Ethiopian Folktales

Narrator Unknown

Once there was a beautiful Afar girl and all the men wanted to marry her. All of them used to chase her. But then one of them did marry her, but almost immediately he divorced her. Now the second man who wanted to marry her wanted to speak to her so he went to her, sitting beside a tree and started chatting her up.

And when he asked her, "Why did you divorce?" she said, "I don’t know. My husband said I’ve got three disgusting things about me and I’m not fit to be his wife."

So when the second admirer looked at her carefully he saw that she was sitting in a vulgar way, and he could see all the way up her. Trouble for an Afar woman.

So he said, "Well, I do understand what one of the disgusting things is."

And she looked up at him and said, "What do you mean? You s-o-b, f-----."

And he said, "Oh, so now I understand the second disgusting thing. So I don’t think I’ll wait and find out the third. I’ll be on my way."

He left her sitting under the tree and he went.

This shows that looks aren’t everything.