Salik

In creating a world of shared love, a veil of ignorance and distance have often created imaginative realities that have separated us by creating fears and misinformation about one another. A kid in some corner of the world grows up believing that, whites are white because they ran away before God finished making them, while in some other parts they believe blacks are black because of the sun. We grow up to such notions, with stories exaggerated and falsely narrated. We grow up with books, teaching us historical interpretations with certain motives, certain goals. The same man who in the books of one part of the world is a hero, becomes a villain in another part of the world. We grow with differences and distances created, insecurities penetrated deep into our subconscious, lines drawn and the word religion is used to make everybody else a dweller of hell; in the name of color, nationality, beliefs and ideologies, we create a xenophobic and a dystopian world around us. We have built walls.

The need of the hour is to remove obstacles and to come in contact with people from different cultures, to understand them, to mingle with them and to be able not only to hear them but to listen to them, and to be able to understand their life, histories, beliefs from their perspectives. The idea is to be able to get beyond ourselves, to be free like birds, to be able to see the world not just through our nest, but to be impartial like the light of the sun. It really takes us to be human to behold our basic humanity, and to be loving, tolerant, and understanding towards humanity. Beauty many a times is a result of differences, the world would not be as beautiful as it is now, if it would be a plain field. The diversity of blossoms, trees, mountains, rivers and all the natural wonder makes it what it is. Nothing is more beautiful about travelling than the potential it has to create individuals who get beyond themselves, and be able to look at the world with new lenses, the opportunity they can behold to dive in the new world and experience it from deep within. Humans need to interact more, they need to listen to one another more, they need to not just talk but to communicate, and understand history from all its available shades, variations, and seek its impartiality. I was no longer a wanderer, it felt like I was replanted and rain showered me with a new life, like that of the blossoms, but I didn’t know how long my spring would last? Growing up, we always become nostalgic of our youths, and our innocent childhood, but there is a different pleasure in the older years of life. You become conscious about the subtleties of life and you start to understand it deeply with your experience and learning through life. You cannot imagine going back again into ignorance you once possessed, while at the same time you miss the freshness of the past times, you value the consciousness you have now, but you miss the beautiful innocence of being a child, and the energy of being a youth.

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They say, there were some people who were high on weed before going to watch a football match, and then police came to arrest them. They, in their altered perception of mind start thinking they are being taken to watch the match. Everybody becomes happy and starts shouting jubilantly, while they are being taken to the prison. Youth and maturity is like that. In our young age we have energy and we have ignorance, while when we grow older, we have consciousness. Both are beautiful in their own ways, but we desire both…the luxury we often don’t have in life. Certain kinds of ignorance are different, you desire them back when you face reality, travelling and coming in terms with life. I have become cognizant of deep hatred some people possess for others. In my years when I lived as a Christian, I came across so many people spilling venom for people of other faiths like Muslims, Jews or others, all based on illusionary notions, or misunderstandings, or as a Muslim I have seen people enormously loathing people of other faiths. The more I think about it, the more it troubles my consciousness.

I came across one such incident. I was walking with one of my Turkish neighbours, when he started to express his views about Indians, he said how dirty all of them are; worshipping cows all the time! The cow story of India overshadowed everything else at that time! At times, it seems like people know nothing about India except cows, whereas in India it’s more of a political instrument than a lived reality, I feel helpless sometimes. It feels almost impossible to explain things to someone who never saw life from a different prism, and it further magnifies my belief about how important it is for people to interact and communicate, to travel so that you learn to be unbiased. This world needs to be experienced.

It was spring in Istanbul; blossoms were romancing in the sunshine; the season of hope they say!

After a short conversation with one of the neighbours I met on my way back home, I reached my apartment and saw my door open. Aghast, I entered and pushed the door a little more, to get a deep view of my indescribably scattered room.  A whole shelf of books was on the floor and souvenirs from around the world that I collected, looked frightfully helpless while lying next to the books. They gave me a strange poignant look as I stood there. My cupboard was broke open and all clothes were jumbled up. I sighed and then sat on the bed. Then I stood up and checked my valuables. Nothing was stolen and I had no cash at home. I thought of it to be some investigation about my identity, and I immediately looked for the only evidence they could behold, a photo album of my family. I pushed the bed aside, and underneath it, there was a small opening I had carved. I opened it, and found the album still there. My identity was safe, but it was important for me to figure out if there were suspicions or it was just an attempt of robbery. I checked the camera footages, it turned out some guys in masks sneaked their way to the apartment, broke the door, and entered looking for valuables they couldn’t find. I was fifty years old by then, and after decades itself, the fear of my real identity was still hovering over me, but anyway I got over it quickly.

I lived more than enough from a point when death was imminent, the love of people that gave me strength and hope to escape, and tread a path to a new world. Except that Fatimah was away! She must be living a very different life, I still carried immense love for her; for distance only amplified it to a level unknown to even me. The kids I had looked after were grownups by then; most of them in universities, while others working along while studying. The orphanage still looked after their needs whenever required. I was not so much into its affairs as I initially was. The orphanage was under the supervision of very efficient people.

The world is an ever-expanding horizon, the more you get involved in it, the more it takes you in. I was becoming tired of the routine work life, so I reduced my work only to teaching. I started to spend more time reading, writing, and with my children, whom I looked after. It was a search of home somehow, a lost home; a home that was more of a feeling than a physical space. I definitely found that sense of feeling there, though it never felt complete. When you travel around, you have to let go of people and spaces that gave you love and memories. You cannot fully feel at home anywhere, even if you go back to your first home, you wouldn’t feel it!

I believe I lost complete sense of home forever, and perhaps it was beautiful and painful at the same time, you can stay at one place all your life, and always feel a sense of complete home, but in doing that you never see the wonders of being a part of the world beyond…of having memories so diverse, therefore making them so beautiful and having extraordinary learning experiences, while if we see the other side of the coin, you lose the sense of complete home forever when you are out wandering and exploring the world. Does it pain to seek that sense of home forever?

Yes, it does! Badly!

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