Old is Gold:

An interview with my father

Transcript of the interview:

The first question was a general one: do you think life is better now than in the past? Or the other way around? 

He told me in what aspect? Be more specific. To evoke him, I reminded him of the first phone my uncle brought to the neighbourhood, it was the first magic I saw in my life. Then I asked him about whether technology has made life better or worse for his generation. His answer was not clear, he told me it was a double-edged knife question. While we are happy reaching each other fast, I mean the family members, a lot of things we lost since technology invaded our lives. He continues talking about weddings in the past and how the families used to gather and celebrate each other. Nowadays, they hold weddings in luxurious hotels and spend a lot of money but do not experience the same happiness we used to have.  I think this was my next question about the change in behaviour, however, you did not tell me what this has to do with technology.

He told me after Ramadan, we used to prepare ourselves to go and visit our closest relatives on the first day, we used to travel for hours and spend like two days to do so, but what’s happening now? people send only two text messages to all people on the WhatsApp app and that is all. You do not see them physically and you do not have the same sense as when you travel and visit them physically. According to my father, although technology makes it easy to reach anyone anytime, people nowadays do not know each other. We used to know the root of each family even to the seventh grandfather. In addition, if a new person comes to live in the village, all people will know in a couple of days. In comparison, the last time is visited the village I heard that there were cousins living next to each other for years without knowing that they were living in the same building.

Then I asked him about the third question since he already answered my second question (behaviour). Do you think the language has changed? I mean do you think people speak different accents or dialects, if yes, why? His answer was “Well! Villagers always look at the people living in the city as superior to them and, as a result, they try to imitate them in terms of language. In past, this phenomenon tends to be rarely noticed because of the distance between us and the cities, nowadays, you use the internet and learn Chinese. In this way, we started to see new words used by the new generation and, unfortunately, lost some original words we used to use for communication. According to my father, one reason for this is the geographical shift; in other words, people who live in the same geographical area almost speak the same dialect, whereas those who interact with different strata, have their language mixed up.

He continued talking about how the people of the village try to imitate the people living in the cities show off and how this demolishes our heritage and customs. He also talked about how even when we could not visit each other because of the long distance, diseases, or even bad weather, we used to go to the post office and stay in line for hours to send the envelope. Nowadays, it is only one click and you send too many envelopes to all people you know you do not even know.