Sultan Diminuendo

1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4835-3861-7
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 246 Seiten

The chronicles of what happened to a Muslim Arab businessman who fled from war-ravaged Beirut in 1983 to London, and how well he was treated there.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sultan, Akram

Leseproben

TWO Peter, my landlord, having allowed the inevitable few months to pass, asked me to drinks and I had the chance to meet the rest of the family. I remember having been both flattered by and surprised at the invitation, on account of my hosts’ supposed inclination to aloofness. Their light-hearted comments of the way I dressed, expressing disappointment that I did not turn up in flowing robes went down well and we soon started warming up to each other. Presently we struck up a friendship that I shall always cherish. Down in my basement flat, I started spending long hours in front of my small telly where the factual and dramatised life of my hosts poured out in torrents of subtly conceived, splendidly produced and masterfully presented art. I gradually began to visit then frequent venues of true recreation out of which I could look back with some disdain at the ghastly synthetic fibre of my previous moments of joy. Those remote days, it had been almost sinful to be part of an audience where a play was unfolding or a concert was in progress. It had been sacrilege to go to a pub for a drink and watch hunched figures turn into jolly people as they sipped on their pints. To go to museums had been considered an act of unseemly defection. There was a lot to see, hear and experience in the vast City of London, and I started to lead a life that was much more in harmony with my basic elements. The public in public houses fascinated me and I watched the drama from a corner, like a man in the corner, wondering whether or not I will one day become a patron of a specified drinking establishment: my local! I had started the arduous task of looking for somewhere to buy, in the manner of someone window-shopping. Big Boss II had, sometime before the end of our spectacular relationship, twice or thrice hinted at his readiness to advance me a small loan for the purpose. It was my first time ever experience at dealing with my hosts on a professional basis. Our various encounters were cordial and smooth, save the odd gazump. I met the asking price on a property not very far from where I was staying only my offer was accepted after I had abandoned the riches of my benefactors. Once more I found myself in the disadvantageous situation of having to raise blasted money I didn’t have. This time, a well-to-do Indian gentleman I barely knew offered to help me and help he did, for he advanced me, by my standards and probably his, a large sum, profusely declining to accept the receipt I pressed onto him. It was agreed that I pay him back in regular monthly instalments which I later kept up even at times of extreme hardship. His generosity and trust still cheer me up when I find myself running out of friends. Peter and Janet, his wife, asked me to meals upstairs several times while I was a tenant and I reciprocated in a modest bachelor way downstairs in my basement flat. He made me change my views that spirit and wine taste-testers and connoisseurs were but well-versed charlatans who exploited other people’s ignorance, for he was well and truly an expert. Joan, Janet’s old friend who frequently cycled up the steep road to see her, wanted to know whether I spoke French, expressing surprise and disappointment when she learned that I didn’t. I was asked to the Christmas party that year and met many of the family’s friends who didn’t mind telling me how lucky I was to have such nice people as my landlords. At the time, I thought the remark a trifle cheeky and ill-considered, though not later. I was also asked to the open-air party held every year in the square’s garden. I remember turning up equipped with my elaborate camera-gear slung on my shoulder to commence a self-conscious, painstaking, hair-splitting session of professional photography. In contrast, Peter’s daughter had a simple old camera, which she occasionally raised to her eye, and clicked rather carelessly. I also remember we had an informed and serious chat on the subject of photography and we both felt that I was the one better informed. Everyone wanted to have a look at my masterly snap-shots later and I stalled for a day or two: it was not easy to tell a dozen or so people individually that I had forgotten to load the camera with film, especially the daughter. I had difficulty sleeping that night thinking that we all seem to pay the price of our pomposity in the end. I was to move house not long after that fiasco as my landlords decided to sell their house. Mazen, my young, dashing, distant cousin was ‘Abroad, working in America, the vast and rich land of opportunity and making it,’ said his mom when I inquired. I had called on her out of courtesy and a vague sense of familial duty, for we were not very close at the time. I recall that there was something amiss in the way she spoke of her son’s accomplishment; perhaps the spontaneous proud pleasure of the mother? I could feel her tense, a pleading fear in her eyes, as I pressed her for more of her son’s news: which state, what kind of work? Hesitation and forgetfulness followed, as the flow of her replies trickled then came to an awkward abrupt halt. Yes, Mazen was in fact in the clink serving the last few months of a longish drug-related sentence. It was Mazen himself who broke the unpleasant news to me when he surprised me by appearing at my door one late afternoon with the determined air of someone who had thought long about confession. He stood there, bleary-eyed, well-dressed and a little uncertain as I asked him in with the smiles, hugs and kisses of our part of the world. As if reassured by my genuine welcome, he sat there calmly, sipping the beer I gave him and telling me all about his great ordeal. He narrated to me, now his calm giving way to a somewhat defiant self-exoneration, the runs and turns of the regrettable fiasco, not without some minor loopholes. There was a great deal of youthful projection and rationalisation which was understandable, but hardly excusable. Nevertheless, I managed to mumble a few words of sympathy and dubious advice, then he went away to commence a long and painful process of uncertain recovery. Prior to his addiction, Mazen had been a good chap, basically: kind, warm and intelligent. The fact that he was the victim of his own folly and the irresponsible blind greed of local and international drug barons seemed to me, in the final analysis, an unlucky strike, no more no less. Soon after he was discharged from gaol, in a series of sometimes aborted attempts, Mazen applied himself to the mammoth task of piecing together the fragments of his shattered psyche, now guided now misguided by misty and gap-riddled recollection. His strife and determination – which sometimes faltered – to build from scratch, a viable, sustainable and socially acceptable pattern of life, prompted many of his friends and relatives to offer a helping hand even though the majority did not underestimate the extent of his addiction. Acute addiction, irrespective of the addictive agent involved, often manifests itself in the no-win situation, where the psychic energy needed to conquer the accompanying affliction is generated by none other than the addictive agent itself. Tim, Mazen’s best friend predominantly and ‘foe’ on occasions, was sometimes alluded to by some as the culprit behind Mazen’s predicament and the instigator of the latter’s abominable misery. I had met Tim very briefly when the odd couple were on holiday abroad where I happened to be working at the time. I offered to put them up and they stayed a couple of days before travelling on. They had been lads in their late teens bubbling with life and beaming with euphoric youth, out to conquer a world that was beginning to tire and irritate me. Six years later, they were to play a part in my life which, quite frankly, never stops to amaze me. When we met again, Tim was – now in his mid-twenties – a young man of ready wit, pleasant nature and debonair manners. Could he be, underneath all that charming crust, the rotten scheming rogue described to me by some? Could he have planned and brought about, after deliberation, the downfall of his friend to whom he often referred as his best? As it later turned out, he and I met long and often enough for me to get to what actually happened between the two young men. Although he did not strike me as someone with a well-developed sense of morality, the fact was hardly grounds for me to conclude that Tim had conscious and deliberate malice towards his friend. He later admitted to me that it was he who had first introduced hard drugs to Mazen. Even though I thought it foolish and irresponsible of Tim to make the introduction, and of Mazen to welcome it, it never struck me that a dastardly act had been committed. Any hard-drug scene is daemonic by necessity and the only prevailing master would be the drug baron as long as he or she remains armed with the awesome weapon of drugs. Both Tim and Mazen must have fallen victim to one of the many blood-sucking spiders that infest the world, weaving in stealth cobwebs of pleasurable living on the streets, at home and at work, any work. Feeling trapped and helpless must have sparked a feud between the two young men in which the associated nefarious dark forces were at work and which later snowballed to a size and complexity that was beyond anyone’s dreams. Personally, simply being around proved to be a somewhat harrowing experience. My flat had a garden, small and bijou, which was why I’d bought it in the first place. Even though I am not a keen gardener, I often feel a strong urge to touch earth. I also like plants, preferably outdoor ones because, if healthy, they seem to assure me that I have not been too wicked; they probably do that to all of us. I...