Grange Road Number 6: the first encounter

When I opened the front hostel door, a tall guy came into view. I said hello, smiling, but nothing was said in response!!! That was the first slap in the face, something the likeness of which never happened to me in my first visit. That was very unexpected and humiliating as I was told weeks before my departure that the students residing at Grange Road number 6 were told about my arrival. I did not expect people there to be waiting for me but the thing was that that was some sort of you being rejected when you knew that they had an idea about your coming.

To Cambridge

It took me 10 minutes to get to Balham Station, and another 12 minutes to reach Victoria Station by the overhead train. I had to walk for a while to find the coach station where I booked a 10 pound ticket to Cambridge. I waited in number 10 for half an hour until the driver ushered us to the coach, which then serpented its way through the clean London streets.

All the way to Cambridge, the flash of memories went back. I wanted to visit Britain for the second time to improve my English, to talk to people, to get to know and cherish the culture and the language I teach in Tunisia and to work on my PhD in some of the best libraries in the world. This country has meant a lot to me, and memories from my first visit in 2001 were still vivid in my mind.

It took us one hour to leave London and vast sceneries started to show up. The green lash countryside, as described by Shamma, was coming into view and clean fast cars of all makes were hitting the road in the opposite direction. We arrived at Cambridge at half past twelve. Because I did not have a map, I asked the driver if he knew where Pembroke College was, but he said that he never heard of such a place. I walked for about half an hour until I found my destination. The first person I met was a professor who showed me the way to the porter’s lodge. I was given some keys and told that my room was in a postgraduate kind of hostel at some distance from Pembroke. So, again, dragging my heavy suitcase I made my way to my new place. The porter was kind enough to walk outside the college and show me which way I should take. Finally, I arrived at Grange Road number 6.

A night in London

It took me some time to find the underground station where I booked a four pound ticket to Balham, south London. The guy at the station said I had to change the tube at Leicester Square, the thing which I did. Yet, I took the wrong alley and the wrong tube finding myself heading to north London. Finally, after some frustration, I found the right tube but then I had to take a cab to my final destination.

Sophie welcomed me warmly, with a big smile and a kind heart. The pasta she cooked me was very delicious, and the cup of Lipton tea was exactly what I needed after a very long and hectic day.

That was something like a blessing, a smile when all other smiles were contorted. A push-up, a sort of you being given the thumb-up, when all other thumbs were going down, questioning what you do, discrediting your intentions, trying to fit you in a strait-jacket, pigeon-holing you, with all the injustices categorization might incur. For some of them the world is a puzzle of their own making, and it is up to them to put the pieces together. You role is just to stand aside and watch them play the big game, do the right thing, and keep the good work; and woe to him he who dares to cross the red line.

I did not sleep immediately. Sophie said that the fickle weather could not be trusted and that I had better shut the windows before I sleep. Nice room, the one she gave me: very well lit and marvelously decorated. A hotchpotch of conflicting images soon overcame me. I woke up a bit early and I could see that some shy light was struggling to find its way through the windows. I tried to do something. The piles of books in the room were very tempting but whether or not it was all right to have a look at them left me undecided. Reading a book that early would require switching on the light, the thing which might disturb Sophie, or Ann, the German student. So, I simply kept to my warm couch; then I started to stretch my legs in the small, yet beautiful room. For a while I was mulling it over but the I could resist no more. I grabbed the nearest book. At around eight A.M, I heard the footsteps of Sophie and Ann. I waited for another half an hour, the time I thought would be enough for them to use the bathroom without being disturbed. When I made my way down the staircase, Sophie was already in the kitchen smiling from ear to ear and offering breakfast. We all had it together, talking about this and that.

A summer in the UK - part 1: the flight

This is a long and tiring day. The longest part of it was when we were flying over the Mediterranean. At first, when Sardinia Island came into view, I heaved a sigh of relief, thinking that we finally crossed all the Mediterranean but when the biggest chunk of the big deep blue sea made its presence felt my heart started to thump and I felt like I was submerging into nowhere, afraid for a moment of the unknown lurking somewhere at the ready to give me a lengthy list of reasons as to why, a poor soul like mine, should be kept to its place. When we left what the British call Europe, the lady next to me started to cherish the lovely sunny weather that day. She asked me if I liked the flight and I said it was too long. She smiled and introduced me to her husband who was sitting next to her and then she spoke about her daughter who was some two or three seats behind us. She wanted to know if that was my first visit to the United Kingdom. I said that I visited this lovely country six years ago, when I was in my second year at university. She was a very nice lady, and that was clear to me right from the first minute I sat next to her before the plane left Tunis-Carthage airport. She was immersed in a book, the title of which I found very funny, especially with the little bear sitting by the right side of it. Later on, and as she showed me the book, it turned out that it tackles some language teaching issues. Yet, the one thing the answer of which I did not come by, was why she spoke a different dialect than her husband. Their being together for years and years, justified by the fact that they had a daughter who was doing a degree at the University of Cardiff, meant for me, a person very much interested in dialects, that living together with people who speak different dialects for lengthy periods would ultimately bring about some sort of convergence or approximation, unless we purposively and deliberately not only want to but also struggle to keep to our original dialects or accents. I did not dare ask her the question, out of politeness.

I remember quite well my living in Tunis for very long periods of time as a student, with all the changes affecting me. I could listen to and speak to the great number of fellow students who spoke different dialects. The point is that there were times when I unconsciously accommodated to the kind of accent or dialect of those people I conversed with. The kind of positive attitude towards a person is, at the end of the day, one way of making a human being come closer to the world of the other; and otherness is no longer seen as a threat but just another manifestation of something that exists alongside us, a complementary component, the other side of the coin, as it were.

By the time we got to Heathrow Terminal Two, she wished me good luck and took her leave.

Art and Craft

The students of the Higher institute of Arts and Crafts, Tataouine, Tunisia: They keep the good job.

Congratulations Si Mohamed

Mohamed Tarhouni, our friend and colleague successfully defended his PhD thesis. Mabrouk / Congratulations!!!

محمد الطرهوني، صديقنا بدرجة أولى و زميلنا في العمل تحصل على درجة الدكتوراه في علوم الحياة. ان شاء الله بالتوفيق سي محمد!! 

Ramble talk

I have changed it from "meditations from Jerba" to "from Jerba: meditations, ramble talk and otherwise" for many reasons. First, mediation alone is too heavy a word for what I sometimes want to say. There are times when I start talking about anything and about nothing, just for the sake of talking, especially when I have a cup of coffee with colleagues in my work place. Actually, I hate to call them colleagues and I prefer the term "friends" as the kind of relationships we have transcend those between people working together. So, what happens is that when I have my cup of coffee I get excited and I start picking on them and and talking endlessly about trivialities, just for the sake of it. And so happened that those trivial things we talk about lead us to other subjects which might be interesting to put on my blog.

So, meditation itself, or weighing ones words before committing them to this online parchment is not really the thing and a change seemed most appropriate.

Second, there are things in life that I want to share with others, and they are so simple and may be stupid and hence they are a far cry from what we can call meditations.

Third, and just like anyone else in this world, there are times when I feel like crying, if you see what I mean, and that completely different from meditating.

submission

I am not versed in Literature and I am not saying that I know enough about it. Literature is just something I like, something I enjoy, something that somehow brightens my world.

I have been reading Women in Love, a novel written by D H Lawrence, and on page 336 (Penguin Books) I came across a dialogue between Ursula and Hermione. Their discussion was on marriage and below are some of what they say:

• I don't want to give the sort of submission he insists on. He wants me to give myself up.
  
• He says he wants me to accept him non-emotionally, and finally--I really don't know what he means. He says he wants the demon part of himself to be mated--physically--not the human being.

This reminds me of something that happened long ago in a wedding ceremony in some Tunisian village. The bride was being taken to the groom's house. Her mum put among her belongings 2 things: a horse hoe and a dog bowl. They wanted to submit the groom to their will, and both tools symbolize their wishful thinking. STUPID BUT TRUE!

I do not know why submitting the other is on the hidden agenda of some people who want to get married. What is it that makes a partner in life a slave? Why is marriage taken as only a way to get the demon part (I am using the characters' words) in us mated? Why is getting married a sort of submission to one partner? Is it not a life and we lead it together?

Success

For lots of people here in Tunisia, as elsewhere, success is measured by the work you have, the house you build, and the car make you have. Once you have those three things you start “enjoying” life, showing off, making your presence felt wherever you go, looking down at others who were not lucky enough and did not have what you yourself had.

I remember a friend of mine who passed the CAPES in 2003 and was supposed to start a teaching career in the following year. He was a heavy smoker and he spoke of the attitudes of his town folk towards him when they know there was a job in store for him. Now, they acknowledged him with a smile and even offered him a cigarette and treated him to a cup of coffee in the local café.

This reminds me of a passage I read a few years ago. In A Pair of Blue Eyes, Thomas Hardy, a great novelist wrote about the change in attitude toward a young man who comes from a poor family but managed to become the architect of the neighborhood church. Now the young guy is looked at with reverence and he is treated to a cup of coffee with a saucer.

It is strange how people perceive others. We always introduce ourselves to others saying we have this job and that car. We want to show others how important we are, may be without any thoughtful sympathetic regard for their feelings. We sometimes enjoy humiliating others and reducing them to nothingness as if our existence depended on others being mere nonentities. This, I think, harbors the kind of self-doubt feelings bogging us down so much so that we seek self-satisfaction in the annihilation of the other. We give others the measure-up test and we roll our eyes at their success.