It's all written

I wrote this on 5th April but forgot to post it.

The roads are empty because of a run of four days of holiday (Egyptian Christian Orthodox hols and "Smelling the Breeze" Day). We're in a bubble of good weather here in Cairo, transitioning from winter to summer. Soon, I will be complaining about 40C days and constant sweating. But for now, it is under 30C by day, and over 15C by night.

Driving around parts of Heliopolis and Medinet Nasr, I cannot believe how charming this city can be. Just remove people.

This sort of holiday begs for visits to Sharm El Sheikh or Ein Sokhna (both by the Red Sea). But everything is full-up; I should have booked a month ago. I have been forced to stay in Cairo, without the daily work routine, and with a pile of things to do.

Still, it is nice to be out and about. Last Saturday, a distant family relative died. In accordance with convention, a member from my family should have gone to her burial. But my dad was at the clinic together with my mother. Should I go?

My mother said: "Well, it is a national holiday so there is no at-work excuse and our family should be represented, so you should go." I got a little upset and said that I don't know the way to the burial site, am not a close relative anyway, etc. My kind mother told me to leave it and not bother.

Eventually guilt got the better of me and I did go. Grandma Kareema (my sister's mother-in-law's mother) had always been very sweet to me. "He's prettier than either of his sisters!"

What a lovely drive it was to 6th October city. The sun was bright and the colours vivid. Roads that would normally take half an hour to pass through, I shot through like a bullet. I passed patches of countryside green by the highway; the trafficmen had switched to their white uniforms - everything was fresh.

The mosque at which Grandma Kareema's funeral prayers were held was big and impressive: Sheikh Al-Hosari Mosque. I greeted my sister's husband, who is Grandma Kareema's grandchild, and went off to do my wodoo' (ritual wash).

The 'asr prayers were spritually nourishing - perhaps because of the newness of the whole experience, perhaps because of my affection for Grandma Kareema. I was "there" during prayer, not away on my usual going-through-the-motions reveries. I reconnected - for fleeting seconds here and there - with young me, more faithful, more pious and devout. After 'asr prayers, the imam said we would offer the Prayer for the Dead.

People - volunteers, all of them - brought forward Grandma Kareema's coffin and placed it in front of the 200-odd congregation (people who just happened to be in the mosque to do their 'asr prayers). There was also another coffin, a dead man; his coffin was placed near that of Grandma Kareema's. Then we did the Prayer for the Dead.

Afterwards, men - random, unbidden volunteers - carried the coffin to the minibus where it would be transported to the graveyards. Men would run from afar just to carry the coffin a little of the way, mentioning God's name and saying personal, spiritual things that no one else really listened to.

I went with two mourners I had never met. We went in the beat-up Fiat 128 of one of them, then we switched to a cool 1970s Mercedes belonging to the other guy. Both men, in their mid to late forties, lit up ciggies and discussed whom they'd spotted and who didn't come. I felt very much at ease with these strangers.

One of them, Khaled, had a full head of gray hair. "Mummy wanted to come but I told her don't worry about it," he said. Something funny about a grown man with a distinguished mane of gray talking about "mummy". The other man, Tarek, did not have a speck of dust or grime on his black shoes.

"What do you do, Ahmed?" Khaled said.

"I work at university," I said.

"Yeah? Like you're doing a masters or something?" he said.

I mentioned a relative of theirs who had died in a car accident. Tarek told me that had I seen how unscathed his car was, I would have thought: "He must have survived. But poor Ahmed died instantly."

"Yes," I said.

"But then I had an accident, which if you had seen the state of my car, you would have said the driver must have died horribly, and here I am, I survived. Times. Everything has a time. It's all written," Tarek said.

We arrived at the burial site. The entire area was narrow dirt-roads with small buildings (graves) lining each side. The gravekeeper laid out plastic chairs for us and he a couple of helpers dug up the "underground room" where members of the Wardani family are buried and motioned for the coffin to come up. We hoisted it up. Everyone was mouthing prayers and Qur'anic verses.

At some point, the cover of the coffin fell off and I could see Grandma Kareema's corpse fully wrapped in crisp pink-on-white sheets, beautifully fragrant. The keepers got the corpse out and went down into the chamber with it. They took about 15 minutes down there.

I asked what they were doing. Someone said: "They're tidying up. Checking after the remains of the others, and finding a place for her."

We sat on the dark brown plastic chairs, surrounded by the golden colours of desert: the colour of the land, the walls of the graves, of the dust, of everything.

Everybody fell silent, looking down.

I noticed Tarek's shoes again. How can he walk through this sand and still have spotless shoes! He had his hands pressed together, at chest level, a little in front, fingers interlocking and playing with each other; it made him look very contemplative. Every now and then, he cleared his throat.

Someone's mobile rang. He got up and quickly silenced it, but took the call, walking away.

A donkey - I don't know what it was doing there - blew wind through its lips, making a loud, disrespectful noise.

Grandma Kareema's daughter, Aunt Mona, was in a state. She sat inside the grave-building, by the underground chamber, sobbing. I turned around to an older mother and her daughter and said: "Aunt Mona is very affected."

The mother-daughter pair looked at me like I was mental: "It's her mother who just died."

The gravekeeper now put the stones back and shut the underground chamber. They started shovelling earth on top of the stones, completely hiding them.

It was now time to leave.

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When visuals strike

I am driving around Cairo and I notice this red bus that is of exactly the same type as the (new) red busses serving London. It even has the same iconic drawing on the side, just behind the driver (imported from the same company, I bet). For a second, my brain merges Cairo with London, superimposing our streets on theirs. But another part of my brain rejects the image. I like them separate.

Another such incident occurred a half hour ago. I have just parked, I open the door and there's a light breeze to relieve my heat. I have Four Tet's remix of "Roads Become Rivers, Rivers Become Oceans" by Rothko on my car system. Perfect music for a hot, 40C day and for me to spot two lizards climbing a wall. They're not exactly the same type of lizards I grew up with in northern Nigeria, but close enough to cause a superimposition, a type of dislocation.

Somewhere out there, everything is still the same.

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Fragments of London

At times, I have strong visuals of London. I remember sunlit roads, or aspects of buildings. Today I happened to remember the approach to a restaurant that my ex-wife and I used to go to almost every weekend. Shepherd's Bush, parking the car, crossing the road, the interior, ... Fragments of visuals from the many scenes that have been imprinted over the years.

I listen to a piece of music and it brings back the spirit of the people who live in London, with all their nationalities. But especially the youthful, trendy variety who made a point of going out to the cool places. Chilled out music, glasses of something or other, cups of coffee, people standing outside pubs talking loudly, puffing cigarettes. There is a certain quality to London's distance: Nobody knows you and nobody wants to, and yet somehow we're all party to the same culture, the same society.

I think of London when I want to go out in Cairo. I find the choice and variety limiting, here. My friends' priorities, their talking-points, ... ugh ... suffocating sometimes. And, even if I did go out in London and come back empty many a time, and lonely too, sometimes seething and bitter at this coldhearted city, still the London I spidered (like google) was a London of ideas, aspirations and endeavours.

Even though age and appearances do matter in the UK, there are lots of 40+ year olds wandering the streets, wearing the same sorts of clothes as the younger people, and enjoying life similarly - with adjustments. But in Cairo, one feels ridiculous if one does not act one's age. I am 38 (still!) and I am constrained already.

London life is indulgent - especially when you earn a good living and have made peace with the indignity of public transport. You tend to have money to be in nice-looking spots, eat out at new restaurants, meet lots of people, dress well, buy books, attend plays, support new acts, hang out, ...

I miss London, but I am sure when I go back it will be the same. Anyone can plug in. In fact, long after I am gone it will still be the same: a hub.

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Becoming a nobody and Ahdaf Soueif

I am in agreement with J D Salinger:

I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.

I suppose my appreciation of the Salinger quote is a sign of impending middle-age and my lack of satisfaction with myself: I don't have a "life project".

Or you could say it is wisdom, slowly seeping into my consciousness.  I suppose that in the flatter world of today, where class, culture, race, even nationality, barriers are declining in influence, a world in which we increasingly grow up believing we can be anything, that absolutely anything is possible, I suppose in a world like that we all end up having the same dreams, wanting the same things.  We all want to become millionaires, have big houses and the best amenities, to leave traces, to have influence, to be renowned.

What about that alternative of dying a complete unknown?  Remembered only by a close circle of children, siblings, and friends - and perhaps a few colleagues here and there.  Outside of that circle of, say, 20-odd, no one has ever heard of you and no one ever will.

You lived in a rundown home in an undistinguished neighbourhood, you drove a below-average car, you took the occasional above-average holiday, you went out to ordinary places.  And you were proud, and you felt great.  You lived it: Life.

Ahdaf Soueif (of Map of Love fame) was on Egyptian television tonight (Dream2).  I was surprised when she said that a book that no one reads is a failure.  She said the art of the writer is to make the reader keep reading.  She mentioned several writers who took part in PalFest and she qualified each of the names with how famous, how big their readership is.  She certainly seemed pleased with her million plus readership in Britain alone.

It brought to mind the little chats I had with avantcaire about whether the appreciation of the multitudes is important for art (I think so), or if a niche of ten-odd was sufficient (avantcaire thought so).  Ahdaf Soueif seemed to agree with me.

Yet, because of that little Salinger seed that I mentioned above, that may or may not grow, I was less respectful of her achievement.

FYI: The secret to keep the reader reading - according to Dr Soueif - is Detail.

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Pecuniary Anxiety

I am poor.

I have friends who started out at pretty much where I started, perhaps from a worse start, and they are far wealthier than I am.

It is painful to be in this situation. Perhaps if they'd "made it" - by rolling around in millions and millions - I'd be more philosophical. Such spectacular success is usually down to luck.

There was no luck in their stories. Not great luck anyway, just the usual run-of-the-mill lucky-to-be-alive luck! My friends are not "rolling in it"; they are self-made comfortable people. They may have passed the million mark, or they may have not (they won't tell, and it depends on the currency), the important thing is: they don't need to work anymore.

My sample of comfortable friends _chose_ to go after money from a young age. Within a year or two of their graduation, they'd angled for the high-paying jobs in the wealthy sectors, and in due course, with careful monitoring of their expenditures and savvy decision-making, they reaped the gradual rewards.

I was seen as someone with possibly more potential than them. Perhaps each had excellences that I could not match, but they certainly expected I was going to be very successful.

Unlike them, I chose a zero-paying initial career path. Afterwards, I chose to be a low-paid academic.

I did so because of my upbringing. Both my parents prized education and saw that its value was in civilising mankind, not in money-making. So, when one of my friends went after a well-paid job only for its money, I scorned his behaviour. And my father attacked me for not scorning him enough!

As it dawned on me that I was not getting the career I'd expected, rather than change it, I dug my heels in even more. It's paradoxical; it doesn't make sense except in my head.

But it hurts now. I sit with my peers and they're talking about their villas, their cars, "100 dollars - you know - nothing," and then they stop themselves.

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Telling stories with you as hero

Your stories about yourself tell a lot about you. People listen to personal stories easily, naturally. So long as you do not inflate your stories to exaggerated boasts, or deflate them to excessive and irrational anxieties, people respond to you. They learn from the stories, and they also place you in their mental maps.

You may be skilled at picking the type of story that would place you somewhere favourable on pretty much anyone's mental map. But I am not.

So, I am going to start curating a "my stories" collection; a pick of the best from my life so far that will make anyone I tell the stories to, do whatever I want them to. Now that would be something. And it seems quite an easy task too.

But looking through my blog archive, I am already having doubts.

Let's start with the most common story of all: My Life So Far.



Age : Tagline
==============
00-23: Fantastic, pretty pleased with it.
23-30: Fundamentally disappointing, but with some rays of light.
30-37: "Wet double espresso machiatto with whole milk please."

Oh dear. This is not a story that belongs in the collection.

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interesting links this week

The funnies

- Parody of New Scientist magazine. Great!

- Is she coming back you think?

- He caught his wife cheating.

- new meaning of "retired"

- Ridiculous T-shirts.

Describe your philosophy about life in one sentence: discussion fires up good quotes and links. Examples: Some days you're the pigeon; some days you're the statue. 'Be kind to everyone along the way for we all fight a hard battle' - Plato. And this thought-provoking Alan Watt vid .

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Is this all there is to it?

Tonight we put on another sketch show: eight prospective writers wrote a total of 22 sketches and performed them in front of an audience. This time, unlike last time, it was in radio-recording format; we stood with our scripts in front of the live audience and read out the scripts into studio-grade microphones.

It went well.

But I cannot get over this business of the 'down' that one feels after the initial 'high'. The initial high comes from having risen to the occasion. But the low, that feeling of 'is this all there is to it?', is proving hard to deal with. People ask you "so what next?", and you have no idea. More importantly, you don't know what you've gotten out of the whole experience. You end up talking quickly and excitedly, like a child, about what you'd like to do, and you feel none the wiser.

*

The first time I gave a proper lecture I got a massive high. I had stood in front of about 120 first-year students, captured their attention, explained things, been in charge, got nods of satisfaction, and along the way discovered I had become an instant role model for some of them, ...

I went to a friend who'd been in the teaching business one year longer than I.

"So, what now?" I said.

"Nothing," he said.

"What about the high? It feels great!" I said.

"Temporary. Look, I'll pass by for coffee later, okay," he said.

*

Mark D was a professor in his 30s at a university I used to teach at. He was an inspiring model for me. Oxford-educated, intelligent, an actor and performer in his university days, and a present-day pianist with his own jazz trio. His students adored him.

A Greek girl enthused to me about how he'd walk into the lecture hall looking like he'd just got up, mad hair everywhere (he was balding, and that's one of our ploys to hide it: mad hair), and then in the middle of the lecture, he'd stroll over to the piano and play. She felt he brought a touch of class that no other lecturer could match.

So when I got my PhD finally, I was keen to chat to Mark D about it. He offered me a cup of coffee in his office.

"PhD. Big deal, eh? You work hard, you think it'll be the culmination of your life, and then you get it and you're like 'so what?' Getting a PhD is like having a girlfriend. When you don't have one, you think everything'll get better when I have one. Then you find a girlfriend, and it's like 'yeah, big deal, now what.'" (Although I suspect he did not express his feelings in quite those words to his girlfriends.)

*

After an improvisation night in which I'd performed well, I walked home actually feeling depressed. An actress I knew at the time helped ease the hardship: "it's always like that after a performance, it's a sign you did well."

*

I was at a meeting of life-coaches on Friday night. I overheard an expressive lifecoach in her 30s (an American who now lives here) complaining about coaching a 25-years-old client. "Oh I'm so confused. My life's a mess. I have no goals," the client told her. She said she wanted to just break out of her professional mode for a while and shake the hell out of her. YOU'RE 25 YEARS OLD, YOU CAN DO WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT. SHUT UP. NOTHING'S RUINED FOR YOU. YOU HAVE TIME. YOU'RE OKAY. STOP WHINING.

I wanted to complete her logic for her: you have time, but I don't!

*

After tonight's show, in an attempt to celebrate our achievement, some of us went out for dinner. There was a guy with us - also a prospective writer - who is almost 20, although he looks 17.

Out of a desire to make conversation, he asked someone at the table "how old are you?" We all laughed. Only a young person would ask that question with such directness. The guy became defensive; he said he looked up to those older than him, knowing he was going to be like them one day, he said he did not at all feel like we were old uncles and aunts to him.

Then, for some reason, we had a moment of feeling for the guy, and out poured unsolicited advice to him. The main thrust of it was: enjoy your life, you have so many wonderful years ahead of you, do everything you want, it's all good, etc.

It is remarkable: this outpouring of angst that comes from people in their mid-to-late 30s when confronted with the question of age. In other societies, the older people would take the young guy under their wings, and patronise him as a 'kid', and he would show visible deference to them. In London tonight, at our dinner table, it resulted in a mass projection of unease over the "mislaid years". Why would you say the things we said unless you felt a deep unhappiness over your present situation, unless you felt a yearning for your youth!

Thankfully, I stepped in. (The lone voice of wisdom, I hear you say.)

I said: "But hang on, when he gets to our age, he'll also feel that he could have done more but didn't. He's not going to get to do everything."

Now I realise that even that was a wrong assessment. The truth is that we HAVE done a lot. Perhaps we wish we could go back and add more to what we did, but we've done A LOT. I have not been sitting on my bum doing nothing. The last few years have been frustrating in terms of the ambitions that have been diminished or slowed down, but there has been a lot of progress.

We now live in an age in which we are addicted to doing new things and more new things. We are addicted to doing whatever the hell we want. And sitting down to face someone who still has about 15 years of that guilt-free 'fun' ahead of him scares the hell out of us.

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Something I just spotted on my twitter stream

Imagine how this felt.