Change
It’s 4 a.m. and my eyes are still wide open. I’ve been falling asleep and waking up at very odd hours lately, odd enough that my sister started calling me a “Vampire”… Actually, come to think of it, perhaps it was something else in my weird behaviour of late that earned me that nickname. Anyway, I just finished watching “Good Morning Vietnam”, an amazing movie with a pure genius dramatic performance by a young “Robin Williams”. Still, I can’t truly say I enjoyed the past hour or so of my life more than the meaningless ones that already passed in a long eventless day.
A trailer for a movie or a new series passes on the T.V. screen in front of me, accompanied by a song: “Stuck in Reverse”! I love the perfect timing of Divine Irony; that’s just what I needed to hear at this hour. Oh God!!! Have I really become sensitive to the point where some stupid lyrics can disturb me so easily? Or is it just that I’m getting sick of his ill sense of humour? The same humour that changed the words of one of my favourite songs! I know it might sound a bit crazy but I heard it a thousand times before and I’m a 100 percent sure it was: “… And if I told you that I love you”, and then it changed. The same day I saw your words; love suddenly became something of the past.
Now I can say it with certainty: I’ve finally come full circle, and I’m right back where I started almost a year ago. I’m back to staring blankly at my friends in our little gatherings, totally indifferent to anything they have to say. I’m back to avoiding everyone, turning down invitations, not answering phone calls, and running away quickly when I hesitantly pay some social duty to a friend or a relative. Yes, I’m back to the point where the shortcomings of my fellow mortals are driving me insane, specially now as I find traces of the same maladies inside me. I can’t stand them any longer; lies, hypocrisy, shallow thoughts. I’m drowning in a swamp of ugly imperfections and my hands are paralyzed by a lingering depression from the past. More than a year has passed, a million moments with a million faces, images and people, spread over that narrow space of 12 months or so, and the only one I felt truly connected to was none other than my dead father. I’m back! Once again I’m phrasing your thoughts with my words, sacrificing meaning to make the images more colourful. That timeless trade-off between clarity and beauty, the one I’m doomed to make for the rest of my days.
Still, it was the eve of a historic inauguration. A few hours later, a man who ran an entire campaign on the simple idea of Change, was about to take the stage and ask millions of people who voted for that possibility to draw courage from their Past! To go back to the original creed of their so called founding fathers in order to meet the challenges of the Future. Change; a 2 hour discussion at a popular restaurant/café in downtown Amman, where modern people have modern talks in an environment that was built to falsely reassure them of their origins. Change; something I never believed in. Not even when I declared on my birthday that nothing can cheer me up except for the good people in Texas voting for it. Not even when I was acting smart and told you confidently that “It” was always good, right before you disappeared. I still don’t know what strange thought my phrase unearthed in your mind, what distant memory grabbed you like a hawk grabs a little bird and left you alone in a place unreachable to my pleading words. That optimistic possibility was something I couldn’t see in the painful look in your eyes, so I gazed away and gave the chance for silence to take dominion.
Yet Change and nothing else was on my mind as I left you behind and started walking, ascending slowly that yellowish pedestrian bridge that leads to the other side. Stretched before me was Tomorrow in the making, a grotesque image of modernization. Building cranes as far as the eye can see, crowned with their tiny red warning lights that scarred the beautiful night sky of Amman and added a sinister feel to its peaceful texture. Here, a distorted image of the Past meets a distorted image of the Future. Here, a local millionaire had to succumb, like us, to the basic laws of capitalism; losing an unfair battle to an international billionaire and bearing witness to the fulfillment of Marx’s prophecy about Capital’s ability to drive beyond all barriers. Here, globalized workers from all over the world, hard working and underpaid, joined efforts everyday to build the modern heart of our city; a soulless model of the western world. A western university, surrounded by western cafes and pubs where westernized students can meet after their westernized lectures come to an end. Western companies, where westernized employees spend their tasteless western 8-5, taking short westernized lunch breaks at western fast food restaurants, and leaving to spend their nights at western bars and night clubs where they can meet westernized strangers with hollow looks in their eyes as they fantasize about short westernized affairs before going back alone to their empty westernized apartments. Here the true victory of a sublimely empty Civilization will be final, as old cultures converge and give way to a new age, wiping out eternally-old values and traditions whose sole error was their failure in competing with Hollywood and MTV.
How fascinated I’ve become lately with this stupid city that I absolutely hate. Something has definitely changed during my aimless wandering in the old streets of Weibdeh and Jabal-Amman. I suddenly discovered real lives lurking inside those old houses with broken windows and cracked walls. And I was surprised to realize that certain parts of certain neighbourhoods could certainly pass as authentic. Foreigners and west-Ammanis don’t fall in this picture. Like me, they are mere trespassers who prey on the remnants of what someday could’ve became a true city. We are the ugly additions that cover a truly beautiful background. A middle aged man in his pajamas is walking with his 12 year old daughter to that small bakery whose windows have disappeared under years of dust. A young couple are walking home with their child; he decides to run ahead of them and a soft voice from behind chases after him and gently commands him to stop. A tired veteran selling lottery tickets is sitting on a half broken chair feeding a lonely cat. An old friend stops to chat for a few minutes before he continues on his way home, carrying bags from that tiny grocery store where every apple and every orange taste the way real apples and real oranges should taste. And then I pass along, with an IPod plugged to my ears, just another clone who enjoys the scenery, and loves to imagine the real lives behind those faces that pass him in the street, the same people he despised and had nothing in common with except the stupid chance that put them face to face on a cold winter night.
But I had to leave the city that morning. Every damn corner was haunted with your memories; your shadow was resting under every tree and your smile was mocking me behind every window. I had to stop myself several times a day from running behind perfect strangers who were wearing your scarf, or your coat or your hairstyle. But worst of all, your scent kept following me around wherever I went, intoxicating, reminding me how rotten everything else in this city was becoming. So I rode the bus that morning to run away from you, but, ironically as always, it followed the same path you once offered me as a gift, the most amazing of all gifts. Gazing through the windows, I could see misery manifesting itself along the road. Those large pine trees seemed pale and exhausted as they stood guard at the borders of the desert. Their figures slightly bent, imitating those of their neighbouring humans, almost apologetic for their sad existence. Not fully built houses, that were never meant to be completed, were scattered sparsely on both sides, like tiny spots of rash on the hills. At first there were hardly any people in that vicinity, and living there seemed to provide the perfect Isolation every one of us seeks at some point or another in his life; a place where your shouts are unheard and your spasms of madness pass unnoticed. But later on, people and houses and markets appeared out of nowhere, they suddenly emerged from the ground and barely had time to shake off the dirt that still covered them from head to toe. Entrenched they were in their misery, so certain it will endure every passing flood or hurricane, the same way it survived every single governmental plan and UN project. Only the Roman Olive trees were different, they stood there proudly with their thick stems, mutated from years and years of suffering, older than Time itself. They gazed back at you, daring and challenging, telling you that you don’t belong in here, telling you to go back to the realm of imagination whose gates you just crossed, warning you that you’ve entered another world, and that you might get really hurt in this land of reality. But It was a wonderful day after all; I planted new olive trees with my own bare hands that were going numb after endless hours of meaningless typing on the keyboard, and they bled with joy in the process. Then I sat down to rest under a great oak tree that was relentlessly shedding off its own sons and daughters, generously covering its surroundings with its shade and its acorns. A beautiful voice descended from a mosque in a nearby mountain, calling people to the noon prayer: “Allaho Akbar”, a reassuring message that everything is possible. Here, faith is a very simple matter, when the seeds are planted there’s nothing left to do but to pray to the unseen powers of the universe. God will always exist outside the fake world of finance, HR and marketing, outside our casual discussions, our casual drinks and our casual beliefs, and his presence is not just a comforting luxury or a social decoration, it’s a true necessity.
A Final Chapter.
For days I’ve been struggling with these thoughts, unable to finish them. There was something missing as usual, something essential; that invisible link between Today and Tomorrow, a path to follow and a destination to reach: The cure for my eternal apathy. I slept that night, a very long and troubled sleep, with your voice ringing in my ears: “You need to move on”, and me still wondering: “Where to, Love?” and “What for?” Then the answer formulated itself in a dream: I saw myself at my old school, rebuilt into a huge house that I was living in. At first I was at a stupid business meeting in the living room, with some colleagues from work, then someone happened to mention the death of my father and I started crying uncontrollably. They tried to calm me down but I decided to run away, the same thing I did 19 years ago on my second day of school when I ran away and walked the entire distance home, except this time I was already there, so I just hid in the toilets outside. But my plan failed, the toilets had doors on all sides, and I couldn’t close any of them. A short while later, my brother and a close friend found me there and took me back in. I slept again that night, inside my old school, and woke up to the sound of dripping water. I started walking around the unfamiliar rooms in the house, discovering leaking water faucets hanging everywhere, out of every wall and ceiling, with their water drops perfectly synchronized. Then I heard sounds coming from the kitchen, an unmistakable metallic jingle of tableware. I found my way in the darkness, and I tried to open the kitchen door but someone was standing behind it, blocking my path and causing all the noise,
“Who’s there?” I asked,
“It’s your father” the voice behind the door replied. “What are you doing up at this hour, Go back to sleep!” he ordered.
“But father, you’re a ghost, you can’t be here!” I answered confidently.
At that point, the voice behind the door disappeared. I opened the door and walked into the kitchen, no one was inside. Through the window I could see the lawn outside, my old school’s playground, then the earth opened up and started swallowing the grass and everything else it could swallow before I woke up.
Rising up right before dawn, I went to the kitchen for a glass of water. Outside, the wind was blowing through a pair of black pants that my neighbour left out to dry, and dark gray clouds were racing towards an unknown destination in the sky. A few minutes later, light started to sneak in slowly from the east, and the black pants surprisingly became a purple towel, clarity was adding colours this time! Then suddenly dawn erupted as pink tides that covered the entire morning sky to signal the beginning of a new day. There were many broken things around the house that had to be repaired, there was a whole new life ahead of me to be built and there was a world on the verge of sinking that needed to be saved. Maybe Change is possible after all.
A trailer for a movie or a new series passes on the T.V. screen in front of me, accompanied by a song: “Stuck in Reverse”! I love the perfect timing of Divine Irony; that’s just what I needed to hear at this hour. Oh God!!! Have I really become sensitive to the point where some stupid lyrics can disturb me so easily? Or is it just that I’m getting sick of his ill sense of humour? The same humour that changed the words of one of my favourite songs! I know it might sound a bit crazy but I heard it a thousand times before and I’m a 100 percent sure it was: “… And if I told you that I love you”, and then it changed. The same day I saw your words; love suddenly became something of the past.
Now I can say it with certainty: I’ve finally come full circle, and I’m right back where I started almost a year ago. I’m back to staring blankly at my friends in our little gatherings, totally indifferent to anything they have to say. I’m back to avoiding everyone, turning down invitations, not answering phone calls, and running away quickly when I hesitantly pay some social duty to a friend or a relative. Yes, I’m back to the point where the shortcomings of my fellow mortals are driving me insane, specially now as I find traces of the same maladies inside me. I can’t stand them any longer; lies, hypocrisy, shallow thoughts. I’m drowning in a swamp of ugly imperfections and my hands are paralyzed by a lingering depression from the past. More than a year has passed, a million moments with a million faces, images and people, spread over that narrow space of 12 months or so, and the only one I felt truly connected to was none other than my dead father. I’m back! Once again I’m phrasing your thoughts with my words, sacrificing meaning to make the images more colourful. That timeless trade-off between clarity and beauty, the one I’m doomed to make for the rest of my days.
Still, it was the eve of a historic inauguration. A few hours later, a man who ran an entire campaign on the simple idea of Change, was about to take the stage and ask millions of people who voted for that possibility to draw courage from their Past! To go back to the original creed of their so called founding fathers in order to meet the challenges of the Future. Change; a 2 hour discussion at a popular restaurant/café in downtown Amman, where modern people have modern talks in an environment that was built to falsely reassure them of their origins. Change; something I never believed in. Not even when I declared on my birthday that nothing can cheer me up except for the good people in Texas voting for it. Not even when I was acting smart and told you confidently that “It” was always good, right before you disappeared. I still don’t know what strange thought my phrase unearthed in your mind, what distant memory grabbed you like a hawk grabs a little bird and left you alone in a place unreachable to my pleading words. That optimistic possibility was something I couldn’t see in the painful look in your eyes, so I gazed away and gave the chance for silence to take dominion.
Yet Change and nothing else was on my mind as I left you behind and started walking, ascending slowly that yellowish pedestrian bridge that leads to the other side. Stretched before me was Tomorrow in the making, a grotesque image of modernization. Building cranes as far as the eye can see, crowned with their tiny red warning lights that scarred the beautiful night sky of Amman and added a sinister feel to its peaceful texture. Here, a distorted image of the Past meets a distorted image of the Future. Here, a local millionaire had to succumb, like us, to the basic laws of capitalism; losing an unfair battle to an international billionaire and bearing witness to the fulfillment of Marx’s prophecy about Capital’s ability to drive beyond all barriers. Here, globalized workers from all over the world, hard working and underpaid, joined efforts everyday to build the modern heart of our city; a soulless model of the western world. A western university, surrounded by western cafes and pubs where westernized students can meet after their westernized lectures come to an end. Western companies, where westernized employees spend their tasteless western 8-5, taking short westernized lunch breaks at western fast food restaurants, and leaving to spend their nights at western bars and night clubs where they can meet westernized strangers with hollow looks in their eyes as they fantasize about short westernized affairs before going back alone to their empty westernized apartments. Here the true victory of a sublimely empty Civilization will be final, as old cultures converge and give way to a new age, wiping out eternally-old values and traditions whose sole error was their failure in competing with Hollywood and MTV.
How fascinated I’ve become lately with this stupid city that I absolutely hate. Something has definitely changed during my aimless wandering in the old streets of Weibdeh and Jabal-Amman. I suddenly discovered real lives lurking inside those old houses with broken windows and cracked walls. And I was surprised to realize that certain parts of certain neighbourhoods could certainly pass as authentic. Foreigners and west-Ammanis don’t fall in this picture. Like me, they are mere trespassers who prey on the remnants of what someday could’ve became a true city. We are the ugly additions that cover a truly beautiful background. A middle aged man in his pajamas is walking with his 12 year old daughter to that small bakery whose windows have disappeared under years of dust. A young couple are walking home with their child; he decides to run ahead of them and a soft voice from behind chases after him and gently commands him to stop. A tired veteran selling lottery tickets is sitting on a half broken chair feeding a lonely cat. An old friend stops to chat for a few minutes before he continues on his way home, carrying bags from that tiny grocery store where every apple and every orange taste the way real apples and real oranges should taste. And then I pass along, with an IPod plugged to my ears, just another clone who enjoys the scenery, and loves to imagine the real lives behind those faces that pass him in the street, the same people he despised and had nothing in common with except the stupid chance that put them face to face on a cold winter night.
But I had to leave the city that morning. Every damn corner was haunted with your memories; your shadow was resting under every tree and your smile was mocking me behind every window. I had to stop myself several times a day from running behind perfect strangers who were wearing your scarf, or your coat or your hairstyle. But worst of all, your scent kept following me around wherever I went, intoxicating, reminding me how rotten everything else in this city was becoming. So I rode the bus that morning to run away from you, but, ironically as always, it followed the same path you once offered me as a gift, the most amazing of all gifts. Gazing through the windows, I could see misery manifesting itself along the road. Those large pine trees seemed pale and exhausted as they stood guard at the borders of the desert. Their figures slightly bent, imitating those of their neighbouring humans, almost apologetic for their sad existence. Not fully built houses, that were never meant to be completed, were scattered sparsely on both sides, like tiny spots of rash on the hills. At first there were hardly any people in that vicinity, and living there seemed to provide the perfect Isolation every one of us seeks at some point or another in his life; a place where your shouts are unheard and your spasms of madness pass unnoticed. But later on, people and houses and markets appeared out of nowhere, they suddenly emerged from the ground and barely had time to shake off the dirt that still covered them from head to toe. Entrenched they were in their misery, so certain it will endure every passing flood or hurricane, the same way it survived every single governmental plan and UN project. Only the Roman Olive trees were different, they stood there proudly with their thick stems, mutated from years and years of suffering, older than Time itself. They gazed back at you, daring and challenging, telling you that you don’t belong in here, telling you to go back to the realm of imagination whose gates you just crossed, warning you that you’ve entered another world, and that you might get really hurt in this land of reality. But It was a wonderful day after all; I planted new olive trees with my own bare hands that were going numb after endless hours of meaningless typing on the keyboard, and they bled with joy in the process. Then I sat down to rest under a great oak tree that was relentlessly shedding off its own sons and daughters, generously covering its surroundings with its shade and its acorns. A beautiful voice descended from a mosque in a nearby mountain, calling people to the noon prayer: “Allaho Akbar”, a reassuring message that everything is possible. Here, faith is a very simple matter, when the seeds are planted there’s nothing left to do but to pray to the unseen powers of the universe. God will always exist outside the fake world of finance, HR and marketing, outside our casual discussions, our casual drinks and our casual beliefs, and his presence is not just a comforting luxury or a social decoration, it’s a true necessity.
A Final Chapter.
For days I’ve been struggling with these thoughts, unable to finish them. There was something missing as usual, something essential; that invisible link between Today and Tomorrow, a path to follow and a destination to reach: The cure for my eternal apathy. I slept that night, a very long and troubled sleep, with your voice ringing in my ears: “You need to move on”, and me still wondering: “Where to, Love?” and “What for?” Then the answer formulated itself in a dream: I saw myself at my old school, rebuilt into a huge house that I was living in. At first I was at a stupid business meeting in the living room, with some colleagues from work, then someone happened to mention the death of my father and I started crying uncontrollably. They tried to calm me down but I decided to run away, the same thing I did 19 years ago on my second day of school when I ran away and walked the entire distance home, except this time I was already there, so I just hid in the toilets outside. But my plan failed, the toilets had doors on all sides, and I couldn’t close any of them. A short while later, my brother and a close friend found me there and took me back in. I slept again that night, inside my old school, and woke up to the sound of dripping water. I started walking around the unfamiliar rooms in the house, discovering leaking water faucets hanging everywhere, out of every wall and ceiling, with their water drops perfectly synchronized. Then I heard sounds coming from the kitchen, an unmistakable metallic jingle of tableware. I found my way in the darkness, and I tried to open the kitchen door but someone was standing behind it, blocking my path and causing all the noise,
“Who’s there?” I asked,
“It’s your father” the voice behind the door replied. “What are you doing up at this hour, Go back to sleep!” he ordered.
“But father, you’re a ghost, you can’t be here!” I answered confidently.
At that point, the voice behind the door disappeared. I opened the door and walked into the kitchen, no one was inside. Through the window I could see the lawn outside, my old school’s playground, then the earth opened up and started swallowing the grass and everything else it could swallow before I woke up.
Rising up right before dawn, I went to the kitchen for a glass of water. Outside, the wind was blowing through a pair of black pants that my neighbour left out to dry, and dark gray clouds were racing towards an unknown destination in the sky. A few minutes later, light started to sneak in slowly from the east, and the black pants surprisingly became a purple towel, clarity was adding colours this time! Then suddenly dawn erupted as pink tides that covered the entire morning sky to signal the beginning of a new day. There were many broken things around the house that had to be repaired, there was a whole new life ahead of me to be built and there was a world on the verge of sinking that needed to be saved. Maybe Change is possible after all.
posted by Without a Cause at 2:56 PM
3 comments
