Joseph Conrad

Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish writer from Istanbul, in his book about his home city really praised and enjoyed his childhood and whole life he had lived there. It was like a promised land to him. Even if it was not a heaven on Earth, it definitely was a special, magical and meaningful place and no other city or country in the whole world could be more important and close to him. In the same book he contradicted himself and the fact of him having strong roots in a certain place (Istanbul in his case) to writers like Vladimir Nabobkov or Joseph Conrad who travelled all their lives, spending years abroad and living there, hardly ever coming back to their home countries. Joseph Conrad, who grew up in Poland and whose native language was Polish, was a writer who wrote his novels in English - a tongue that he learnt in his twenties having already spoken fluent French. Most of his life after leaving Poland, he spent working as a sailor and later just living abroad and being a writer. He never returned to Poland for good.

As even the dumbest reader (not to insult anybody whatsoever) of this blog may guess I am rather a Conrad or Nabobkov than Pamuk type. I left my country at the age of twenty-three and even tough I was not planning on staying abroad permanently it did happen to me and probably I will never come back to Poland for good. Not only do I live abroad but I am rather the type who feels like living everywhere and thus settling down nowhere. Once while waiting in the queue to Mirano, I met a friend of my friend who initiated the standard interrogation with a freshly encountered Brussels' expat (me). He asked me for my name, my profession and for how much longer I was going to stay in the city. I answered 'I have been here for nearly five months and I will stay for another half a year. Then I will probably move to another country'. 'Oh, I understand' he replied 'you are this kind of a person' he continued meaning that I was not an expat who settles down but rather lives everywhere for a fixed period of time and then changes the place. I was unceremoniously put on a labeled shelf but on the other hand his response meant he had perfectly understood who I was. And that was the truth.

I have friends in so many countries and cities all over the world. I have visited quite a few places in Europe and Mediterranean region and as soon as I have the chance I will go everywhere in the world. I love being abroad but I guess I do not like the idea of settling down for good in one place. I live everywhere and nowhere in the end. I have friends everywhere but in the end will they be in one place with me once I need them badly? My family is always far from me (or it is me who is far from them?) and they do not really understand why I want to live abroad (but I might understand why they do not understand that), travel and live this kind of life. We keep in touch obviously but it is nothing really strong or profound. It is never enough time for me to really understand the culture I live in and plunge into it deeply because I tend to leave the countries pretty quickly. Do I learn enough about the politics, the famous people, the history, the well-known places? Maybe if I did so, I would understand the people and their actions more instead of complaining about their awkward behaviors. In the same time due to not living in Poland I keep getting further and further from the country and culture I grew up in. Once my friends and I laughed at a person who asked one of my frequent traveling friends 'oh boy! You travel so much. Don't you get confused?' We did make a lot of fun of it once we were told that. But it is not that funny sometimes. Isn't it sometimes confusing to live abroad? I.e. to be part of a discussion among five locals speaking their own language when you do not understand a single word of what they say? The worst thing for me about living abroad is when I start hating the country but on the other hand I know I do not want to return to Poland because it is not going to be better there and I do not want to go to another country either as I do not presume it would solve my problems. It happened to me in Morocco in the middle of my stay. I stopped liking it. However, I did not want to be in Poland or in any other country. I just felt trapped. No place for me where I could have been happy.

Have I become rootless? A true citizen of the world without a real home but still having it anywhere he moves in? Is it bad or good? Do I need to have roots and feel part of a place, city or a country? Or is it better to just feel a human being who can live anywhere? Do I need to define it? Why is it sometimes so amazing and wonderful and sometimes so confusing?

As I wrote in one of the previous posts - most of the times it is better than anything else. But sometimes it is not the most of the times.