Memories by Prof Zak
An ordinary human being possesses a vast repository of memories; some good, some bad. Regardless of the feelings they evoke, memories have the tendency to linger on in a human membrane; at times assuming an integral part of one's development and grooming as a person. The pleasant memories act as a reverberating force and aim to cheer one up in times of distress or extreme nostalgia like a camp fire on a cold night in November, but the bad ones linger on like a mighty force of nature and keep furnishing the scars from the painful burns of the experience that was a treacherous moment in a life otherwise full of shawarmas and aromatic rice.
As I am not a psychologist, I can’t argue how far back the human brain can retrace memories to, but in my case there are some hideous memories that have lingered on since the time I was barely but three years of age. One could attribute it to the fact that I either possess outlandishly advanced human retention ability or the horrific experiences might have been so charring, neigh painful, that the memory refuses to make its exodus. Like someone exorcised, I carry the weight of that pain and it nurtures me into a contemporary Sufi of the thoughtful kind - someone who could cast a spell with the satire in his words, and the range of variety in his emotional depth. One particular memory for instance takes its origin in the autumn of 1980 when mother used to drop me off at a daycare facility in our neighborhood. The standard form of punishment at that adolescent butchery was having your pants pulled down in front of the entire class, and all the other kids forcefully compelled to sing, “Shame, Shame, poppy Shame," in chorus, as you stood atop a table in your birthday suit for the display of all and sundry.
Talk about public molestation! The embarrassment that followed was sure to kill any last remaining shred of an innocent childhood into a million pieces. But, then were times when public humiliation wasn’t enough, and the curator would resort to taking you by the shoulders and literally tossing you into a dark restroom that occasionally had the odd roach roaming about on the walls of that prison-like restroom unperturbed. To a 3-year-old, that's the adult equivalent of Hannibal Lector having a victim's brains for dinner with fresh far-far beans. Heck, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre might be pale in comparison. Like I said, there are some memories that resonate with such forceful pain that they are simply impossible to let go. They are ingrained as part of that personality which shaped out the way it did. That explains my tendency for being nyctophobic.
And then there were some painful wounds which were inflicted by the hands of my near and dear ones. On one occasion, when I had recently turned 6 we were on a family trip at the beach for what was supposed to be a fun day of barbecuing, sand combing, and lazy lounging around the beach when a distant uncle felt the urge to ensure that I would never be able to learn how to swim for life ever again. On a sadistic impulse he lifted me up without prior warning as an idea of masochistic fun known only to himself, and threw me into the deep end of the sea on a high tide and I sunk into the sand head down and for a good two minutes lost my breath as water rapidly entered every open pore it could find in my body. That was it. It took that one defining moment to ensure that I would forever develop an inherent fear of swimming for life.
Coming back to the subject of discussion; yes: memories - some good, some bad. Where the bad ones linger on like the horns on Lucifer’s head and stick out as a stark reminder that had these uneventful experiences never happened, there might have been some semblance of normalcy to my otherwise unfaltering genius.
-This is copyright of Prof Zak