My Applause

I clapped for you, I clapped against you;
I clapped myself out — my applause, how are you?

I want to write. Writing that makes the country tremble. I want to speak. A speech that leaves the country dumbfounded. I want to be a leader with many, many followers. A leader big enough not just for Ethiopia but for Africa.

When I speak, I want the whole country to fall silent and listen to me. But when I pay attention, I notice the people in the very room next to me get bored fast. Some of them mutter, “Is he done yet?” Even the ones I’ve invited out for coffee don’t listen — they just keep talking over me while I’m speaking.

Sometimes I think, would it kill the country to fall silent and hear me out, just once? Really, this is oppression. When I think about why I’m not heard, it baffles me.

A lot of people talk on regardless of whether they’re heard or not. Being heard is like a lottery. It’s luck. One of them, someday, gets listened to. There are people being listened to even now. Whether they have an idea or not, there are people who’ve got the chance to be heard — who’ve built themselves some power, or who’ve won the lottery. They’re ignorant. I don’t mean they’re hard of hearing — I mean they genuinely know nothing. And yet a hall full of cynics sits there clapping for them. “You, lead us. You, speak to us. You alone — stay up on that stage” — sometimes even rising to their feet, applauding and praising them for ages. I see this.

One day I quietly pulled one of the clappers aside and asked him, “So why exactly did you clap?” He told me, “This man’s ignorant, sure, but he’s good.” And I’ve run into the man who told me, “He can speak, but he has no ideas.”

How a person who can tell the difference between someone who speaks well but is ignorant and someone who speaks with real ideas — how that person could then clap like the rest, well, that itself takes another kind of thinker to explain. When I ask, “Why did you clap?” — “Search me! But let the hall account for what I’ve got.”

In any case, if the person next to you claps, you clap. If you’ve got someone who stands up and cries “Viva,” you stand up and cry “Viva” too. Because it might look like envy, or contempt, or that you’ve got some difference of principle, you get up against your will.

And besides, you’re no better than the broad public. When the broad public claps, you don’t stay silent. Even if it weeps, you weep along. When it sings, you sing; when it condemns, you condemn. And when the condemnation passes and the fashion swings back around — well, “Hey, you, hand me back that applause of mine…” is bound to come — so don’t get too distracted, either. Keep your applause warmed up.

Originally published in Amharic in Ledesta. By Dereje Desta.