Every Commonality is a Wave form

Every Commonality is a Wave formXK

#fiction, #aristocracy, #persianpoetry, #exoticism, #Paris

Paris / Le Jules Verne I was in Paris to celebrate my grandfather’s 70th birthday. One of my uncles had decided to fly in relatives and family members from close and far, which for most visitors to this very lavish birthday party meant either a convenient flight from Scandinavia, or an exhausting time-zone crossing flight from New England, in North America. The birthday party had become the perfect disguise for a week-long family reunion which would culminate in my uncle renting the whole Le Jules Verne restaurant in the Eiffel tower. I sighed when I heard of my uncle’s plan, I was not at all surprised, rather relieved, because— if you knew my uncle, you would know that it could have been much worse. He might say things such as ‘only the best is best for The best’, while stressing the last of the two definite articles and gesticulating with his open palm, like a conductor over his orchestra. I couldn’t wait, I say this with the most bitter irony, to hear his speech in this Michelin starred restaurant named after a mediocre adventure novelist writing for men, who find refuge imagining that they’re traveling around the globe in 80 days, or going to the moon (aka men who struggles with a midlife crisis). Despair was inevitable. I started to self medicate with tea made of St John’s wort as soon as I heard about my uncle’s plan. My aunt was just as enthusiastic as my uncle, and had started to organize the performative aspect of the dinner; her idea was that each branch of the family would contribute with something: a speech, a song, a collective dance, playing the restaurants piano or a violin or any other instruments of any sort that secretly could be smuggled into the restaurant, so that grandpa would have no opportunity to figure out what was in the making.

Grandpa / Rumi Poor dear grandpa, he hated all kinds of public displays of wealth. His mother was the last heiress to the small nobel family of Night and Day [Natt och Dag], and since the Scandinavian laws of nobility only recognized men as legitimate reproducers of a nobel bloodline, the poetic and ancient name of Night and Day saw its last day in her. According to grandpa she hated all kinds of public displays, not only of wealth, but also of affections and opinions; to put it in his own words – she would even make a Victorian priest feel ashamed. He grew up in the compounds of the nordic embassies in Berlin, and one year before he started his studies at Harvard, he received, probably thanks to his fathers contacts, a minor internship position at the Swedish embassy in Teheran. In Iran he fell in love with the poetry of

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, which, years later, he would introduce to me. I remember how when I was little we used to sneak away on Christmas Eve to his library, where we would light a candle, open a box of baklava, and read poems of Rumi.

On the day I die, when I’m being carried toward the grave, don’t weep. Don’t say, He’s gone! He’s gone. Death has nothing to do with going away. The sun sets and the moon sets, but they’re not gone. Death is coming together. The tomb looks like a prison, but it’s really release into union. The human seed goes down in the ground like a bucket into the well where Joseph is. It grows and comes up full of some unimagined beauty. Your mouth closes here, and immediately opens with a shout of joy there.

My own father was the one who took up the diplomatic tradition left after my great grandfather and became the third western diplomat ever posted in North Korea. My uncle, on the other hand, was of another sort. Even if he was the son of my grandfather, he didn’t have the upbringing of a diplomat nor nobility. Instead, he loved math and engineering; and after having been a fundamental part of the team inventing 4G, he became a multi-millionaire. He himself didn’t change his lifestyle at all, he kept on living in a small apartment, but relocated it to Monaco; he never really liked the cold of northern Europe. All his spending was instead a way for him to show his affection. He was, like so many mathematicians, not especially good with words. And even though I hated this marvel in opulence, that plenty of my relatives genuinely enjoyed, I couldn’t not love my uncle, because after all he had a heart of gold and was so loyal that it would be more likely for a stone to spontaneously evaporate than for him to break a promise.

My Aunt / Pronunciation Either way, my aunt expected me to read several poems during the dinner. She knew I loved poetry and she knew that it would mean a lot to my grandfather because of our common interest in Persian literature. She had called me a few weeks before: ‘I have never understood what you and my father see in that Arabic poet you two love so much, Romi or what’s he called, but I do know that he’s dear to both of you, and I do know that nothing would make your grandfather happier than having you read a few poems of Romi. Maybe you even could read one in Arabic, that would most truly make him happy, wouldn’t it?’. I remember it so clearly because afterwards I regretted that I sounded so irritated in my abrupt reply: “Persian, Rumi is Persian, and the language is Persian. How hard can it be?”. She was silent, and I regretted my not so well thought out outburst as soon as I said it. I more or less knew, in the midst of this silence, what would

come, both she and my father had these passive aggressive tendencies, especially when they felt that they where at risk of coming off as stupid in front of people they loved: ‘You know I always wondered how my father’s reading voice sounded like, he never read anything for us, neither to me nor to you father, he was to busy then, or that was what they told us. I think that we somehow reminded him of his own parents, they were very very strict, you know, so it was easier for him to laugh and share his inner life with you, the grandchildren. Either way, he loves you very much and I am sorry that I used the wrong nationality of that poet, it was not at all my intention and you know that.’ I couldn’t say that Arabic or being arab is not a nationality nor that the persian language is more complex than solely the border of a nation, or that Rumi actually was born in what today is Afghanistan, it would only make it all worse. So I just said that I’m sorry and of course I will read a few poems during the dinner. I can’t promise that I’ll be able to read one in Persian but I’ll try to do my best to learn and fully grasp the pronunciation.

Père-Lachaise / Wilde I had one afternoon shaken off my brothers and cousins. I don’t know how my parents had done it, but they had succeeded in shaking off all of us long before I did. I knew where they went, my father and mother both loved Degas, especially the blue ones in Musée d’Orsay. They could stare and glare at the blues of the pastels and paintings of Degas for hours. The petite dancers, dressed by Degas in sublime colors, had become a symbol or even a totem of their unity, their life together, not only as husband and wife, but as comrades, as they sometimes giggling (like little girls) would call each other. I was twenty at the time and had, quite like a cliché of a young European woman, evolved a small obsession for Oscar Wilde. So, when I finally was alone, I took the metro to Père-Lachaise. I painted my lips, fending off the movements of the metro car while holding the scarlet red lipstick in one hand and a pocket mirror in the other. My lips were pouring with redness, layer after layer making them shine. Their presence forced the eyes of passers-by, willingly or unwillingly, to look. My goal was set, my goal was clear: I know it’s silly, but I had decided to kiss his grave – no matter what the sign, asking you not to, said

Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow. All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust…

I thought I did all this out of mere fun, to smile at the practice of living the cliché, but Père-Lachaise, to my surprise, made me feel more empty and shallow than I ever could have imagined. There I

walked around the city of the dead. Grave after grave, amongst past celebrities and true geniuses. On some graves there were flowers slowly dying. It felt defiling somehow, that we the living, put the most brief beauty in the world, a flower without roots, on the grave of the dead; as if we wished to stress their non-existence, pointing our fingers saying, you’re not worth more than a dried out petal. The only life I saw was crows, the scavengers of cities, and an old lady in her late 80’s. Her curved back made her eyes unable to rest anywhere else than on the dirt of the ground. She was the reminiscence of the city, what it was and what it once had wanted to become, but never became. Now the scavengers were waiting for her. And what did I do? I passed the grave of Edith Piaf, humed non, je ne regrette rien, than kissed this queer mans grave as if I would have been important to him. I felt dirty – not necessarily because I felt disrespectful, but because I understood that I have no clue what true respectfulness is. Only the scavengers know… and they know that we’re oh so lost.

Lilies / Darwish and Gavalda I think I left Père-Lachaise through the west gate, but honestly it could have been any of them, because it felt like I was walking in a thick fog. I let my feet lead the way and they took me onto random paths. Luckily the Parisian streets came to my rescue in making me fantasize about being a 19th century flâneur. An independent man, not bound to the fact of actually being chained to the realities of the second sex I actually was. These feelings of endless liberty made my humor rise more. Earlier in the morning I had finished reading the pulp novel Billie by Anna Gavalda. The main-characters of the novel, Billie and Franck, were very close and dependent upon each other when growing up. They had this intimate friendship, not in erotic or sexual terms but, in the sense of being interlaced into one emotional entity. Growing up it seemed as if they, at least, on a superficial level grew apart; but in actuality they just had a need to find a way to exist without the presence of the other; before being able to truly rejoin again. During this period of distance and separation they had the routine of regularly meeting once a year, always having a drink at one of the luxurious hotels in Paris. Luxury hotels, such as Hyatt or the Ritz, consist of a universe of their own. A parallel society unique to all of these high-end luxury hotels, with its own bureaucracy, its own versions of everything between postal systems and police reinforcements. A societal system separate from the political transformations outside of its walls, creating a sense of beyondness amongst its inhabitants, an own sense of civic identity, transcending geo-political borders and national affiliations. Since this world within the luxury hotels was so different from Billie’s and Franck’s everyday life, and foremost their abusive working class childhood in a small town in rural France, it somehow, through it’s otherworldly surreality, created a gap in their space-time, which became a foundation for their reunion. The separateness of this peculiar milieu, made it possible for them to meet without dealing, or even being reminded of, all the scars from their childhood, which neither of them were yet ready to deal with. Due to

all of this, I had made myself sincerely keen on the idea of having a cup of hot chocolate at one of these hotels, extending the experience of the novel I just finished. One detail that now becomes quite important for this anecdote of mine is that when I left Père-Lachaise I passed a flower shop, where white lilies were sold. I bought one and, to the vendor’s surprise, attached it to my blouse, using one of the buttonholes. It looked clumsy but the quirkiness of it was very enjoyable. You might not know it, but the white lily, especially when fastened like this in a shirt or blouse, is a symbol for Palestinian peaceful resistance in literary and cultured circles of the arab world. It comes from Mahmoud Darwish’s poem A soldiers dream of white lilies, which in the most delicate way depicts an Israeli soldier in a conversation with a Palestinian subject.

[…] - I dreamt of white lilies, an olive branch, a bird embracing the dawn in a lemon tree. - And what did you see? - I saw what I did: a blood-red boxthorn. I blasted them in the sand...in their chests...in their bellies. - How many did you kill? - It’s impossible to tell. I only got one medal. [...]

The young man / Tunis A young man, most probably my own age, sat in a group of older gentlemen, next to the window of the restaurant located in The Ritz, at Place Vendôme. He followed the white lily with his eyes until it took a seat with me at a table further into the restaurant. He gazed at me and occasionally our eyes met. I gave him a quite kooky smile to show him that I was aware of the unusualness of the lily in my blouse. The whole thing made me giggle, especially when he tried to hide a laugh but did not fully succeeded in covering up its traits. Anyhow, I felt obliged to direct my focus towards a cup of hot chocolate, that so kindly had been brought to me by the butler not long after I had seated, and to the colossal Shahnameh, the Persian book of Kings, which I had carried around in my bag the whole day. I had decided to read an extract from Shahnameh at the Eiffel tower dinner that would be held within a few days together with two other poems; the earlier mentioned, On the day I die by Rumi, and finishing with one of my own favorite poems, The Rain Song, by the iraqi poet Badr Shakir al Sayyab, which I also, to further please my aunt, would read in Arabic. When I was born, my father was still working at the embassy in North Korea. Hence, I spent my very first years in Pyongyang. I have no memories from there, for me it’s barely more than a name written on a piece of paper and a quite uncommon, even exotic, birthplace compared to most of my friends and acquaintances. Anyways, it was our home, until my father could be reposted to a diplomatic mission

somewhere where it would be easier for my mother and my brothers (and me) to move freely (yet specifically my own inability to move in North Korea was caused, not necessarily by the intricate political situation, but rather by my corporeality as baby). That’s how I came to Tunis. Tunis feels like home for me; the evening breezes from the mediterranean, the callings to prayer by the muezzins, and street vendors shouting out their bargains. It is somewhat surreal, not having citizenship in the country where you not only grew up, but where you also feel most at home. My passport says Sweden, but I never really learnt how to stop my homesickness with the midnight sun, blueberry abundant pine forests, clean streets, and well-structured recycling stations. Tunis is the reason why I know at least the basics of Arabic. Tunis is also the reason why french, rather than swedish, in many aspects feels like my first language, and not my second or third. There were so many francophone diplomats and embassy workers in Tunis, that french had become the lingua franca in its international kindergartens and schools.

The Prince / The New Beginning The young man had left his table without me noticing, and now he was standing in front of mine, clearing his throat. »Sorry miss, the lily… is the lily… « It seemed as if he was searching for the appropriate words. I couldn’t possibly know that he was Arabic, but I decided to take the chance, if he was, he surely would be surprised, and if not, it would at least leave him breathless, before I could answer him in English. And since he was asking about the lily it felt like the most reasonable thing to do, so I simply recited the first verse of the Darwish poem in question. I knew it by heart, thanks to the fact that I had listened to all the different versions of it on youtube, where the poem was set to music in a multitude of ways.

حلم بالزنابق البضاء بغصن زتون بصدرها المورق ف المساء

He looked more than surprised, he looked shocked. And after a short silence between us, that felt like forever and made me feel genuinely scared that I had made a total fool of myself, something very beautiful happened. He started where I had left the poem, following the edict of tradition.

حلم – قال ل – بطائر بزهر لمون ولم فلسف حلمه لم فهم الأشاء ا ل مما ح سها .. ش مها

Now it was my turn to look surprised. And this little shared experience of astonishment made us both let down our guards, which we humans normally tend to have towards each other, and not towards strangers. So when he asked if he could take a seat, it felt as if I had been waiting for someone who finally had arrived.