Ya'ali pondered. And whistled.
That is the way Ya'ali always do things. Ya'ali ponders, and Ya'ali whistles.
This time what Ya'ali did was to update his status message on Orkut. Ya'ali loves orkuting. In fact, Ya'ali loves almost everything in this world; except may be, pornography and raunchy jokes. But Ya'ali knows how to derive joy from that also. He's a master of deriving joy and thanking Him. Him the Maker.
"The touch of lips belonging to two persons of opposite sexes can prove immensely joyful and satisfying, provided the noses are at 90 degree angles."
Ya'ali whistled again, happily. Another of his wisecracks that is sure to invite frenzied commentary. Although he wont admit it, Ya'ali likes being commented on. He loves people misunderstanding him. He's a master at deriving pleasure from self-pity.
"Blaa-jaab" I said, and roared with laughter.
Ya'ali smiled too. That outwardly shy why-are-you-saying-this can't-you-be-a-little-more-mannered smile. If you showed him a dirty picture, he'd display the same shy smile before covering his eyes so as not to see the wicked (sinful) photograph. Like kids do, the only difference: he will leave space between fingers.
Ya'ali is clever. But not shy as he describes himself to be. He's far better than that. People mistake him to be shy, and they think they have to coax and cajole him to tell his opinion about something. They are so wrong, Ya'ali loves that.
He stopped whistling, and began to ponder.
Ya'ali had decided, it seemed to me, to plumb his cognitive depths before answering the question I had asked. Ya'ali looked pensive.
"Why should I tell all my problems to someone like you?" Ya'ali said. It was more of a statement than a question.
I'd certainly have been offended by that reply. I did not, because that question in reply was asked to Su'uri rather than me, Ya'ali is more comfortable with girls. With boys, he tend to be really shy.
"Yes, Ya'ali. But--"
Ya'ali cut her short. "Why should I tell if I do not wish to do so?"
Ya'ali sometimes has this European way of using English. This stiff upper lip way that is the product of reading dictionaries and dictionaries alone.
"Man is a social animal. Give and take." I ventured as a reply.
"Yes, exactly." Ya'ali fell silent.
Ya'ali is a master tactician. If you are arguing with him, the most tragic thing that could happen to you will be Ya'ali agreeing with your views. And then keeping silence. You'll be irritated because he is silent and not giving the satisfaction of him subscribing to your views. But more appallingly, you'll be loath yourself for not giving this peaceful person the right to keep his own ideas. You'll loath yourself for disturbing the serenity of his mind for matters as absurd as this.
This refer to the question I asked. Ya'ali, in his earlier controversial status update, had said something about his hope of wishing to "wash out his problems". This had, as usual, snowballed into an argument where we, me and Su'uri, fancied ourselves of trying to help Ya'ali with his array of predicaments; although, in reality, we both were trying to have some fun with Ya'ali's eccentricity.
Ya'ali, the master tactician he is, was inviting us to, well, coax and cajole. And that we did. But Ya'ali was far from being in a mood to talk about his problems. He was currently inclined to muse about other things.
"I'll tell you when I was happy, then. You know when I was truly happy? I remember...when I was five or six, my mother used to bathe me... That was really wonderful. No worries, no tension, no problems...no nothing." Ya'ali's attempt at a pun. Good one, I thought.
"Nowadays," Ya'ali continued, "Everything is a risk. Taking a bath is a risk. Hmmm."
"Risk?"
"Yeah, a risk." That what-are-you-dumb look from Ya'ali. Then glad-to-enlighten-you relish in his eyes. And hands, Ya'ali does part of his communication with his hands. Very effectively sometimes, you may doubt. When Ya'ali speaks he speaks at three different levels: he mouth his feelings, pretend by his eyes and reason by his hands.
"Yes, bathing is a risk. You have to take off all your clothes, bathe, and then put it on. It is a risk."
Christ!, I thought. Ya'ali was at it again. There is not one real person I know who can outdo Ya'ali in his exercises of being outrageous. Ku'Uji may come close, I thought. But then, he was busy banging his head with six-stringers and writing propaganda pieces that nobody read, and made sense only to himself.
"Free is the man who is alone and walks around naked. When you are five or six, like when I was, you are not worried about such trivial things as clothes and nudity. You are a just free soul..." Ya'ali droned.
I had a sudden vision of that story in which God asks Adam and Eve who of the two wanted the accessory to pee standing up and Adam (the gadget-freak he is) replying that he wanted it. God grants the wish; and then the crazed Adam goes around the Garden of Eden trying out the new thing, whizzing all over the place: first on the side of the rock, then writing his name on the sand and after that trying to hit a stump 10 feet away. Laughing all the while. Free spirit, that one.
Su'uri I noticed, was laughing all the while. Eyes watering. "Ayu traing to se Ya'ali that teiking a baath is a big risk. Uh Uh hoh my god..." Su'uri was having fun.
And me too. I was glad I weren't the one who said such non-sense. Ya'ali was, but he wasn't showing it. He wasn't terribly pleased either to see both of us laughing at one of his considerably more profound statements. The statement that bathing is risky, and nudity is freedom.
He is nuts, I thought. How could you say that, I thought of asking Ya'ali as I roared with laughter. But I didn't because I saw Ya'ali's sheepish face and tried to think of bathing as risky; and that made it only longer. The laughter.
If only I knew. If only I remembered.
***
Something Ya'ali said, although wrapped in his trademark imprudence, had struck me as being very profound. I didn't know what it was at that moment of crazy laughter; but do know now. Ya'ali said what Eco said.
There is a book by Umberto Eco called The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. Eco is probably the world's most famous semiotician. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana was published in 2005, the same year Eco was selected by Prospect magazine as the world's second most influential global intellectual. The first place went to Noam Chomsky, I think. But Chomsky is nowhere near as entertaining as Eco is.
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana tells the story of Giambattista "Yambo" Bodoni. The Amazon blurb reads like this:
A sixty-ish Milanese antiquarian bookseller nicknamed Yambo suffers a stroke and loses his memory of everything but the words he has read: poems, scenes from novels, miscellaneous quotations. His wife Paola fills in the bare essentials of his family history, but in order to trigger original memories, Yambo retreats alone to his ancestral home at Solara, a large country house with an improbably intact collection of family papers, books, gramophone records, and photographs. The house is a museum of Yambo's childhood, conventiently empty of people, except of course for one old family servant with a long memory--an apt metaphor for the mind. Yambo submerges himself in these artifacts, rereading almost everything he read as a school boy, blazing a meandering, sometimes misguided, often enchanting trail of words. Flares of recognition do come, like "mysterious flames," but these only signal that Yambo remembers something; they do not return that memory to him. It is like being handed a wrapped package, the contents of which he can only guess.
Yambo goes through the pieces of his life for to resuscitate his memory. He reads, travels and try to imagine the life he had. All torn to bits. Eco uses words beautifully. Polished and refined verse. Reading Loana is like to remember the long forgotten. Like a man trying to remember him as a five-year-old boy being bathed by his mother. Trying to remember like Ya'ali did.
If Umberto Eco had said that one of his happiest memories of childhood is that of his mother bathing him, laughter will be the furthest thing in my mind. In most readers' mind. But if it was Ya'ali?
If Eco said that bathing, as many of the deeds adults have to do, is a big risk (he won't use of the word "risky", instead it'll be something like "discommodious"), then I won't laugh. The nearest I'll come to laughter is contemplating about what the hell exactly did Eco mean by writing that.
But if it was Ya'ali? A different matter altogether. Eco is polished, refined. Elegance is the word that suits him. For Ya'ali, there are words like outrageous, which lies in the other end of the spectrum.
Eco may be as crazy as Ya'ali is; or Ya'ali is as adept as Eco in assessing the human condition. But reaction to craziness varies. I think...
No, I don't think. Even after saying all this, I'd rather laugh at the Ya'ali wisecracks rather than...rather than what?
To each man his own madness. His own folly.
I can hear Ya'ali whistling. Another status update, probably.
