When I was 9 years old, I nearly died. My appendix burst, so the symptoms were confusing, and I was admitted to hospital with a different diagnosis. It happened that my mother worked there in X ray lab, so she knew local staff. One of her friends, a surgeon, came up to see me. He came to our house sometimes before, so we were kind of friends…well, if friendship between 9 years old boy and a man 40 years older can exist. Anyway, occasionally we had a game in chess. Whatever the reason was, he came up. By a weird coincidence, he had a girl with a similar case admitted few weeks before; she also was diagnosed with something else and later died. So he took me to the operation table at once. In a matter of few hours I could be dead too. Of course, such a case brought as closer. I had to stay in hospital with drainage pipes coming out of my belly for a couple of weeks. He visited me daily. If he had enough time we had a chess game and talked. Little by little I learnt about his life. In 60’s he was a doctor in Cuba and in one of the attempts by americans to topple Castro was shot from M16 somehow. He didn’t go into details, but the scar on his belly was impressive. He was a doctor with Soviet trade fleet later for few years. He worked in Kongo’s hospitals during outbreak of cholera. He went as an army doctor to Afganisthan in early eightees. He saw the world from Honduras and Africa to Singapore. He had many stories to tell. For over 20 years he kept notebooks where he’d write everything that seemed interesting to him: from his life, books, stories he’ve heard…they were eclectic. He brought them to me so I could read them. I remember them vividly. I read them through a dozen times. I remember their covers and that some pages were missing; I remember a leaf of grass between pages of one of them and a photo of a group of soldiers in another. I secretly copied them. I even copied the drawings. After I’ve finished, there were still some pages left. So from that point on and off I started to write what I’ll find interesting myself, later on switching to computer. So here’s one, connected with dream, though not mine. This really happened; at that time, though, I tried to put all these things in a kind of narrative, there everything is connected, making a long and often absurd story. So it goes with remarks to unknown reader and different discourses to clarify the matters: Continue reading ‘Have you met yourself recently?’
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