Déjà vu (part 4)

January 19th, 2023

It happened again. It keeps happening to me every once in a while, and always completely unexpectedly. It doesn't bother me, actually it gives me quite a lot of interesting thoughts to think about, but it also brings an unnerving afterthought.

I was looking through photos of Central Asian cities from the nineteenth century. I have a soft spot (and I hope one day to visit) the Silk Road trade posts that bloomed into amazing bustling cities and centers of culture, learning, and commerce — Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva. That was in the period of the European Dark Ages, but then and there it was a time of abundance and learning and opulence. The remains are still there, well preserved through the wars and uprisings and natural disasters.

And it happened at one moment when I saw a photo of an alleyway in Khiva. It was a foreboding feeling, no — more than a feeling — a knowledge of that place. I knew I had been there, in person, before. Of course, it is not possible. I have never visited Uzbekistan or any other Central Asian country. And I don't believe in reincarnation, so I doubt it was possible for me to be there in some other life. Yet, I knew that alleyway that was preserved in a photo from a hundred and fifty years ago. And more yet, I had other thoughts flooding my head as well with regards to that spot — I felt excruciating boredom, I felt forcibly bound to that place which at that time was crumbling in the relentless sun and dry winds from Kyzylkum Desert. I was a prisoner, allowed to roam the city, but constantly watched by unseen eyes. I was there against my will…

The strength and vividness of those thoughts left me deeply confused. I don't know what to make of it. There is only one clear thing in my head from that experience — I want to go there and will find a way to make it happen.