iuliana varodi p o e t r y p h o t o g r a p h y a r t p r o j e c t s
As sweet as it can get - out and about in Brussels
Shahzad from Punjab is happy to live in Belgium. Talking about the way he has built his life in Belgium, he slowly reveals his stories of time and home. He appreciates the social security system here. He has lived in the city for eight years and has always worked. He is married to Gina, a Belgium girl that dropped her studies and become Muslim after meeting him; it was her desire. Recently he has opened his own restaurant. During Ramadan, there is a lot of work, his clients often ask him to provide the food for family parties. Yet, if politicians would not be corrupt in Pakistan, he would prefer to live there. People in Punjab are so sweet; they take time for each other. Here, people don’t do that.
Around a cup of chai, in between hesitations, a fragile tide is getting born in the air. Shahzad took time to talk. For him, time is like a deep sea; in its depths you will find human tears.
“Originally home meant the centre of the world – not in a geographical, but in an ontological sense. Mircea Eliade has demonstrated how home was the place from which the world could be founded. A home was established, as he says, “at the heart of the real”. (…) Without a home at the centre of the real, one was not only shelterless, but also lost in non-being, in unreality. Without a home, everything was fragmentation”[1].
A couple of stores down the street, working in a Pakistani shop, Hanif from Afghanistan tells me the story of a British female journalist who, treated with respect and care during the time she was kept prisoner in his country, became Muslim when she was set free. Hanif’s favourite writers from back home are Amin Frotam, Froghar and Khoram.
He helps his family by sending them money when he can. If he could feel safe in Afghanistan, he wouldn’t stay here one minute. He is fine with Belgium people but doesn’t feel related to them. His favourite fruits are grapes, but not these ones, those from back home. Pakistani mangoes are better than Indian mangoes. And much better when you buy them in Pakistan than if you get them in his shop here. He sells goor, a type of raw sugar with a strong yet smooth flavour, which he eats next to a cup of tea. He tells the best one is the fresh goor, the one that comes with the vegetables, not the one that you can buy in boxes, as a pressed paste. I tell him goor reminds me of Varanasi. Time here passes very slowly for Hanif; a day feels like a year. In Afghanistan, time passes much quicker. I asked him about his mother tongue; it is the language spoken by Taliban he said and a peaceful laugh cheered his face. He laughed as one laughs when seeing an invisible barrier, knowing that the other one sees it too. We both laughed at this invisible barrier. Taliban I repeated. We then talked about the word musafir and its meaning in Arabic languages. I told him that in Romanian, my mother tongue, musafir has only one literary meaning, that of guest.
In the Sainte Catherine church, there is a Romanian Orthodox parochial, a church in a church one would say, a spacial interruption. A Connoisseur can recognise the Romanian style of the altar, the icons, the traditionally embroidered towels and decorations. Under an icon, hangs a golden plate on which one can read in both Flemish and French “Ortodoxe Kerk In Belgie” and in French “Patriarcat de Roumanie / Paroisse Annoncation de la Mere de Dieu / Rector: P. Dr. – Vasile Palade” and his phone number. I called him; he said he would be at the church in half an hour. We had a talk. I was trying to discuss with him the same subjects as with Shahzad, Hanif, Bahri. He was not happy with my questions, telling me I should read books instead of asking him to talk about his personal feelings; nor did he appreciate me telling him how I feel and think about any issue. Something about the questions I asked, the fact that I needed explanations, that I tried to openly share some thoughts, must have scared him. I made my goodbyes, in order to leave. “Are you a member of a sect?” He asked as I left. “You can always come back“, he said as I was walking away, with the notion of religious belonging challenged once again.
Bernadette, whose driving I interrupted while crossing the road in front of her car (I deliberately stop several times on one and the same crossroad in front of the cars who stop for me – I do this about an hour each day) wrote later in my notebook “We are Time and Space”.
“Emigration does not only involve leaving behind, crossing water, living amongst strangers, but, also, undoing the very meaning of the world and at its most extreme – abandoning oneself to the unreal which is absurd[2]”.
Bahri, a young woman from Tunisia, married to a Moroccan who keeps a bakery, tells about time “Life is short / The path is long / The sentence is eternal” (La vie est courte / Le chemin est long / La sentence est eternelle” – proverbe arabe). When I met her in the shop, she was reading The Idiot by Dostoevsky. She likes the psychological refinement of his writing. The memory of her kind smile and the image of the pretty decorated cakes in the bakery are with me as I am writing these lines. Soufiane is one of her favourites Tunisian poets, she loves Amin Bouziali and one of the last books she read from the library is “Et si c’etait vrai?” This reminds me of Melanie and her second session of yellow stickers with the question “Et si c’était elle?”
“Philosophy is really homesickness, it is the urge to be at home everywhere” says Novalis[3].
Caroline invited me to join her for lunch at her friend, Bernard Liettaer’s place. Bernard mentioned about Marc van der Erve, an Antwerp based researcher and his book “A New Dimension of Time – Why we didn’t discover it so far and how it will change our world”. He lent me the book and offered to introduce me to Marc van der Erve. Later that afternoon, Melanie suggested the book “Vous qui habitez le temps”, by Valère Novarina.
One evening, on my way home to Elke’s place, who is hosting me these days, from a car stopped on the side of the road, Romanian music was floating to my ears. A young boy was sitting on the right seat, waiting for someone. “I know this music” - I said, walking closer. We exchanged a couple of words: the boy was here for work - in a car wash he said, me for studies – I answered his question at my turn. “Are you a member of a sect?” he asked, as I said good-bye and walked away. The same question as the priest asked, I noticed. No, I said laughing and waving at him.
I went back to Hanif’s grocery shop to ask him his definition of time. I knew I was going to interrupt him again and wasn’t sure if that would be appropriate; last time he spent quite some time answering my questions about home and here. As he saw me, he walked away while calling someone on his mobile. I followed him in the store. He returned, telling me “I don’t have time today. Sorry. I have to go, I have a meeting. I am too busy today”. He had no time to answer my question about time. He had no time to smile as the previous time, or why should he?
After the closing time of the opening, I will go and have a chai at Shahzad’s place down the street, “Fields of Punjab”. It reminds me of the time I felt at home in a culture apparently so different that the one I grew up in. There is something about drinking a cup of chai offered with a kind heart, something that theoretically has nothing to do with the research of the concept of time, but eventually it makes any research fade away in front of the sweetness of the present moment, a moment that promises nothing except its own fragile existence. “Is this a good moment?” was another question that Melanie spread around on yellow stickers in town. I am a stranger in the city, a stranger in the city I am.
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[1] “and our faces, my heart, brief as photos”, John Berger.
[2] idem
[3] idem.