Put on your shoes

The rocking rhythm of a rail journey promotes the deep reverie that I am now enjoying as I go over in my mind the past golden week. I am thinking: that if the Palace of Alhambra is not one of the Seven Wonders of the World, then it certainly should be! Between the 9^th and the 13th century in Spain there was a quite extraordinary flourishing of all aspects of life and culture: in agriculture, economics, music, art and most of all architecture. At the heart of this expansion of Islamic culture lay a remarkable tolerance and diplomacy. It was this tolerance that made the Muslim rulers of this period especially revered and loved. It is still there today of course, in the beautifully proportioned buildings and gardens of the Palace of Alhambra. It is still there in the golden brilliance of the Moorish influence in the Spanish flamenco dance and music. It was this tolerance that created an epoch of peace and prosperity that lasted three centuries. The extraordinary beauty of art, music and culture was made possible by this tolerance. For a period the Moslem Moors were able to reign-in the sadly typical astounding levels of bestiality of brutality that seem inherent in the human collective ego. Rather than battling and attempting to ‘ethnically cleanse’ the Jews and Christians of that period, they facilitated something special and it created cultural gold.

I am suddenly jolted out on my reverie buy an insistent tap on my shoulder. I am sat on the aisle seat. My partner sits alongside me on the window seat. From across the aisle a young lady has reached across from her window seat. She is young, about mid 20s, attractive with long red hair. She says to me:

“Excuse me but would you mind putting on your shoes.”

This intrusive poke into my reverie finds me in a very good space. I feel neither anger nor insult. In fact I am not even mildly affronted at this request. With the same side-wise leaning over the centre aisle manoeuvre, I take a hold of the empty aisle seat armrest and I say to her:

“I am deeply curious to know what it is so deeply disturbing to you about the presence on my bare feet.”

The truth is that even if I wanted go along with her wishes I could not comply: I have none I am not traveling with any shoes! I am at least aware that ‘though I may not have the most attractive feet that were ever on the end of legs, I can be totally sure of one thing about my healthy feet: that they do not smell!

So just what is this all about?

It is at this point that the interaction takes a deeply unsatisfactory turn. The young woman is now behaving toward me as if, for all the world I am accosting her. It is at this point also that my partner is aroused out of her snooze to a scene that to all appearances looks like I am accosting and harassing an attractive young woman on the window seat of the opposite aisle! I am now experiencing the same distinct unease that I often feel with a certain friend who has a way of ringing me up and then making me feel that I’m taking up his incredibly valuable time. The highly unsatisfactory interaction is brought to firm close as she adopts a chin-raised, turned sidewise Cleopatra profile and she states empatheticaly while staring at the back of the seat in front of her:

” Well-do what you want then!”

What remains so unsatisfactory is that I have no idea what prompted her request or what it was that underpinned her evident discomfort at the sight of my bare feet. I don’t know and I probably never will know. But hey – I am free to speculate. You have to say that whatever disturbed her was enough to make an attractive young 20-odd year-old female traveling alone on a train, reach over to an (UGHMM!) older middle-aged man and make a request that he rearranged his appearance. Unless this is simply an exercise in assertiveness, then there really was something quite disturbing for her. Might it have been that she had been perhaps abused in some way by an older man in bare feet? Is she returning from a funeral in Burundi of a close friend who died from the bug that buried itself into the sole of his bare feet?

My speculations now take a different turn and the next thing I consider is this: how would it be if  this odd situation was flipped around. Now I know that it is a fact because I have made quite a study of healthy feet and I know that the high-heeled shoes that this redheaded lady is wearing will seriously upsets the geometry and weight-bearing of her body. There is now a raft of research to suggest that what she is wearing on her feet is a really serious health hazard. So disturbed by this, imagine I reach over and touch her similarly on shoulder and I say:

“Excuse me but would you mind taking off your high-heeled shoes.”

Immediately I am likely to get into deep trouble if I do this, despite the fact that I might have the highest altruistic reason to reach over and intrude into her private reverie with such a request. As I play out the scenario a certain gender inequity reveals itself. It is quite possible in fact, quite likely that my touching her shoulder would represent, (certainly legally), a technical assault:

“He touched me and then he went on to sexually harass me by asking me to take off an item of my clothing.”

I could finish up behind bars! Of course I don’t feel sexually harassed by what happened but my deep curiosity and a deep unease about this interaction remains.

Since I do not know but since I have been granted free license to: ” Well-do what you want then!” I am at least free to continue to speculate on with endless possibilities. Is she somewhere on the Asperger’s spectrum? How about the chat up line: the possibility that I am now- well a bit too old for: but when she makes her request, I could say: “Okay. If I put on my shoes is it my place or yours?”

No. The really disturbing speculation to me is that in these days of growing separation and intolerance, in these days of Brexit and America First, that this interaction may represent a sinister and widespread trend towards intolerance. This intolerance is expressed against racial minorities, different nationalities, people with different sexual/gender orientation and in my case against an individual making an unconventional health choice: not to wear shoes. I can well see how such a sinister speculation might arise out of my thoughts and my meditations on a tolerance that allowed a great blossoming of Islamic culture. My sincere hope is that what happened on the train is not part of a more widespread intolerance.

 

John Woodward April 2017