It is my own where-are-they-now show. Those who have fallen off the map of the memory long ago. We might not have had the deep friendship that justifies my question, but I cannot deny my memory of elephants the right to wonder how life treated them throughout the years.
· Y and I were close friends at Preparatory School. Nice blond kid who acted, in my eyes of today, beyond our age. In a matter of few years, he drifted away. His interests became different and we would barely say hello to each other. In High School if we happened to come across each other, he would turn his face away for no reason,. The change of his character was dramatic. Drugs and sex were heavily involved, and a cocky air of self-superiority colored his attitudes.
When I wonder where he might be now, no hypothetical scenario sounds far-fetched. He might have died from an overdose, and he might as well have turned into an Isis-styled barbarian.
· S was above the average age of the students in our class in Primary School. She was bullied and called names like ugly face. Despite my young age I sensed from her revolting attitudes she must have had problems at home. She somehow chose me to be her closest friend and I welcomed her choice, or more accurately, I did not find a reason to keep her away. One day she confided to me that her mother worked as a belly dancer, and showed me her photo wearing that glittering suit and dancing on a table top in a nightclub. She asked me not to reveal the secret. S added that her maternal aunt was also a dancer who committed suicide by jumping off a high-rise after a failed love story. As a kid, the world she talked about seemed fascinating and very different from mine (Another S is remembered here).
Years later, I accidentally ran into a story in an old magazine about the suspicious circumstances of the suicide of a belly dancer in the early 1970s in Lebanon. It was the aunt. The story suggested the incident was a murder.
I remember S family name although I'm not quite sure of the spelling. I googled and searched FB, but nothing gave me glimpse of information on her whereabouts.
· Throughout my university years, I took evening classes in an American educational establishment that I thought would be an additional asset to my future career (Academic staff were not exclusively American). The atmosphere in the establishment was different from that of my conservative university, and I had the chance to meet interesting students from various walks of life. I took three consecutive semesters with the same professor. He was highly qualified, efficient in his teaching method and very decent. In his classes, and due to the nature of subjects studied, there was always a space for all of us, including the professor, to express our personal views on many matters of life. So I thought I had, to some extent, an idea about the traits of his character. Physically, he was short and skinny with bluish lips due to his chain smoking.
Years later, the national media covered news about the arrest of members of a cult in a northern Mediterranean city. The arrest gained huge coverage and public follow up due to the sensational stories about the head of the cult who claimed to be a messenger sent by god, and the bizarre religious and sexual practices in which the members were involved. I could not believe many of these stories and thought newspapers and tabloids exaggerated or even made them up to raise their sales.
It turned out my professor and his wife were among the members. Special focus was given on him by the media with titles like “Professor in the American University Among Members”. The case developed and went to court for a number of alleged crimes. Many members, including the professor, were eventually sentenced to terms ranged between 5 and 10 years in prison.
I tried to find any common trait between the person I knew as a professor and the members of the cult as I read about, but I failed. I understand that dealing with someone on professional level, does not give the full picture of his or her character, but nevertheless the total disparity between the two pictures, if we supposed the authenticity of each of them, was huge.
How did he spend his prison years? What did he do after and how did he overcome the stigma? Where he might be now? I really wish to know. Unfortunately again, no electronic search could shed light on the answers of any of these questions.
