Tripping down memory lane
November 2006
Cultural pie and civilisational mash
Between the reel
and the surreal
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©2006 K. Diab |
Wafers of reality
There is something almost spiritual about revisiting a place where you spent a long chapter of your life. I was struck by this realisation yet again during a recent trip to London – and I feel it every time I set foot in England or Egypt.
To have lived in different societies at various
stages of your life is probably as close as a non-Hindu is likely to get to Samsara,
or reincarnation, particularly without the inconvenience of actually
dying… and possibly discovering that all the religions were wrong – or, even
more confusingly, were right – in their predictions of what happens next. To return
to the scene of those incarnations is almost like transmigrating (i.e. being a
migrant in soul as well as body) to another state of being or connecting to a
former life. And as life’s wheel of fortune spins, you are left to wonder
whether you have reached your ‘true self’ and, if not, when.
During a visit to London in October, I was
struck by the layered nature of reality, of how the various chapters of life
are not clearly delineated and separate entities. Being in that unreal city was
quite literally a surreal experience, as different wafers of my reality piled
up one on top of (sur) the other. The chapters of my life seemed to
blend and overlap and flow into one another like some stream of consciousness
storyline.
The scenery – particularly the unchanging buses
and tube trains, the older black cabs, the zebra crossings and the fine drizzle
– were largely from chapter three of my life but the people I was with were
from various other chapters. Our bohemian retinue was one of contrasting
boisterousness and calm, of scruffiness and elegance, of north and south, east
and west.
There was the serene stylishness of my wife for
most of chapter five and my girlfriend in the latter pages of chapter four. My
youngest brother who, by pure coincidence, reflected his mixed English-Egyptian
cultural pedigree in his pale skin and brown hair, Arab nose and rough North
African hair. Although we had both revisited the UK on several occasions since
our move away in chapter three, it was the first time we had been there
together since the end of the 1980s.
One of my dearest friends, whom I have known
since mid-chapter four, looked like a cross between a Chechen rebel, a Sufi
mystic and an Indian fakir, while swearing like a trooper and pontificating
like a preacher making earth-shattering pronouncements. His girlfriend was an
Italian with pale features and blue eyes, and Mediterranean ways. Read on
ã2006 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website
is the copyright of Khaled Diab.