Thursday, March 02, 2006

Farewell, my city!

01.03.06

London is diminishing into a patchwork of residential areas and fields; uneven cuts and patches spread around the landscape. And even the patchwork is disappearing behind an endless flock of silver stranded clouds... Now it seems like a cotton field back in my country waiting for students to pick them with no anticipation of reward.

No, it's true and it did happen. I don't even try to pinch myself to wake up, because I am awake indeed. I left it behind. I closed a chapter of my life and am trying to open a new one. It was bitter to do that. "Bitter" is not that word to make you understand what I feel right now. I left a world behind. A whole world full of joy and sorrow. A real world that made me fall in love with it...

I left a voice down there. A voice that made me feel a traitor while I'm not. "Please come back. Miss your flight. At least for one more day... come back". And I was heading towards the boarding gate with a hope that something would turn wrong in my papers and I would remain here again. But then the jealous axeman (Lord Life itself) wanted me away. The sooner the better. And my papers took me through check-in points smoothly, as if I was sailing on a buttery surface up to my plane seat. It happens only when you don't wish it at all. "Murphy's law" they call it. In my dictionary it's got a different entry: Life's jealousy...

And now I'm here, in my new apartment in Prague. Filling the deafeningly silent room with puffs of curling smoke and watching them go up to the ceiling, fading and losing themselves, just like the human race. I cannot fathom why we have to follow a smoky path and lose ourselves somewhere along the maze of an illusionary cycle of movements.

Reading messages from there. Some of them cutting my heart into pieces and cooking them on the heat of my blazing mind. And the voice is still here, breaking the silence at times... Miss your flight, please...

It's too late to call Dushanbe either. She knows I need her now.

A while ago I got a call from the world I just lost. It was Behzad asking about my well-being. Well, what to say? Richard Templar's book "The Rules of Life" doesn't advise us to complain, because, he says, the only thing people want to hear is that you are fine. And that was what I said. But after a while I spat on the rules of the jealous axeman and told him how I truly felt and how much I missed my lost world already. He said, he would strive to give me back my lost world and that was what I wanted to hear. To make me believe in something unbelievable. He's still determined about his plans to launch a new TV channel and possibly that would be a way to get my lost world back. It seems I haven't lost the inhabitants of my lost world yet.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

salam duste aziz.....this is the first time i am writing in your blog , forgive me for not having done so before. I remember that day too, when i called you as you were leaving for the airport. you didnt have to say anything, i heard your sadness in your 'dorud'.

It is one of the hardest things to leave behind people and places you love, but one thing i always admired about you was your courage, you did what you had to do and flew away with your head held high , even if your heart was breaking.

But you know what, Shamsi jan is right, the people you care about are only a phone call away, you take your principles and standards with you, and the world is much bigger than London....make it your oyster and enjoy the journey, because nothing stays the same.

rememebr the poem ? "tarashidam, parastidam , shekastam"

But we do miss you, and i miss you, You have been my most constant friend and colleague over the last 5 years. the one i knew i could trust and rely on.....a truly unique person, you make your mark wherver you go and i know that you will do so in Prague as well. ....

..... until you come back that is, and you WILL, its only a matter of time.... :)

bedroud !

D said...

Shoku-jaan, you don't know how powerful your words are. I've found a really true and heart-melting friend in you and I'll do my best to keep in further on. I've always loved you as a great and humble personality to be known as a sample of a perfect human being. And being away from you for last 2 months I'm strictly stuck to my first impression. You are a human purle to be found and worshipped for good. I've found you, thanks Ahura, and I hope you'll be found by others as well.