The sun shines. It usually does over here.
In a few weeks’ time, I will be in the grey and overcast
battle between a UK winter and spring. So, it’s back to the Corniche to sit in
the shade of a tree on a concrete bench to watch the World go by. A goodbye to
the sea front that has served me so well over the past 18 months.
I stroll.
I’m watching Tern hunt a metre or so off shore when I hear
a cry from behind me.
“Hey!”
A look back and recognise Ibrahim immediately. He’s not
dressed in a dish dash but dark jeans and a heavy jacket that looks too hot for
the weather. It’s touching 30C. I’ve bumped into and spoken to Ibrahim a dozen
times before. I won’t say that he’s a friend, but he is as welcoming as any
other soul out here.
Ibrahim lives and sleeps on the Corniche. I’ve seen his
stuff laid out across benches in the past. I have no reason to doubt that he
lives as a vagrant.
He is Libyan.
He has repeatedly told me his story. Over and over. It doesn’t
really deviate.
He has reached a point where he lives on Khobar Corniche.
And each time the story ends with an explanation of how he will be moving on in
a few days. Today, he was talking with friends who have offered to pay for him
to go to Jeddah in the West. Previously, it has been Bahrain, Jubail, HufHuf,
Kuwait City, Doha and Abu Dhabi. The reason that he needs to travel is always
the same, he has no paperwork, Saudi does not recognise his legal identity or
status and he needs help. His friends will help.
The story, over the year has become Godot like. Helplessness
and inertia. A permanent promise of improvement tomorrow.
The story that I have been told is one of success, bad luck
and dispossession. Ibrahim says that he is from a well known and widely
respected Libyan family. His contacts have led him to meeting the great and the
good. Gadaffi, Qatari Royals, members of the Saud family and UK Royals;
Elizabeth, Phillip, Harry and William. The stories don’t change. He explains
that when he was introduced to “Liz” – his abbreviation, not mine – in London
she touched his hand as she spoke of her respect for his father and uncles.
We all read the press. We all know that Libya is in disarray
and he tells me that he has not heard from his family in years. They live(d) in
Benghazi. He hopes… he prays that they are well. If I prayed, I would, too.
When I first ran into him, I assumed that it was the usual
preamble to asking for a spot of cash for a bed for a night or a cup of tea.
But Ibrahim has never asked me for anything. Money. Food. Nothing. The
opposite, in true Arab style, he offers to share his tea and food. In reality,
he appears to appreciate someone to talk to.
I first heard this way back in early 2015. It was late.
Dark. I had no idea whether I should take him seriously. I guess I still don’t.
But it’s his talk of UK royalty I find unusual. It got me thinking back to
something that happened way back in Birmingham; something
that has always given me the creeps. When I have bumped into Ibrahim, the
same sense returns albeit, to a lesser degree. As if the story is being told to me is prophetic in some way...
I will explain.
I sat on a bench at New Street. I
was on my way to Belper in Derbyshire. Later in the day, I would bump into and
chat for a while with a former railway worker who claimed that – while living
near Cambridge – had snuck into the grounds of Jeffrey Archer’s home and poured
super glue into all the locks he could find; cars, doors… anything. A story
that I so want to believe is true that I lie still lie awake at night laughing
when I think about it.
Back to Birmingham. An interlude...
I had forty minutes plus to wait and
the platform for the Derby train was deserted, so I was a little miffed at a
guy not only choosing to sit at my bench, but right up alongside me. It felt as
if my personal space was not just invaded but had surrendered and the equivalent
of the Vichy Government had been imposed to govern it. He barely gave me a
moment to “tut” before starting to talk.
He talked of where he was going.
Chatsworth House, out near Bakewell. He told me why. A reason I had forgotten
within moments. He told me of the route he was taking. He told me of every
other stately home he had visited. And it went on and on and on.
I have no idea of when the
conversation changed. But, I suppose that it was just before the train arrived.
“Do you think Diana is happy” he
asked.
He was referring to the UKs beloved Princess. I was non-committal.
“She seems so happy with Dodi”
I cared so little about either of
them, that I gave them no show time in my thoughts. But he went on and on. Or, so it seemed. He wouldn't stop talking about their relationship, their happiness, their luck and their love.
I couldn't have given a fuck about them. So, I just wanted out, but he went on
for some minutes. It’s a long time ago, but my memory (my dream) is that his
voice was monotone and dull. My imperative was to lose him when we boarded the train.
I managed to get behind him. I
figured that he would find a seat, I’d spot where he was and keep walking until the end of
the earth to avoid sitting next to him. The train was crowded. It took a while for
the crowds wanting seats to force their way through the crowds happy to stand.
And I lost him.
Happy.
But, we’ve all been there. You
cannot help but look around to see what other poor soul has landed next to him.
It was a small carriage and, try as I might, I couldn’t see him. It was odd,
because it was a little one carriage train and I hadn’t pushed past him. A few
minutes on, I didn’t care… But at Derby, I kept a wary eye to avoid him.
But he wasn’t there.
I scanned the platforms and even the
onward train to Belper, as I knew he should have been on it. But, no… I never
saw him again.
I immediately found it a bit
unnerving. Like I say, he would have to have pushed back past me to miss the
train. We were going the same way using much the same route.
The following morning – a Sunday – I
woke early and couldn’t sleep. Switching on the radio, I was confronted by wall
to wall sombre music only broken occasionally by an equally sombre presenter
telling me that Princess Diana was dead.
Since then, I have often thought
back and wondered whether the guy at New Street station was there or whether I
had imagined it. But, given my antipathy toward the UK Royals, I think it’s a
really odd thing for my imagination – fevered or not – to latch onto.
Now. Back in 2016, following my chats with Ibrahim, nothing
odd has happened to the UK Royals, to my knowledge. Although, I accept that
such is my dispassion toward the family that I wouldn’t immediately read
anything about them. Even a death. But, even I, would have to accept that I
would probably have noted the Queens death and resulting coronation of Charlie
Boy, Sarah Ferguson, Clare Balding, Katie Price or whoever is next in line these
days. So I am guessing that lightning hasn’t struck twice.
But, I’d not seen Ibrahim for an age. Maybe six months. Like
my Brum experience, I had thought of him and questioned whether some or all of
our meetings were in my imagination.
Back to Ibrahim.
His stories are fantastic and fantastical. They seem extraordinary
and utterly false. I cannot prove them to be either true or false but I warm to
the conviction in the way he tells his tale. Though his English can be laboured
and his voice mousy quiet at times, the tale seems to have the sincerity of
truth.I enjoy listening.
Away from the Royal associations, he tells me how his life
changed at BAE. He worked at an airbase where he was belittled and physically
abused by Saudis. He wasn’t assaulted by the British or Americans. Eventually
he suffered a severe head injury, leaving him hospitalised for a long, long
time. Even then, laid out and injured in a Saudi hospital (he has tried in vain
to explain which one) he was visited by members of many royal families; Saudi,
Qatari… et al. They sat with him. They shared their families concerns and
offered hope and prayers for his recovery.
And Ibrahim tells the story with unnerving sincerity and
belief. I’ve spent a year looking for holes or angles. Not to attack him, but
to satisfy myself that I am just listening to yarns. But, no; the story doesn’t
change.
What is it that I read or heard? If you tell a lie often
enough you end up believing and acting as if it were true. As a test, perhaps
we should ask Jeremy Hunt.
Although his story is the same each time, it isn’t a
monologue. He talks and listens to me. He engages. I tell him stuff. About my
family, about life in Saudi. Small talk. But he listens, interjects and
understands, offering opinions and advice. And he remembers. He picks up on
things that I said months ago, pursuing updates. He appears to care. It’s
difficult not to talk with him and – once sitting down – he can be difficult to
leave. There have been times when I’ve wanted to just walk away, but others
where I’ve found his story telling utterly compelling and I am left enthralled.
Ibrahim is a great story teller. He tells his tale with
pathos. Misfortune. They always seem sad, but he tells them in such a matter of
fact and dispassionate way that all emotion is suspended. Again, as I say,
there is a hopeless, hollow, Godot-like aura to our interactions. Sadness. And
senseless hope.
Today, I explain that I’m heading back to the UK. I share
some of the reasons and he is broadly supportive. He, certainly, doesn’t look
to try and make me reconsider my decisions – unlike just about everyone else I
talk to out here.
He says that it is the end of a chapter. Which is how I have
viewed it since the first conversation that I had about it.
Ibrahim goes on to tell me about heaven. Of how we will both
meet again after death. But, when we meet again it will be for eternity, not
for the few years that we have in life on earth. He explains that we will sit
in the shade of a tree, just as we do on the Corniche and we will talk for 100
years. But the sea will be of milk or honey. Something unexpected. A gift from
Allah.
Expanding, Ibrahim explains that heaven will be like our
dreams. But that dreams, themselves, are just memories. But as we live and
build more and more memories while having more and more dreams, the edges
between the two become blurred. Many of our recollections are from our dreams
rather than from actual memories. Both become clouded. Neither true nor false.
But real.
Our conversation started to take a more philosophical
direction than usual.
And I go back to the suggestion that, if you tell a lie
often enough you end up believing and acting as if it were true.
I left him today with a million thoughts buzzing through my
head. But I feel a little phased, just as I did after my conversation at New
Street station and events that followed.
I have no idea how to take Ibrahim and his story.
He claims to be a vagrant. No. He claims – and appears – to
live a vagrant life. Everything that I see supports this. His stories of royal
ties are sold with such conviction but – to the sceptical outsider – they do
not hold water when reviewed in the cold light of day. But, although his tale
is tragic, I hope that it has a basis in truth, even if it is exaggerated. I
want to believe that I have met a Libyan from a noble family. I hope that he
has met Gadaffi and our dear, dear Queen Liz. It’s a good story. As a result, I
will miss him. I will miss our little chats. I will miss his serenity in an
apparently hopeless position. I will miss his quiet inspiration.
However, I am also well aware that he could just be an expat
worker who has overstayed his visa and is now stuck in a bureaucratic limbo
where he cannot leave the country without being found out and imprisoned prior
to deportation. Perhaps, a bench on the Corniche is favourable to the cell and
a one way trip to a war zone. The tale he tells walks the edge between a
dream and a memory. But it passes the time of day.
…
…
…
Of course, he could be completely off his tits and as mad as
a box of frogs.
I hope not, but, - if that is the case - “May the Lord have mercy on Stringy Bob”
