Back to School

I got back into SFI this week.

Nice to be out of the house a bit more. Even lurching over a grey and pockmarked hotel carpark, still semi-crippled by whatever weird viral thing has gripped my joints this week, through the autumn's icy rain. Fresh air and a sense of progress, no bad thing.

My school is on the fourth floor of the hotel building, an especially glamorous place called the Hotel Mektagon. If the name didn't sound like a race of murderous robots, the glossy black lobby and austere Nordic staff might make you feel you'd wandered into a sci-fi set. I half expect Tom Cruise to burst explosively out of the lifts at any second, firing improbable handguns at security guards dressed in cumbersome chunks of plastic wheely bin.

Funny how adults regress in school. Thirties and forties, most of my class. Everyone behaves like teenagers, sloping in late, giggling in corners with their mates or making 'you're fit, miss' type remarks to our Norwegian teacher. You can tell who was a class joker, a swot or a rebel. Or at least who fancied themselves as such. I guess our mental pictures of ourselves don't really change that much from teenage days.

Quick disclaimer - I'm not making any passes at the Norwegian Teacher, just before my wife gets paranoid. I'm a swot. And a lazy one, still - I keep my head down, quickly do the exercises and then try and look busy so I don't get set any new ones.

Occasionally I get a little down about being an immigrant. It's tough being away from home, friends, family and all the familiar things I grew up with. It's tough not being able to understand people very well or finding employment on the other side of the language barrier.

Sitting with my 80% Syrian classmates makes me pretty much suck it up and get over myself, though.

Yes, we have an overbearing, overpriviledged and massively underexperienced bunch of politicians in the UK right now. Full of jobs for the old boys, ministers filling the portfolio for I Knew Him At Eton And He's A Good Egg. Incompetent wankers though they may be, they're at least an elected government. We've only ourselves to blame.

These guys are fleeing from a civil war that's been tearing up their country for over three years. Some of them speak halting but competent Swedish after only a few months, and they had a whole new alphabet to learn to go with it. I've been feeling sorry for myself because I don't have a regular job other than dishwasher operation (entirely through my own life choices, I might add). Jeez. For my next performance, the interpretive dance piece Awakening With Rose Appreciation.

People in school keep asking me what the British think of Syria and Syrians. This made me realise, cringingly, that I knew very little about Syria or its current conflict.

"What do you think of Assad?" someone asked. Knowing he's either a politician but also possibly a Middle Eastern secret service, I tried to keep my remarks fairly non-judgemental. I don't know which side of the war these guys are refugees from. I don't know how many sides there might actually be.

As I educate myself (starting from Wikipedia and moving outwards), it's embarrassing to find how little I know. And worse, to find how pointed some of the remarks I took for lighthearted jokes might really be. "You think anyone with a beard is a fanatic, yes?" someone wryly said, pointing at mine. I don't, personally. I know people who do.

Being bombed by a country that once trained him as a doctor is probably doing little to persuade President al-Assad that his conspiracy theories of foreign manipulation are false. Listening to Cameron preach about extended campaigns in Iraq and anywhere guilty by proximity doesn't do so much for mine.

While they make their speeches, a pleasant middle-aged man asks me to translate a letter from the Swedish Embassy in Ankara for him. It's in English and Turkish, neither of which he speaks, so he wants it in Swedish. It says his wife can pick up documents allowing her to come to Sweden. He's pleased.

I rather feel I have some priorities in my life to examine.