A stare.. A tear.. A tear.. A tear.. * I have done nothing bad.. A tear.. A tear.. A tear.. * I love her very much.. – Don’t worry sir.. we will help you – You will get better A stare.. dries his tears… * I will trust you.
Gu gu gu..te- te- te- nnnnnn.. Mooooorgen.. doktor.. I am so glad you are here.. I have traveled long and have been waiting for an appointment.. I came here with fear.. I fear to stay the same.. With my thoughts just for me.. I fear to speak so slow, that no one wants to hear.. They all think I am fading.. my whole seems to disappear.. Year after year, I worked like a machine.. even when all retired.. I went on for 10 more winters.. I just couldn’t leave.. I could have gone to Cuba.. I could have sailed the seas.. I could have built a villa.. I could have.. i could have.. I could have.. Now I am stuck in myself.. with words as many as none.. I have lost the way to folks.. I have lost the meaning of all.. Please don’t think I am stupid.. the brain works faster than my tongue.. I used to scold the kids.. I used to sing and hum.. I used to do it all.. before my health was gone.. I know it is the end.. things won’t be the same.. I know the days are different.. that hope is rather lame.. I won’t ask for much.. it is little what I need.. I just would like a look.. of patience and of respect for whom I once was.. I will suffer, for sure, alone.. Acknowledgement would be fine..
My stepping out of the smartphone world was not intentional. Having accidentally killed my iPhone 4s by forcing it to learn swimming with me in the pacific ocean, I was left off the grid. A new iPhone was out of my budget and I didn’t like androids. I decided on a small call-or-text Samsung phone to bridge my downtime. Then life has changed!
This post is not to convince you to dump your phone. Rather a retrospective reflection on the past two and half years of smartphoneless life.
I do miss access to music whenever I want. An iPod shuffle partly solves the problem (thanks Christian). I do as well get lost a lot without google maps. However, two GPS devices (thanks Elke and Susanne) and asking beautiful ladies on the street eventually save the day. I do not have immediate access to google and consequently most of human knowledge. However, a set of Moleskin® notebooks (thanks Merve) are my usual company and capture most of my questions for a later google time. I can not check a restaurant, a book, a movie nor a product. Which is partly solved by asking people (Mostly they check their phones, thanks everyone!). More and more of things that I “miss” or do not have anymore.
However…
I grew to like this new life-style. I feel way more relaxed now than before. When I had a smartphone, I checked it often. Facebook, instagram, twitter.. etc.. I had a constant nose in everybody’s life. I knew a lot about my friends and even people I didn’t care about. This was sometimes too fast that usually didn’t have enough time to emotionally process some events. A wedding in Italy, a friend’s mother in Egypt got cancer, a bomb in Belgium, etc.. Within minutes, my emotions were confused in a roller coaster. Needless to say that after a while, after knowing so many news too fast, you stop caring about all of them. They all become some post on your feed or a message in your inbox. Most of your connection with them is “reading” about them. I didn’t like this.. It reduced my daily experiences to a very minimal quality. And when I met the person that I read about him/her, I didn’t feel much. The first shock was absorbed by the crowded online input. I chose to reduce this to the couple of hours in the evening when I have access to the internet and social media.
When I am offline, I have more time to think, to reflect, and to be genuinely bored and left to myself. During my many years of smartphone use, I forgot how to deal with myself! The smartphone provided a constant escape from self. An easy distraction. Let me message him or her, let me check facebook, let me look at this or look at that. A constant seek for something to fill the void. After losing my smartphone, I had to re-learn dealing with boredom. I had to pickup the habit of thinking and daydreaming.. It is simply more time for me.. rather than looking at people’s lives or replying to their contact. Besides, I have to memorise things now.. to calculate things.. to remember the road and directions.. these little cognitive tasks are very enjoyable for me..
This phase without a smartphone is very peaceful. I will probably get myself one in the future. But not now 🙂
On a day before today.. Early june or late in Mai.. I was walking on the way.. Where the angels used to stay..
She was there walking with me.. Many smiles in her pocket, and a poem in her wallet, and a lot of things to say..
Full of joy I saw her soul.. Walking, talking also joking.. Laughing louder than I do..
Curly curls in her hair.. Lovely earrings in her ear.. In her eyes there was a flare.. All the time I had to stare..
Then we wandered in the town.. Walking up and walking down.. Having many things to share.. Saying words to tell we care..
Then she pointed at the crowd.. People sitting in the garden.. Having fun and being loud..
“Wonder, how it is to be.. like the people that I see.. lame and boring little lives.. unlike you and unlike me..”
Well, of course my dear to-be.. We are pearls inside the sea.. Take my hands and walk with me.. Let’s go far let’s be free..
At this moment when we looked.. Both the hands and eyes are locked..
All the movements came to slow.. Scented breeze began to flow.. Lovely music in the show.. Just one thing I had to do.. Kiss those lips the way I know..
calligraphy of a7med5hawaga that I painted in my room
A thousand fragments of a few ideas! I feel overwhelmed and I yearn to create.. Letter after letter and word after word.. My little heart is about to expl…!
Ayyy.. today I read pages from a book that touched me deeply. I have been reading this book for a while and as much as I love it, it touches me so deeply that it hurts. I read slowly! I contemplate the sentences and descriptions that the author used to share his experiences. Comes to my mind my friend Ali’s words when I thanked him for trusting me with sharing his emotions: “This is also a kind of charity”. How is sharing your emotions with me a charity? It took me a few seconds of processing to grasp the meaning! It is human, humble and general. We all have emotions (even Germans!). We often hide them because we learned that they are weaknesses. Vulnerabilities. (Here, at this very moment of writing, I received this message:
I just wanted to write you that I am very happy at this moment
!). I probably understand more. I am puzzled by the timing of this message. It made me understand more. I felt chosen to receive this line. I just received charity. I should probably share more.. and let these lines here be a start.. Or a resume.
My days in Nepal are counted. Today I leave Pokhara to do rafting in a river between Pokhara and Kathmandu. I went for an early morning stroll around 8:30 where I enjoyed watching shops opening and sellers putting out their stands and prepare for the day. It was the sunniest day since I arrived to Pokhara and I could finally see the Fishtail (Machapuchare) mountain from the street. It was there in the horizon like a nice painting hanging in your room that you often stop and contemplate its beauty. I stopped for a hair cut close to the hotel. I look a bit like a monkey and could use some grooming. The barber was on the way to the hotel and he often eye-contacted me in the last few days which made me insecure about my hair. As if I heard him saying “when are you coming to fix this?” He was young in his mid-twenties. I was relatively shocked when he said that his wife is now 19 and they have a 5 years old child! He married her when she was 12. They have two kids now. This woman could be a grandmother at the age of 30 and a grand-grandmother at 45. anyway… He gave me a nice haircut and talked me into having face mask and massage. Then he put some creams on my face that smelled local, you know what I mean. He then started rubbing my face with his fingers which I found to be a bit too intimate compared to what I am used to in Europe. His fingers occasionally went inside my mouth or eyes. He lacked precision in these movements and seemed as if he is painting a solid wall. He then started a long procedure of face and head massage that I felt was impressive. The guy had a technique. He didn’t just massage my head, instead, he made different hand shapes and used them to sometimes hammer my head.. sometimes massage my eyeball.. he even tried to somehow de-wrinkle my forehead.. and at times, I heard sounds of his hands cracking. I even had the near-death experience when he fucking cracked my neck! How could you even do that in a barbershop? I left the shop after almost an hour and felt like a new man. You don’t usually get this treatment in Europe. At least not for that price. It was, again, a skill, a craftsmanship that is fading away from the modern societies.
I then had to leave Pokhara with a personal driver (i know, luxury). He felt so cool in himself that he didn’t speak to me at all. He drove the skoda so fast and, in my perception, dangerously, that every turn and every move was a life-threatening event. Either for us or for other road participants. In Nepal, there are unexplained things on the road. Why are there a group of young guys discussing something on the road? Why is there a blind man walking with his stick on the road? Why is there a guy taking a nap on the road? A truck just stopped in the lane and the guy is cleaning the windshield? All of this is happening on an already-dangerous zigzag road in the mountain. I kept watching out of the window and never grew bored. There was always something new to see and wonder about.
After two hours, the driver dropped me at a bridge and said “you know the way? just go left after the bridge”. I carried my backpack and walked over the bridge and got lost a bit till I arrived to the resort. The view from the bridge was amazing! I enjoyed looking right and left while crossing the bridge and entertained the idea that I will stay here for one night. I already planed to wake up early to watch the Sunrise.
Although this is just a photo from the internet of the bridge, there was actually a person carrying such a big sack crossing in front of me.
At the resort, a Nepali guy welcomed me and spoke a bit of Arabic. More than half the Nepali people I talked to have worked in the gulf and spoke a bit of broken Arabic. He pretended that he knew my reservation and checked me into a room. They also had cottages and tents for lower budgets. We had a small chit-chat and I had lunch with the people who just finished rafting. Most of them were Nepali and they seemed to have had a lot of fun. Meanwhile, Summit tried to contact me and informed me that I went to the wrong resort and that a guide will come and pick me up to take me to the right place in 5 to 10 minutes. An hour has passed. The place I waited in became very empty and not fun. Electricity was out so I also didn’t have internet since a few hours. I read and read and read until I got tired. Summit called me again and apologised. “The guide will come in 5 to 10 minutes”. He said again. Half an hour later, I was pissed off. This was not fun anymore and I was not looking forward to staying there nor to do rafting nor to anything. I felt an urge to leave this place. It was getting darker and I knew it would be sometime before I arrive to Kathmandu. But it didn’t matter. I wanted to leave this place. I walked back on the bridge and found a few people who sat on the road and appeared to appoint themselves in a job where they stop local buses. They did for me! I took a local bus to Kathmandu and was happy to get out of there.
The bus was a paradox of high and low technologies. It had outlets for electricity, a decent big TV screen, a bottle of water in front of each seat that were also reclinable. However, the over-all status of the bus seemed to belong to the last decade. Specially how it roared when we drove uphill. The bus was like a dying elephant. But the road between Pokhara and Kathmandu was also not easy. Although it was only 200km, it needed at least 6 hours if there was no traffic. Despite all that, the driver was impersonating a Fast and Furious role and didn’t break on these mountain curves. I looked to my left side and saw only 50 centimeters between us and a cliff then the river where I was supposed to raft and I was very confident that this was way more dangerous than rafting. Everybody else on board seemed relaxed so I decided to leave life in the hand of God.
The passengers argued on what movie to watch, a Hindi movie or a Nepali movie? But it was shorter than a couple deciding on a movie night. We ended up watching a hindi movie dubbed with Nepali so I didn’t understand anything! But I didn’t need to. You know, Hindi movies are exaggerated but this one was something that my brain couldn’t process nor classify. Was this even science fiction? The reason they chose a character with a big belly to be a super-strong man was unclear for me. They seemed to focus on his moustache as a sign of his manhood and an excuse of the unspeakable things he did to his attackers. Well, if you grow up watching these movies, you could have a distorted view of reality and of how life works! However, I found the movie entertaining with the amounts of “Oh shit” and “What the fuck” that I kept repeating in my head. It made my bus trip lighter and shorter.
I arrived to Kathmandu around 4 hours later and chose a good hotel for the next two days. I needed to treat myself well after the frustration of the day. I guess in general, I wanted to relax and enjoy the last few days of my trip. I was sleeping in the Royal Penguin Hotel!
Goooood morning.. It is still cloudy and I couldn’t see the mountain. But good. I still see the green hills around. I went for breakfast in the garden where Hanna was sitting and checking her iPhone. In front of her, was her journal and a pen. We chatted a bit and then I found myself asking her if she can read me a random page from her journal. It was too private.. but come on.. we will most probably never see each other again. She actually accepted and read to me one of her reflections two days ago. Which she describes as “the most reflective entry I have written in my journal”. In her post, she discusses some people and conversations she had in the trek and her childhood and how she grew up to fullfil a certain image required by her parents that made her unhappy. I appreciated her sharing these private thoughts. There was then a relatively weird atmosphere since she felt a bit exposed to me, a person she does not know almost anything about. I tried to soften the conversation by a couple of jokes and we then had a couple of nice discussions.
We decided to hike all together downhill. Hanna, her two companions, Ram and I. With all of my luggage on my back, it wasn’t very easy. Although yesterday I didn’t have any difficulty trekking uphill, today I felt a bit weaker. My legs started shaking with each step and I miserably observed my lack of fitness for such activities. Well, I play football weekly, I go the gym. But I guess this wasn’t enough for the Himalayas! With many stops for rest and with Ram’s help, we made it downhill in a couple of hours where we met very old ladies who spoke English and sold us unnecessary armbands and beads.
We drove to the hotels where I said bye to Hanna and and agreed with Ram and her companions to go out for a boys night in the evening where we go for dinner and some dancing in a local Nepali place. Until then, I spent my time relaxing, chilling and strolling around town.
Due to the similarity in the food, religion, language and somehow the culture, you would also assume a bigger range of similarities between India and Nepal. However, Nepali people are a bit different. They are very punctual for example. All my appointments with Nepali people were punctual and respected which rarely happens in India or with Indians (DJ :D). There is also a certain sparkle in their eyes that shines some kind of intelligence. Being aware of the inaccessibility of good education, I wonder what gives me this impression. It seems to me that the culture is rich and that Nepali people are emotionally mature. The Nepali book I am reading has also given me this impression. Driving around Nepal, I try to observe the people in their small encounters and fantasise about the various conversations they might be having, the gossips about their neighbours, and what they share with each other about sufferings and dreams.
Ram was punctual. We went together to pick up Lakhpa and Mingmar (I am pretty sure the spellings are wrong). They spoke Nepali a lot which was very relaxing for me. They discussed at length where to go and then decided to go to a local Nepali dance place that is the Nepali analog to a dance club. We took a taxi and went there. It was in the local city far from where the tourists go. I must confess that I wanted a more western place. But then I just followed them and decided to wait for whatever comes. The place was damp and mouldy. I asked myself “what am I doing here?” It was an eventful night. I just sat there and observed what seemed to be a different world for me. The stage had a carpet and each one of the performers had to take their shoes off before climbing up the stage. They were very casual and checked their cell phones and drank water on stage. Having a mysterious red light in the stage, my first thought that this will be an erotic show and that the guys brought me here for an unforgettable night. It was not! It was unforgettable but totally unsexy! The performers were a mixture of men, women, young girls most of them were rather unattractive except two of them that were acceptable. A blind young man joined the performers to play the flute. Also he took off his shoes and put them in a safe place that he seemed to always reserve. I observed him with rather respect. The performance started with traditional singing and a huge woman that started dancing. I found refuge behind a pillar that restricted my visual field and protected me from this, forgive me, visual pollution. I had no solution for the music though. The first few songs were rather painful and boring. I failed to grasp the rhythm and the dance. Mingmar seemed to share with me the same opinion which made me have more faith in Nepali taste. Mingmar said “I need one pillar here”.. he envied me! 😀 We ate and drank and were served by very young girls. The 2nd part of the performance was more dance-encouraging. So we went to the dance floor and tried to dance. I tried to mimic their dance moves which didn’t seem to follow any physical law or maybe Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. But I had fun. Rochsa, an 18 years old girl wanted to dance with me and asked me if I am married or unmarried. She gave thumbs up when she knew I am not married and Ram tried to make more fire in the atmosphere! The performing band seemed to be creative and tried to incorporate some English words for me “I love youuuuu”. They then sang what Ram translated to me: “Here is one foreginer who does not understand the language… ♫♫♫ But no worries, the guy with the cap is translating for him… ♫♫♫” The guy with the cap was Ram who was euphoric on the dance floor! We danced a bit more and then decided it was time to go. Rochsa gave me her phone number and wrote “call me plz” I am going to sell her number to the highest bid.We left the place in a nice mood and had a long walk to the hotel in the peaceful night and discussed the events of the evening. Today was my last day in Pokhara. Tomorrow I should start the drive to Kathmandu and go raftinggggggg…
