A Midnight's Awakening

By Shaukath Mohamed

'Awake! For morning in the bowl of night
Has flung the stone that puts the stars to light;
And lo, the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's turrets in a noose of light.'

--Beau Geste / P.C. Wren

It would be terrible I imagine when a young man on waking one day looks up at the sky and feels that the world has closed in around him.

The clouds so succeed in reminding him with their changing faces that by living his life in ignorant oblivion up to now he has left himself with but a small vista to the other world. His surroundings fail to please him anymore when he realises this.

I suppose some would be content to live their lives in reasonable solitude, inside four walls but I am not one of them.

'The age of romance is over' so said great explorers after they had conquered their share of the world. How selfish they are to suggest this. They lived in 'an age of wonder' and were made legends after cutting through the Amazon, subduing Africa, and fighting gallant wars in the Sahara in all supremacy. After having done this they return content, and leave everything else to imagination. They make us wonder what fun it would have been to live in their worlds.

If they had a foresight and imagined what it would be like to live in a world where such adventures are listened to with bored indifference I suppose they would have never come back from those wonderful places to talk of their experiences.

Imagine running bare chest and barefoot in a vast tropical jungle, your senses tested to peak, drawing in sharp air and sweat running down your body, a modern Tarzan, with only the lesser mammals of the earth as friends and companions. Or riding your camel in the scorching sands of the desert your only worry being the heat and scorpions, praying that you get a chance to refill your canteen at the next oasis.

And then think for a moment. Ours is the 'age of technology' where people create their own worlds in VR, digital imaging and video graphics. This same technology has taken over our day to day lives. From Europe to Asia people seem content with this replacement world to spend the rest of their lives in front of a small screen (or a larger one), with the glowing images as their only companion and distraction.

Now is a time where people of different worlds learn each other's language in textbooks, try their best to comprehend conflicts that rage constantly in far away places. Yet none among us ever imagine to strike up a conversation with a stranger curious of his place in the world. Never if it was not for some selfish interest of own.

But I can't possibly convince myself that a man could become a true soldier through simulation in Virtual Reality. Nor would one become a true linguist if he did not spend some time among the people of a desired language. And surely a man could not truly empathise for people caught up in wars by watching details on TV. All these situations demand adventure and experience and that cannot be had within self-containment.

Maybe it is the dull grey atmosphere of concrete around us (in any place of the world for that matter) that numbs our sense of adventure. Maybe it's the glowing haze of lights and other crude distractions. Whatever it may be I feel that our pride in being mammals of spirit, of wonder and mystery is slowly being tamed. I somehow feel that eventually there will come a day when conversation would be of no use, being so locked up in our own worlds.

Such a time would not be for me, I would not care much for it, for I am still thrilled by the playful nature of the dolphin, I still dream of flying with birds. More than anything, I long for a day that I can be free of these dreary surroundings and stand proud on desert sands, my turban wrapped around my head, a Sultan in a far away Persia.

(This article was published in Haveeru Daily on 1 July 1999)