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Camino II: Dawnbreaker

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Holy Week got off to a flying start last night outside Logroño’s cathedral, Santa María de La Redonda. It isn’t always easy to tell which towns will have a serious procesión, but for the record, Logroño goes the distance. It looked as though all the brotherhoods were out in force last night, garbed in white, red, green, black and blue. Crucially for me, they also beat out the same halting drumbeat from my memories of Holy Week in the south. Not every town does it, but you’ll notice if they do: it’s the ever so slightly delayed drum roll during the march that, once you hear it, you can’t unhear. It’s the suspense of the last days of Jesus’ life, as his followers waited to see if he would save himself. At least, that’s one way of reading into it.

I had supper with a rather awkward American, the only other guest for dinner at the albergue. He wasn’t even staying there, but appeared to have wandered in looking for a menu peregrino (the cheap three-course fare offered to pilgrims on the Camino). He had his reservations about how sociable people are on the Camino and pined for the quieter stretches, and from his less than satisfied reaction to the ‘vegetarian option’ he’d asked for, I couldn’t help wondering what he was doing out here. He was quick to want to fact check my anecdote about his home state of California being one of the only places in the world named for a fictional location (it takes its name from the mythical island in Montalvo’s 16th-century chivalric novel, Las sergas de Esplandián) but I won’t begrudge him for it. After Trump and the fake news boom, who’d trust anyone?

I was definitely one of the first out of town this morning. Though I passed some pilgrims on the road a few hours in, from the speed at which they were walking I suspect they’d been lodging one or two towns ahead. As a result, I had pretty much the whole 30km hike to Nájera to myself – including the first hour and a half before sunrise, which is always one of the most magical times to walk the Camino.

Approaching the Laguna de Grajera from the east, I counted about six or seven night herons flying in from their roost somewhere beyond Logroño. You can just about make out the silhouette of one of them in the photo above, as dawn was starting to break. There were rabbits everywhere – more than I’ve ever seen in this country – and the morning sky was alive with the songs of blackbirds and larks. I could have waited for company at any point, but I do love to have that part of the day to myself. Self indulgent, perhaps, but worth indulging all the same.

There was even an icon of Nuestra Señora del Rocío on the lakeside. Whether or not I sang her into existence through various repetitions of Las llanuras ardientes and El Rocío es un milagro as I was walking is conjecture. It felt special to find her here, so far from her usual haunt in the marismas down south.

Now, while I needn’t have set off quite so early (the 8 hours in the guidebook is a joke, the trek is at the very most 6h30 with a stop for lunch) I did have my reasons, and one was to catch a very specific angle of the sunrise at just the right moment.

At the brow of a hill to the west of the laguna stands one of the famous Osborne bulls for which Spain is so famous. By the time I got clear of it – at around 8.20am – the sun was almost exactly behind it. I could not have timed it better. Point and shoot!

The rest of the walk was pretty straightforward. The ruins of the old pilgrims’ hospice at San Juan de Acre were picturesque and the Camino itself, though it cleaved close to the road on occasion, was quiet and easy underfoot. I let a couple of Dutch pilgrims overtake and continued to have the road to myself. The Sierra de Cebollera remained cloudbound for most of the walk, and I kept my hoodie on until I reached Nájera – it simply wasn’t hot enough to justify fewer layers, and that’s not bad thing!

Navarrete was stunning – easily one of my favourite stations on the Camino so far. The church is a classic Spanish affair: pokey and generic on the outside, and an immense explosion of heavenly gold within. I lit a candle for abuelo, left a story in the visitor’s book, sang through Thomas Morley’s Nolo mortem peccatoris (since there was nobody there) and moved on.

From Navarrete, the final stretch rolled across the hills before sloping down toward the cliff face of Nájera. Legend has it the French hero Roland fought a Syrian giant on one of these hills in a single combat that went on for days, but I was happy enough to see the familiar silhouette of the giants of my childhood: griffon vultures, circling high above the meseta in the distance. I didn’t keep a tally, but there were raptors everywhere today. Kestrels and kites – both black and red – and buzzards and booted eagles, these last in both white and brown. Since it’s still early enough in the season, some of them were displaying still, climbing high and then plummeting down in a sharp V with wings tucked in. Between that and the flute-song of woodlarks that followed me for the last hour before Nájera, I have been in seventh heaven all morning. Oh Camino, I have missed you!

The Albergue Municipal is filling up. Maybe I’ll meet some of these people later. But for now, I’ve done my write-up for the day and I could use a little shut-eye before I seek further adventures in Nájera this evening. Until the next time, folks. BB x

Rome: Marching on the Capital

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

They weren’t wrong when they called Rome the Eternal City. It seems to go on forever and ever – which is probably why everybody I asked told me not to walk, but get the bus or metro. But I’m stubborn when it comes to walking – years of not driving forces you to master the art – so I spent today exploring Rome on foot. The only foolish thing was that I did it twice: once to scout the city, then once again to visit the Colosseum for my timed entry slot. My heels are aching and frankly I can’t blame them. But if anything should be aching, it’s my eyes… because there’s more to see in Rome than in any city I’ve ever seen in my life.

I’m staying in a cosy AirBnB behind Castel Sant’Angelo, situated within a condominium that’s just a stone’s throw from the Vatican City. I figured it would be nicer to be in a quieter part of the city as I’m not much of a city boy, and I wasn’t wrong… Rome is loud. Somebody grabbed the volume dial on the train from Venice and ramped it up to max. Noisiest of all are the ambulanzas… the way they hurtle down the streets with sirens blazing every ten minutes you’d think the Romans had one of the highest mortality rates in Europe. Given the Vatican’s population growth rate of 0% and the average age of its citizens, perhaps that’s not surprising.

It’s telling enough that between writing the word ambulanza and this line, I’ve heard four go by in the space of two minutes. Ils sont fous, ces Romains.

I started my route by crossing the Tiber over the Ponte Sant’Angelo. A Korean couple posed for their wedding photographs on the bridge while two local men dressed as legionnaires did the same with a family of tourists before bullying them for cash. It’s been a long time since I’ve done real tourism – my usual holiday destinations are well off the beaten track – so the vast number of selfie stick sellers, water hawkers and tack touts caught me off guard. They seem to swarm about the oldest parts of the city like flies around a wound, preying especially on the young, the old and the Chinese. For the first time, as a single male traveler, I passed most of them as though invisible. I guess I’m not prime real estate – nor would I have much need of a selfie stick when I’m armed with my trusty Nikon D3200.

The Pantheon was a little underwhelming on such a cloudy day, so I saved it for later. The famous Trevi Fountain was being cleaned as I walked past, knocking two items off my itinerary early on. Instead, I spent some time in the bizarre Capuchin Crypt to see one of the most alarming sights in Rome: the disinterred and rearranged bones of hundreds of monks, dressed up and set on display in a grisly but remarkably intricate work of art. As a mark of respect to the bodies (which does seem odd when they’ve been played with so) cameras aren’t allowed, but fortunately nobody ever seems to have any issues with sketching, so I spent some time drawing the macabre display instead.

Moving on through the squares and streets, past sharp-dressed polizia and fire-breathing carabinieri, I made a point of dropping in on a couple of Rome’s churches. Not too many – there are so many here one could burn out easily – but enough to get a flavour. Even if you’re not religious in any way, they’re blissful refuges from the constant hubbub of the city.

After four days in Venice, the near total lack of traffic along the River Tiber was hard to believe. And not just on the water – its banks too were almost deserted, but for a couple of joggers and a few clusters of homeless folk. Even the usual river fauna was nowhere to be seen… just a motley crew of gulls and a couple of hooded crows. By contrast, the Guadalquivir is usually heaving with both birds and sunseekers. Perhaps Rome is just too busy to afford the Tiber either.

After an all-too brief recharge back at the AirBnB I trekked back across the city toward the forum, where sadly no funny things happened. I made it to the Colosseum in more than enough time and they let me in fifteen minutes early, so I guess the newly imposed time slots are more guidelines than a point of law.

Standing in line, I watched a German family try to take a selfie where they all try to jump at the same time. Ein, zwei, drei! Ein, zwei, drei! A gang of twenty-something-year-olds sauntered by, and one of them who clearly thought himself a first class joker kept jumping into their shots, sauntering off with an unflattering imitation of their countdown. The same thought occurred to me as it had with the phoney legionnaires: some people are just goons for no reason.

The Colosseum… was it worth the entry fee? I think so. It is without doubt one of the most impressive buildings in the world, and though it’s a lot more imposing from the outside, with all the scaffolding and building work going out around it, it’s easier to get an impression of its ridiculous scale from inside these days. They’re currently building a new metro line that will service the old city, which I saw advertised all over today. Great news for my feet, not so great news for the Colosseum, which won’t enjoy the additional underground reverberations.

I did get one thing right today, and that was my timing: the blinding white clouds that covered the city all morning were gone by five o’clock, which meant my walk home through the Forum landed right in the golden hour. Blackbirds and blackcaps sang from the olive trees and the crumbling walls as they must have done since before the Romans came. Children played leapfrog between the pillars. A British Indian family had an argument about “too much history for a holiday”, while a Turkish girl made her boyfriend take her photo again and again and again and again under the wisteria tunnel. My services as a family photographer were called upon three times between Titus’ Arch and the Temple of Saturn, but that’s what you get for obviously wandering about with an SLR camera.

I don’t really have anything profound or original to say about my adventures today, which is a little disappointing. I guess you could say that everything that could be said about Rome has been said by thousands before me. So tomorrow, after a decent rest for my beleaguered feet, I think I’ll investigate somewhere further afield. There’s something very appealing about spending the day in Ostia Antica – not least of all because of the mild amusement I get as a Spaniard from the name alone. But that’s not set in stone. For now, I should get some shut-eye, and give my blistered heels a well-earned break. BB x

P.S. Oh, and I also had my first Italian pizza this evening. It was… OK. Nothing to write home about. Which is ironic, since that’s exactly what I’m doing right here.

Keep the Faith

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Last night, in a return to pre-COVID tradition, we celebrated Tenebrae in the Abbey Church. With the latest wave of infections sweeping the staff and students, I’ll admit I had my doubts I’d be able to go up and sing as I used to with a house to run, but my housemaster very kindly stepped in, allowing me to bolster the tenor line. It’s hard to overstate the importance of making music in my faith: singing is an act of worship. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t go to Mass when the churches opened last year, while the ban on singing was still in place – how could I practice my faith without lips to speak? I remember saying as much to one of the school’s youth chaplains once, who remarked that I ought to rethink my approach to faith. Was he right? I don’t think so. I think everyone’s path to God is individual. Mine just happens to be through music, which, all things considered, is hardly surprising.

I spent a great deal of my childhood in and out of churches. My mother played the organ for the village church when I was very young, and I remember sitting (probably not so quietly) next to the pedals, listening to the growling hum of the organ long after the last notes faded into the stone walls. Later, during my short spell at a prep school, I spent two nights a week up in the organ loft of Canterbury Cathedral while my father sang for the cathedral choir. What was undoubtedly an incredible privilege became routine – that is, until a Victorian-minded parishioner who happened to look up one week decided that children were better “seen and not heard” and my brother and I were unceremoniously ousted, forced to sit in the quire thereafter.

Perhaps that was God’s will, because twenty years later, I still jump at the chance to stand in just such a stall and tangle with some sacred music. There’s really nothing quite like it.

I have a somewhat unorthodox relationship with God. If it were a Facebook status, I might just go for “It’s complicated”. Somewhere deep within, my spiritual compass spins toward Israel. Maybe it’s the stories my mother brought me up with or the belief we both share that our ancestors were among the many thousands of Spain’s Jews who converted to hide from the Inquisition, many hundreds of years ago. It would go some way towards explaining the ferocious proclivity for the arts borne across the generations by my ancestors, at a time when intellectualism was unwise and even dangerous. Millán-Astray’s battle cry of “muera la inteligencia” in 1936 – around about the time my grandfather was born – hardly seems out of place for a country where, for hundreds of years, it was better to hacer mala letra than open your mouth and betray your wits. Our own Michael Gove gave us an uncomfortable reminder of this dark past when he claimed the British had “had enough of experts” in the lead-up to Brexit.

I can hold my head up high every day as a teacher knowing that I am the next in a long line of teachers, all of whom dabbled in music and poetry and art. Were they really Jews, though? I’d like to think so – I really would – but I have no proof of that. I have barely enough solid proof of my connection to my grandfather, never mind a connection to a Hebrew ancestry that may or may not have ever existed. The silver Star of David I sometimes wear beneath my suit is no heirloom, but rather a keepsake from a Jewish silversmith in Cordoba; a reminder of the terrible fate suffered by the Chosen People in a land far from home that was once their paradise. Will I ever know for sure? I doubt it. But some things you see with your eyes, others with your heart. This is one of those things the heart sees. Something you have always known or believed with little to no provocation. I believe because I cannot be sure. It’s the weakest of arguments, the merest of threads. But about such threads, Faiths are often weaved into being.

So why am I a Catholic? With such silent conviction, how can I stand there in the darkness, singing Christian verses and watching the candles going out to mark the extinguishing of Jesus’ light and life from the world, a little under two thousand years ago?

I am a Catholic because I would make the same journey as my family. Whether or not my ancestors found their way to the Christian God through awe or terror, I would take that road that they took. And there is something fundamentally grounding about faith. Standing as one with my students and singing songs that have been sung for hundreds of years… you feel a power, there, echoing down the generations. It’s all the more powerful when you see the date at the top of the copy reaching back to the middle ages. One imagines one’s voice reaching up to the heavens and mingling with the voices of those who came before you on its journey across the stars. Perhaps that’s what the choir of Heaven is: the echo of thousands of years of collective prayer through song. I’d like that.

I might also point out that the Catholic church represents an important bastion against the foe, since modern Christian music is, to my ears, quite possibly the wettest, most uninspiring drivel ever produced. It clearly works wonders for some, but it does nothing for me. Give me plainchant any day. A colleague once joked that one of his greatest fears was that he should reach the pearly gates only to find that Mozart and his kin are nowhere to be found, and Hillsong reigns triumphant. It’s a joke (and a nightmare) I share. But that’s a story for another time.

I am also a Catholic because Faith is a journey of forgiveness. Noli mortem peccatoris. Those were the words of power that spoke to me last night, as the last of the candles were snuffed out. I do not want the death of the wicked. I bear no ill will against those shadows who persecuted my people, because there is too much hate in the world already. I wept on the shores of the Dead Sea years ago at the sight of the sun going down over the Holy Land, knowing I was not yet ready to see it with my own eyes. Jerusalem evades me still: the last time I tried to make that journey, a little hiccup called Covid-19 came thundering in.

Finally, I am a Catholic because of what it stands for. Katholikos. Universal. It chimes with me in much the same way that the Arabic expression ahl al-Kitaab – people of the book – called out to me in my Arabic studies, many years ago. The world is immense and no two people are the same, and I think it’s as foolish to expect everyone to share the same faith as it is to expect to find two identical grains of sand on a beach: the closer you look, the more you’ll find yourself doubting. But I have built my faith upon doubt rather than surety, because that, to me, is what faith is all about. Believing in the light when all the world is darkness because your heart tells you to do so. Fate may be the master builder of the temples of our lives, but hope is the cement that holds the stones together. I believe in that light and in that hope. And in my heart I know I would go on hoping, though every light in the world were extinguished as they were last night, one by one.

In three days’ time I set out for Italy on my first solo adventure in a long time. Venice will inspire, no doubt, but it’s Rome I’m especially excited to see. I hope I can catch some music there during my stay. I could use some of that ancient magic after what has been quite a long term. BB x

The World’s Most Beautiful Women

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Why am I doing this?

No, seriously. Why am I doing this? This isn’t Amman. This isn’t even vaguely Arabic. We’re halfway to Kiev on a bus that isn’t the Skybus that Google and Tripadvisor recommended. Come to think of it, I didn’t even ask the driver where we’re going. It might not even be Kiev. I’m going by the size of the city and the great big river we crossed earlier and assuming it is. Other than that, I really don’t know. I can’t read the alphabet. Any and all Russian I learned in those four after-school sessions has jumped clean out of my mind, except that the letter P becomes R and K, T and A stay the same. Ten points for effort for this worn-out linguist! I mean, there’s no escaping it this time: this is sheer lunacy, even by my standards.

‘We could be going anywhere right now,’ says Andrew. ‘We could literally be going anywhere.’

Well, this really isn't Arabia anymore...

Well, this really isn’t Arabia anymore…

We really could. It all looks bleak and Soviet; pine forests, grey skies and grim skyscrapers with peeling walls. Even the hooded crows look seedy. But I do have £33 worth of Ukrainian hryvna in my wallet (or at least, I think I do) and I plan for us to be back at the airport for six o’clock at the latest. So there is some semblance of a plan beneath the anarchy. Blimey, but what I wouldn’t do to have fellow linguists and Russian speakers Shahnaz and Rosie here with me now, if just to have a vague idea of what’s going on.

Nope, I don't understand any of this

Nope, I don’t understand any of this

If that whim decision to go for the twelve-hour layover bothered me slightly at four o’clock this morning, it was practically crucifying me by nine, when we’d touched down in Borispol Airport and navigated customs. Andrew managed a good couple of hours’ sleep on the journey from Amman; I did not, and it’s really beginning to kick in now, as I’m no longer constantly on the move. But fatigue is the smallest of barriers to the determined adventurer!

…once again I find myself picking up the mantle some two hours later. Two sentences later I woke up with the iPad slipping off my legs onto the floor of the bus. So I take that back. Apparently fatigue has other ideas.

I digress. After a minor financial confusion over the exchange rate of the Ukranian hryvna, Andrew and I made it to Kiev (it really was Kiev in the end) with six hours to kill. Cue at least half an hour of ‘wow’, ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this’ and ‘this is absolutely bonkers’ as Andrew patiently bears my childish enthusiasm. We took a wander into the old part in search of the Bessarabsky Market to grab a bite to eat. Every single stall inside, without exception, was manned by what can only be described as the stereotypical babuschka. And no, try as they might, Andrew and I didn’t understand a word of what they were saying. But an idea struck me at one of the aisles and I procured a tin of caviar from one of the stallholders who was anxious for us to try a spoonful of all of her wares, from sweet to tongue-zappingly salty, from lumpfish to Beluga sturgeon. And if you think I’m exaggerating, I point you towards the sequin-scaled monstrosity lying headless on a mound of ice near the market door, barbels removed. It hardly needs saying, but this is a world away from Amman. Period.

Concrete block for make unification of great Russian Power and Ukraine

Concrete block for make unification of great Russian Power and Ukraine

The miracle of Kiev is that there is so much to see in so small an area. Like I said, a world away from Amman. In just under four hours we had covered almost everything there is to see. Beginning with St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral, an elaborate Orthodox affair in gold leaf and black-robed majesty, we set off an a tour of the old city. There’s something really special about Orthodox churches. At first glance it all looks a bit showy: giant crosses, bold block colours, gold used just about wherever there’s breathing space, not to mention all the icons. But it’s a great deal more complicated than that. It was Andrew who pointed it out to me. The congregation, outnumbering the sightseers by about nine to one, were mostly women, in varying states of dress, but the one thing they all had in common was the wearing of a headscarf. A kind of step-down for us from Jordan, perhaps.

‘Surely it doesn’t work like that,’ says Andrew, as a scarfed young woman in high heels leaves the cathedral after making the sign of the cross twice across her chest and bowing out, a lurid pink thong showing above the cut of her miniskirt. Apparently, it does. You know what they say about book covers…

Overloading on the blue, much...

Overloading on the blue, much…

One of the subjects that came up in conversation with Fahed and Massoud yesterday was the subject of Ukrainian women, whom Fahed believed, as ‘proved by science’, to be the most beautiful women in the world. I set out to test that theory today, both to conduct some kind of fair test in light of such a sweeping statement (especially when any suggestions of Spain and Colombia had been overruled just minutes before), and more so to justify this ridiculous little side-quest into Kiev at the end of our labours.

Or you could just cut out the middle man...

Or you could just cut out the middle man…

I’m going to surprise myself, but Fahed’s got a point. Ukrainian women are pretty stunning. They must be, or we wouldn’t have run into not one, not two, but a total of seven weddings in the course of our wanderings. There’s also a heck of a lot of them; more than the men, anyway, at least from my observations. A bit like Elvet Riverside, come to think of it. But seriously, those weddings we walked in on (there was hardly any avoiding them, they were all over the place…) Flowing white dresses everywhere on a backdrop of marble steps, spiralling turrets and Orthodox spires. My heart was on a serious flutter. Perhaps it’s the healthy skin tones, the raven hair, or the eyes that shelter a mixture of light and dark? Or even the fabulous dress sense? No, surely it’s the curled smiles most of them are wearing… (I wish Nizzar Qabbani could help me out here, I’m teetering on the edge of the villainy of objectivity)

Somebody stop me before I make a rash move!

Somebody stop me before I make a rash move!

Before I go too far, I’ll throw you the anecdote that tipped me over the scale of utter disbelief of Fahed’s claim to conceding a little ground to the guy. In the grounds of the St. Sophia Cathedral, Kiev’s jaw-droppingly beautiful UNESCO cathedral complex, Andrew and I stumbled upon an outdoor recital by a young Ukrainian student playing quite possibly the largest lute I have ever seen. I believe, if memory serves, that it is called a bandura? We still had a good three hours to kill so we stopped to listen, and am I glad we did! No sooner had she put her fingers to the strings than the girl began to sing, and in all my years as the son of two music teachers I have rarely heard a voice so magical. Like a siren, but sadder and more graceful. I was totally drawn in – so much so that it took me some time to realise that the bandurist and I had been staring at each other unflinchingly for almost a minute before I snapped awake, and she’d been singing all the way through.

‘You should have got her number or something,’ said Andrew, as we moved on to the Great Gates of Kiev twenty minutes later. ‘You haven’t got forever. Get them before they’re all gone, that’s what my godmother told me.’

DSC04510

I’m not running out of time yet – at least, I hope I’m not. Maybe I should have done or said something. As ever, I was lost in the music, I guess. Too lost to appreciate that we kept looking back at each other after her set was over. My obliviousness reigns supreme. At the very least I have a good three minutes of her set on video, so I can listen to that siren song again if ever the mood requires. And by that I mean, of course, sleep. Andrew fell asleep during her recital. If I hadn’t been so entranced, I guess I might have done so too.

It's ok, as long as I have cats I'll be just fine

It’s ok, as long as I have cats I’ll be just fine

Water under the bridge, hey? But what an adventure, and what a way to end my time in Jordan! It’s been a pleasure to live and work alongside you, Andrew, and I wish you all the best in France (knowing that you’ll be back in the comfort of your own home by the time you read this, and that Babette won’t have to check on how you’re getting on in this long-winded fashion anymore!) As for the rest of you, dear readers, I shall probably take a few days’ hiatus to catch up on sleep, as I’m dangerously behind, and to clear my head. Just a few minutes in one of Kiev’s parks was enough to recharge my batteries right the way up – green, green, GREEN, oh my God, the trees, the leaves, the grass and all of the GREEN – but I intend to set up stores for the winter, as it were. Villafranca’s not lacking in countryside, but I’ve learnt my lesson, and I’m not setting off into the open world without a well-supplied heart next time.

There’s still another hour to go until boarding begins for the flight back to London. Farewell, До свидания and I’ll catch you all later. Yours truly needs a well-deserved break from all this madness. Until the next time! BB x

And Then He Threw A Table At Me

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

There’s a line in Tolkein’s The Fellowship of the Ring when Gandalf returns from his first encounter with the Balrog and tells his companions that he has ‘never felt so spent’. Well, I just got back from an hour spent looking after nine Iraqi children, and I think I have a fair idea of what it must have been like to face said fire demon.

But don’t get me wrong. I signed up for this. Willingly, even.

After three weeks of teaching English at this church Andreas introduced us to, I’ve been enjoying it so much that when one of my co-workers called in to say that she’d be absent, I leapt at the chance to try something new in looking after the children of our students for a change. They looked pretty fun, they sounded like they were having a good time with the girls, and Firas’ youngest is just about the cutest little thing on the face of the planet, even with the super-saiyan hair. The year abroad is all about new experiences, right? And I’m not afraid to say I’ve always been rather good with kids. I guess it’s my willingness to de-age mentally by about twenty years whenever I’m in that kind of position. Clown mode, or something like that. Kids love it. It’s supposed to be foolproof.

These kids don’t exactly speak much English, but I’d been told that they could introduce themselves and that they knew a few basic words, like colours, animals, the parts of the body… that kind of thing. So I thought I’d get the ball rolling with a song and dance kind of game. ‘I get loose’, to be precise. It always went down a storm in Durham, and that was with twenty year old students. Once they finally understood that they were supposed to be copying me – Maryam, the oldest of the girls, had to explain it to them – they seemed to be enjoying it. But one of the kids, Fadi, wasn’t having any of it. He just stood looking surly in a corner saying ‘ba’ over and over again, getting louder every time. After a few minutes of this it became almost impossible to think, so I shot him a dark look. He just yelled even louder at me, and then ran over and started hitting me with a microphone that he’d picked up from who knows where. I scolded him for it but he kept at it, and in the end I let him tire himself out until he got bored of smacking my arm. At least, I thought he had. Instead he ran to the other side of the room, grabbed the nearest small object – a piece of wooden train track – and threw it at me. Luckily, he missed, which is more than can be said for the dollhouse, the microphone, Noah’s ark, the drum, the foam floor mat and three chairs. When I looked up from teaching the girls (whose attention was quickly beginning to wane by this point) and saw a table flying at me from the other side of the room, I guess I realised that we had gone beyond the point of no return. At least he didn’t get his hands on my iPad, or I might really have lost it.

And then the screaming began. Whether Maryam had lost faith in my ability to control the class, or whether she was angry that it wasn’t Susie taking the class, or whether she just revelled in the chaos, I don’t know. But the next thing I knew all five of the microphones that Fadi had been using as missiles had found their way into the hands of the older girls and they were all screaming at the top of their voices into them. Fortunately, they weren’t on, though for all intents and purposes, they might as well have been. I tried everything – disappointed face, changing tack, feigning ignorance, even getting strict – to no avail. They just waved a massive thumbs down in my face and the screaming continued.

It was at this point that Andrew stepped in to lend a hand. For a few seconds the kids stopped, judging how he might react – and then unleashed a new barrage of screaming on him instead. Between the two of us we made absolutely zero headway and eventually Andrew retreated back to the Bible study group. Five ear-bleeding minutes later Kate came to my assistance and we tried again. More screaming – only this time they got tactical. ‘We’ll stop screaming if you dance’. So I danced, and they stopped screaming – for a grand total of two minutes. ‘We’ll stop screaming if you sing’. I whipped out the Circle of Life for them, and they actually shut up – until the English lyrics, at which point the screaming started up anew, not least of all because one of the girls who had slipped away during the chaos had returned with five cups of water. Ammunition to renew the war on the Substitute. There was a point when Kate and I just looked at each other in an expression of utter helplessness. What could we have done? The kids were mutinous in the extreme. They weren’t having any of it; no Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, no introductions, no colours, nothing at all. Just screaming. When their parents came in to tell them to shut up, and they got the screaming treatment just as bad as we had, Andrew, Kate and I threw up our hands in defeat. We’d tried everything. The kids had overwhelmed us. And when the clock struck five minutes past five, I can honestly say I’ve never felt happier to have finished something.

So the next time I jump at the chance to teach kids, somebody stop me. Please. My ears, at the very least, would be grateful. BB x

  

Searching for God

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I’m not a Christian. At least, not in the truest sense of the word. Insofar as my upbringing is concerned, I guess I don’t fall under any category other than Church of England, but when the occasional questionnaire gets handed my way, I tick the box marked ‘agnostic’ without a second’s thought. Only if that’s not an option, and it usually is, Christianity gets my vote over the ‘no religion’ box. Why does this matter? Because today I found myself, once again, in a position where it made more sense to come down on one side of the fence. ‘Christian’ simply makes a lot more sense than ‘no religion’. Strong words for a not-so strong belief, don’t you think?

Let me explain (you’d better get comfortable). I was baptised as a Christian. Church of England. Standard fare. I had a fairly regular English upbringing. I attended a Church of England primary school. I went to church every Christmas and Easter, like almost everyone else. The only minor difference was that my parents both had various musical roles in their respective churches, which meant that I probably spent more time in church than most kids my age. It just so happened that one of them was Canterbury Cathedral, where my dad was a lay-clerk. I guess you get a little blasé about that kind of thing when evensong is a biweekly venture. Not to mention all the school carol services held there. It certainly made the local church back home seem a little small by comparison, though I have warmer memories of that. When I was little I went to church every other Sunday, or at least when Mum played the organ. The memories get a little fuzzy sometimes; this is reaching quite a way back into my childhood. I remember only that I used to sit behind the choir near the organ pipes, and you could hear the organ humming long after everyone had filed out of church and Mum took her hands off the keys. Between that and the old gas heater glowing a dim red in the corner, I have this musty image of your run-of-the-mill Church of England parish tucked away in my head. That’s my strongest memory of the early days, at least. Nothing particularly special. I wasn’t even old enough to sit in the choir then, but I knew most of the hymns well enough, especially the ones they used to roll out on the projector at school. Morning has Broken, for one.

Fast-forward on a few years and it gets a little more interesting. Moving back to England from a year abroad in Spain finds me singing in the church choir in my new home town. It’s nothing more than something to do, I suppose, as I have little else to do at the weekends but go birdwatching down at Stodmarsh or Sandwich Bay – I’m still too young to be thinking about girls or going out – but it pays my first wages, and it feels ‘sort of right’. Right enough to take that next C of E step and decide to get ‘confirmed’. It’s not as big a deal as it is over in Spain, with the sailor suits and all the bells and whistles that go with it, but like I said, it seemed like ‘the right thing to do’. And the other kids in the choir were a lovely bunch, too.

Then along comes my early teenage years, a girlfriend and the beginning of a new approach: evangelicalism. She got me into it, I suppose, but it was something I took to with relish. Prayer and worship, spiritual healing, speaking in tongues… It was a brand new world and I loved every second of it. Ever heard of Soul Survivor? That kind of thing. It was a far cry from ‘open your hymn-books to Hymn no. 348‘ or what-have-you, at the very least. I might even go so far as to say that, for a little while, I even believed it. But it was the people that really made it for me, not the spiritual side of it. Just like playing the violin, the practising of which I had come to loathe, it was more the sense of community that went with it that I craved: the orchestra over the recital, and the worship group over the prayers. I guess you could say I built my house on the sand. Little wonder, then, that it all came crashing down with the end of that relationship. Coincidentally, it was raining that night, too.

I wandered for a while. I asked a lot of questions. I even stopped saying prayers at night, realising that most of them had been selfish anyway – especially the later ones. If not selfish, then love-blind at the very least. Eventually I returned, somewhat shame-faced, to my local church youth group, whom I’d abandoned for almost a year and a half. That was where I met Seth and Jenny Cooper, the Walmer Parish, and Katherine, that everlasting beacon, who showed me that there was more to life than a constant search for answers. For a little while longer, I continued to carry the flag, stronger than before. I was happy. But it was not to last. A series of unfortunate events came as the second hammer blow to my faith. I started to read about the Empire, and all the horrors that had been wrought in the name of God. My brother was assaulted on the way home from school. And Katherine, ever the kindling flame, went out of my life. A few weeks later, I gave up altogether.

As a true Christian, that was my final chapter. I had another fling with the Church in Uganda – ain’t no party like an African Baptist Prayer and Worship Party – but that was little more than a dalliance. Back in England, on the gap year that seemed like it would never end, faith eluded me. Mum, on the other hand, found her way to the Catholic Church and embarked upon what she has described as the ‘road her whole life had been leading towards’. I coveted that, I suppose. It wasn’t her new-found happiness of hers that I wanted, but that contented state of mind. Structured. Ordered. At peace. At one. Something that I’ve struggled with in all the hypocrisies of my life for the last seven years. Her faith gave her life a new meaning. I’d been looking for that meaning for a while with no such luck. People say that ‘finding yourself’ is the first step on the road to that level of understanding. If I could have ‘found myself in Africa’ as so many jokingly think I did, I’d probably have more of an idea as to where exactly I am right now. Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately, as God knows how lost I’d have been – I didn’t, and the search continues. Right up until last night, when I found myself sitting in an Iraqi church, listening to a Californian preacher explaining the meaning of John 3:16 whilst a translator conveyed it to the congregation in Arabic. Talk about a new way of looking at things!

Now we come to the heart of the matter. I’m not a Christian, like I said at the start. I might have been once, but for a token gesture or two of late, I’m not labelling material at the moment. I can go through the motions like a mynah bird, of course, but that’s got more to do with habit and observation than anything else. That, and a burning desire to believe, whenever that day comes. Until it does, everything seems false. To pray to a God you don’t believe in with all of your heart, with all of your soul – does that not seem a bit ingenuous? That’s not to say I’m not religious, though. Given the choice I’d rather be spiritual than to disbelieve entirely. I’ll put it this way: there’s a hole in my heart that’s waiting for faith. I just haven’t found it yet.

I’ve had this discussion/argument with Andrew recently. I put it to him that I’d be happier not knowing all the answers; that sometimes it’s better to stop asking questions and to have a little faith in what you can’t see; that some things, like as not, are necessarily beyond our understanding. It goes against a great deal of my character, and I think he took umbrage at that, but it’s a principle I try to stick to, and as far as I’m concerned it’s connected to the most fundamental principle of all: hope. I swear by it. There is no greater sin in my book than despair. I might not have the staying power that others prize – indeed, if something is beyond my capability (or, more often, interest) I’m more likely than not to throw up my arms and walk away – but I never truly give up on the inside. And as long as that’s the case, I’d like to believe I still have a chance.

Faith lies somewhere along the road, of that much I’m sure. Wherever it may be is, for the time being, beyond my understanding. And that’s not a bad thing. I tried to find it out here, but for all the strength of the community and the goodwill of the people, it continues to elude me. Maybe I’m being picky. Maybe I’m looking too hard. I don’t know. I’ve just got to keep trying.

I leave you (and this gargantuan post, which is approaching essay length as the clock strikes twenty minutes to midnight) with the only Bible verse I’ve consigned to heart, as it speaks to me on much the same level as it ever did five years ago, when first I found it:

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1:5

I wonder whatever happened to Katherine? I hope her light is still shining brightly for the rest of the world, wherever she is. BB x

Not All Those Who Wander Are Flossed

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s just taken me about an hour and a half to wade through the latest Arabic text for tomorrow’s class. With a night of karaoke at the Marriott Hotel on the cards for this evening, I don’t exactly have the ‘I’ll do it later’ gambit at my disposal.

First off I want to apologise for a very rocky week or two of bipolar posting (some of you noticed, I gather…). The mid-term fury is over and things have settled back to the way they were before, helped along the way by much meditation, H.R. Haggard and Karl Jenkins. Ouch, that’s a painfully middle-class sentence. Life in Amman rumbles slowly onwards, the daily Arabic homework’s still coming in thick and fast and the Versailles branch of the British Council still haven’t told Andrew where he’s going. Business as usual. I took an entire weekend out to deal with my restless psyche and it seems to have paid off. It meant missing out on a couple of parties, but for the sake of my bleeding heart, it was worth it. So if you were feeling the strain of my sine-wave posts over the last week or so, fret not; the dust has settled. It should be a little easier on the eye from here on out.

It’s been a fairly productive couple of days, which means we haven’t had that many adventures; but that’s no bad thing. I saw our first clouds in a month or so the other day, and what a sight for sore eyes that was. You’d be surprised how uplifting it was to see a speck of grey on the horizon for once. Blue skies are lovely and all that, but when you’ve had temperatures balancing out over the high thirties for almost three weeks without cease, a cool breeze is a welcome miracle. There was supposed to be a thunderstorm, which we all got super excited about, but it never came. Instead, the sky went a very queer shade of brown and a mild sandstorm swept through the streets. No rain. One of the strangest weather phenomenons I’ve ever seen. We got the full force of the stifling storm heat, though; the temperature soared up into the mid forties. My insides felt like they were being cooked every time I stepped outside and there was a weird charge in the air. Mostly we found ourselves retreating to our various homes to sit like idol-worshippers before the air-con until the sun decided to call it a day. Even then it often carried on long into the night, that stuffy, all-pervading heat. The blankets had to go. How they’ve lasted this long is anyone’s guess. BBC Weather’s been getting an unnatural number of hits from our flat, at any rate. They say there’s a 51% chance of precipitation tomorrow. Good news takes the strangest forms…

I finally got around to sending off an email to the school I’ll be teaching at in Extremadura. I’ve had it written for the best part of a week and a half, but for some reason I never hit the send button. I guess I wanted to be dead-certain on the grammar, but in the end I just had to be happy with what I’d written, bite the bullet and hit SEND. With any luck, I’ll get a reply at some point before I arrive in September. So that’s pretty cool. In the meantime I’m keeping my teacher senses trained with this project of ours at the Iraqi church Andreas got me in on last week. The last session must have gone down well enough, because we had double the numbers this time. We’ll have to call in reinforcements at this rate. Parts of the body this week, following on from the previous lesson on going to the hospital. Getting the groups to use the vocab to compliment each other was a great idea, and also highly amusing. Apparently eyebrows are a valuable commodity. Or maybe they were just trying to get their heads around the pronunciation. I’d like to believe the former. Having to explain the difference between diarrhea and constipation in the politest possible way is definitely going down as one of the most entertaining moments of my teaching career. Something along the lines of ‘let’s say you eat a bad falafel, and it goes right through you… and for the other one, well, it doesn’t quite go right through you…’. British humour. It never gets old.

This church is just about the best thing that’s happened to me out here, though. It’s the one thing I’d return to Jordan for, given the chance. Maybe this is the beginning of a spiritual journey, maybe not. I hope so, at any rate. I’ve been waiting for my chance for so very long now, ever since I left that world behind almost six years ago… I’ll be dropping by three times a week from now on, twice for class and once for the service, so things should start to look up. And that’s a real slice of good news.

Bummer, I’m out of toothpaste. Looks like I really will have to resort to this weird Arab brand I picked up in the corner shop last week. At least it smells nice. After Morocco I’m none too keen to follow up on any of these traditional Arabian dental practices. BB x

The moment we thought Andrew’s placement might have come through…

A Sex-Tape is a Step Too Far

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I think the title needs a little explanation.

In addition to the mid-term exam, our Arabic teacher set us the task of coming up with a five to seven minute presentation on a topic of our choosing. It took me until the morning to come up with something I could realistically rattle on about for that amount of time (no, seriously), but after stumbling over my words as usual, I ended up putting Andrew up to a bet whereby he had to talk about Kanye West. Naturally, Andrew tried to make his presentation somewhat relevant to what we’d studied so that he could activate the vocabulary, or whatever buzzword you want to use. The result was an exploration of the modern wedding through the Kimye phenomenon, complete with all the gory details, ego, sex tape and all. Highly entertaining, of course, but our teacher took umbrage at the subject, claiming that it was ‘hardly suitable’ for class, and debarred us from asking any questions so as to bring the topic to a decided halt. Still, the man did a good job, and he held his ground in spite of all the criticism, so I held up my end of the bargain and rustled up a pretty neat lentil and vegetable stew for him and Andreas, as promised.

To kill some time in the post-class hours, Andreas took us to an underground church in West Amman to help him to teach English to a group of Iraqi refugees. Just a couple of hours in a church not too dissimilar in style from a Worth Abbey chapel, which made me smile almost as soon as I set foot in the place. John 3:16 was up on the wall behind the lectern in golden lettering; it was pretty clear from the first four words, even in Arabic. Beautiful stuff. The Iraqis themselves, Christians from Basra, were just about the nicest bunch of people I’ve met here in Jordan yet. Andreas and his teaching partner Jason assigned Andrew and I four to teach, and we discussed hospital related vocab to get the ball rolling. Whilst we worked, the children of our students scampered about the church at full pitch. I haven’t seen such unfettered happiness in a while. One of our group was a lot quicker on the draw than the others when it came to learning all the new words and expressions, but Raja’, the oldest of the group at seventy-one years old, was an utter delight to teach, especially when she came out with a flawless sentence at the end of the session, primarily because she was so shy. It kind of reminded me of how I must have been earlier down the line. Boy, but it was good to be teaching again, though. Getting back into practice for my assistantship in two months’ time. Better still, Iraqi Arabic is the closest to fusHa out there and a joy to listen to. Basra sounds like a beautiful place, as if Iraq needs anything more to make it more appealing. Land of the Abbasids! Home of Abu Nuwas! Man, why can’t I spend my Year Abroad in Iraq?

Wait, on second thoughts, don’t answer that one.

There’s a lot to be said for this religion malarkey. With any luck, one day the moment will come and I will believe. Warm fuzzy aside, I’ve got to say that those two hours were a godsend, no pun intended. All of my frustration and anger from the past week simply disappeared. I have Faras and his friends to thank for that, for being so friendly and eager to learn; and of course Andreas, for giving me the chance to get in on the project. All is well with my heart once again. I’m still going to fight for the chance to go back to Morocco next year, but I know now that I can and will survive another month out here. I can do this.

Hold the phone, according the beeb there’s a storm coming. Rain. You have no idea how happy this makes me. That it’s going to be 41 degrees at the peak of the storm is beside the point. Bring on the rain, I say. Bring it. BB x