Recruiting

(This short story below is inspired by one of the same title by Nabokov… and is entirely fictional. I wrote this when I was in a café and saw a man on his laptop.)

I was sitting in a coffee house one Saturday afternoon. I was not alone in being alone, sipping on a ‘medium’ coffee in the corner. Far across the saloon sat a man who, in his blandness, was a perfect recruit. I almost pitied the man. By walking into the coffee house he had unknowingly walked into the trap of my imagination. As I watched my oblivious prisoner I couldn’t help but smile. How little he knew of his crucial role in the moments that followed!

He was a well built man, the breadth of his shoulders filled out a dark, corduroy blazer. He wore a black cap, which in the context of his blazer and shirt gave him the vibe of a retired, celebrity sportsman. His graying beard was as sharply chiseled as the shape of his jaw and his orbits were contoured with wrinkles. This combination of facial features gifted him a permanent contemplative expression, duping not only his friends but also his work colleagues into believing he was highly intelligent. This unintentional mask, a result of years of bafflement and confusion, had resulted in his promotion to Manager of the malfunctioning human resources department.    

So here he was, struggling on his laptop in the corner of a coffee house. His missed deadline stared angrily at him through a spreadsheet on the screen. He had realised the night before that the numbers were not adding up. It was in desperation that he was staring at the spreadsheet, hoping it would cease its antagonism and save him from his boss. He blamed the spreadsheet because he couldn’t blame anyone else. He also surrendered to the idea his brain was more inanimate than the numbers that tormented him.

He was the subject of a cruel joke. This spreadsheet was an editable omen of his future, one that foretold his redundancy as things stood. The cruelty came in the fact it was his incompetence that paralysed him into being a spectator to his own failure.

He stopped seeing numbers. The spreadsheet blurred away into his reflection in the screen. He studied his own face and for a moment smiled as his mind began to wander. He remembered the first time he saw his wife. He was trying on the very same black cap he was wearing, angling it on his head whilst posing in front of a store mirror. He caught her watching him whilst he was pouting. His eyes locked onto hers. Her face betrayed a character of innocence and longing. She flushed red at the reflective encounter and before she could even turn around in shame, he strode towards her and asked her out.     

That was five years ago. Her naivety coupled with his idiocy was a recipe for ignorant bliss. Life seemed easy, a stream of coincidental events recycling the past into the future. They revelled in the monotony that shaped their love. When one has low expectations of oneself and one’s worth, it is easy to be content with any level of monotony. She never tired of his face, and he of her laugh. They walked the straight line of their life, unaware of the precipice that lay ahead.

How was he going to tell her? All he knew was he had to. He closed his laptop and slid it into his bag. I watched the hero of my story get up, with the intellectual expression on his face which plagued his life. He took slow, calculated steps out of the coffee house and directed himself towards his flat. Each successive step propelled his confidence. His heart raced as he got to the dingy stairwell leading to his home. Adrenaline was now overcoming the inertia of reluctance. He steps into his hallway and stops as he sees his wife.

She stood in front of him, her face a pale mirage of the first time he saw her that fateful day. Her hands were behind her back, stretching the stained apron draped around her body.

They stared at each other, dueling with the knowledge that what was going to be said would change their lives forever. He didn’t have to wait for her to speak. He saw the reflection of her slender back in the mirror. He saw the reason for her silence in her hands and she saw that he knew.

She was holding a positive pregnancy test.

The Not So Normal Attachment

‘I definitely enjoyed it but can’t see myself doing it’. I gave this diplomatic, yet honest answer to the Consultant Psychiatrist on the last day of my 6 week placement. Truth is I was grateful it was my last day and as we walked to the wards, I couldn’t help but remember all the things which made this such a mentally exhausting attachment.

My first day was vaguely disturbing, a good reflection of how dangerous naivety can be. My firm partner and I thought it was a good idea to clerk someone in the acute admissions unit. It didn’t seem too bad. A few patients loitering around a glass box which ‘sheltered’ the staff. They would bang their fists on it from time to time, asking to be seen by someone. We picked out the least rowdy person from the crowd and decided to speak to her in the kitchen as there was no other room available at the time.

My partner and I were confused. This lady seemed perfectly normal, almost pleasant to have a conversation with. Why was she here? She didn’t seem to know. All of a sudden, things decided to get pretty sinister. A man spotted me from outside the kitchen and rushed towards me. He put his face an inch in front of mine and stared into my eyes. I was perplexed. Now what? I told myself to keep calm. He smelt awful. My eyes darted around the room in the ridiculous hope something would magically intervene. This didn’t please him at all. He told me not to move my eyes off his as it disturbed him.

So here I was, locked in an epic staring contest with a man in full invasion of my personal space and sense of smell. Meanwhile, the patient we were speaking to was being accused by another patient of being a spy. This didn’t go down too well. The shouting attracts another patient into the room, my saviour. This newcomer, almost randomly, prods my invader in the back and claims he owes her 20 pounds. He answers the accusation with a right uppercut to her face, which she dodges by falling into the fridge. Chaos ensues as the glass box of nurses empties into the kitchen. My saviour comes up to me saying I should act as a witness when she takes the incident to court. I look at my partner and we flee the scene.

The subsequent days were far less dramatic but just as confusing. I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t talking to people or even ‘patients’ on the ward but to the conditions they were afflicted by. I was talking to Schizophrenia, Bipolar Affective Disorder and Depression. It was like speaking to a puppet whose strings were tangled. The confusion eventually resolved into a chronic sense of helplessness. I am a heavily empathetic person, and empathising with an irresolvable emotional façade had become a terribly exhausting, guilt-ridden experience. I remember in particular feeling terrible after speaking to an elderly suicidal lady. All our efforts to encourage her fell flat in front of an eerily rational approach to suicidality.

What I should have realised at the time was that my naïve attempts at understanding these people were both futile and frankly patronising. My feeble mental stamina is not worth an iota when compared to what they are going through. You can’t empathise either. Saying ‘That must have been difficult’ is an offensive statement to make. It is impossible for someone of my background to imagine what their experiences must feel like.

It wasn’t always like this though. There was always an intellectually challenging patient. One day I was trying to figure out why a man in front of me thought he was the Messiah. His indefatigable belief mixed with outrageous and plausible theories made me question myself and whether this man was indeed ‘The Awaited One’. It was that surreal an experience. You only really appreciate how blurry the definition of reality is once you speak to someone who can’t tell the difference.

So it was with relief that I finished the attachment. Safe and sound in a world where ‘normal’ was far easier to define and less guilty to be.

Band Review: Le Trio Joubran

A Palestinian fraternity, Le Trio Joubran have been a refreshing presence in the world of the oud. Their music is a product of three ouds and some percussion, forgoing any vocals. It is easy to place Le Trio Joubran with other Oud contemporaries such as Naseer Shamma, but their performances as a group give a different, deeper dimension to their music.

As their name suggests, the brothers founded and developed a fan base in France. It is unsurprising that they are more popular in the West, where there has been a growing interest in Middle-Eastern music such as that of Souad Massi. Samir invited his two younger brothers Wassim and Adnan to join him in France after his success as a solo artist. The birth of Le Trio Joubran was marked through the release of the album Randanain (2005).

Their repertoire is entirely instrumental, so it is more likely to expect Le Trio Joubran to feature as background music in a café rather than on the radio waves. This doesn’t do them any justice as their music is rich, stimulating and should be appreciated as solid classical compositions.

Le Trio Joubran’s triumph is best experienced through Masar, a track off their second Album; Majaz. It exemplifies the strength of the Arabic maqam, even though the track is essentially constructed on one repeated riff. It gradually progresses in rhythm, with a subtle introduction of percussion building up to a climax. The track is a celebration of the maqam, giving it the starring role in a sequence lacking any unnecessary extravagance. This unassuming composition is far more evocative in its simplicity than the Arab pop so heavily circulated in the East.

Their latest album, AsFar (meaning ‘Travels’) is a play on words. It is another chapter in the maturation of the group, with tracks such as Nawwarand Dawwar al Shams showing a lot more versatility of the trio with bolder use of percussion. Although more complex, they have successfully maintained the beauty of the maqam as their centre piece.

Oi Blad

There is a specific demographic in our community which is now looked upon with a blend of dismay and apathy. Discussing them, even in jest, is usually done with serious undertones and accompanied by expressions of consternation. We look at them through Orwellian lenses, attributing to their present life a dystopian disposition and predicting in their future failure. I am talking about the ‘Youth’ of our community.

“Who are these ‘yobbos’?”, you ask yourself. They forgo a belt to showcase their Armani boxers. They limp and waddle down the street, challenging evolution’s choice for our gait. Their only contribution to society is noise pollution and the dramatization of conspiracy theories. We all know that it is this generation in particular that has taken things too far. Being a rude-boy is one thing, but smoking in the car park is too much. “They’ll be drinking and clubbing next”, says an Uncle one day. Who are you kidding? They are probably down at Tiger Tiger as we speak. Our youth are a catastrophe.

We find it incredibly easy to condemn young people as disappointments. “They’re straying from our culture and the heritage we inherited from our forefathers” is the mantra widely used. It was also the same thing a father told his young son, Ibrahim, when he came up with this radical idea there was only one God.

I care not for the reasons behind this ‘rude-boyation’ of our youth. I see this as a natural progression of our culture as it is diluted over generations. What I do care for is how our community elders react. You can’t just shrug your shoulders and sigh with displeasure. You can’t just give up on them and pigeon-hole them as outcasts. You can’t just judge them without knowing them, without trying with them. There is definitely a culture of apathy and blame when it comes to our youth and it alienates them.

Doing the opposite and actively engaging them is what is needed. I don’t mean forcing them into futures they don’t want, or squeezing the rude-boy out of them. That only breeds rebels. It’s true that they want freedom. It is also true that they want the community to trust them in their practice of freedom. If we believed in our youth and had hope for them, then the tremulous journey that is adolescence will be less turbulent for both parties. They would always have a community to fall back on, and one they feel they respect, belong and adhere to.

In a few years time, The Salaam Centre will stand tall and proud in North Harrow. It will be the youth of today who will run and represent it. Don’t judge them before you have trusted them. They are our future, and therefore the embodiment of our hopes and aspirations.

My Iraqi Identity: A Nostalgic Nostalgia - Part 2

In Part 1 I introduced my neologism of a 'Nostalgic Nostalgia'. I like to think this is the major factor still tying me to my homeland, and the distinguishing variable between myself and my countrymen back home.

This train of thought started last week Sunday. I went with a couple of friends to watch 'Son of Babylon', an Iraqi movie directed by Al-Daradji. The plot followed a grandmother and her 12-year old grandson in search of his father who had disappeared under Saddam Hussein's regime in 1991. For me, the film was a harrowing but important experience. I walked into the screening room with a false understanding of my Iraqi 'pride' and 'patriotism'. I discovered that not only had I totally misunderstood the meaning of these words by patronising them with my blindness, but I walked out totally embarrassed that I had even considered myself a patriot at all.

It is this smoke-screen of Nostalgic Nostalgia that has dazed us second generation Iraqis abroad. We are duped into believing that just 'feeling' patriotic is enough to be Iraqi. We forget that our Self-Realisation of Iraq is an entirely abstract experience inherited from our parents, whilst Iraqis back home actually 'experience' patriotism by generating their own Self-Realisation.

It is this experience which defines whether one has a claim to Iraq. Son of Babylon detailed a journey of two dependants from one mass grave to the next. It was painful to watch a mother looking for her son amongst the piles of bones, still hoping to find a body she could bring home. What was even more painful though, was how useless I felt. I was forcefully coaxed out of the comfort-zone simulated by my nostalgic nostalgia and it wasn't nice. If you were to place me next to this grieving grandmother and then had to identify which of us was Iraqi... the answer would be obvious.

Saddam Hussein's legacy is patented by his inhumanity. His reign had a permanent stamp on the Iraqi people's Self-Realisation. Generations of Iraqis grew up with the cancer that was Saddam's brutality. It would eat away and take over their feelings for Iraq. You wouldn't be an Iraqi if you hadn't experienced Saddam Hussein.

Here I am, a fortunate escapee of Saddam Hussein. It is absolutely pathetic of me to say I am a patriotic Iraqi. This would place me on par with the Iraqis back home who genuinely suffered. Am I really equal in my experience of Iraq as this grandmother? Absolutely not. It is an insult to the people of Iraq to consider myself a patriotic Iraqi. I know nothing of the word.

I'm not saying I haven't suffered under Saddam Hussein's reign. Indeed, my family managed to escape the atrocities and the tyranny. My parents suffered when they were refugees, and worked hard to regain their former position in society. Throughout all this I was an oblivious child.

What I have suffered from is a confused identity. I am like a lion in the London Zoo; I have a primal instinct which I can't exercise because I'm in a strange land. I'm moping about in an environment I wasn't brought up to be in. I have this nostalgic nostalgia as my only foundation for nationality, and I can't apply it. I'm lost. Iraqis in Iraq are growing up with Iraq, whilst I am growing up with outdated, rotting and irrelevant bits of information as my sole source of Iraqiness. This I blame entirely on Saddam Hussein.

I don't think this is enough of an excuse to justify my being Iraqi. As it stands, my nationalistic tendency is patronising and offensive to those that have earned it back home. I have to accept that never in my life will I understand or feel Iraq as they have. I will always be the outsider, pampered and sheltered.

Thus, I have set myself an ultimatum: I either capitulate and assimilate completely into the UK as a British Muslim, or I go to Iraq and live there for some time, contributing to its growth and repair. Maybe by doing the latter I can finally atone for what has actually been a failure of identity. By contributing and living in Iraq... I will finally quench my nostalgic nostalgia and find a purpose for my under-used upbringing. I will finally have a chance at achieving true Self-Realisation.

It would be like... finally finding Home.

My Iraqi Identity: A Nostalgic Nostalgia - Part 1

I am Iraqi. I remind myself that I am. My parents remind me and so do my friends, yet I still waver and doubt how Iraqi I really am.

The only proof of my heritage is that of my inheritance: I am a genetic mash-up of a Baghadi father and Basrawi mother. My parents are also responsible for indoctrinating me with a bias and an inexplicable affinity towards the Tigris and Euphrates. My mother has done an exceptional job at attenuating my taste buds so that they are most accepting of tomato based okra dishes.

All I've done now is make my upbringing and nationality sound like a scene from Aldous Huxley's 'A Brave New World'. I have only stated facts, and I genuinely believe my current status as an 'Iraqi' is all due to my parents' teaching.

The reason why this point is important materialises in what context one is an 'Iraqi'. If I was born and brought up in Iraq, my feelings about this would be different. My parents' indoctrination would be justified, if not necessary for my survival. I would have grown up surrounded by fellow indoctrinatees and students of the Iraqi school of thought.

Another dimension to being an Iraqi is introduced if one was to live there. Not only will I have had an Iraqi education from my parents... I would also have experienced it for myself. I would have been able to form my own memories, opinions and ideas about what Iraq meant to me. Thus becoming an all rounded Iraqi is a two stage process: The Indoctrination stage and the Self-realisation stage.

The latter is what distinguishes outsider Iraqis from those still there. An Iraqi who has spent a little amount of time in Iraq will be considerably more aware as to what this place means to them than someone like myself. This 'yearning' for your homeland, better known as 'حنين' (haneen), is only truly genuine when it has a solid foundation of self-realisation and first-hand exposure. My repertoire of Iraqiness is devoid of any such experiences yet I still have this 'حنين' for my homeland.

I have developed a neologism for this phenomenon: It is a nostalgic nostalgia. When I think of Iraq it is fair to describe this 'حنين' as a nostalgic feeling. Nostalgia for what? A country I have never been to and hence no memories of? You can't be nostalgic to something you haven't experienced!

This is where I disagree. When I remember Iraq and become 'nostalgic', a flurry of emotions accompanied by scenes of Iraq parade through my brain. I see orchards of palm trees banking a stream in which a Hajji is expertly fishing. I see book sellers in Mutanabi street. I see communities living in harmony and security, their doors unlocked and their hospitality celebrated.

You must think I'm talking about another country. Truth is I am. The scenes I have just described typify the Iraq of the 70s. This is the Iraq my parents lauded and longed for in their 30 years abroad, the Iraq which featured heavily in the stories they told me. The 'memories' of Iraq that I have and dream about are in fact my parents'. Hence my 'حنين' for Iraq is based entirely on my parents' nostalgia. My own feelings can be, at best, described as a nostalgic nostalgia.

Click here to read Part 2. 

Spontaneity: A Lesson Incarnate

Exams are finally over and the mental siege of my creativity has been lifted. An embargo on my life which banned the trading of ideas and the emotion of 'yearning' has ended. It lasted a month and as with any set of unjust sanctions , it came at a hefty price to my soul.

The past month has seen what was normally an unscheduled schedule morph into a monotonous routine of brain force-feeding. It was difficult at first; the transition from living a life enriched with creativity and spontaneity was abruptly replaced by that of a storage vessel. A really dull one, ineptly moulded from the clay of somnolence and dreariness.

The contents of this pathetic excuse of a container were even less impressive, being only consistent in inconsistent practicality. Is the coagulation cascade going to feature in my life after this exam? Is this picture of a pseudo-gaucher cell really that relevant to my life? Probably not but I must stuff it in anyway.

The price of this enterprise is the formation of a creative vacuum. Your imagination, once a kaleidoscope of ideas is replaced by a psychological wasteland. This desert is now the definition of your existence. You begin to 'revise', to take in the obligatory information. You add more sand to the desert to make it sandier than it already is. Look! A cactus is beginning to grow. It is something fairly creative that has percolated through from your pre-exam life, here to distract you. You quickly douse it with as much sand as you can.

Exams finish, and it feels strange. All those things you looked forward to doing after exams have stopped being as exciting as they used to be. You had convinced yourself that post-exam feelings would feature pure elation. Instead you are plagued with this anti-climatic sense of nothingness.

It is no surprise that you feel this sense of the 'non-sense'. A custom made desert still gravitates your psyche. The swathes of lectures you desperately force-fed yourself are now stagnating, smouldering and waiting for you to desperately evacuate them. You can't get rid of them though.

Like looking into a puddle to see the sky it came from, you look into your soul to see where it is hibernating. You muster all your strength to awaken your true self. You remember what it was like to generate ideas of your own. You dare to do the most creative thing of all : Be Spontaneous.

Then you succeed. Out of the aridity grows a vegetation of creativity. Your true self blooms and eventually overcomes the vacuum.

This post is a testament to spontaneity. It is evidence that I have finally traversed the uniformity of irrelevance that is exams. I refuse to succumb to the increasing monotony forced upon us.

I leave you with a quote from E.M Forster's 'The Machine Stops':

" 'I found out a way of my own.'

The phrase conveyed no meaning to her, and he had to repeat it.
'A way of your own?' she whispered. 'But that would be wrong.'
'Why?'
The question shocked her beyond measure.

'You are beginning to worship the Machine,' he said coldly."

The Weakness of Henchness

A few days ago, a small yet significant incident made me 'rediscover' a fundamental, neurological component of my body: My Proprioception.

I was on my way to Sainsbury's, braving the cold in my pj's and slippers. I was in one of those strange moods. Instead of cursing the ill-tempered gale I was swimming against, I accepted the flurry of sensory stimulation it had to offer. It reminded me why I was delaying my haircut for so long... and why an un-shaven face has more benefits than just looking neat. I slipped around the corner to see the gate I normally walk through was blocked by some roadworks.

My normal reaction would have been to walk the long way around. As I was in a strange mood, I decided to go the strange way around. I ran up to the gate, and planted my right foot into the gate hinge. I heaved my unaccustomed arms over my head and clasped my soft, naive hands into grooves in the brick wall. At this point my body was in auto-pilot, the last time I had climbed anything ended in broken bones, and I was not experienced. The muscles in my arms contracted, levering my torso around the elbow fulcrum. I swung my legs over, paused, and jumped.

I landed awkwardly in front of an old lady who wasn't too impressed with the randomness of an unkempt lad in slippers leaping over walls. It was only then that I realised that there was an open side-door next to the gate, and that my antics were pretty pointless. This was still not enough to distract me from my new 'rediscovery' : My Proprioception.

My heart rate was up, my whole body tense, and my right knee throbbing with pain. I had never felt physically better in my life. I had this incredible new-found awareness of every inch of my body. This was probably the first time in years that my body was contracted to exert itself for an actual purpose.

Unfortunately, all this did was to get me thinking.

Back in the days of the cave, man used to run to survive. He used to run in hunting, and run in fear of being hunted. Man used to run to gain fuel, yet today man is encouraged to run to lose fuel. What a strange sight it would be to the cave-man, if he saw us today, trudging along on our treadmills to no actual destination or visible purpose.

Our species has slowly tipped the balance from what used to be a purely physical existence, to that of a more intellectual presence. There was once a time where man knew how to build his own house and plough his own land. Man is so feeble physically today that I'm pretty sure even the stereotype of 'being able to wire a plug' does not apply any more.

We have even invented sports to keep our deteriorating muscles and bones alive. We run after balls, throw balls and catch balls for no actual purpose. We now run marathons just for the sake of running. We salute those that run the best. To what purpose though? Running from what... and to what?

This isn't what bothers me. We have replaced our need for physicality with that of mental prowess. It's done us well, and made us relatively prosperous although I still feel we would benefit from a more physical existence.

What does puzzle me, is a growing trend of weight-lifting and 'henchness'. Forget the treadmill, where the lack of a physical life and a gluttonous taste has lead people to run for the sake of it. Men (and some women) are increasingly looking to put on weight in the form of muscle. It makes no sense on paper. Why the need to build muscle? You're not ever going to use those muscles in a practical situation. The aim for building muscle now is to look 'hencher' hence stronger and more of a man than other guys, whilst attracting all the girls.

This was a fundamental part of girl-boy kinetics in the past. A guy would be toiling away in the field, construction or hunting, gradually building muscle. His efforts in life were reflected in his body. His muscularity reflects his power and abilities in real life and this is what was attractive. The fact is his muscles weren't just some decoration.

Today, there is no actual base for this. The bulging muscles mean nothing. Instead of gaining muscle through work, we gain it through a mixture of protein shakes and ridiculous exercises. There is an actual intention to get hench not to use the strength but to reap in the spoils of being big. For all we know the majority of these people are sissified individuals hiding behind an armour of protein...

But hey. Why am I being such an Uncle Scrooge. Let them be as artificially attractive as they please!