The Haj

 

Read the book onlone at www.archive.org

 

Some books I've read in the past are seared into my memory, not because of the books themselves but because of the settings and the circumstances in which I've read them. "The Haj" by Leon Uris, better known for "Exodus", is such a book.

There I was, after yet another sleepless night, sitting in the early morning sun on the upstairs porch of my newly-acquired house at 43 Wackett Street at Cape Pallarenda just north of Townsville, holding "The Haj", slowly reading out each sentence to kill time, while over the top of my glasses I jealously watched my neighbours driving off to work.

 

Somewhere I still have a photo of me sitting on that porch.
If and when I find it again, I shall add it to the blog.

 

It was a nice neighbourhood and they were nice neighbours who waved as they drove past, probably wondering what I was doing all by myself in that big four-bedroom-two-bathroom house, seemingly with not a care in the world. They possibly even envied me for not having to go to work.

Little did they know that, having gone like the clappers for years, I felt like a fish out of water. Work had always been my hobby, my social life, my whole reason for being, and, having returned from my last big job overseas, suddenly being without it, it did strange things to my mind.

Despite all the fancy work overseas, I had always been ready to work at home for just a fraction of my previous salary in some small mum-and-dad business, or, at best, in a small suburban accounting practice, but to find nothing on offer at all had unnerved me. It was not even a question of money - of which I had enough - but to have a purpose in life, because to me to have a purpose in life meant to go out to work.

The days simply crawled by. A nice couple living across the street at 42 Wackett Street invited me a couple of times for dinner during which they showed me photos of their daughter and expressed their regrets that she lived in far-away Tasmania. They encouraged me to enjoy my 'sabbatical', as they called it, and to 'hang in', presumably until their daughter returned. They were very nice people but checking up with all-knowing realestate.com.au, they, too, sold up in 1989 - click here.

 

My then neighbours across the street. Thanks to GOOGLE Map
now your fingers can do the walking - click here

 

The neighbours to my left at Number 41 had also tried to befriend me, even if only to get my permission to crane their new swimming pool into position from my backyard. We had a few beers together but I didn't stay long enough to try out their new pool. They, in turn, sold up again in 1988 - click here. I hate to think I had been an unsettling influence!

 

The pointer is above Number 41; my house was to the right of it

 

Reluctantly, I left for Sydney only a few months after I had bought the house, but kept it as a renter for several years. However, as always, trouble with maintenance and defaulting tenants got the better of me, and I sold it in 1992 for little more than I had paid for it, but I still have the "The Haj". No need to read it as I still remember it, line by line.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Of far-away places

 

 

As the days slowly grow cooler - well, the mornings anyway - I again ruminate on escape from my everyday self in the Deep South. I juggle in my head images of warm places. It's clichéd, but islands in the South Pacific come to mind.

Warmth means indolence, time to dream, letting the outside in, unlocking all those doors to rooms in the mind where musty thoughts have gathered. But where to go? There's a danger in making choices.

I remember asking a local in Port Douglas once why there were so many FOR SALE signs around town. "Well, people love it here", he said, "so they move here. Then they discover that, although they love it, they don't want to live here at all." Exactly. It's a terrible mistake to confuse your favourite place with the place you'd like to live in. It's like thinking you ought to marry your best friend.

Making wrong choices has never troubled me. I made many, and some even turned out all right. As Patel says in the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, "Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it is not yet the end."

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

"Why don't you visit the (c)old country before it's too late?"

 

How Germany copes with its new citizens

 

How many times have people asked me this question! And how many times have I briefly hesitated before telling them, "Well, perhaps one day I will."

I've just now visited the facebook page of my old hometown and found a photo of the communal swimming pool with a large sign proclaiming, "Mondays is women-only day except during Ramadan".

This is a very provincial town where the mostly non-swimming Muslims are still very much a tiny minority, and yet they've already comman-deered a whole day for themselves in the precious indoor pool!

When I said as much on the facebook page, I was shouted down by Germans themselves who considered such comments "unakzeptierbar". Unacceptable? They used much stronger words eighty years ago but the results were the same: no discussions, no opposition, no free speech!

Mohamed Atta told the doomed airline passengers on 9/11, "Stay quiet and you’ll be okay". Well, I'm not staying quiet because I know it won't be okay. Nor am I visiting the (c)old country again. It's already too late!

 

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Postscript:

 

Why I write

 

Relax! What follows is not as erudite as Orwell's essay - click here

 

"A room without books is like a body without a soul" Cicero.
Günther, I almost recognise some of the German books on your shelves

 

Lange Zeit seitdem wir miteinander Kontakt hatten. Was gibt es Neues am anderen Ende der Welt? In Europa überschlagen sich die Ereignisse und in Deutschland herrscht Chaos und viele sind bang. Dein Blog ist so interessant. Eine sagenhafte Lebenserinnerung. Du müsstest einen Verlag finden der das druckt." [Translation]

So wrote an old acquaintance from the (c)old country in a recent email. "Danke für die Blumen, Günther", but I only write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say. And writing helps me to keep up my grammar which is the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you're shit. Unlike the stomach, the brain doesn't alert me when it is empty, so I want to keep feeding it just in case. We all know that social media is the most whitewashed form of communication where people describe the outside of their lives without ever revealing anything from their inside, so for all that ugly "inside", for all "the truth and nothing but the truth", you may have to wait for my memoirs.

For all those "inside" thoughts, I do keep a personal diary, erratically and irregularly, in cursive longhand which, more than typing, stimulates ideas, links them, and puts them in relation. Not by chance does the word cursive come from the Latin "currere", which runs, which flows, because thought is winged, it runs, it flies. Cursive writing gives breath to our thoughts again. Without breath, as the ancient Greeks said, there is no thought. And without thoughts there is no life. More is the pity that elegant cursive writing has no place in today's world, a world that does everything possible to slow down the development of thought.

And before writing comes reading, but that is a story for another day.

 

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Heute hier, morgen dort

 

 

I loved living and working in Samoa in 1978 but then the fatal call came one day, "Would you like to do a consulting job in Penang in Malaysia?" And so I packed up, climbed aboard an AIR NAURU jet on a Saturday, overnighted in Nauru, changed planes in Manila on a Sunday, and was met at Penang Airport and taken straight to my new office inside the Penang Port Commission.

Many years later, in 1981, I had bought a little house on the beach just outside Townsvile and settled into comfortable domesticity, when that fatal phone call came again, "Would you like to assist in the setting-up the tug-and-barge operations on the Ok Tedi Copper Project in New Guinea?" I gave notice to my comfortable domesticated job, put all my newly-acquired domestic stuff into storage, and flew to Port Moresby.

The only reason I lasted a whole three years with my Saudi employer in Jeddah was because he, too, knew that the simple act of moving is for some people the only source of hope. Whenever he saw me falter a little and beginning to lose my edge, he would send me to supervise the transhipment of 20,000 tonnes of barley at Sembawang in Singapore or check up on what was going on in our office in Fetter Lane in London.

Having somewhere to go, not feeling stuck where we are, gives us hope. And it needn't be a jet plane. A car gives you control. You choose the direction. You decide when to leave. Even sitting in traffic, there’s a quiet truth: you are not stuck — you are in motion. You don’t know what’s around the next turn ... and that’s the point. A train invites you to let go. You’re on a shared path, moving forward with others, trusting the tracks beneath you. There’s something deeply calming about that.

Of course, planes are the most hopeful of all, because they collapse distance and time. A different version of your life — new people, new perspectives, new memories — awaits you just a few hours away.

Physical movement doesn't solve problems but it interrupts the feeling of being stuck. And that’s what hope is: the belief that you are not stuck. Hope isn’t the destination; it's the act of going. You can tell yourself, "I'll feel better when I get there", although the really hopeful part is in the commute, the ride, the journey between the two points.

Heute hier, morgen dort.

 

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