Longing for the East

Exam revision time is always the best time to write blog entries... I remember writing a few long ones when I was studying for and writing my thesis in St. Andrews in April/May 2006. And it is also a time for longing.
As I am trying to digest a total of 614 powerpoint slides on Water Conservation for a ridiculous exam tomorrow morning, I am listening to North African Arabic music from a collection called "Algerie"... spectacular sounds, which are waking feelings of longing deep inside me - a longing to return to the "Orient".

Many times in the last weeks people have asked me: why did you learn Arabic? What is it that fascinated you about that language, that culture and that area? (funnily enough it is especially people from Arabic backgrounds, who put this question to me most inquisitively, baffled at a European's true interest in their own roots)
And although I always give some sort of answer to do with travelling to Iran with my family when I was still young and then not having a chance to study Farsi at university and simply choosing Arabic instead... that's not really it. I've just used this answer because I couldn't actually answer that question for myself. I am one of those people who believe that there are reasons for things that happen in our lives, so the answer: it just so happened – isn't really good enough either.

I guess I'm simply an "Orientalist". [Although I have to admit at this point that I still haven't read Edward Said's must-read book on this issue and that I'm hence not entirely aware of the many connotations – good and bad – that this word might have.] For me, an Orientalist is simply someone who is fascinated with the East - ash-Sharq – and I can definitely say that about myself. Apart from its mysteries and exoticism, its adventures and stories, its fragrances, tastes and colours – all of which are reasons for many people's fascination with "the East" – there is something else there. Something that we have lost in the West and it is this (in addition to the just-mentioned), which perpetually draws me eastwards, I think.

Although what exactly that something is, I cannot say. I shall have to contemplate it for a few more years. It has something to do with the people's ability to be surprised, their belief in mysteries and wonders; with the different value of time; with the plains of the desert and with the way the sun rises in the East.

Germany vs. Turkey

I was woken by a brutally loud blast at 8am this morning - it was so loud that it shook me from my dreams and forced me – thoroughly confused – to spend the first few seconds of my day considering a very unappealing scenario:

A bomb just went off – Cologne has descended into civil war, maybe to do with the football game tonight – Germany vs. Turkey in the semi-final of the European Championship; the German fans got drunk the night before and started attacking Turkish passers-by, which quickly turned into a brutal fight between Turkish and German fans, fought in the streets of this ‘civilized’ town (during the Roman Empire, the part of Cologne that lies west of the Rhine had been the last bastion of civilisation, with “Barbaria” beginning just across the river on the eastern shore), then in the early hours of the morning, as the fighting went on above ground, now engulfing most of the centre of town with increasingly heavy artillery shattering shop windows and coffee bars, the leaders of the more radical streaks of German hooligans met in a secret location underground to plan a strategic attack on the Turkish forces; by 5am they had established contact with Al-Qaeda and convinced Osama that the Turkish were opponents of Islam, merely because of their efforts to join the EU, not to mention the wide prohibition of headscarves in many public institutions; Osama agreed it was time to take action against these infidels who called themselves Muslims and that the Germans, who had always been supporters of Islam, had kindly hosted his Hamburg clique pre-9/11 and had opposed the war on Iraq, were good partners in such an undertaking. Himself a fan of football, he was quickly convinced that this was a good occasion for such a historic strike. He quickly promised to send one of his best skilled and keenest suicide bombers, Hamadi Ezzudin, who had been waiting for a call like this since his recent release from Guantanamo Bay, where he had been kept innocently and without charges for 19 months after he was caught in a sex cinema in Kabul in early 2003. Hamadi, based in an undisclosed European capital, arrived within two hours and was ready for action. They chose breakfast time as the best time to strike. The German hooligan leaders were nervous when Hamadi insisted on recording his martyr’s message on camera before going on the mission. But after he started calling them opponents to the will of God and threatening first to call it all off and then to blow himself up there and then, they agreed to film him with the Qur’an in one hand and a gun in the other, making his last statement and expressing his happiness to be in paradise soon. The Germans had to promise to send one videotape to Hamadi’s family in Afghanistan and one to Al-Jazeera. Finally at 7:30am all was ready and they took him in an armoured vehicle through the devastated town to a safe place near the front lines, where the fighting was still going on. Hamadi – an experienced terrorist, naturally carrying his Kalashnikov by his side – didn’t look all that different from the Turkish football fans who had turned into rebel fighters over night, especially after he bought a Turkish flag from one of the many shops suddenly selling football attire and gimmicks. He easily mixed with the thousands of angry Turks who were just struggling in a last attempt to take the main stadium and it was here where he blew himself up, tearing apart the bodies of hundreds of Turkish and German fighters and waking me from my gentle sleep.

Seconds later I started dreaming up another scenario, when a very loud grumbling could be heard from the horizon and a second clasp of thunder exploded over Cologne.

Gottesweg

I had seen him before, a few weeks ago, on the tram home. Now he was sitting at my tramstop – alone in the open glass cabin – twitching nervously. He was waiting for the same tram as me. I remembered his ever-twitching body that couldn’t rest even for a few seconds, as his head would suddenly fall on his chest or his arm would quickly rise above his shoulder. The abrupt yet constant movement was of involuntary nature and seemed as if a merciless puppet master was randomly pulling at the strings attached to his fingers, elbows, head and torso in intervals of a few seconds and the poor creature had simply given up resistance and hung like a defeated towel in the hands of a greater power.
As I stood next to him, something else came back to my memory, stimulated by its intense and definitely un-ignorable presence in the air: his revolting smell. It was a complete mystery to me: how could anyone smell so horrendously bad? Where did this smell come from? Last time I saw him, he looked significantly dirtier – now his hair seemed washed, his clothes showed no visible stains and his jeans even looked new. One had to imagine an insidious mixture of matured, concentrated urine, fermented eggs and some kind of sulphurous gas, so odious was the stench.

[I just want to emphasise that I am by no means exaggerating for poetical value or anything – I have never smelled such a repulsive aroma in my whole life – not at the many waste water treatment stations I visited recently, neither in the dirty backstreets of Bombay slums, nor in the waste dumps all around Cairo.]

How could the beautiful element air carry such an abhorrent scent at such potency so far from its source? One could hardly stand within about three meters of the man in the open. When we sat inside the tram, you could see how one after another, everyone in the wagon would either lift their nose in disgust (and almost disbelief) or express the latter to their neighbour, as his stench slowly filled the room.

Poor him.
He reminded me of religious stories, where God comes in the shape of a beggar to your door and you just shout at him and slam the door in his face. Might this smelly sod be God in disquise?

Welcome. Take a seat.

Uncle

A few days ago I had the fortune to become uncle for the 5th time.
My older brother's first child was born into this world with the beautiful name of Margaux Dakota.
Margaux means "child of light".
Dakota is the name of an ancient Native American tribe and means "friend to all".

That's a good start, I think.
Welcome to this life, Margaux!