those dear to me, those who know me well, those who have shared with me moments of deep and unfound intimacy know of my struggles, know of my prejudices, know of my dreams, know only because they have experienced me. they know that i do not like to have that much attention focused on me, and they know that i can lead, they know i can act, and they know that i love them unconditionally and that i am an intensely private person. that said, it is perhaps no surprise that being a writer, feels like a curse on most days.
yesterday i invited my 80 some year old neighbor for a coffee here at the "little" pied-à-terre in the helvetic capital. she often reminisces about her youth when i receive her. i am not informed on the local gossip, and i do not know the same people she does, so we end up talking about whatever, that is, our lives. yesterday we were talking about my son, and she observed that he was a very quiet person, very polite, and surprisingly mature for his age. indeed in the past six years if you have experienced him in the stairway, that is the impression you would gain. as a child, he was extremely active, so much so, that it gave some people concern about his mental state. he underwent psychological testing, and low and behold, he tested positive for attention deficit (ADD) or hyperactivity, this was before he even started school. this diagnosis was one that i was not about to take sitting down. fortunately at that time i was in the faculty of an ivy league american university, and i queried a rather well known name in child development among my colleagues in the psychology department. i followed his advice, and after one year of regular sessions with a psychologist, my son takes the test again, and he no longer tests positive for hyperactivity. it was a revelation for all, yet it confirmed my instinct on the whole thing. it was the test situation that did upset him, once he trusted the test situation, he was at ease and relaxed. meanwhile he had started school, first grade, and he was the best student in his class, he loved his teacher, and he loved school. he even went as far as learning sign language during that year, just to be able to communicate with one of his schoolmates who was hearing impaired. the initial prognosis after the first round of test had this child incapable of integration in a normal class or of learning. yes, experts can be very very wrong. the lesson for me was to believe in myself and in my son, and to do that which was going to help him, regardless of whatever feelings i had about the whole thing. i had no good feelings about any of this, i just knew my son, and i knew that his learning and concentration abilities were by far not impaired in any way.
then he became a teenager, and this time was rough for both of us. when i first took on this pied-à-terre, i took it for myself, i had not expected to share it with anybody, at that time he was in boarding school. being a teenager and attending a strict, albeit very liberal boarding school, was a bit of a challenge to him then, he decided that he wanted to return home. we rearranged the furniture and he returned home, to the pied-à-terre, that i had neither planned that it would be our main residence, nor that i would share it with anybody else. the posh public school of the neighborhood was however nothing that he could adapt to, and he tried hard. after one year and a half, he had lost all motivation, he withdrew. at the same time, i was seriously ill, however i did not know. in the year 2000 it all turned around: i had surgery for a major disarray in my physiology, and he had surgery for a little detail that is not so little when you are a teenager. one could say that we both calmed down a bit since then. for the last two years he has been living in california where he is studying psychology and computer science.
i noted to my aged neighbor that perhaps at her age one can say something about how one's life has turned out. i am about half her age, and the jury is still out on me.
what is certain is that i have both a celt and a semitic background. background, being a genetic, cultural, and historical heritage. when i speak of myself as an arab, i am one, do not let my celtic pale skin fool you. in my reality, this is totally irrelevant, first i am a human being, as a human being i am a part of humanity, all of it. yes, i am the cyborg, the arab celt. that said, i ask you, what is identity?
