A Very Good Brain ... Or Just Another Lost Soul?

For some time now, the subject of my head, or the apparent ever decreasing contents of it, has been a cause of obsession for me. Over the last few years, I have become increasingly frustrated by the continued disintegration of my memory and command of the English language. It has been the cause of some considerable frustration, worry and embarrassment, which has ultimately led to my seeking medical advice.

While I knew I was too young to be seriously in danger of having some kind of degenerative disease, I simply couldn’t fathom what else could be the cause of my struggling to find basic words in conversation, remembering peoples names, remembering how to do things and explain it, even struggling over basic pattern driven games or a simple general knowledge quiz. It irritated me. I used to be good at this stuff, really good. The competitive side of me, that somewhat over proud and stubborn aspect of myself, was not impressed.

So now, here I lie inside the tight, pulsating tunnel of an MRI machine, eyes tightly shut so that I don’t have to deal with the claustrophobia of it all. With the sound of the giant scanner pulsating in my plugged ears, I can’t help wondering how I got here.

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I arrived in Dubai a little under three years ago, a broken heart on the run. I had spent the previous few months between Switzerland and the Czech Republic trying to pick up the pieces of a shattered 6 year relationship. When things fell apart in my home country I ran. At the time I justified it as finally doing what I had always wanted to do, but the reality was that I just couldn’t deal with my broken life face to face. So, I walked out on my home, my family and and some 7 odd years of an archaeological career, got on a plane and refused to look back.

After a few months in Europe licking my wounds, and as a result of a cold call from a teaching institution in the Middle East, I decided to run a little further. I was one of a large number of Irish, British & Americans recruited by an international school to work as English teachers. My shared accommodation was reasonably comfortable and well contained behind a large curtain wall that surrounds the entire school complex, which itself sits in the middle of the industrial area of a city about an hour and a half in the nearest traffic jam from Dubai.

My arrival in the UAE, while not my first experience of an Arabic country, was somewhat of a cultural slap in the face. Far from being a conservative pinion of all things Islamic, sky high steel girders, pyres of glass and spinners on Hum Vs bounced the sun’s rays off each other like ping-pong balls, lighting up a city which had it’s very capitalist eyes set on the west. Long legs and pumped up breasts glided through the malls, their diamond encrusted fingers clutching Gucci & Armani embossed shopping bags, the flickering fabric of their black abayas always leaving a waft of sandlewood behind them. That smell seemed to be the only authentic thing about the place sometimes.

My original plan when coming here was to use the bulk of my modest tax free salary to pay off a not inconsiderable debt that had been carried over from my failed relationship. It was sound at the time. I estimated 12 months would do it. Unfortunately, as I began to become overwhelmed by the place, things changed very quickly and my landscape of plans began to fade.

My life back home was one that was comfortably spent outdoors, sleeping in tents, playing in dirt, loving the fresh summer air or the cold winter rain in equal measure. Day by day, my time behind the school walls in dusty Sharjah started to bring me down. I soon found myself seeking the familiar to try and abate the sadness. That ‘familiar‘ became an involvement in the expat drinking culture of Dubai.

Alcohol is illegal in Sharjah, and, generally, one needs a license to purchase off-sales everywhere else in the country. However, as with all illegal substances, where there is a will, there is a blind eye. Ten minutes from the school, across the border into the next Emirate are a number of ‘Offies‘, where one can purchase as much as the car can carry for next to nothing. It’s interesting how many ‘dish-dashes’ you will see in joints like this. Monthly, the fridges and cupboards were filled with cases of beer, and bottles upon bottles of spirits. This was just for the tight weeks, when the money would run a little low. When the pockets were full, it was a taxi straight to Dubai as soon as the last school bell rang on a Thursday, for liquid obliteration at the nearest ‘All You Can Eat & Drink’ emporium.

I remember my first Friday (Muslim Holy day) well. The Waxy’s brunch, then a mere pittance which translated at that time to approximately 10 Euros, involved 5 drinks of your choice for 50 AED. By 7pm I was onto my second batch of tokens, beaming from ear to ear and loving the fact that the whole night was still ahead of me. Every Friday that followed that one however, seems to be a blurry mash of declining self-awareness and dignity.

It’s funny how you seem to find yourself mixing in like-minded company in situations like this. Not everybody is lost but many are. Everything is lived on the surface, the lives are 2 D, thoughts are finite, hopes are never really discussed with any seriousness, and if they are, they are always somewhere off in the distant future. You know that there is a story there somewhere, festering beneath the surface, an abused emotion of some kind which has caused them to leave their original pack, become an itinerant, and loose themselves in an endless party. I called it The Lost Soul Syndrome. I remember naming it a number of years ago with a friend of mine in Amsterdam where, as spectators, we watched the very same phenomenon from the sidelines. Diasporic, young Irish people on the run, filling their conscious hours with constructed highs in unconscious avoidance of the fact that they were actually running on the spot. No reason, and no destination. I pitied them then, little did I know that I would become them.

At the time I told myself that I was entitled to party, after all I’d been through so much hadn’t I? I would spend more than I should on transitory things and justify it with the thought that I could always make up for it by saving a little more next month. The job was mindnumbing, not at all like working in a real school, a prescribed system that the director of the whole organization philosophically preached could be presented by trained monkeys. Like a good little primate, I did my eight to four job in my sleep and took my paycheck at the end of the month, quickly exchanging it for liquid sustenance and transitory material pleasures. It was all about immediate fixes, and as time progressed I never really got around to saving a little bit extra that next month.

Now here I am, three years later still owing money and a credit card to boot, signing up for my fourth year in the zoo to do something I don’t care about. I’m lying in the middle of a contained magnetic field because I’m obsessing about the fact that my brain doesn’t seem to be working.

IDIOT!!!

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There’s a guy in a white coat tapping me on my shoulder. He seems like a sensitive, intelligent man. Time to get dressed. Sitting at his screen he points out the various images and explains how the scans work. “It worked well. Hopefully we will have a report ready by Tuesday,” he says in his Indian infused lilt. I thank him and turn to walk away. “But I can tell you now,” I hear him call after me, "you have a very good brain!" I smile, and almost without thinking say, “Yes, yes I do!”

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I never rang on Tuesday to find out the results, instead I sat down and started writing.