Strange Case

by:Hassan Bahri

Here I am, it’s been two years now. London is bigger than I imagined, and less than I expected. Its streets full of others, buying, eating, drinking, looking round. Seeing, but not noticing. Consuming, but not digesting.You do the same, hoping somebody will talk to you. Nobody does. But when they say ‘sorry’ for things you never used even to notice, you nod in return, and try to work out what that ‘Sorry’ was for. There, where you came from, nobody has their ‘personal space’, there are no boundaries. Everybody steps over each other’s boundaries all the time. They call it warmth, caring. You used to, as well.It`s nobody`s fault that here you feel downcast and blue. But realising they will not come to you, you go to them.So two days later, on a double decker bus, I headed to the City of London. That day, like the day before, I had barely spoken ten words. In front of my mirror. To myself:‘It’s a nice day…go…find someone - and talk.’All the way on the double-decker I was thinking about the importance of exchanging words. With meaning or without meaning doesn’t matter, what matters is talking. For the first time I realised the importance of the word in itself. It was at the beginning of all beginnings, it is the source of all other powers we have, many problems could be solved by just exchanging words, many lives could even be saved.
Words… I felt I had discovered something important. A feeling every lonely woman or man shares with me. The word is a kind of energy, maybe you could call it bio-energy, the word is a carrier of that inner energy which, if not expressed, may kill…I thought about those who sleep on the streets, who sit in the Underground and at every crowded street corner, asking for change. I was quite sure that in that moment they need to exchange words, not money, and all the people who give to them misinterpret their words. We all think what we need is money, more and more money, but our real need is kind words. Not ‘How much is this?’ and so on, but more genuine, heart to heart words.
Words warm , words console, words bring love and bring tears, words can make wars or peace… we all just need genuine words which come from real feeling, not just for the sake of saying something…I imagined a world without words, or what would happen if our world suddenly stopped exchanging wordswords are so important, yet I could barely remember when I last used them not to buy, but to chat …
‘Last stop, last stop! Bus terminates here!’…
I got off the bus, sunk in my thoughts about words, meaning to stroll over London Bridge. It’s a nice walk from there to Tower Bridge. An old man looked at me and said:
‘It’s a nice day, isn’t it?’
I was so surprised that he was gone before I could agree with him that indeed, the day was really nice.
I took the road down to London Bridge. The river, the people, the afternoon sun and even the wavy line of smoke, descending from a factory chimney far in the south-west of the city, were beautiful. Alone and lonely on this crowded street, I walked past the bridge by the riverside. Did the same as others were doing, bought a drink from a pub, sipped it on the embankment, left my big empty glass there, and headed to Tower Bridge, still hoping I could find somebody to talk with.When I got there, many - so many - people were enjoying the beauty around, the boats, the late afternoon sun - and themselves. Some were leaning on the parapet, watching what was going under the bridge, and some maybe were following a piece of floating wood as it jerked over the river, trying to deduce its speed, or trying to travel with it mentally in its erratic journey to unknown shores. And to others, like me, the bridge was just a bridge, a way to cross the river without going into it… A few had gathered around two playing dogs, who were barking cheerfully, exchanging doggy words and celebrating their casual encounter. I halted there, like the others, watching the dogs.
For dogs life is so easy. Any dog, as soon as it sees another dog, begins shouting and talking. Maybe because dogs are less numerous than US! Or, WE are more clever!? For us, the thinking animals, it’s impossible to do the same. Just imagine having to greet, to celebrate, everybody passing around you. Anyway, I don`t think dogs get depressed.
The two dogs were still playing. It was an opportunity to make contact, and this time I could not miss it. Maybe the dogs’ method of communication was contagious. So I found a place round the barking dogs.A man looked at me:
‘That’s a nice dog, isn’t it?’He said it, and went on his way, before I could bark -sorry- answer him back.