In one form or another I kept getting the same question: “what does it feel like to be leaving?”
In truth, I didn’t know. One plane reservation in an endless queue doesn’t do much to the psyche, and the trip to London was going to be the 10th weekend running I got in a plane left Riyadh. At that point it felt like my mind had been too many places and was going to be in too many places for much change to register anymore. It’s like I had become location-deaf. I figured leaving Riyadh would only register itself after a few weeks, when I realize that Chinese training is more than a week vacation from visa interviews and sandblaster heat.
But coming to London, the differences once again blast my location-deaf self into realization that my tour is done and I’m starting something new. Perhaps it’s because London, and Europe as a whole, has always served as a layover between the U.S. and the Middle East. I’ve never been to the continent for more than 10 days, and it’s always been going to or from somewhere else. But it’s also how much of a cultural pole the west is, and how far away it is from all the countries I’ve visited recently.
Morocco, Azerbaijan, Congo, Kenya etc. are all very different, but when compared to the U.S. or the U.K. they look a lot more the same. In London (the west) there are stripes on the road, movies in the theatres, internet fast enough to play games, concerts with thousands of attendees, and a native language I have in common with the local population. These are things, like rediscovering a childhood album, I’d forgotten how much I liked.






