Ahmed's Chunks

For no good reason, and probably as a way of escape, I have gone to see four Arabic movies in under 24 hours.

The BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) is organising a special celebration of movies from the Arab world.

It kicked off with a gala opening night of drinks, followed by the Syrian film "Out of Coverage", followed by drinks and canapes.  The gala night was grossly over-priced (£25); but it was a good place to meet interesting people.  Among the bored journalists of major Arab media outlets were the directors and producers of some of the movies.

The opening film was the Syrian "Out of Coverage".  This was a likable and quite funny film about a put-upon chap (the typical hero in most Arabic films) who is noble enough to attempt to take care of a friend's family while the friend is in prison.  But it was not realistic; it portrayed Damascus and Syrian women in possibly too flattering light.  I was struck  (by Damascene beauty, of course) but also by how similar Damascus looks to Cairo.  Though not as crowded, it has the look and sounds of the nicer parts of Cairo.

I liked that the film lingered on the central characters and their relationships before, finally, revealing the true dilemma at hand: the hero has fallen in love with his friend's (who is in prison) wife.  It is satisfying, 45mins into a film, to discover that it has a structure and story, that it will not be a resounding disappointment afterall.  But by concentrating on humour and paying loving attention to the attractions of life in Damascus, the story was slightly degraded.

The overall feeling amongst my friends was that it was funny but forgettable.

I wondered if the director was unwittingly, or wittingly, pandering to the international festival audience in his mind.

Today morning, I watched Egyptian production "Ein Shams" directed by Ibrahim El Batout.  The movie won "top film" at one of the festivals - which is an achievement for a very understated, documentary-like film.  Again, the director shows us around his home town: Cairo.  In particular, there were many evocative sequences from Ein Shams, the suburb the film is named after.  But in contrast to "Out of Coverage", the footage is not flattering. 

The film was sentimental to a high degree.  It tackled the story of a young girl growing up to a put-upon father (another one!).  It educated us on the story of Jesus - Mary and Jesus sought refuge in Egypt at some point and were reputed to have lived briefly in today's Ein Shams.  The dialogue was real and authentic in many parts and reminded me of how easily good dialogue comes to Egyptians because we are much more expressive and emotional than most nations. 

Some shots lingered on the characters for unusual lengths of time, or they continued to be fixed even when the character has already moved out of the frame.  At many points, I silently applauded the director for not using music to influence certain sequences; but then he used music to devastating effect in other scenes.  In the Q&A, the director explained these quirks as "necessary for the rhythm of the movie".  But the overall feeling, to most tastes, was that this made the film feel weird and loose, ill-fitting.  The director's strong documentary background probably explains this style.

Ein Shams was impressive and made me feel good about Ibrahim El Batout's approach of independent-minded film-making.  His film would never succeed at a popular level.  Though the film is still pending discussion and has not been on release in Egypt, it would only attract attention because of its rather controversial sociological content.  I did not feel the humour was as deliberate as "Out of Coverage".  The good news is that the producer has already made a big profit on the film from selling it to various satellite channels.
 

The next film "Paloma Delight" was a much more conventional film.  It had a decent budget, clearly.  The story was well-put-together and the cast had a lot of eye candy.  Yet another Arab director makes a point of showing us around his town, Algiers - and educating me. 

A prostitution madame, who also does odd-job fixing, found new talent Rashida - whom she renames Paloma - and proceeds to slowly introduce her to the ways of "relieving men of their loneliness".  Except that the madame's son falls in love with Paloma. 

As ever, the film is heavy with symbolism - as the director confirmed in the Q&A.  My main problem with this film was its length and its evident symbolism - I did not like the inherent implication of longing for the past, the French past.  It was also entirely in French - although the director explained that this was necessary for funding reasons.

Nevertheless, with some genuine female beauty on display and a well-acted, well-thought-through scenario, no one came out of the theatre feeling disappointed (though perhaps frustrated).  The director proved himself an intelligent guy (speaking through a interpreter) during the Q&A.

Finally, I watched "Under the Bombs", the Lebanese production that was filmed within days of the end of the Israeli bombing of South Lebanon two years ago. 

The director got the idea three days into the bombing and proceeded to put it onto film within weeks.  So, they shot during the last days of the bombing and recorded on film, firsthand, all the destruction. 

The story is that of a wife going against all flows of traffic - TO Beirut, TO the South of Lebanon (all traffic is in the opposite direction) - in order to be together with her son, whom she left with her sister in their hometown somewhere in the south of Lebanon.  She does not find a single taxi driver willing to take her to the South, except for one resigned, dark-humoured guy called Tony.

The film intersperses documentary footage and on-location scenes.  They used a handful of actors and a lot of real people, in the field, on the spot, who were very happy to commit to film whatever they said.  They even got various media journalists to appear on the film pretending to talk to the main actress.  The film feels real.  The acting is measured.  The cutting is snappy. 

I can hardly fault the film in its first hour.  Within minutes, you are driving with Tony and 'madam' looking out for her son, and observing the destruction.  Within half an hour, you are shaken up: you are being cluster-bombed, running for cover and talking to hectic, hysterical people.  Even in the scene where some men at a mass burial site are prompted "who're you for?" and they chant back "Hezbollah", and then "who's your leader?" and they chant back "Nasrallah" ... you kind of know where they're coming from.

The film - again - showed us around a lot.  Despite the destruction scenes, when we get to the green Bekaa Valley in the south of Lebanon, I was surprised at how beautiful and lovely Lebanon can be.  Now I understand the reputation Lebanon used to have in the 1960s.  Now I understand why the crusaders set up home there; it would have reminded them of their European homes - with better weather.

The story slows down and becomes more moving, by turns, as we approach the end. 

In Nada Abou Farhat and Georges Khabbaz, I saw great actors improvising under severe real-life circumstances.  I am not surprised the film has won so many major prizes.

Expectations play a really important role in our lives.

We expect things for ourselves.

Then we get into a state of competition with ourselves to achieve the expectations.

Every so often, this competition tires us out.  It is certainly burdening; and occasionally depressing.  No doubt. 

Some of the expectations are unreasonable; we are being imiitative of other people, or we are just bending to society's norms.  

The wise (truly effective?) people ask themselves WHY they set the goal, HOW they will achieve it, (is it within their reach?), and WHAT to do if it is not achieved.

But, hey, everything happens for a reason ...

There are two sides to this cliched phrase.

If my thinking about Britain is that it sucks and I can't stand Brits, etc, and I end up punched in the face by some cockney thugs, or rejected by every British woman I date (as examples), then these unfortunate events probably happened for a reason inside of ME.  I think bad things about British people; they can tell; events happen as a result.

Sometimes you get the external event - like, I am not particularly pissed off with Britain, but apropos of nothing, a group of thugs pounce on me and I end up being punched-up.  This is where it helps to think that things happen for a reason.  Maybe these violent incidents needed publicising and I am the sacrificial lamb.  May be these thugs were going to rape a woman and instead they punched me up.  Maybe God is telling me to leave Britain ....

Actually, the "things happen for a reason" thing becomes an exercise in interpretation.  People can come up with really weird "reasons".  The simplest learnt lessons are probably the best.

We should be grateful for what we already have: alive, able to see, to smell, to walk, to run, to laugh, to have a job, to have a home, to have a family, to have food (last on my list and yet number one for all humans).

But it is all a bit tricky.  The ancient Egyptians thought they were preserving themselves for the next life (and taking their worldly possessions with them).  Thousands of years later, we found out about their ingeniousness, we collected their DNA, and even reconstructed how they looked.  So, sometimes the reason comes out thousands of years later!

So, I have finally managed to watch the biggest film to come out of Egypt for the past three years.  Based on the most compelling novel to come out of Egypt in the last ten years or more (The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany), the film is a two-and-a-half-hours-long exploration of the stories revolving around the various occupants of a fictional apartment complex, called the Yacoubian Building, in old downtown Cairo.  Released in 2006, the film boasts a cast consisting of Egypt's top brass, a script written by Wahid Hamid - probably the strongest film-writer in the country, a budget far out-stripping most Egyptian productions up to 2008 (the same production house is now filming the most expensive production ever), and a bursting new talent in director Marwan Hamed who was at the time of filming under 30.

The film (and novel) shot to notoriety because it busts one particular taboo: it depicts a gay character sympathetically.  It also depicts characters with rampant alcohol-drinking habits, and men abusing their positions to fulfill their sexual urges.  We also see political corruption, torture, and extremism.  The Yacoubian building houses all the contradictions of Egyptian society and its modern history too.

The story has no hero, no central character, although Adel Imam's character comes closest.  He is the son of a deceased Pasha (an aristrocrat) who lives an alcohol-driven, degenerate life in which he pursues women and does nothing.  Yet, this old man is refined, charming, gentle with his ladies, and humourous with everybody.  When his sister turns on him and throws him out of their apartment - accusing him of wasting his life and his wealth, he does not turn on her.  Rather, he excuses her and tries to weather it out. 

He was educated in Paris.  To him, Paris is the whole world.  He may not be in Paris any longer; but Paris is in him.  He left it for Egypt back when Cairo still had something of Europe in it.  But today's Cairo is a jungle.  A society in which a former shoe-shine man is now a multi-millionaire parliamentarian, a society in which good manners and subtle touches are absent and unwanted.  To the author of Yacoubian Building, this character is The Last of the Good Men.

The other characters in the film are immensely interesting.  But I felt the author's true sympathies are with the European enlightenment.  The police are authoritarian torturers.  The politicians are a cartel of corrupt men. The youth are misguided into religion and extremism.  The women are put upon by men who want sex and are ruthless about it.  The gay man is predatory, then generous, then conflicted.  The "little guys" are all schemers and rotten to the core.  The innocent is exposed as possessing an evil streak and ultimately weak.  No one is as wise, as degenerate and yet as loveable, as the Paris-educated character.

The acting was great.  Adel Imam confirmed, yet again, what an immense talent he was and still is.  From the young man of the 1960s who specialised in quirky, funny small roles ("in my head, the small role was the star of his world"), to the comedy giant of the 70s and 80s, to the established main man of blockbuster movies, to today's ocassional starring role, Adel Imam's face, this still, put-upon, bewildered face, shows his success was never a coincidence.  His subtle touches throughout the film gave me some hearty laughs.  Nour El-Sherif, another huge actor, also gave his role a lovely depth.  In fact, it is hard to find a single actor who did not play his part well.  It was also interesting to see the director's vision of life in Cairo as slick and elegant.  Life in Egypt comes off more glamorous than it really is - something Hollywood manages to convey to us, of life the in the US, all the time.

My main criticism is the length of the film.  It could have lost at least half an hour.

I am not qualified to critique the original novel (which I have not read); but since everybody says the film is very much the novel, I feel Alaa Al-Aswany (the author) should have tried to cut down on the numerous strands of it.  Perhaps he should have tried to focus on only a few stories.

I am in love with yet another Burt Bacharach song.  This is the sublime "Anyone who had a heart" by Dionne Warwick.  There have been many cover versions (including Shelby Lynne's) but this is the neatest, the most elegant, the original that inspired all the covers.

The last 30 seconds are pure magic.  Spirtual, intoxicating, other-worldly, mesmerising, overpowering, ... just the way I like my ladies.  ;-)

Burt Bacharch - the composer - what a talent.  He is also behind:

What the world needs now is love.
Raindrops keep fallin on my head.
Walk on by.
You'll never get to heaven if you break my heart.
...

Lovely songs.  Each with a memorable melody, each heightened (or deepened) musically by just the right amount.  Simple and beautiful.

But wait.

There is magic behind the words, too.  And that all goes down to a Mr Hal David.

Nick Tosches wrote:-

"The Bacharach/David repertoire which [Dionne Warwick] chooses to sing is so fascinatingly cynical / fatalistic / stoical / emotional / happy,  simultaneously!  It is pure emotion."

Hal David himself says:-

In writing I search for believability, simplicity, and emotional impact. Believability is the easiest of the three to accomplish. ... Simplicity is much harder to achieve. It is easy to be simple and bad.  Being simple and good is very difficult. ... Above all, I try to create an emotion to which others can respond. Unless I can create an emotion to which I can respond, I throw the lyric away.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love.
It's the only thing that there's just too little of.
What the world needs now is love, sweet love -
No, not just for some, but for everyone.

Anyone who had a heart would take me in his arms and love me too
Why won't you?

Raindrops keep fallin' on my head
But that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turnin' red
Cryin's not for me
'Cause I'm never gonna stop the rain ... by complainin'
Because I'm free
Nothin's worryin' me

I can hardly wait to hold you
Feel my arms around you
How long I have waited
Waited just to love you
Now that I have found you
Dont ever go
Dont ever go
I love you so

I walk along the city streets you used to walk along with me
And every step I take reminds me of just how we used to be
Well how can I forget you girl,
When there is always something there to remind me?
...
If you should find you miss the sweet and tender love we used to share
Just come back to the places where we used to go and I'll be there.

If you see me walking down the street
And I start to cry each time we meet
Walk on by, walk on by
...
Foolish pride
Is all that I have left
So let me hide
The tears and the sadness you gave me
When you said goodbye
Walk on by

I can hardly wait for the day when we say I do.
It's a day i dreamed of so long now comin' true.
...
You'll never get to heaven if you break my heart.
so be very careful not to make us part.
You won't get to heaven if you break my heart.

Okay.  Check this video out.

Before you do, let me tell you that it has garnered 200,000 hits on youtube in a week.  It has got all the makings of a strong viral hit.

The story is that an apparently elegant girl, called Olga, handed her business card to this guy Dimitri in the SF Marina district after a two-minute chat.  Afterwards, she doesn't return his calls.  So, he leaves her a voicemail.  And then another one.  The video is really the two voicemails on audio and various pictures that the 'producer' strung together.

Have a look and then read on.

I find it appalling that the video was put online.

I do not find it funny.

I feel for the guy: he was gutsy and honest but went too far and shot himself in the foot.  I do not conclude all the things implied in the video.  It is very likely he is normal.  It is very likely he will calm down once a relationship starts.  I am more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt than to condemn him out of hand.  I feel that condemning out of hand makes him an outcast.  To me, a toothless threat designed to win over only the type of woman who likes her man strong and full-on is a very honest, harmless portrayal of what the guy wants.  Of course, I recognise it is completely ineffective.

1. Why do women hand out their contact details to men they have no intention of keeping in contact with?
2. Why can men not see when they chase so hard and sell so aggressively, they would never get the woman?

Are the sexes on two different planets, really?  I guess John Gray said it already: Women are from Venus, Men are from Greece.

• Is it true to say that our ideas are out there in a realm called the ideas realm?  That we have to leave our selves and travel to that realm in order to lay claim to an idea.  That ideas do not come to us; we go to them.  That we let ourselves free, we play, we have fun, we let go, ... and in this journey, things will happen.  We lose our conscious selves. 
  

• Are our ideas divinely inspired?  Do we, having made the (conscious) effort to travel to the realm of ideas, to newfoundland, what we lay claim to is our fate, dependent on divine allotment, ...?

• Our brains are apparently wired to inhibit, to control, more than to loosen and let go.  We have to consciously de-activate our inhibitions.  Often when we do that we physically tense up.  It is ironic: to free up a muscle, our brain first tenses it up and then attempts to loosen it.  Alexander (of the Alexander technique) apparently said that there is no such thing as free will, it is free won't.  Often in the Alexander technique, you do the counter-intuitive thing: "stretch to relax", "make an opposite motion in an opposite part of your body to the one you want".

• Is it true to say that experience derives from repetition and learning and that when we have competition that is more experienced than us, it is likely they will beat us to whatever we seek because they have 'been through' what we are experiencing for the first time?  But when we seek new territories, when we pioneer, go to lands that no one has, as far as we know, gone to, we are free to explore and are not hampered by competition that wants what we want?

• Wasn't it Paul Simon (of Simon and Garfunkel) who said: "the fact that other people have never done this, that's what I want to do.  What other people are doing, go ahead and do it, I'm interested in what they're not doing".  So, he went off and was one of the first western musicians to work with world music bands.

So, no updates for a while.  Is nothing going on?

This is a riff right from tonight's events.

A colleague and I have a paper at a conference in Paris.  I had registered and paid the conference fees about a month ago.  Now, I simply had to book a eurostar journey, some hotel accommodation, and be on my way.  Except the passport had not arrived up until yesterday.

My colleague had suggested calling the passport services hotline; it helped!  I got a super-fast appointment for the ID check and the actual passport was delivered two working days later.  I have now become a member of the club of people able to hop to virtually any place in the world without visa hassle.

I spoke with the finance officer and asked about the limits of my budget for the trip.  She was more concerned why I had not gone to the conference already (it started Monday), and why I had not booked anything until now.  I explained the passport situation.  She gave me guidelines on how much I can spend on both travel and accommodation; I was very pleased.  So, I started an hour or two of intensive planning on the internet.

I had never been to Paris, except for a 24 hour period in which I had chosen to not dip my toe in the central Paris pond and instead remain at the airport hotel.  So, my research was high-pressure.  I had to swot google maps of Paris.  I located the conference centre with respect to the Champ Elysses and now wanted to find a hotel not too far from both.  I found the ratp.fr site which, like London's journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk, is a route finder for all transport in Paris.  I hunted for hotels via the eurostar site (they sell rail+hotel combos), and via random hotel booking sites that I found through google.  I weighed between options: travel times, hotel locations, prices, etc.  I rang up Eurostar.  I rang up a couple of hotels.  Eventually, I plopped for the best that I had found and booked.  It was 5pm.

The hotel would not be central, rather it would be about half an hour from the conference centre; but it was well-equipped, had free wireless internet, and was reasonably priced. 

My decision was to travel within three hours.  I wanted to depart at 8.05pm (the last available train for the night) and arrive in Paris around 11pm.  I would go to the hotel, sleep, and wake up fresh and early for the conference.  I would catch the remaining three days of conference and take a full Saturday and half a Sunday to discover Paris.  If the conference bored me, I'd add Friday to my out-and-about days.

Now I had to pack and get ready within two hours.

It was not fun and it reminded me of how much more organised I need to be; but I did it.  I packed clothes, packed  toileteries, packed the laptop and camera and some reading material and was ready shortly after 7pm.

Clever me, I decide I would go first to Victoria to change money, and then carry on to King's Cross St Pancras.  I thought I would still be able to get to St Pancras before 8.05pm departure time.  It did not occur to me that this is no ordinary train journey.  That I'd still have to go through passport control and do some check-in procedures.  I was aware I'd still have to get the tickets printed at St Pancras.  But I thought I'd probably squeak through.

By the time I got to Victoria, around 7.20pm, I was seriously worrying that I had not thought things through.  Surely the journey to King's Cross would bring me to 8pm.  The walk from King's Cross tube to the new St Pancras concourse could gobble up five minutes.  And what about printing the tickets!  Still, I decided that since I was in Victoria anyway, I might as well go through with my money-changing idea.  The reason I wanted to do the money-changing in Victoria and not anywhere else was: doing it in Paris was bound to be more expensive, doing at St Pancras was bound to be exploitative.  I thought Victoria would be best.  Poor bastard!

I realised I do not actually have cash to convert.  So, I had to get to the cashpoint and take some money out.  Now, I feel the weight of the two rucksacks I am carrying.  There are too many people walking about outside of Victoria station at 7pm.  Too many.  I was perfectly happy to run a few down if necessary.  I get to the cashpoint and there is queue.  I wait.  After some random guy took ages I yelled "come on, what are you doing?"  Everyone else looked at me with amusement.  Finally, I got the cash and literally knocked people off their stride as I ran over to a money-transfer office (fast-moving guy with rucksacks dangling on each side). 

Got my money converted safely.  Every moment of deliberation is killing me.  She is re-counting the money for me and I'm thinking: "GIVE ME THE MONEY, LET ME GO".

I run to the underground line.  Again, thumping and knocking people off.  Most of the time I get a "sorry" - they knew they had done something wrong: got in my way.

Now I am on the tube and staring at the seconds hand on my watch.  I timed the travel times between stops.  Found the average time was under two minutes.  This was good news; it meant I would reach King's Cross at 7.50pm.  Which would give me a full 15 minutes to get to the concourse, get my ticket printed, and go through passport control.  I began to daydream about Paris.

At Euston, the driver - almost as an afterthought - reminded all passengers that King's Cross tube station is closed for security reasons.  We were advised to get out to the ground level and make our way through alternative means of transport.  I wanted to kill somebody.  But now this was turning into one of those tales of perseverence and tenacity; and I was not going to give up.  So, I whacked a few more people on the escalators and down the passageways until I got to ground level, ran off to the bus stop (thinking it was the taxi rank), found a bus, and got on it.  But the bus would not drive away as soon as I got on it!  Many people were doing the same thing I was doing: trying to get King's Cross. 

I spot a young English bloke who looks like he could be travelling to Paris.  I ask him where to get off and how long it takes to get to the concourse.  He reassures me.  "Plenty of time," he says.  "Get off at the British Library and walk along the side," he says.  "Are you an optimist," I asked disbelievingly.  He says he travels to Paris all the time, he knows.

At the British Library stop, I get off together with him and he advises me to "jog" to the concourse and gives me directions.  I was disappointed I thought we were going to jog together - but it turned out he wasn't actually travelling to Paris that night. 

A lot of people are on the pavement.  I can't run; people are forcing me to slow down; I hop on to the street but a cyclist almost knocked me down.  I walk with a quick pace.  At the entrance, I find Policemen blocking it.  They advise me to walk a further 300 yards down to another entrance.  Finally, I get inside the very modern St Pancras concourse (opened just last year, and advertised as one of the world's most spectacular).  I have never been there before.  I am slightly lost.

I run to the check-in entrance.  Many security people are standing doing nothing.  I ask them if I can still manage to get my ticket printed and get on the 8.05.  One guy says: "the 8.05?  Forget it.  Get your tickets, but there is no way we will let you on the train".  "But I have still ten minutes before 8.05", I say.  "No way," he says.  Sweating and clearly stressed as I was, I felt the guy was utterly insensitive.  I started walking away, then I turned around and abused him.  I felt he had not shown any understanding for the situation I was in.

All the staff congregated and looked at me.  It occurred to me that it was possible they might run after me and throw me out of the station on the basis that I had been abusive to staff.  Still, I continued jogging and looking up at the signs to identify a "ticket office".  I find the machines and dig out my credit card.  But the machine insists on the reference code first.  I had to dig that out from my paperwork.  Now it asked for my credit card.  I kept looking down and could not find an appropriate slot to put my credit card through.  I try sliding it into wrong-looking slots, but the machine is not "sucking it in".  I turn around and spot a roving staff member.  "Can you please help me", I ask plaintively.  "Not when you insult our staff, no.  You can figure out yourself".  "Thank you, that's very good of you", I said.

I looked back at the machine, and what do you know, the slot is actually on the upper side of the machine.  I slide the credit card in and the machine prints out my tickets.  Now, I run over to check-in preparing to scream, yell, ...  I am sweating and clearly in distress.  I am now confronted by a very calm woman.  She tells me that the train is about to depart and I am too late.  She says that I should have allowed 30 minutes for check-in.  That all their literature says so.  That they have made allowances for the delays caused by King's Cross station's closure.  I was now to go to the ticket office to discuss travel options for tomorrow.  (The 8.05 was the last train to Paris.)

I notice all the staff have congregated around me as if I was a spectacle.  A policeman has also miraculously appeared.  I ask her why I am surrounded by so many people.  She says it is normal, that staff have now finished and preparing to shut the counters.  That I am not the only one who was late, and she points at other passengers who had also missed the train.

So, I go back to the tickets office and I get a refund. 

I decide I am not travelling to Paris. 

I call the hotel and cancel the reservation, accepting to pay one night's fee.

Paris. 

A city that carries superstitions for me. 

Tonight it confirmed them.

2008-04-09 18:32

My father went into a small rage on the way to the airport.  My mother angered him tremendously because she had diverted a point he was making (about the disadvantages of buying a car on loan) into another story.  It was shocking how much anger came out of him at such a trivial thing; but of course the real trigger was the fact that mama has always been like that: when she does not like a where he is going with a story, she diverts to a tangent story that may contradict his.  

He cannot recognise that she has accepted so much about him; that he cannot change her; that even though he makes solid points, he throws them away with his eruptions.  My mother backtracked as much she could to let the moment pass; she didn't want to ruin the journey to the airport.  But he was tense all the way until they said their goodbyes to me at the departure gates.  

My mum and I had a minute together while we waited for him in front of the departure hall.  She couldn't excuse his behaviour: lack of sufficient sleep was dismissed, tiredness was rejected.  She felt he just wasn't someone she could relax with anymore.  I knew she would relax later, and so would he, and things would be fine.  But it was an unnecessary eruption by baba; though I was sympathetic to his reason for it, I could also see how mama was rightly slighted by his rage.

Sitting in the back seat as my parents argued heatedly (well, as baba attacked and mama defended), I captured that moment of loss that children have when their loved ones fall out.  I had seen it in my nephew (almost seven) and niece (nine months).  When their grandparents argue, the kids go into a form of time-freeze.  They just watch, as if observing a spectacle.  Even the nine-months old baby, who doesn't understand what is going on, is drawn to the energies involved: raised voice, jerky movements, sudden heightenings, sudden head-turns, voice-tone changes.  

My father puts in a tremendous amount of energy.  It is for no small reason he has very high blood pressure.  My mother gets sucked into his energy vortex, and ends up having to put lots of it in as well.  She is expressive in her gestures, in her tone of voice, she seems to cry out how much she hates being in that situation.  But there is nothing anyone can do.  He is who he is.  She is who she is.  He deplores certain things about her.  She deplores that he cannot keep his mouth shut, and vows to be equally mean.  He becomes incensed.  We watch.  After a while, we distract ourselves and move on.  

I am sure it is a form of child abuse.  Sitting in the back of the car on the way to the airport, I remembered how I used to feel as a child, how I would distract myself into fantasies, and yet continue listening.  Now, as an adult, I realised that my brain is partly-engaged; if I tried to think, I would be deceiving myself, the brain would not be fully focussed.  I imagine this is how it feels in a boxing ring, after your opponent has just landed a stinger: you're disorientated, and yet you pretend that everything is fine.  

Now I told myself to listen intently and to try to intervene if I could.  Absorb the situation, acknowledge it, let it not trouble me; focus on solutions.  Easier said than done; a lot of the time they are arguing over the past and their interpretations of it "you said this", "no, i said that, but you made it out to be ...": the original problem, or worry, is forgotten.  

On the way to the airport, my dad snaps at me, I snapped back with a lot of anger.  They both ignored me.  They too were used to me taking out my anger at these angry situations on to them.  

But I am also training myself not to play the victim so much.  Much as I would hope not to, I probably will inflict similar abuse.  I do not think it is possible to be a perfect parent.  In these situations, I want to learn what I can from them, rather than bury my head in the sand and say it won't ever happen with me.

Now, I sit calmly on my laptop to reflect and muse ... and I wonder if the eruption was a form of release by baba to express, in a very round-about way his unhappiness at my leaving.  Mama had herself commented how baba has become very tense about any airport errands (they always involve me); in the past he would never accept anyone going to the airport in his place to receive me or to send me off (in fact, he would even tell others not to come), now he welcomes other people's offers to go pick me up, or drop me.

But perhaps he is genuinely tired, as he says, and he really does want others to take a bit of the burden off him.  I am probably over-analysing this.

As soon as it was time to say goodbye, everything calmed down instantly.  All the tensions were forgotten.  The scene of baba and mama bidding me farewell at the departure hall of the renovated Cairo Terminal One was, as ever, moving.  It belongs in a film; but it needs a hell lot of context to be as touching for others as it is for me. 

My father leaned on the railing, his earlier tensions now behind him, a genuine grin on his face, waving with his right hand.  My mother, her face unsmiling, rather more like she was watching her son play in the playground, puckered her lips and blew me a kiss.  She wasn't leaning on the railing, she was standing upright.  Though I can't remember whether she waved at all, I imagine she must have.  I found myself instinctively walking closer to the glass barrier that separates us.  I froze there for a couple of seconds, smiling, tucking my passport wallet under my arm and waving with my right hand.  Then, I turned around and walked off.  I didn't turn back again to check on them.  I was conscious I was ending the moment.  

As I was walking away, I thought maybe I should have let it last longer.  So, after I got to the gate and saw that I had a full hour before take-off, I went back to the spot where they were waiting in the hopes that I could say another goodbye; but they were not there anymore.

A friend comes to visit.  Two men growing up.  Two men getting more burdened by life and yet unwilling to let go of the search for excitement, for success, for the things that made us gel as younger men about 12 years ago.  Still struggling to understand, still struggling to steady each other, still struggling to make good ... still young!  Still occupying a tiny space of earth as the rest of the world goes around them.

Ageing is a humbling process.

All worthy causes are humbling.  They involve struggle and hardship and self-doubt.

Ageing in pursuit of worthy things makes one's life worthy.

Aligning oneself to worthy, lofty struggles - trying to lessen the influence of competition - puts one above the grandeur and pride of winning.

Competition belongs to the young, it belongs to the stage of character building.  All winners know that after they have won, they will lose.  They triumphed; but one day someone else will triumph over them.  They compete to make a point, to prove themselves, to build character, to not regret later, ...  They win because someone tells them "you can win, if you don't try now, you'll wonder whether you could have won for the rest of your life".

Competition is a great way of human progress.  It pushed Europe from the dark ages to the enlightenment.  Market competition makes better products, lowers prices, and educates the user.  Competition drives forward - relentlessly.

Competition is soul-less, empty, it is everybody and no-one.  It creates narratives interesting only to those in its midsts.  "The worthy search", "the voyage", "the return of the hero", those are the narratives that humanity grew up with.

We have no choice in our ageing.  Perhaps we should make it worthwhile.