Into Darkness

We made our way up to KL yesterday afternoon, after I'd finished all I needed to do at work - and I must say how strange the journey felt. This wasn't anything to do with the journey itself, which was quite uneventful - a bit of a delay with jams at the two checkpoints, but nothing special. No, it was what preceded setting out that gave the experience its sadly, dark, unpleasant flavour.

Actually my morning and early afternoon had been highly enjoyable despite being of the non-stop, packed variety. The Friday timetable, which only goes up to 1.00 pm, sees easily my busiest day. I teach five different classes in that time and it's quite a challenge to record exactly where I'm up to with each and any admin concerns emerging from the individual lessons as I zoom around. But the teaching of itself is generally enjoyable, and so it proved yesterday. In what little time I wasn't in the classroom I found myself with important deadlines  to meet, and that also worked out well, prior to motoring off for Friday Prayers, the period of guaranteed peace on any given Friday, once I've got myself to the Clementi Mosque. On returning to the school I needed to lend my talents to some filming being done by some students from our Council. It was a bit of a rush, since I'd had to let them know of my deadline for leaving to try and beat the Friday jam, and we were outside on a hot afternoon, but a lot of fun was had mugging for the camera.

So when I got in I was in a good mood. At which point Noi told me about the shooting at the mosques in Christchurch and it was as if the day had been suddenly, incongruously stained. In fact, she started to show me a recording of some of the dreadful live-streamed video of events which one of her friends had sent her. I think I watched about thirty seconds of it, not quite grasping what it was I was seeing. It was surreally unreal yet all too definite. And then I just couldn't watch anymore.

We soon set off, happy in ourselves, yet all too aware of darkness and misery in one of our favourite parts of the world. (Again, adding to the weird sense that this couldn't be real.) On the way north we were monitoring for updates, with the death toll increasing, as it awfully does with these kind of incidents. And so a privately happy day ended seemingly forever marked by public darkness.

So often after a terrorist atrocity one is left with the feeling that one cannot imagine the scale of the pain and anguish involved. A way of protecting oneself, I suppose.