A message from a disciple

 It’s Sunday morning in a rarely sunny Manchester and I’m sat outside my university library, tantalisingly close to the buildings I’ve not yet been allowed to enter because of Corona virus, soaking up some of the sun’s rays before heading inside to hammer some Spanish grammar. I call it revision, but realistically it’s probably just an attempted linguistic immersion so that my return to the beloved Spanish culture doesn’t seem so tragically far away from my reality. 

Rather depressingly, as my flat mate has pointed out to me, my schedule is so predictable that this is not an irregular occurrence, the 1st floor of the Ally G having seen me through more hours probably even than my pokey uni accomodation flat. But what he fails to account for, as he and the rest of the flat lie in until mid afternoon, is the astonishing array of encounters I feel more exposed to even within the relatively sheltered university grounds. 

The majority of overheard conversations consist of complaints about ‘piss-takes’ of essays, or southern accented gossip about who’s slept with who even though they have a [insert partner]. With the approaching end of term casting looming deadlines over our heads at the same time that bars and pubs have finally reopened just in time for summer, the interweaving between the two topics is perhaps more frequent than you’d think. However, sometimes I find myself surprised by snippets of Arabic that drift across the courtyard, or the always appreciated pulsating bass of the infamous ‘Boombox Barry’ as he cycles past, blasting music from the bag for life swaying from his handlebars. 

Less often (but occasionally) I even find myself engaged in these interactions, like the Saudi Arabian man who noticed me reading a Spanish play and wanted to practice the language with me, or the hour long conversation I had with a random fellow student about the enneagram personality test, culminating with the realisation that ‘the world is poetry’. It is without a doubt far more interesting than sitting in my dark, cold room all day. I come to the library to study, sure, but it’s difficult to focus sometimes when there’s such a plethora of experience and personality all coexisting in this relatively small part of the world. 

Today as I sit down, the snippets of the one sided phone conversation I can’t help but overhear, had by the burgundy fleeced, buzz-cutted young man on the bench next to mine, is one of the importance of god of all things. As I unzip my bag he’s professing his belief that he sees being a disciple as the one true ‘purpose of life’. This seems fairly standard, and my interest is peaked but not enough to halt my rooting around for my earphones, not expecting any immediately impactful revelations which, unbeknownst to the conversationalist, I’ve begun applying to myself. 

However, god works in mysterious ways does he not, and by the time I’ve untangled my earphones, his conversation has taken on a more general tone, as he surmises that ‘life is not about ourselves’. This to me seems like very good advice for followers of any belief system and I delay the opening of the document holding my essay on Islamic feminism in case I can soak up any more nuggets of wisdom from this wise disciple. The few more minutes his conversation continues for consists of rowing talk, a misuse of ‘literally’ (but sarcastically I think, so it’s fine?) and an inside joke about the uselessness of the yanks - a sign of potential xenophobia but I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt. I minimise the tab holding my essay and instead click open notes, this piece begging to be typed before I can get on with anything else. 

I’m glad I sat outside today, and I feel privileged to be around so many diverse opinions and different backgrounds and beliefs. Whoever that man was, I’d quite like to thank him for his reflective influence on my slow Sunday morning. I hope he got to his rowing training to finish his circuits, and that he sorted those last few lines of his essay. I have to disrespectfully disagree with his beliefs though; for him maybe ‘happiness does come on the journey to god’, like he advises the person on the other side of his Bluetooth earphones.  But right now, on a sunny April day in my beloved Manchester, life seems pretty good as it is. That may not make me a disciple, but it’s still a message I’m more than happy to spread (even if I do go to hell for thinking that).