The Timetable

“We have people in Libya?” said the rather twitchy ex-military Professor of Linguistics. He and Sven sat at right angles around the table in the dining room of his dusty bookish North London apartment. He shifted his hunched shoulders imperceptibly within the triangle of his heavy blushed clasped hands and ruby-red nose. He had loved whiskey a little too much over the years. Dressed in green tweed with oiled slicked-back ginger hair, his greying sideburns held any perspiration tightly to his forehead. And yet, the occasional drip would still escape, finally nestling against his mandible joint. He was a heart attack waiting to happen, pursed lips thinning into an edgy smile. Sven scanned his face for a few seconds trying to gauge the emotional direction of the script unfolding between them. 

Professor Malcolm Maguire was born in Belfast and educated at Cambridge. He had won a scholarship and shared digs with Sven in Marshall Road. Sven had gone on to study psychoanalysis at the Tavistock whilst Maguire had joined the Royal Intelligence Corp. He completed several tours, mostly in the Middle East, and often recounted his role in the Suez debacle; but in general, he was ambiguous about his political views. His lack of conviction actually helped him climb the ranks of Academia. He gained a PhD in Anthropological Linguistics at the age of 38. His thesis looked at the evolution of Arabic languages during the post-War period; comparing the stability of cultural practices with the fluidity of contemporary lexicons. He was a mine of information. Sven had come to see him to ask if he could help his friend, Shirin, who had phoned from Tehran, frightened for her life. It was unfamiliar territory for Sven, but not utterly incoherent. He reversed quickly from an all-out charm offensive, into a more familiar, more reflective refrain: “What do you mean ‘We have people’?” A momentary stale-mate ensued, which Maguire was more than equal to: “Yes. In Libya!” He replied.

Maguire paused to pour himself another drink to see if Sven was going to match his return of serve. But Sven remained silent, still studying the light pink marbling sheen of his friend's face. So he took a deeper breath and went on: “Libya has just been through a revolution. Similar to the one that took me to Egypt and Israel. I have a couple of PhD students over there. They are sampling the discourse. I am helping them analyse it. They want to publish. They can’t. There is a lot of politics among the Arabs. The Journals are all State run. It’s an excuse for a free-ride, if you ask me. Plenty of international development money, and all that. Still, …” he paused.

“What?” said Sven.

Maguire looked directly at him through his silver blue eyes “…they think Iran will be next.”

Sven’s heart was beating a bit faster “You mean, Shirin really could be in danger, it’s not just her delusions again?”

“Sven, you have to understand the situation over there. There is a lot of paranoia. No trust. No truth. The War, well it never really ended. It’s shifting sands. Dirty tricks, espionage, arms dealers, the lot. People only ever tell you whatever they think you want to hear. They need to survive – everyone does. In a world of fear, delusions ARE the reality. It’s an echo chamber of misery and lies.”

“That’s what she said Malc. It’s terrorism really isn’t it.”

“Call it what you want Old Boy. If she is going to survive I suggest she gets the hell out of there.”

Sven saw his chance to pop the question: “How can she Malc, tell me, how can she do that?”

“I really don’t know Sven.”

“God help us! Can't your students do something?”

“I don’t think that would be on. Tripoli is over 2,000 miles from Tehran. No direct train. I don’t think she could get through Iraq. Lots of mess. Bloody Ba'athists! The way things are, she probably wouldn’t be let into Israel.”

“Well….what do you suggest?” Sven bit his lip and clenched his teeth, metaphorically of course, at the same time. Staring intently at his friend, like it was all his fault, his neck turned a pale rouge beneath his collar. There was a longer pause this time as both men weighed the thought of ending their friendship now, through a violent and senseless incandescent rage spilling over into the next few years of silence between old comrades, or indeed, spending the rest of their morning hours making a plan, like the anxious middle-aged insomniacs they had both become.

“Let me get a map.” Said Malcolm.

“And a timetable.” Said Sven.

As the Professor left the room to raid his library, Sven looked up to the ceiling momentarily, and sighed deeply. His eyes widened, his head fell, his sight landed back on the table. He felt sad, exhausted, thrilled, excited, angry, and uncomfortable. He leant over to pour himself another few millimetres, and arose, shifting his bones wearily, to find a comfier chair. The crockery tingled on the table top. He felt the glass warming in the palm of his hand as he sunk into some nearby upholstery; smelling Brylcream, stale smoke, and oak-matured spices lacing the back of his throat. The clock on the mantel piece was chiming 1 a.m. quietly. And as the movements whirred to their ultimate conclusion, the metronomic rhythm resumed its beat. His mind drifted. His pulse slowed. His thoughts danced across the surface of a deeply unconnected terrain.

He entered a world created and bound by an infinity of interlocking journeys, a synchronicity of converging narratives, personal and cultural memories. He became a part of a massive holographic DNA clock, ticking quietly in the background of all God’s creations. There were quantum movements between cells, with distant echoes rebounding from the shoreline, separating and uniting living liquid and crystalline forms. The symbiosis of causal deterministic processes. Communication is consciousness, he repeated gently to himself. The sender and receiver of his own thoughts. Death was the vacuum, sucking order into chaos, the entropic end of all thermodynamic beings. His life was only an energy potential. An impermanent, permeable threshold. What is belief but redundant information that constantly reiterates itself? What is the brain but a time machine mapping the past onto future events? What is reality but an isolated interpretation of a momentary snapshot of sensory experience? What is love but an intoxicating addiction to something that can never be possessed? At least, not completely, not completely possessed, not by him.

He could see Shirin now, completing the crossword, at the table. Waiting for a delivery, or a train at the station. Not knowing the environment but reading it through its various arrivals and departures. The clothes of the people arriving indicating their source. Like insects on the back of his hand when he was lying in the middle of the woods by his School; hiding from his pursuers, the insects predicted their approach, the threat, the need to move. Like a fish in a pond. The clouds are just waves breaking overhead. The natural order of ecologies. The Chi that binds the Universe. People arriving at the same point in time. A coincidence, perhaps? He smiled. The floral genitalia attracts bees for pollination purposes. A change in behaviour in response to an observation is a communication of consciousness. Lilies on a pond. Opening up on the surface but reflecting the ecology underneath. The intimate connectivity of cells of the body. The more distant communication of neurons, screening out the background while lying on the surface. Smells. The innate need children have for their parents’ attention. Attention is attachment and security in a hostile environment. Scent. The innate knowledge that is provided by the genes. The constructed knowledge that is stimulated by the environment. Perfume is a religion. Being is an identity. The clock entrains. Like attention, it reinforces behaviour quietly.

But perhaps, this can be over-ridden by the shock of louder noises, more intense and momentary gustatory pleasures and disgusts. Tastes. Trauma memories and reward centres buried in cultural traditions. The interpretation is the feeling. Like flowers and insects. Behaviour is objective but feeling is subjective. That is how we know we are not alone. The temporal dimension of our stories tie everyone into a clockwork machine, the sociological dimensions of who we are to each other, determines the size of the journey we are on. Our bodies are knitted together by the intentions of those at the top. Externalising their vision and values. We reproduce their dreams. The chaotic nature of the deepest levels of evolutionary experience. He who starts furthest away from the centre has a longer and harder journey to traverse in order to achieve the same outcomes. What tools are at their disposal? Only language can tell you. The chains of freedom enslave us all. A life is just another sentence in the book that is being written. The commuter and the homeless person sleeping through the rush hour. Oblivion. Isolation. Loss of meaning. How can the masses choose the narrow path? Is their pursuit of sensory pleasure a risky sexual deviation or part of the same train track? Travellers on different journeys arriving at the same destination. The solidarity to be found in the complete transience of life. It doesn't always go to plan, does it? Missing the train. Bereavement. Guilt. Reorganising the journey plan, using timetables, maps, watches, calculators. The inevitability of "transgressions". And, hopefully, our absolution.

A few moments passed and Sven was startled back to his sense slightly as the Professor re-entered the room.

“You’ve given me an idea, Old Boy” Maguire said eagerly.

Sven barely moved. The nape of his neck lolling against gravity, his eyelids losing the battle against sleep. He mustered a muffled grunt. 

This was enough for Maguire to continue: “My students in Tripoli have been looking at the relationship between how the cultural lexicon is changing along with changes in attitudes towards the West. BUT, they can’t PROVE that the revolution was the cause. Plenty of anti-Gaddafi literature says it would have happened anyway. Bullshit! Who cares! The important thing is, it’s the closest we’ve got to deep grammar.”

Sven’s forehead wrinkled and without looking he exhaled: “Whaat?!”

“Right. Surface grammar - the way nouns, adjectives, determiners, etc. are ordered in a language [yes?] - that stays the same. While the deep grammar - the way the meaning of a word maps onto their physical manifestations [yes?] - changes. And this happens more quickly [yes?] during periods of political and economic revolution, than it does, during normal periods of science.”

“Rrriiight” said Sven, in a slightly mocking apathetic tone, not sure if he was really following what was being said.

“….BUT, in order to be sure, we need to observe this process. This process: before [before?], during [during?] and after [after?] a revolution….”

“Yeeaahhssss!” said Sven starting to cotton-on.

“…and a revolution is what is just about to happen in Iran.”

Sven’s neck straightened to lift his head bolt upright.

“You mean, you want Shirin to help set up a research team in Tehran?....”

“Yeeaahhssss!” replied the grizzened Professor

“….And you can employ her on a research contract…”

“Yeeaahhssss!”

“….And get her a visa to the UK to work with us?”

“Yeeaahhssss!”

“Brilliant!” Sven was shocked "Why didn't I think of that?"

“But it's not with Us Old Boy” Maguire replied “with ME!”

“You?”

“Yeeaahhssss!”

Sven bit his lip and ground his teeth again, metaphorically of course, at the same time. “OK….” Sven gasped silently out-loud half-questioning the rationality and impertinence of Maguire’s intentions but not wanting to reveal his own “….so what’s the timetable going to be for all this to happen?”

“Let me show you” said Maguire as he took out a pre-prepared manuscript. One hundred and twenty-three pages of a draft proposal written for the Board of Research Ethics at his Department two months ago. Sven grabbed it from his hands and started to thumb through it. It contained a fully costed timeline for the research to happen without any exact dates but enough detail for him to think this was all too much of a coincidence.

“You had this prepared?” Sven startled blinking rapidly now sitting on the edge of his chair.

“Like I said…” the Professor returned a rasping volley back to Sven with what he thought would be his final indefatigable point “…WE HAVE PEOPLE!” he declared victoriously and smiled gleefully at his intellectual accomplishments.

“IN LIBYA!” came the retort, as Sven moved back to the table with the leaves of the manuscript unfurling within his hands.