You Never Go Back

“You never enter the same river twice” 

~ Heraclitus the Obscure aka Heraclitus of Smyrna 

That was tradition. It was their tradition. Theirs. They just knew each other’s exact thoughts as they happened: glimpses of Zanzibar, Dar-Es-Salam, Conakry… So many harbours, so many colours, so many times. They were standing side by side, waving at the crowd on the quay. A steamship departure. An instant forever. This time, they would stroll back to Europe, walk at leisure the decks of the boat. In style. That pace, this service, the little traditions, that was truly travelling. Anything else was just commuting, really. 

Suzanne and François waving from the boat leaving Lobito, Angola, on the 7th of March 1958, for Europe. One last time.

Soon, all these familiar moments, sounds and smells would be packed away with the rest. Just memories. The Lounge, the glass of champagne, the last sign-off for the trunks, the pungent smell of heat, dust, mould and brine in the customs room. Being Welcome On Board. Even the Wait. So, for now, they waved with application at the gathered crowd below. As it had been, as it should be, as it would be after their passage. He stands at the forefront, to better breathe in, see, process and observe his thoughts and emotions. After all, it is not every day that you leave your life behind. 

No celestial music, no swell of emotions, just a foghorn signal. Nothing. One last look then? Too important to sully this moment with a picture. François waves. And stares.

Look at the people standing in the sun on the wharf below! A long time ago now, it would have been a scrum of lace umbrellas, bowler hats and straw boaters, pushing and shoving, bobbing enthusiastically. Today, it was a thin line of company personnel bored, but paid to keep the decorum. Some dockhands too. But mostly wharf rats seating on rotting burlap sacks, yawning. The mob had moved on, to gawp at planes landing and taking off from the viewing decks of airports. Images of the future and faraway lands. Speed was winning that battle anyway. Soon, the rich and famous would style themselves the “jet set”, not anymore the “gentlemen of leisure”. 

Flying was History and boats were his story – François liked both. Modernity, and its price. She often regretted it and said so. He turns away from the wind, shields his lighter and lights a Camel. 

The ship shudders. The tug boats wrench it from its berth, and corral the ship towards the high seas. François has left Africa. Suzanne is thinking of France. 

Just as Einstein demonstrated, time and space melt and overlap. Their separation and direction an illusion, but an unavoidably logical one. Space, distance, did not really matter that much anymore. Only a few could witness this as fully as they both could. Travelling for leisure in the 1950s was still the preserve of the wealthy, but, year after year, it became more and more affordable, available and achievable. It was still very expensive, but not anymore a pipe dream. Weeks and months of travel, were now hours, days. Manageable. The 50s, it was the time of Orly in Paris, and even Brussels was replacing Evere with the spanking brand-new Zaventem for the 1958 Expo. Flying to Africa for a just few days, a week maybe? Why not. Physical and temporal barriers were coming down, and yet, there was no solutions to manage a shrinking world. 

Congo, even Katanga, was not anymore the cul-de-sac at the edge of a map. Nowhere was anymore. They knew they could visit again, but knew as well they would never go back – they did plan to. 

To the people on the wharf, life continued, uninterrupted. It were the passengers that truly waved goodbye. On the boat, a different stream of time moved on. In 14 days ahead, Antwerp. And then to join a third time flow. The illusion of linear time. Just as Albert Einstein had said. François and Suzanne knew that true reality was not purely defined by time and space. Reality is made mainly by a cloud of small, ephemeral motes that glint in the light, and their shadow, that give it texture and taste. That makes it real. That is why they recorded so much.

Take the vocabulary lists of obsolete French words they transmitted to their daughters. Let me use an English parallel to explain: you can tell decades just by the way a generation expresses enthusiasm. Try it: what is the year of “copacetic”, “swell”, “far out”, “groovy”, “rad” (cf. the end of the article for answers*). Culture is sound and voices, as much as date and location. 

They knew the location they had left, they knew where they were going. And they knew that they would have, on arrival, to contend with a new reality with which the only choices are: adapt, change, or sink in silence. 

In the ship’s hold, the trunks were already tagged “Claviers-Var-France”. Even the bush tent is there – entombed now for 65 years. They had made their choice. Silence. 

They smiled at the lush coasts passing by. Let Nature wash you in its beauty. 

They carried back in the trunks a world, and what world! But they would only ever mention this world in hints, in frowns, in smiles. To her dying day, Suzanne would always click her tongue whenever she was discussing, commanding or reminiscing. A punctuation that closes sentences and arguments in Lagos, Accra or Panda. An African punctuation she would still have through Alzheimer. And she would let through a knowing smile when my father talked about the ferocity of the Assam monsoons or the lushness of the Vietnam jungles. The will, tenacity and infinite resilience would always be there.

And the rest? Let the daughters tell their story as they had seen it. Her? She had loved being called Memsahib on the ships. But that word, that world, had retired long ago now. It only survived for some time in tiny time capsules, relics really, in the wooden floors of the Singapore Long Bar, or the wooden beams of the Singapore Raffles hotel. 

She knew first-hand what that secret world had cost. So, ever since 1932, that world would always remain hidden, at the back of drawers or in the depth of trunks. Time moves forward. 

François was shedding a lifestyle, but he was already steering the ox train to the next place, engineering the next life. That was the price of it. Nothing to sob about. He would have to drive a tiny French car – because Chevrolets were just prohibitively taxed – and sit with the boss under the Micocoulier to find good builders. He had done the same for years in the villages. François pondered if Donatien and Mulandu would start their own safari business. I like to think he sold them the pickup truck for a token price. Maybe he did.

The plan was clear: circle the wagons, build a laager. He had already started buying up 5 or 6 houses in the village for the extended family to regroup. Next, they would call up the in-laws to move in, and later, there would be the husbands and grandchildren. Everyone hanging from their windows blabbing away excitedly. What a sight that would be! It just needed a lot of repairs. He had bought all the books. 

Claviers, Var region, France. Like dialling back time by a few decades. Views, space, smells, sounds. The Arcadia of his poems. 

My grandparents both stood on the gallery watching the coast go by for a long time that day. I know that. 

For the first time in decades, they took no picture. Too much to look forward to. 

They knew they would just become strange people, anonymous social canvases for others to project their views, values and judgements without any clue of the reality beyond time and space. People who had left country, parents and friends behind. Some even whispered, a kid. Then silence. The shroud of social limbo he always craved. Socialising? Networking? No-one wants to listen anyway, not really, they want to be listened to. We are here.

And in the basement of the house in Claviers, the sand carried from the Sahara by the khamsin wind slowly covers the towers of trunks, the only witness to that last day.

I see in my mind’s eye the exact sequence of my own last day in Singapore, on the 31 dec 2019, at 23h55. A last cigarette at the smoking area across from the second floor exit, next to luggage trolleys. A last walk in the Jewel Changi Airport shopping gallery. A glass of white wine in the lounge, then the warm embrace of Singapore Airlines business class. No one to wave to. The airport viewing galleries are long gone everywhere, ever since someone used it to shoot a rocket at a plane. Anyway, who would want to see planes take off and land anyway? Plane spotters maybe.

I will visit Singapore again, as often as I can, but I can never go back, not really. Process what you lived through. What was There, whether Africa, India, Singapore, the UK, Belgium? France? 

A cloud of time, space, motes of heat, humidity, sounds, smells, tastes and voices. That is Singapore to me. Information you soaked up. Input. Reality. It is also a time and place, a now you can never go back to.

The Long Bar has been tiled over neon white, and the teak bar replaced by tearoom tables. Across the street, Chimes has been tarped over in sagging awnings that collects humidity, and the overflowing buffets my mother loved so much because it reminded her of the steamships, by a Michelin gourmet experience. Elegance and style have been replaced by queueing gawkers eager to take “the” shot and move on. 

You could still visit. I will.

Speed always wins. 

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*Answers to the expressions’ years:  1920, 50, 60, 70, 80…2020.

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