Look, don’t touch
Since the
barber shut, I grew a dank mop of dull, grey hair.
No, not a
mop, a tangled skein. A vicious wiry spiral, resistant to any attempts by the
hairbrush to tame it after restless tussles with half bitten pillow slips.
Sleep
doesn’t come easy.
A yawn. Erase
half remembered dreams of smiling face and ghost caresses.
Pad in bare
feet, over to the laptop, slopping hot coffee down jeans, resisting the urge to
rub bloodshot eyes because touching is forbidden. They feel sore, a cat o nine
tails, all lashes and flashes.
Let’s shoot
off a couple of Tweets. Blank bullets - less warning shots across bows; more
distress flares.
Woken up at 4. Answered a couple of messages and I was
touched, thought about it then no, and now it's 7.30. Derek will be thinking
porridge's been cancelled.
E Mail. Spam Tray. Amazon - Payment declined, like yes of
course I'll send all my credit card details but please later and phish off,
bye.
Maybe a wry
smirk shadows my face as they wing intangible around the globe. Featherlight. Will
anyone like? Retweet? Respond? The whole world is watching. Looking but not
touching.
Shock. Boris
is in hospital. No, don’t think that.
Somewhere in
the background, the Al Jazeera, recording, reporting. Locked down, locked in,
single, solitary hearts, peering at us through screens, like they were windows
into our souls. And the soothing psychologist with her prognosis of ‘without
touching, we fall apart’ because it releases a chemical you see? Oh, don’t ask
me about the Science, I deal in spellings. Some sort of witches’ brew; like that
solution we slop onto our wrists and palms every time we remember.
Not much news
on Qatar. What’s what with Doha?
And the
sunlight shanks black shadowy bars through the webbed curtains, running its
fingers through your grey as it rises on another day.
But, look,
now, here’s life!
Picture by
picture in manic dream pixels, faces appear, square by square until the screen
resembles some sort of flashing pinball chessboard.
Let battle
commence.
But wait.
Just a quick rewind, here.
When I was
told to teach via video, I had reservations. Well, you know, I always have reservations.
Oh, there
was hue and cry across the teaching community. Wailing and gnashing.
Unprecedented. Simply not possible. Virtual teaching? Virtually impossible.
Strange how
resentment builds like a virus, isn’t it? A resistance to change, a herd immunity
to originality, spark or thought, seasoned professionals using only the reptile
part of the brain. Fight or flight. Understandable, though. Some of us faced
this before – don’t die of ignorance, icebergs and all that.
But when the
children disappeared, the classrooms emptied, and our school became now a vast,
reverberating cavern where the only sound was the slight echo of footfall on
tiled flooring. A sad note, that.
Or so I
thought.
But here’s
Rafan, grinning, all teeth and curls, peering impudently at me through the
screen. That shy fellow there? Oh, that’s Muhammed Ali, ready for a twelve
round dust up with metaphors; look there’s his mate, Abdullah. Nice fellah,
Abdullah, quiet but excellent sense of humour – ah, yes, this one? Well, Abdelaziz
of course, hasn’t even brushed his teeth by the look of him. His hair is as
bedraggled as mine.
“All, right
lads?” I cry in my faux cockney. It slips. My dialect and accent, I mean.
Mostly I can manage a passable Standard English, with a serious tone and
semi-formal register but I have been known to lapse into black country or even
stray north of the border to Scotland. Well, it knows no frontiers, does it?
No, not that
- dialects, accents, peoples – we’re all one, jammed together inside virtual squares,
a template, looking at each other. Qatari, Indian, Lebanese, Egyptian…yes, even
British.
“Yes,
Mister, yes, Sir, yes, yes, yes.”
I clear my
throat, “Now, lads, I’ll do the register later, I don’t know how, but we’ll
muddle through it, eh? Now I must tell you, there has been…er…how can I
say…some complaints about the use of the chat room. Some boys have been writing
unflattering comments about our Principal, Doctor Wycherley…”
“Sir! I know
who it was, sir!”
I try to
look grave, but we were all young once, weren’t we? In my day, there were
blackboards - big rolling screeds of chalk that the teacher would yank down
with much huffing and puffing only to discover, too late and in dismay, some
wag had written ‘wobble-bottom’ on the reverse side in multi coloured capitals.
I raise my
eyebrows for quiet. I can do that, you know, they’re pretty impressive. Hush
descends across the city. “We all know who it was, Sherlock,” I rumble, trying
not to titter, “because the chat displays your name, doesn’t it?”
They hadn’t
considered that.
I continue.
“Now, see here. Any repetition of such rambunctious revelry and I will not only
disable the chat function from my end but…” pause for effect…”bring down upon
your heads such punishments that have even yet to be devised, so awful will
they be.”
The silence is
thunderous.
“So…let’s
continue with exploring this very exciting poem, ‘IF’ by Mr Kipling.”
A square
flash which indicates that someone wants to speak - Camren. Clever boy;
sometimes works at the tennis during the Doha Open. “Sir? Sir?”
“Yes,
Camren.”
“Doesn’t he
make cakes, Sir?”
“No Camren.
He does not make cakes.”
“He does, Sir.
Fondant Fancies. My mum buys them.”
“That’s an
entirely different Mr Kipling, Camren.”
Now here’s
another flashing square and some grinning teeth. “I’ve been thinking, Sir,”
says Ahmed. “If the punishment has yet to be even devised, it’s not much of one
is it?”
“Not much of
one what?” I sigh, rumbled by a keener mind than my own.
“Punishment,
sir. Basically, it’s like saying ‘if you do this thing, then you’ll be punished
with something that doesn’t exist’, Sir. Invisible.”
“Well, that
may be true, but it’ll be terrible, anyway, and are you prepared to risk it?”
Well, yes,
it seems. And now they’re all at the chat screen again, fighting over it,
because they do like a struggle if truth be told. Shooting hoops, kicking
footballs, jostling joyously, bundling over park greenery, piling on top of one
another, screaming and kicking. Kings of each and every castle where a virtual
scrap is better than none. It’s called growing up.
So, I
disable it and continue. “Yes. If you do this thing, then this will happen
boys. And, that’s what ‘IF’ is all about. It’s all conditionals. If you do
this, then you’ll grow to be a man, my son.”
There is a
pause and then a terrible thought. “Will we, Mister?” says a voice. “Will we
grow up?”
And thirty
sets of eyes look from the screen. Touching.
I’m sitting on
the grey couch. Matches my hair.
In front of
me, the flatscreen and the Al Jazeera chant evening statistics in soothing
susurrations like throat medicine; cool water on hot skin.
I chopped a
salad earlier. Fresh tomato, cucumber, crisp lettuce and I seasoned it with
rumours. If you eat garlic, if you munch raw onions, if, if, if.
Ah, what
will be, will be. I’ll have mine with those sweet lamb chops from the Turkish
butcher on Al Sadd Street, thank you. Some company would be nice but that would
involve touch, lack of distancing when we’re locked in.
Check my tweets.
Not much on the timeline, just an endless comfort chain ‘name your top ten
books’ from around the globe and a message from an old friend I wish I’d spent
more time with lately, but I hadn’t.
I don’t want to die here.
Tsk tsk. Ah, you’re not going to die, you nana. You’ll be
fine. You’ve those two lads to bring up. Eat more garlic.
Does that work?
Halfway
across the globe, pictures of Primrose Hill, London where people frolic like
lambs and a grim reporter looks on, like a teacher. I shiver. Think of
punishments so awful that have yet to even be devised. Invisible.
But look,
here’s a young girl picking a flower in sheer joy at being out in the Spring
sunshine, blossom of the new year, delighting in life and growth and renewal.
And I’m reminded of somebody who said once, ‘for every flower that dies, a
flower must surely grow.’
It won’t
last forever.
The sun
sets, taking with him his blank shadowy bars and as night falls, on television,
our psychologist mutters something about getting in touch with ex partners,
comfort and such.
So, alone, I
tweet one final thought.
In times of crisis I want to touch my X, although maybe I
should consider Y.
