Of Travels, Nostalgia and being Namak Haram

 

More than ten years after her passing, I can still hear my mother’s voice: « You are a bunch of Namak Haram! Ungrateful lot! » My mother used to speak in my native tongue, Kreol Morisien, often infused with words in Urdu, among which the term Namak Haram. It’s a term that stuck in my mind and which I gladly use jokingly, more often than not. Similar to an ingredient that inadvertently spices up a dish, it brings a special kick to a conversation.

It so happens that my darling daughter Maariya, recently directed that term to me. « Dad, you are a Namak Haram. » She said it in French, after a lengthy diatribe of mine, another one, on my frustration of not being able to travel because of the Coronavirus. And she added, « You are so exhausting Dad, you always say the same thing! » She caught me unawares, but I have to admit that she is not quite wrong. Since a year now, I have been practicing gratitude. Following a triple bypass surgery, during which, I was subsequently told, I almost lost my life, I have been trying to integrate gratitude in my life. I have gone back to praying and I try to carve some time to say « thank you » daily; thank you for the joy of being, thank you for all things, big and small, that I have been blessed with. This sense of gratitude does not come easily to me as the mechanisms of negativity and dissatisfaction that are etched in me are hard to be subdued.

But when it comes to travel, I am not ashamed one bit to claim loud and clear that I am Namak Haram. I don’t hide it; I actually do not have the choice.

I’ll tell you why.

I live on an island, Mauritius. For some, including my Indian friends, it means Bollywood sceneries of stars sashaying on the beautiful beaches. For others, including my French friends, Mauritius is an exotic fantasy, akin to heaven, a place out of this world. In fact, Baudelaire wrote some exquisite verses on my country: « There, all is order and beauty, luxury, peace and pleasure. » But for others, that is the majority of earthlings, Mauritius does not even exist, they have never even heard about it. My country is neither worthy of praise nor contempt. The worst sits side by side with the best. To be honest, I have a love-hate relationship with it, my roots, which are here, hold me firmly grounded but at the same time I am suffocated by its exiguity. It’s a tiny island, which can be toured in less than a day and I feel like a captive within its limits. Hence this need to travel. In a way, I don’t travel, I escape, I run away, it’s a legal breakout from the confines of the island.

 

Travelling is primarily frustrating. First, finding the money is never obvious (I am thankfully invited to festivals from time to time), then there are the innumerable formalities, planes that look more and more like sardine cans, tiredness, exhaustion. And then these moments of grace, these euphoria-filled moments where all the senses become alive, where we know we belong to a fate other than bearing the weariness that fills our lives and bodies. I live for these poetic moments that go beyond expression: taking the photos of a perfect stranger in Trivandrum in India, this magnificently lined face which tells a thousand year story, walking along the river in Iowa city early in the morning where I ask myself if there is any place that is more mystical than this; getting lost in the labyrinth of books that is the Shakespeare and Company library in Paris, endlessly walking in the streets of Medellin in Colombia, being crushed by the magnitude of the hyper realistic magic of the place; visiting Toledo, the highly symbolic place of Islamic civilisation in Spain or visiting the grave of Kamala Das, in Trivandrum, which looks like unadulterated poetry in its simplicity.

I crave moments like these, of which I soak myself up. I need them, they feed my imagination.

Even better, they serve to invent that nostalgia which makes the present bearable, possible.

I am convinced that you will tell me that it’s a naive conviction, you are most probably right, but I remain steadfast in my belief that travelling, in this world that is filled with hate and anger, increasing racism and intolerance, is a way to go towards the other. More than ever, we need to find ourselves in the face of the other as the other’s face is made up of different vistas, journeys and places, but isn’t it also our own that we look for while travelling to the ends of the world, at the end of the day? Thus, beyond our motherland, beyond ourselves, we find, in the countenance of the other, our own.

And this journey towards the other may be nothing but a journey towards oneself. We need to open our heart to the other, so that the latter can open the doors to the law of brotherhood.

Mankind will prevail.

And if being a Namak Haram is the price to pay to access the plurality of senses, nostalgia, and mankind, I am ready to pay that price.

Sorry Mum.  

Umar Timol.

( Translation : Saffiyah Chady Edoo )