London’s Khawater 1: Daily Dance
Khawater (خواطر) is an Arabic word for “Thoughts”. It is often used to label the kind of thoughts that you have on the fly in some sort of a monologue or a lightbulb. In here, I will share with you some of my khawater that I sometimes have during my stay in London.
Location: Liverpool Street Station
Time: 8:20 am
Have you ever had the experience of seeing yourself through the eyes of a stranger? I did.
If you live or have lived in London, you know that there is an art for commuting through the city. There is a traditional dance that you need to perfect through practice, especially if you use a big station, like Liverpool Street Station for your daily commute.
It all starts on the train, the gathering by the door, the threatening looks at the door button and the poor person who is responsible for clicking it exactly on time. The thrill of waiting for the sound. Beep, beep, beep… off we go! We are on the platform and within a couple of steps, that dance will start, all your senses are at alert. Soon we will all become a current, all going in the same direction. At one point there will be congestion, a bottleneck before a gate or an escalator. At that particular point in time, there will always be that one person who is starting to dance a bit earlier than others, swinging right and left trying to find that little gap that will make all the difference in them winning this morning race.
Past that point, you are more likely than not to be faced by a current that is coming opposite to yours. Don’t worry this is manageable, somehow we all form lanes and put on our auto-pilot. The true dance is when you are crossing a hall of a station like Liverpool Street.
In there, there are no lanes. Suddenly, the danger is coming from everywhere, some in the form of small to a large current of people, some are just individuals going in some random direction, some take the weirdest turns, u-turns and even a full stop. We are all contributors to this manic, chaotic and yet harmonic symphony. Somehow it all makes sense to us, locals.
Unfortunately, if you are a newbie, a tourist and or just a passing visitor, to you this can be a fascinating and horrific scene at the same time.
While I was performing my usual dance, at 8:20 am, my eyes crossed the eyes of what looked like a tourist to me. For that split second, I saw myself in her eyes, I saw all of us in her eyes.
Tourists tend to walk differently and look around differently. While we are too busy pacing and performing our routine dance, looking at our phones or just looking at the floor, they walk slowly, looking in all directions, taking a sphere-like picture. Even if we simplify it into 2D coverage, we both cover a 45° angle, however, ours is downwards while theirs is upwards.
For some reason, I was looking at myself in her eyes, all while listening to what she was thinking: how lucky they are to be living in such a magnificent city with an endless offering, I’m here for a week only.
At that particular split of a second, it struck me! I realised how we, or maybe just I, have little appreciation for this city. How we take it for granted. How we do less and see less just because we live here.
It made me realise that the difference between those tourists and us, between when we were tourists (here or somewhere else) and now is simply a deadline!
As a tourist, you know that you have a few days in this city (or any other city for that matter). A few days to see, feel and appreciate. As locals, we tend not to feel that urge, we just live in our routines, rituals and daily dances. We treat our visit to this city as eternal. We become very good at bragging about the benefits of the magnificent city, about things to do and see and about all that it can offer. Yet so little do we take advantage of it. Think of how many plays, exhibitions, and events you missed just because you thought that you will go later. And now think if you were visiting the city for a couple of days and this event is happening, what would you have done?
All of this, as you may have guessed, made me think of the other stay that we are taking for granted and treating as if it is an eternity with no deadline. Do you know which one I’m talking about?
