The Return to the North and Memories from a Birthday

The last 48 hours have been so sweet and harmonious as a return to the homestead should always be! The snow covering in white the city outside and the coziness of the indoors activities with Ilias and Henriette are coming to a climax today with the celebration of Henriette’s birthday. And although it is the second time that the birthday is celebrated with Ilias, while twice we were on Sai on that date, our memory returns to the first time we were together on a 23rd of January: it was the year 2008 and our story had just begun…

It is interesting how memory chooses between events and fabricates realities, both in the personal and in the public level. Apart from the above-mentioned selection of a birthday remembered among others, in the present entry the comment upon memory has to do with the way the collective memory of Christians chose one saint over another to be the Father of the monastic life style. The reference is to St. Anthony who, although he was not the first hermit, he was the one granted the honor of having started the monastic movement – instead of Saint Paul of Thebes who departed in fact from the society earlier than St. Anthony. One plausible explanation for this choice is that the monastery of Saint Paul was founded later than the monastery of St. Anthony, which along with the Sinai monastery, is considered among the earliest in the Christian world. If now, the photos that follow come exclusively from the monastery of St. Paul, it is because a road accident prevented us from reaching St. Anthony’s monastery as planned… So, the promised entry of the 30th of January will have to wait for another visit to this holy place…

In any case, between a memory made of personal experiences and a memory inscribed in the collective past, space seems to have a very important role to play: either a birthday in Khartoum or a monastery in the Red Sea deserts of Egypt, the location may pend decisively in what one chooses to remember as the primal event. Isn’t it therefore the case that when contact to space is lost gradually memory linked to it will also fade away?

About these ads