December 2019
the end approacheth
I had spent a very full day in Fez and mostly enjoyed it. It had exceeded my expectations in some places and I even made a new friend. [see: Fez Royal Palace; Fez Souk]. I hastened to the train station for my return trip to Meknes because winter days were short and I didn't like walking in unfamiliar places in the dark. By the time I got back to Meknes it was early evening, but I knew the way to the riyad from the station and it was a safe walk. I had just seen an ancient city that I had heard about for years, Fez. I should have felt more satisfied, but alas - I only worried about getting to Casablanca the next day.
Travel is so much better in retrospect.
Little did I know that as I watched that lovely winter sunset on the train platform in Fez, the world was about to change dramatically. In fact, the change was in progress and none of us knew it. I am getting worn out from cataclysmic change. I lived through the outbreak of AIDS, I saw 911 with my own eyes, and in late December 2019 I traveled, as the coronavirus pathogen was being spread across the globe by unwitting Chinese tourists. A week later I would be back in Duhok getting ready for Spring term. There would be one unseasonal blizzard to suffer through and then, a month later, all in the space of a week - my life and everyone else's would change dramatically. The world closed down for nearly two years.
The Fez sunset above represents the end of easy travelling, the end of stability, and the end of a world that I had taken for granted. The sun was setting on several decades of international travel for me which I considered "normal". The sun set on my job in Iraq and its high salary and long vacations. The sun also set on middle age as 60 loomed and I could be nothing other than "old" ever after. The sun sadly set on always having my retirement investments increase. It was like being shot into a brick wall of sorts. And not just for me, for everyone.
Now I look at that beautiful sunset in Morocco and feel thankful that I saw it. I am lucky I did all those things in life that others put off and never got around to. Nonetheless, the sun did set on that world. We have now woken up to some very new realities and I find myself a little tired - like a person who perhaps did not sleep enough after that beautiful sunset.