I felt so much like I'd had two lives... I guess anyone who's moved countries and way of life is bound to feel that way at some point. After a few years have passed, life in the previous country starts to feel like another life, or even a dream. Age must matter in the way we end up feeling, too. Children would barely remember anything and adapt almost completely to their new surroundings, but teenagers and young adults never forget, and yet the detail becomes hazier everyday.
The way things panned out for me, I was a teenager when we moved. Not yet an adult, no longer a child. All I know or remember from my previous life is the language and school routines - nothing beyond that. The fact that we pretty much severed all contact with anyone we used to know was perhaps another factor playing in the way I feel so disconnected with my past. I remember wanting to tell a couple of my friends at school that I was leaving, but my mother said there was no point, because I'd never see them again. It was better to leave and never look back. So I did, not knowing any better at the time. I left my city like a ghost. Nobody knew. The few friends I had, I left behind without a word. I simply disappeared.
So I returned where I was born and grew up yesterday with my mother. We emerged from the train station and it felt like summer in the city. The sky was a pure diluted blue and the sun was shinning strong, making the white stone of buildings shimmer like diamond dust.
The architecture of Paris is stunning. The moment you step outside into the street, you can recognise it and it captures your imagination at once. As we looked around in a daze, my mother realised that she no longer remembered the streets of Paris so well... her memory had played a trick on her, making her only remember the main parts of the city, but no longer the detail of how to get from one place to another on foot.
We wandered down a quiet, large avenue. It was Saturday morning, there was almost no traffic and no crowds. We were trying to go south towards a place called Chatelet, and as we walked, my mother recognised a street where an old friend of hers used to work. It was the friend with whom she'd moved to the city with when she was 20. I still remembered the woman, because she used to visit us often when I was a child. I remember them sitting in the large kitchen of our old flat, smoking Gauloises and speaking in their native language I barely understood but that will forever sound extremely familiar. They would chat for hours while I played with my lego blocks and other toys.
Sometimes we'd go to her place, and I remember it always felt like such a long trip because she lived far from us on the other side of town. In fact, I remember the woman's place in striking detail, perhaps because it was a small place, and we used to go there often. I remember that when I was around 8, she got married to an Egyptian man who always used to wear those middle eastern dresses. I remember he used to pick me up and throw me in the air with his arms as if I was but a feather. Then when I was around 8, they had a son, followed by a daughter when I was 10, and I used to play with them whenever we came to visit.
So there we were, in that street my mother recognised. She turned to me and said: "Let's go in and ask if she still works there, what do you say?"
I shrugged, uncertain. "It can't hurt to check, I guess," I replied. We walked inside the building and asked for the woman. The man at the desk knew at once who we were asking for but replied: "Ah, she's retired now, you know, about two years ago."
"Do you have a phone number for her? asked my mother.
"I do, but I can't just give it to you," he replied. "I can call her now and see what she says."
So he did. He called her, and then passed the phone to my mother, and we arranged to meet for a coffee in the city centre around lunch time.
It was only morning, so we carried on walking around almost at random. Our footsteps took us down the river banks where Notre Dame stands proud in the distance. We stopped by a bakery and bought some pastries to eat as we kept walking all the way towards my old high school... Past the river, and past the Latin quarter that remains just as I vaguely remembered it. And then I saw the old bus I used to take every day to go to school drive past us. We were getting close, yet none of the streets looked familiar to me. I had no clue how to get to the school... until I realised that although my mind didn't seem to remember, my feet 'knew'... Suddenly I knew how to get there without knowing how exactly. It was all starting to come back to me.
When we arrived in front of the black gates of the school, there was a crowd of students loitering outside... standing exactly where I would stand for a while after school myself all those years past. It was so strange to see all these teenagers standing there just as my own past generation used to. It was like watching myself back in time, in a way. And then I realised that I didn't feel sad or nostalgic at all... We walked past the school and went to sit outside a café in the shade to wait for my mother's old friend.
The woman arrived and although she looked much older than the way I remembered her, she hadn't changed that much. It was strange to think that the woman had known me since I was a baby. She showed us pictures of her two children, and seeing them as adults on pictures contrasted greatly with the baby faces I always remembered because I'd only seen them as such.
Of course, one of the first things the woman asked my mother was: "Where the hell have you been? You just disappeared..." Yeah, that we did, I thought to myself. They chatted for a couple of hours, and then it was time to part ways. I took a picture of them together and we carried on with our journey, this time back where we used to live. It was getting late by then, so we had to take the métro this time.
Walking around where I grew up was strange. Not much has changed in the past 10 years. It's all mostly the way I remember it. We stood outside the building we use to live and my mother pointed at windows on the fifth floor.
"That's the kitchen window," she said. "And in the corner, where the shutters are closed, that was your bedroom, remember?"
I remember alright. It all felt so familiar, yet distant. It was where a younger version of my self used to live, but my person today can no longer relate. I realised that my only link to that place was the memories I had, and it actually didn't matter to see the place in reality anymore, because what made it special was the memory I kept of it. It was certainly not a place I would wish to live in again, that's for sure. And I realised more fully that all I was after by going back was to make myself realise that although we'd left too abruptly, it actually turned out for the better.
We ended the day by going to Montmartre - one of my favorite places in the city. We walked down various narrow, winding streets, reached the top of the hill where the breathtaking Sacré-Coeur stands reminiscent of some fairytale castle from the East, and then made our way back to the train station. As we were about to go in, I turned around to stare at the street now bathed in settling darkness and whispered: "Good bye Paris... it was nice seeing you again, but now I'm going home."
Indeed... I don't think I could ever live there again. The city has become way to foreign to my person, but I hope from now on I'll be able to simply appreciate the fact that I was born and bred there for most of my younger years. I'll probably enjoy going back there from time to time, but this time I think the ghosts of my past have finally be put to rest.
I feel... relieved.
No comments:
Post a Comment