March 29, 2024

Making new spaces “home”

Apologies in advance, since I already know this is going to be an off-beat post (in its honour I have added a new category: “Totally random stuff”), but I’ve had it for the day with reconstructing the way the UN Security Council got to refer Darfur to the ICC (Chapter 2), so I’m up for a non Darfur reflection.

Perhaps it is just a by-product of the kind of ‘adaptation bred by necessity’ of one who has moved around more than a person should, but I get an enormous satisfaction out of making a new space “mine”, in a freakishly rapid amount of time. Whether it’s a student dorm room, a domestic violence refuge, an apartment –  in Holland or Kenya, a tukul, or the street corner I used to busk on – the realities of the location itself seem to make little difference.  There is just something nice about getting to know a space.

Why am I on this train of thought, you wonder. Basically because I had an interview-free day today (scheduling being what it is, I have too many to squeeze into the coming days), but this meant a solid day of drafting was in order:  me, my computer, and my room – broken only by occasional foray outside for amazingly good Koshary from an alleyway round the corner from me (pasta, rice, lentils, chickpeas all mixed in one bowl with garlic and tomato, hot sauce and lemon juice at the princely sum of 3LE – roughty 50 cents – – when I run out of money for this project I think the plan maybe to come to Cairo to finish it!).

I’ve been here just over 48 hours and feel like I can claim this little room as my home. I have a early morning “conversation” (his three words of English, my five words of Arabic) with the old man who sits across the road drinking coffee until his mate comes and joins him for a game of backgammon. I am welcomed by the man who piles koshary in my bowl like I’m an old friend, and the woman who signals that I should get a bigger bowl because I look skinny (all communicated in gesture and evidently hilarious to everyone around!).  And then there’s the fact that I now know how to jig the toilet down the hall so it actually flushes, and the right way to position myself on my bed in order to avoid the odd spring that is desperately trying to sprout out from the mattress, and the exact corner of the room where I can get a good enough wireless connection to make calls on skype. Small things. Yet in combination they give me a disproportionate amount of joy. It’s a nice thing – to be able to make a space “home”. Lucky me.

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