A Place You Can't Return To

Life is endless grief

I was thinking about Ilhem’s house today. I can try, and perhaps even find some success in describing it. But I don’t think I can describe what it was.

I spent three nights there, right at the edge of the city of Lomé. From the terrace, you could hear Ghanaian accents debate with Nigerian ones about what a fair fare to Lagos was. These debates often turned into full-on screaming matches until car doors shut, and silence returned.

She had three dogs whose names I wish I remembered now. They were big; way too friendly, like most dogs. She had a cat too, peckish and introverted, like most cats. There was a wild but intentional jungle around the pool, with vines climbing up the side of the building. On the terrace, she nursed what felt like an endless row of potted plants. I think it was all the life in her house that got me.

I remember being tormented by decision fatigue. I always find it so hard to choose a place to stay when I travel. On this trip, I had turned down an offer from my friends to stay with them at a beach resort with rooms that opened to balconies that opened to the beach. Soft Life beckoned, but I chose to leave and navigate my way to Ilhem’s house. I had an address and some French. First, I took a shared taxi to the Grande Marche, then I got a motorcycle to (what I believed was) a dance studio right opposite her building. I rang her bell; she opened with a sweet smile and asked if I was Mo. I said yes. She went inside and put the dogs away, then returned to get me. I felt the soul of her house the moment I stepped in. I don’t believe I have felt that much soul anywhere since. I don’t know how to describe it to you. It’s not something you can see in pictures.

I cried so much when I left Paris. I cried in the airport and on the plane. At one point, I moved to one of the empty rows at the back for more privacy. By the time I got to Lagos, I was dehydrated the way a good cry leaves you.

A few weeks later, I told my friend how sad leaving Paris made me feel. She said to me, “Maybe you should consider moving there, you clearly love the city.” She said to me, “Don’t be sad, you can always go back.” I had been to Paris three times in three years, so yes, I loved the city, but it was not the city I mourned.

I said to her,

“ I was crying for all the friends I left there (not in Paris, in the summer.) I can always go back to Paris. I can never return to that summer with those people”

The picture you see above was taken on the last night of that summer. Today, it hangs in my sitting room, a place I cannot return to.

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Being alive feels like this endless grieving of what was, and what could have been. I don’t say that to critique it. It is so hopeful of us to grieve. It is so hopeful of us to want. It is so hopeful of us to remember.

Some days, like today, I feel so so lonely, and at the same time, I know I am so so loved. Some days I think about all the things I will mourn, and at the same time, all the things I have.

Some time last year, I found myself at the beginning of liking someone’s company. The cynical part of me couldn’t help but project to the end when the feeling would fade…

By this point in my life, I have experienced so many versions of this unrealised excitement that it is sometimes an intellectual exercise to start mourning before it is necessary.

Lately, I have been wondering if ends are not what they seem to be.

Remembering, I have found, is a very active practise. I’ve had a friend in Abuja whom I try to see whenever I’m in the city. Over the past three years, we’ve shared many rushed moments of companionship just before I dashed to catch my flight. Last month, there was no such rush; we hung out three times. On my second visit to her apartment, she cooked daal, I played music, and we judged movies by their first 5 minutes. At one point, she caught me staring. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked

“Nothing,” I said, “I’m trying to remember”

This active practise of remembering has changed the way things end for me. This isn’t to say I don’t still feel all that grief. In fact, maybe I feel more of it now.

There’s a Japanese phrase.

mono no aware - 物の哀れ - this moment is already gone

There’s this complicated mixture of sadness and happiness when you realise that now does not exist. Every moment is a passing one. Even this.

It sparks so much grief and so much hope. There’s so much contained in the knowledge that life is a series of endings. All of life is an end. This is precisely why life is so precious - because it will end.

During a recent bout of existential dread, I collapsed under the weight of the knowledge of all that I will forget. I will forget the image of amazing sex, I will forget my best dates, and I will forget what it feels like when you first fall in love. I will continue to forget until there’s nothing left.

Even though I cannot imagine the end at the beginning, at the end, I will barely remember the beginning. This is so sad.

Then I remembered the movie: About Time, which starts out being a movie about time travel but ends up being a movie about enjoying every single moment of life. The one person who had the power to do the very thing I wished I could do, to return to lost places, found that the best thing about these places is that we lose them.

It is so sad and so hopeful that being alive is the continuous loss of something precious.

It is so sad that I cannot return to the moment before I first read A Man Called Ove; a book can only change your life once. It’s so sad that I cannot return to when I first tasted Katsu curry, a flavour can only be new once. It is so sad that I cannot return to my first year in uni. When you become depressed, you never return to the person you used to be.

At the same time, it is so hopeful that I can mourn all of these places. It is so hopeful that I can remember. I can remember the conversation I had with this one girl at an exhibition last year, where for a second I felt like this was the only thing that mattered in the world, that she was looking at me. I can remember the moment I first heard the song Baliguha by Saraabb, in Athens, as I watched my friend read a Greek book on her radio show. I can remember the moment before my first kiss. I was 18, and the moment felt like it lasted forever, because it did.

It is so sad and so hopeful, all the places we cannot return to.

Post script: Essays like this (not at all about my work life) used to only appear on my Medium. I am bringing them to Substack. I hope you will permit me.