BOOKS

I’ve been in introspect, very quiet, no music in the car (although I updated my mp3 player with the coolest sounds going on in the world at the moment), I find myself looking into empty spaces and trying to listen to the silence in between the noise…
Coupled with that, I feel like a bookworm, over the last few weeks I’ve been through new books I bought, old books I bought and never read and old books I read and keep re-reading…
More intensively than what happens with movies, when you pick up a book you have read before it’s like having a memory of a story you lived, like re-living that story over and over again, never loosing its sense and the heart of it. Two examples of my favorite books that I keep on going back to are Baltasar and Blimunda by Jose Saramago and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy both I read in both my native language and in English because I was curious to know how the translation would affect the perception associated with it...
A priceless question-quote from The God of Small Things is “If you’re happy in a dream, does it count?” And the same can be asked about books and stories, as the intensity of what is lived in a dream or read in a book is some times superior to that of our own daily routine lives… And that’s what makes me go back there, to books, new and old ones, because for me it does count. I find happiness, beauty, humanity in all of these books. And these feelings count, they do!
Of course Dubai with all its fast moving pace, has no time for books and nobody discusses books, the very limited portion of friends I made here used to read books and stopped after moving to Dubai – big void!
So I experienced a rather awkward moment the other day, when I went to a book shop looking for some books: one that I lost after reading half way through (I felt lost myself when I realized it!) – Khaled Hossaini’s The Kite Runner; one that I started reading at my friend’s – Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude; and another recommended by a friend Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild.
I looked for them, but couldn’t find Jon Krakauer’s and Paul Auster’s but found The Book Of Illusions instead and The Kite Runner there were lots of supplies, so I decided to ask IT help with the bookstore staff (something I do in last resource, as it can be stressful at times with the level of ignorance of English, let alone book knowledge).
Well, I was so positively surprised with the gentleman that served me, not only was he knowledgeable about the authors and titles I was talking about, he even corrected me in something I didn’t know and when he saw the book I had in hands he said: "It’s ok, this is a much better story!" pointing to The Kite Runner… I was awestruck! The man started blushing all of a sudden, I guess it was because of the way I looked at him, as if he was made of gold (and he probably is!), my immediate feeling was to invite him out for coffee and talk about books…
Of course I stopped myself from doing it, firstly I didn’t want to scare him even more and second I realized what a depressing thing this is that you feel like inviting a complete stranger out for coffee to chat about books, how lacking must my need be…
But this is Dubai, I have no friends here to discuss books with, shopping and gossip goes over here, but books, nahh! My book reading friends are all far away, truly annoying, and funny enough I feel like reading mostly when I’m away myself… It’s like this is a non-reading territory…
Anyways, I’m surely defying this tendency as I’ve been reading everywhere lately (I even stop the car at the side of the road to read a bit) and I might defy my self containment and might ask that man out for coffee next time I visit the store… I’m sure he has wonderful tales to tell… And for a moment there I felt a tiny bit of envy of him, how wonderful can it be to work among that that you love the most…