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.