As the lecture drew to a close, he paused at the lectern for a moment. In front of him, the students pushed their chairs back, closed their laptops and stowed their books and notebooks away in their bags. The babble of voices, which had fallen almost completely silent during the seminar, slowly returned and filled the room with that gentle disorder that often arose at the end of a long university afternoon.
The faint light of the setting sun poured in through the tall windows. It rested on the tables, on the books and on the large map on the blackboard, on which lines, areas and borders were still visible. He had drawn them in with chalk at the start of the lecture, but by now some parts had already smudged away. Where countries, coastlines and mountain ranges had stood just moments before, all that remained now was a thin film of light-coloured dust on the black surface.
The majority of his students’ questions concerned literature references or submission deadlines. There were rarely short answers to other questions. He closed the last book, put the chalk aside and tucked his papers into the old leather bag that had been with him for many years. Most of the students had already left the room. Only one young man lingered for a moment by the door.
“Professor? May I ask you one last question?”
He looked up and nodded. “The interview tomorrow – will it be in English or Arabic?” He thought for a moment. “Probably in Arabic,” he said. “But sometimes that’s only decided at the last minute. The language often gives away which conversation they want to have for whom.” The student smiled. “Well then, I hope they give you sufficient time this round.” He chuckled softly. “With programs of this scale, you rarely have enough time.” He said goodbye, closed the door behind her and disappeared down the corridor. For a moment, only the soft hum of the air conditioning remained. He switched off the light, picked up his bag and stepped out.
The walk across campus was one of those little habits that had gradually become part of his life. Wide avenues ran between the buildings, lined with old banyan trees whose mighty roots rose from the ground like tangled veins. Groups of students sat on low walls, drinking iced coffee or milk tea and discussing exams, music or their plans for the weekend. Bicycles glided silently along the paths. Somewhere, someone was playing music on a mobile phone. Its melody carried over by the wind only in fragments. He had made a habit of walking home after lectures. Some ideas could only be thought through properly whilst in motion.
Behind the main building, the view to the city opened. Above the treetops, the glass façades of the skyscrapers soared into the sky, as if they were growing a little taller every month. The late afternoon light reflected off the windows, casting a cool shimmer over the steel and concrete. Between the towers, the humid heat of the day hung like a light veil, softening the contours of the more distant buildings. Guangzhou seemed almost orderly, as if it could simply be divided into districts. It was a city in a state of constant change. When he returned from a trip, he sometimes felt that a street had vanished or that an entire neighbourhood had appeared overnight. And yet there were paths that resisted change.
He left the university campus and set off down the road that took him home most days. He could have taken the metro instead. The journey home would have been shorter. But he liked that hour between university and the evening, when nothing had yet been decided and the day was slowly drawing to a close.
At first, his route took him through the new Guangzhou. Wide streets wound their way between the buildings, whose façades reflected the light in cool shades of blue. Outside the entrances of large office blocks, employees stood with cups in their hands, staring at their phones. Scooters whizzed past, delivery drivers manoeuvred boxes and bags through the traffic. And somewhere above the rooftops, the steady humming of countless air-conditioning units hung in the warm air. On the wide pavements, rivers of people moved with that natural determination that exists only in big cities. No one seemed to stop, no one seemed to waste time. Not even now, at this advanced hour of the day. Amidst the many smooth surfaces, the sky was visible only in narrow bands. At some junctions, dozens of scooters waited side by side for the traffic lights to change, before setting off in the next instant like a single swarm.
There was something restless about the city. It never seemed to come to a complete standstill. Even in those few quiet moments, one had the impression that it was merely taking a short breath before setting off again.
With every block of houses, the surroundings changed. The streets grew narrower, the buildings lower, the signs above the shops older. The glass and steel gradually faded away. In their place came small shops, whose doors stood wide open, as if there were no reason ever to close them. Outside a tailor’s, an old man sat on a low wooden chair, silently sewing a shirt. Next to him, a woman was carefully arranging bowls of herbs and dried roots, their scent mingling with the aroma of freshly cooked broth from a noodle shop. Faded signs hung above some of the entrances. Their colours bleached by years. The façades bore the marks of countless monsoon seasons. And in the small spaces between the houses, plants had found their way through cracks in the concrete. In front of a small shop stood several cages with songbirds, whose sounds mingled with the voices of pedestrians and the clatter of dishes. To him, this part of the city seemed more alive than the orderly streets he had left behind.
He unintentionally slowed his steps. These old streets seemed to resist any sense of haste. They moved at their own pace. In front of some houses stood small wooden stools on which elderly men sat drinking tea, watching the afternoon slowly give way to evening. Fragments of conversations and the soft hum of old fans drifted out of open windows. The damp heat of the day hung over the narrow alleyways, trapped between the walls and still refusing to lift even now. Clotheslines stretched between the houses, with white shirts and children’s clothes fluttering in the barely perceptible breeze. Electricity cables ran overhead, as if they were as much a part of the cityscape as the branches of the old trees. A cat lay curled up in the shadow of a scooter and didn’t even lift its head as people walked past. Outside a small stationery shop, an old man was flipping through a newspaper, whilst a small bowl of sunflower seeds stood beside him.
The further he walked, the more the city seemed to change its voice. The bustle of the city streets faded away behind him. Instead, he heard the clatter of a mahjong table in a courtyard, the high-pitched ring of a bicycle bell, the distant laughter of children and the rhythmic tapping of a knife on a wooden chopping board coming from a small kitchen whose door stood open. He paused briefly in front of a fruit shop. On wooden crates lay mangoes, dragon fruit and small green citrus fruits, whose scent merged with the smell of fresh tea leaves from the neighbouring shop.
He carried on until he finally came to a halt in front of a small teahouse. It was set back slightly between an old bookshop and a watchmaker’s, whose shop window was full of yellowed dials and pocket watches. Anyone hurrying along the street would probably have overlooked the teahouse. The wooden door stood open. Behind it lay a narrow room, filled with the scent of fresh tea leaves, old wood and the faint sweetness of dried fruit.
He sat down at the small table by the window. The wood had become smooth at the edges. On the walls hung old black-and-white photographs of the city, in which wide boulevards were still dominated by bicycles and trees rather than cars. On a shelf stood metal tea tins, each labelled with a small handwritten tag. A few moments later, the owner placed a plain porcelain teapot and a small cup in front of him. She did so with the same natural ease with which she had presumably been serving every guest for years. The teahouse was filled with a silence of the sort that can only be found in rooms where people have been performing the same routine actions for a long time. The muffled, steady ticking of an old pendulum clock drifted over from the watchmaker’s shop next door. He poured himself a cup. Thin strands of steam rose from the cup and slowly vanished into the warm air. He liked that first moment, when the tea was still too hot to drink in a hurry, and forced one to slow down.
He glanced briefly at the alley through the window. The first lamps above the small shops were switched on, casting a warm light onto the pavement. Then he took his phone out of his pocket. A reminder lit up briefly.
Al Jazeera, Tomorrow, 09:00, Doha Time.
Then he put the phone next to the teapot and poured himself another cup.
In the early years, he had prepared himself for every conversation with them. He had checked figures, taken notes and worked on his phrasing. At some point, he had stopped doing so. Not because he had lost interest in the topics. But because he had realised that most questions had no simple answers. And that certainties often existed only for those who were far enough away.
He raised the cup to his lips. The tea was clear and had a subtle flavour. It softened on the tongue, leaving a delicate, almost imperceptible bitterness that lingered long after the warmth had faded.
Most of his students first learnt about the Levant in his lectures. Later, they encountered it again in the maps in their textbooks or in the brief reports on the evening news. In their eyes, it was a region between the Mediterranean and the desert, an area characterised by borders, conflicts and political interests.
To him, it had never been a region.
To him, she was the warm light just before sunset, glinting off pale stone façades and bathing entire streets in a soft golden glow for a few minutes. She was the scent of jasmine and orange blossom wafting out from courtyards onto the streets. And the clink of small coffee glasses whenever a tray was set down somewhere. She was the murmur of conversations carried across open windows and balconies, as if there was no hurry and no reason to bring them to an end. She was the warmth of old houses, which even deep into the night still held the previous day within them. She was the smell of coffee with cardamom drifting through the streets in the early mornings. She was the distant tolling of a church bell mingling with the call from the minarets as evenings slowly settled over the rooftops. Above all, however, she was the peculiar closeness of the people to one another – the feeling that even the narrowest streets and smallest alleys were never truly empty.
He leaned back and listened to the faint sounds in the room. The sound of a cup being set down on wood. The rustling of a newspaper at the next table. The quiet chatter of two old men who had been sitting there for half an hour and yet had exchanged little more than a few sentences. The soft sound of tea being poured. The steady ticking of the clock next door, which filled the room with an almost soothing regularity.
Outside, the light began to change. The shadows in the alley grew longer. The glass of the modern towers glowed as if it were emitting light of its own. Beneath them lay the old streets, quiet and still. They had learnt not to let the world’s rush disturb their peace any longer. He remained seated for a while longer. When the pot was empty, he placed a few banknotes on the table, thanked the waiter with a brief nod and stepped back out onto the street. The air was still warm. The scent of dinner wafted from an open window. Somewhere, a radio began to play.
Behind him, the door of the teahouse closed. Ahead of him, the narrow alleyway disappeared between the houses. And twilight was slowly descending over the rooftops of Guangzhou.
Photo by Wally Yang on Unsplash