.

Just like the old man each rider said his version of goodbye. 

He was the last one left when he arrived at his destination. The bottle on the floor. I will let it be there he thought, but then he hesitated to pick it up and throw it away.  He bent and again hesitated and dropped it back on the floor. 

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(January 2018, Los Angeles, California)

No, TPLF is not TIGRAY: A Case of Ethiopian Airlines

Part one: Leave and never come back!

Three years ago, July 03, 2015 around 10:50 AM, a few (I stress a few) connected and Mafia-like members of TPLF, operating at the state-owned Ethiopian Airlines, were still above the law.

That day they used a non-existent ‘security concern’ they claimed I had become and a ‘ political tendency’ they claimed I had,” (as a cover for their planned ‘ethnic profiling) and sent security to my office at the Aviation Academy of the Airline to literary push me out saying, “leave" and by implication,"never come back.” Just like that!

And I never returned since.

This action might be hard to fathom for people from outside of the airline ( How come a civilian airline allow such mafia-like operations on its employees by a political group?)

Well, I am not the only one. Many before me and many after me have been subjected to such intimidations.

Although these people operate in the name of the TPLF, for me Tigray has nothing to do with this, only the Mafia that wanted to hide its corruption has everything to do with it.

But then, “why did they do that?” one might ask. The answer makes the level of impunity with which these mafia groups acted in the company more evident: they wanted to pave the way for someone who they deemed was more ETHIOPIAN than I am because he was a member of the TPLF. 

Making the act more bizarre is that the person they wanted to install was not only unqualified for the position but also and had no aviation experience at all.

This action might sound bizarre for an Internationally acclaimed airline.  One might even ask, “why didn’t they cook some semblance of excuses (as they often did before to jettison  others) to fire me?” Again, three years ago, they felt they were above the law and too arrogantly sure that they could do anything.

So, on that day, they sent security to intimidate and push me out. I am sure they never thought time would change this quickly.

To give context to the whole ‘security risk farce’ I must mention an executive management meeting of the Airlines held in April of 2015 where it all began.

Most of the management personnel of the Airline were present- where I had to answer questions on the state of quality in the Aviation Academy by the CEO’s invitation. After which the CEO, Ato Tewolde, allowed five positions for the Training Quality and Safety Assurance Section where I was the acting manager.

Based on this decision, I ventured on searching for the right people from inside the company per the company policy.

What I did not know was the TPLF mafia group was also eyeing on those vacancies and was already selecting its people from outside the company to fill the spaces.

Without any consultation with my section, the HR manager who is the principal member of the mafia group and the security director did their interview (or claimed they did). And before I know it, people were already completing medical check to join my section. But I was also conducting my recruitment process seeking the right person from inside the Aviation Academy.

So, when the vacancy was announced for the internal applicant, the Mafia Group was irritated. The HR manager of the Academy sent me emails after emails to stop the process because they had their people from outside.

Imagine, I was looking for A pilot, a cabin crew, an aircraft technician, and a marketing professional with safety and quality assurance experience in the aviation field to fill the vacant spaces. However, the mafia group had already interviewed another TPLF member who needed a good paying job but with none of the qualifications the position required.

Tigray did not do this, TPLF did it!

I had to do what I had to do. I told the HR manager if they wanted the person from outside so dearly they can employ him for another position in the airline, but I have needs that could be fulfilled with people with specific skills and that I have found the right applicants. By the time I had already gotten an applicant who was a senior auditor and had more than 15 years of experience.

That was when the mafia started to move like intimidation machinery.

That was when I realized some people I thought were friends were informing the security about and my phone conversations - as if I had some hidden “motives.”  As a result, some projects such as Toastmasters Club that I had suggested and wanted to launch at the Aviation Academy- (apparently to help the trainees and staff develop communication and leadership skills) -were interpreted as neo-liberal movements and should not be conducted in the Airlines. (I know it is bizarre to read such ignorance of world affairs and what Toastmasters was all about to prevail in an Internationa airline -but then the Mafia-group was ‘above the law’ thus they stopped it.)

Then my immediate and other superiors started calling me to their office and advise me to apologize to the mafia group, and especially to the HR manager. (The HR Manager of the Aviation Academy is a fascinating character among the mafia members that I will cover later).She was so full of herself that she sent me emails, which I have for an exhibit, that the qualifications set by the company requiring aviation experience don’t work and that I must allow the person in because of 'their evaluation' of his analytic skills. My superiors even suggested that the person coming is an aide to a minister and that what I was doing could be interpreted as resistance.

I understood their fears.

But I refused to do so because there was no need. And there was no way being a minister’s aid would qualify one to a position in aviation. In the meantime,  I went on completing the recruitment process along with the right recruitment team for the right candidate, conducted interviews-selected the right candidate.

That was the time the Mafia went on claiming that I had some intentions and motives.

Tigray did not do this, TPLF did!

So a month passed, and I managed to fill one of the positions with a qualified aircraft technician with 10 plus years of auditing experience.

On July 03, the morning I was in an ACE Management meeting.

At the end of the session, I walked down to my office on the first floor of the administrative building of EAA.

I was told the security was waiting for me at the Managing Director's office.

I walked in.

And the scared face of the managing director told me something was off. Two security personnel sat with him.

“You are under investigation. From this moment on you leave your office.” As my boss was the one who was supposed to give me orders I asked him. “What investigation is this?” He only said, “do as they said,” so I left.

They were quick to take my office computer for their fake investigation.

And In a week time, since I was forced out, they installed another TPLF member from inside in my section.

I thought that was all.

But they also started to interview my colleagues to cook a nonexistent crime.

In all this, I have not seen the will of the TIGRAYAN people, I only have seen a mafia group that calls itself TPLF acting with impunity.