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Eastraveller

~ Every day I learn him, every day he doesn't learn.

Eastraveller

Category Archives: Friendship

‘I never forget a face’

07 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by traveller in Friendship, Life in the Middle East, Travel

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Tags

Cultural differences, Faces, Living in the Middle East, Memory, People, Personal, Strangers

I used to think I have a reasonable memory of faces.

I remember random faces from the past, strangers that never crossed my path in other ways than through some meteoric quirk, quickly shot down in the sea of their anonymity.

An old Irish gentleman I once saw in an airport calling the waiter ‘boy’. 

An American marine drawling invitations to prayer on the edge of a swimming pool.

A Saudi driver emerging grim-faced from a coffee shack on the side of a dusty road.

A crying toddler, the English father slamming down his thick book in simmering fury at the disturbance, the Spanish mum fading under a sun hat, grandma singing softly to herself .  

They are all revered exhibits in my inner museum of strangers.

But coming to the Middle East has dwarfed my museum to the dimensions of someone’s old shoe box left near the Prado.    

What I used to label as a reasonable ability is in reality quite sub-standard. People here never forget a face. They say they don’t and they don’t. Ever.

I went to a little Red Sea resort a year after first spending a couple of days there. The waiter put down an empty lemonade glass and greeted me with a wide smile.

“Hello! You were here a year ago! You like hummus!”

As indeed I do so I proceeded to create new memories of my appetite.

I once left a bag in the corner shop. A month later, I went back and the guy handed it back to me as if we’d parted 5 minutes ago.

People here care about faces. They scrutinise every centimetre of unknown skin until it is so firmly implanted in their memory that the combined bulldozers of time and new- foreigness can’t possibly dislodge it.  

In Egypt I once spent a morning walking around extremely busy Islamic Cairo.

Later the same day, I happened to be back in (roughly) the same area.

A guy I had never seen in my life stopped me:

‘You’re back! Why?’

‘How do you know I’m back?’

‘I never forget a face.’  

 

Making friends

11 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by traveller in Friendship, Life in the Middle East

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

food, friendship, kindness of strangers, life

ImageIt was a chilly February morning and we had just got off the bus in a small mountain town.

It was Friday, a day most people spend indoors with their families so the streets were dead.

My friend and I started our journey through the town maze, fleetingly eyed by the occasional young boy coming back from the grocer’s or a shop keeper smoking his cigarette in front of the shops.

We passed a bakery and, as I instantly fainted with longing for a big fresh loaf, had to continue our journey with massive flaps of fresh bread in tow.

After an hour of going up and down winding little streets lined with old Ottoman architecture we decided to stop for a cup of coffee.

Small place, 2 or 3 tables, just us and the owner.We ordered coffee and he disappeared behind the bar. Minutes later he emerged with coffee, water and a bowl of fresh hummus: “You have bread. You need something to go with it.”

Our quick snack finished, we made to leave. No amount of begging swayed him.

We were not to pay, we were guests in his city and his shop and that’s how things were going to stay.

To this day, that was the best hummus with bread I’ve ever tasted.

Unfriending me softly

09 Saturday Feb 2013

Posted by traveller in Friendship, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

friendship, life, unfriending, virtual

So one day somebody unfriends you. You have no idea why. Or when. You just realise it must have happened. Like when a stray cat pisses on your doorstep.

The unfrienders don’t scream and shout (as people may do in real life when they wish to be unfriendly) and they don’t throw your love letters in your dumb face. They don’t call you names, they don’t slam the door, the neighbours don’t feel they should call the police.

Unfriending is silent. Break a plate and you’ll hear it break. Friendship hits the floor without so much as a half arsed whimper.

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