The Train

Mahmoud Saeed

The four of them walked together, carrying backpacks like school children, except for
the eldest, maybe a twelve-year old, who was dragging her wheeled luggage behind.
They would walk a little, then rest. They paused, mesmerized by the big station with its
pale lights. They stopped, their inquisitive eyes wide at the sight of a wheeled cart
stacked with hundreds of souvenirs – playing cards, balloons, key chains, toys, dolls
and small stuffed animals.
“Look…a dinosaur…a gorilla…a dog…what a beautiful car…a Gannon…”
“Come on, we’ll miss the train.” The big sister hurried them along. They ran while
looking around, pulling on her dress to get her attention. “Sana, can we find stuff like
this in Mosul?”
I smiled. Children are the same always, everywhere. I didn’t hear Sana’s reply.
She headed quickly towards the train beneath the pale yellow lights, clasping the hand
of her youngest sister, who was only three or so. It didn’t occur to me to wonder who
was escorting them to Mosul – once old age hits, one falls victim to mental lapses. Then
I noticed a woman lagging behind them. I slowed and then stopped. This was the first
time in forty years that I was taking a train to Mosul. I checked the numbers of the
rusted wagons – the metal letters were falling off and clumsily patched with white
paint. Aha…this is wagon 235. I got on.
Things were different from forty years before – the seats were wooden then, while these
were leather and more comfortable, though tattered. The clamor of a dozen or so young
men filled the cabin. Their red, black and white patterned shirts suggested they were an
athletic team. In the two seats to my right were Sana and the little girl. In front of them
sat the other two, a five year-old girl and a ten-year old boy, who had taken the aisle
seat. It so happened that my seat was directly across the aisle from him, while an
elderly man wearing an old military coat sat to my left, his face shrouded with a ragged
black bishmag. I couldn’t see his features – I couldn’t tell if he was fast asleep or just
trying to be. The three children sounded happy with this adventure – riding the train
for the first time. They gazed out of the windows at the dirty platform, what lay beyond
it, the sky. They sat erect, thrilled by everything, convulsed with mirth at a single word.
But Sana seemed sunk in thought.
Then I remembered the other woman; where did she sit? I didn’t see her. Could it be
she was a stranger to them? I looked to the right, towards the door of the wagon, and
saw her standing there, crooking a finger at me, sad eyes pleading. She repeated the
gesture, and I was about to ask, “Me?” But she put the finger to her lips, indicating to
me to keep silent, so I stifled my response and got up. I drew close to her. She was in
her fifties, thin, with traces of a beauty worn down by negligence and countless
tragedies – a faded cloak, a dotted white baza dress, two gray braids resting on a full
bust. As soon as I got close to her, she stepped carefully down off the train. Then she
turned to me; I went down after her. Her eyes brimmed with tears. “You seem like a
kind person,” she said.
She grasped my hand. I smiled, interested. “A small favor for me, please. I beg you…”
she whispered.
“What is it?”
“Before anything, promise me you’ll do it…”
“Before I know what it’s about?”
“It’s easy. Just stay with the children when the train gets to Mosul, until their uncle
Saleh shows up…”
“That’s easy.”
“Will you do it?”
She drew a small Koran from the pocket of her black-dotted, white baza dress. “Swear,”
she insisted.
I smiled. “No need to swear, I’ll do it.”
“No, swear.”
She reached to kiss my hand.
“There’s no need for all this.”
“Swear.”
I swore.
“You won’t leave them until their uncle Saleh receives them?”
“I will not.”
She smiled. “You sound kind. My hunch was right.” Then she added: “Their mother
died three years ago, giving birth to Hana. It’s the sanctions-- the country is out of
sterilizers. Their father had cancer the same year, from sorrow or maybe from the
depleted uranium shells. No one really knows. He was an engineer at the Taji base. You
know, it was destroyed during the Kuwaiti war. He passed away a few months ago and
the landlord wrote off six months’ rent. We sold all they had. They have nothing left in
Baghdad.”
“Do you know their uncle?”
“No, but he’ll come pick them up from the station.”
“Are you sure he’ll come?”
She spread her arms wide, in her faded cloak. “Why not? I called him three times. The
phone calls alone cost me ten thousand dinars. I went through hell to find his phone
number. I searched for it for three months until I finally found it, with God’s help.”
Then she bowed her head, appealing for sympathy, tears welling in her eyes. “You
know today’s problems…children kidnapped, bombs, killing… You deliver them to
uncle Saleh by hand.”
***
The train’s departing whistle drew them to the windows, but soon disappointment set
in, as there was nothing worth looking at. The lights of Kazimiyya reached us dimly
from afar. The tops of palm trees shone needle-like in the blackness. Soon the light of
the street lamps was cut off as we left the suburbs of Baghdad. The children turned
away from the windows. The monotonous motion of the train would have put them to
sleep, if not for the smell of food wafting by – grilled kabab, shawarma, eggs, pickled
mangos. The athletes took out their sandwiches, chewing, joking, chuckling and
exchanging toasts with Pepsi and Seven-Up.
The two children looked back at Sana and whispered, while the little one sitting next to
her looked at her, imploring. She got up, reached for her bag stowed on the overhead
shelf, and brought it down, the children’s eyes riveted on her movements. She took out
a cup and unfolded a small towel, revealing four equal pieces of a bread loaf that she
had prepared for this moment. She gave each of them a piece of bread and wrapped
hers up again. She returned her bag to the shelf and went to the restroom and filled the
cup with water. She came back, and the children began eating bread dipped in water.
“We’ll eat tomorrow at uncle Saleh’s,” the boy said.
“We’ll drink Pepsi,” the girl sitting next to him replied, watching the athletic team drink
soda.
“Seven-Up.”
“Orange juice.”
“We’ll play with his daughter.” Then, she turned to Sana. “What’s her name?” she
asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s name her ‘I don’t know’,” the boy suggested.
They all laughed.
“How old is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let her age be ‘I don’t know’,” he said. They laughed once more.
“She goes to the ‘I don’t know school’,” the five-year old added.
I was watching them discreetly and enjoyed how they laughed with jubilant innocence.
“Listen to Uncle Saleh,” they repeated in unison, as if they heard this statement tons of
times. “YES. Listen to his wife, YES. Don’t vex his daughter the way you did with
Zaina, Auntie Kawthar’s daughter, NO!” Then, they all burst into peals of laughter.
They shared common features – light chestnut hair, pure white skin, big bluish-black
eyes rimmed with green, and thin rosebud lips. I started reading the magazine that I
had with me. The boy, who was the nearest, turned towards me. “My father used to
read the same magazine: Modern Science.”
I smiled. “And you? Did you try to read it?”
“It’s hard. I’m only in fourth grade. I just look at the pictures.”
“Diya, don’t bother the man with your questions,” his sister interrupted.
“No, it’s no bother.”
Sana got up, holding the little girl’s hand, and went towards the restrooms. When she
came back, she gave the five-year old girl, who was dozing off, a gentle nudge on the
shoulder. “Raja, come on, come with me to the restrooms before you go to sleep.”
Afterwards, it was Diya’s turn. “You too, come with me.”
“I’m not little. I’m a man. I go when I want to.”
“Come on,” she insisted.
“Go,” I said.
“Have you been to Mosul?” he asked me when he returned.
“Forty years ago,” I replied, smiling. He giggled, intrigued, as though he didn’t believe
one could live that long. “Forty years?”
“Yes.”
“You must have forgotten everything!”
“I don’t know. Maybe everything has changed. Maybe some things have stayed the
same. I’ll find out tomorrow.”
“Did they have soccer fields like in Baghdad?”
I smiled. “No, we used to play outdoors in the open space.”
“And now?”
“There must be some. In schools at least.”
“I’m the best soccer player in my class – top offensive player. I’m going to be on the
Iraqi team in the future.”
I smiled. “No doubt about that.”
“How can you tell?” he asked me seriously. “Have you seen me play?”
“No, but you can achieve anything you want if you’re persistent.”
“My father used to say that,” he whispered quietly. He turned to me. “I didn’t want to
leave Baghdad,” he said seriously. “I have lots of friends there. But where can we stay?
We can’t pay rent.”
“Who’s that woman with the cloak? The one who saw you off at the station?”
“She’s auntie Kawthar, our neighbor. She used to be a teacher. Her husband is a retired
teacher, too.”
“Is she a relative?”
“No, we don’t have any relatives except for uncle Saleh. We’ve never met him. Are
there bomb blasts in Mosul like in Baghdad?”
The question hit me in the face. “Yes…like all over Iraq.”
He said nothing. His eyes went vacant with the stark reality. He yawned, fighting
slumber, and soon fell asleep. His yawning was contagious, and between waking and
sleep, I saw Sana check on her siblings, cover them one by one, adjust their positions
while asleep, then close her eyes.
“A donkey.”
I don’t know exactly who shouted that word, but I heard guffaws coming from the
athletes along with the children’s giggles, before I could hear the braying of the donkey.
I opened my eyes: The children were up, swarming the windows; a donkey was
braying, then he disappeared; clay houses, they disappeared; arid hills followed in
succession, with luminous white alabaster on both sides. I heard the words ‘town of
Hamam al-Alil’, and then the train entered a tunnel. The lights went out, darkness
prevailed. The three-year old wailed. “Don’t be afraid, honey,” Sana said in a tremulous
voice. Maybe she was afraid herself. “Don’t worry, we’ll be outside the tunnel in a few
minutes,” I said, to comfort them.
“What’s a tunnel?”
I placed Diya’s voice. “Ha… A road under the mountain,” the laughing voice of a man
replied from the front, maybe one of the athletes.
“We’ll be in Mosul within ten minutes,” I added. Silence reigned. Suddenly the train
emerged from the tunnel. Soft light flooded the cabin. Closely packed one-storey houses
loomed in the distance, lamp posts, lingering dust.
“We’re in Mosul, uncle Saleh will come!” The children’s features lit up with glee. “Will
uncle Saleh come with his wife and daughter, or alone?” Raja asked.
“I don’t know.”
“‘I don’t know’ won’t come with him, she’s at school,” Diya said. They laughed again
with exuberant joy, and then went on making comments and giggling until the train
stopped. It was seven in the morning.
The athletes rushed to the door while Sana gathered her siblings to her, spreading her
arms wide, encircling them, to keep them from getting down. I respected her wish, and
got off quickly. I stood in the station entrance, watching them from afar. The main gate
is the only exit to the city. When I was little, before the roads between Mosul and
Baghdad were paved, the train was the only means of travel. Back then the station,
though it was small, radiated glory with its shining alabaster walls, but now it is dirty,
neglected, tumbling down and literally shocking to the eye.
The minute I got off the train, I felt the bitter cold of Mosul bite at my skin. I left the
station to seek the slight warmth of the sun. The children couldn’t leave. They were
fighting the cold, huddling together, each of them holding up a piece of paper. I don’t
know when Sana took out those papers; each of them had one word only: Saleh.
No welcomer entered through the gate. A fifty-year old man arrived, wearing a
traditional zaboun – which I thought no longer existed – with a wide belt, a black
bishmag and a shining silky ikal. He waited outside in the sun and smiled at the sight of
a young pregnant woman, wearing the hijab and walking with an old lady who tilted to
the right in her stride. Then a big military man with a sullen face joined them,
accompanied by a teenager who seemed to be his daughter. They all stood outside and
welcomed a woman and two young men with exchanges of hugs and kisses. A few
minutes later, the station was empty except for us. It appeared utterly forlorn – the
alabaster flooring pitted with holes filled with dry mud, and a single wooden bench
with only one slat, two centimeters wide, remaining of its back. The children sat on the
bench – Hana on Sana’s lap and Raja to her right, Diya standing, their eyes riveted on
the open gate, the Saleh signs drooping.
It was bitter cold despite the shining sun. I sought the electric heater and held out my
hand, but there was no heat. Forty years ago it used to be red hot; everything was going
downhill…this was our way of life. Suddenly, a limping man, with a broomstick in his
hands, began to sweep the pitted floor of the lounge. He seemed to be a villager,
unrefined by civil life. “Get out. No more welcomers. Get out,” he snarled in broken
Arabic.
The children’s eyes dimmed, their self-defense instincts kicking in, and moved close to
each other as a pack, without saying a word. Their eyes flitted between Sana and the
limping man. I was outside the gate. I approached him and offered him a foreign
cigarette. “It wouldn’t bother you if they stayed here a bit longer, would it?” I
whispered to him in order for the children not to hear us.
He rested the broom against his chest, “The inspector will be here soon,” he said.
“We’ll deal with it then.”
“Are they with you?”
“Yes.”
I lit the cigarette for him. He drew the smoke in deep. He closed his eyes and opened
them, and looked at the cigarette with contentment. He slipped out to a side hallway
and disappeared.
Half an hour went by. The little one wept. “When will uncle Saleh come? I’m hungry,”
she cried.
Sana opened her bag and took out the piece of bread. The three of them gathered
around it, eyes transfixed on the small piece. She divided it among them. “And you?”
Diya exclamed.
“I’ll eat at uncle Saleh’s.”
“What are we going to eat?”
“I don’t know.”
“Kaimar…and honey?”
“I don’t know.”
Diya laughed. “We’ll eat and ‘I don’t know’ will eat with us.”
Suddenly the limping man appeared from nowhere. “You’re still here! Get out… Let me
clean,” he grumbled.
I was still standing outside. I went in, smiled and took out the pack of cigarettes. I gave
him a cigarette that I lit for him before he even opened his mouth, and placed some
money in his hand without the children seeing me. He disappeared once more.
“You listen to…”
They completed, “Uncle Saleh…”
I remained standing, my back to the children. I sat down to smoke…
Sana got up and carried her younger sister to the restrooms, where she washed her
sister’s face and patted it dry – she was very pretty. Then Sana went to Raja. “Come
on,” she said.
“Not now.”
“No, now, before uncle Saleh arrives. You didn’t wash your face after sleeping on the
train.” She grabbed her hand and pulled her along. No sooner had she come out than
Diya went towards the restrooms before she even called him. “No need to go with me,”
he said. She waited for him to come out and then began brushing his wetted hair with a
small comb, while he whined.
It was past nine o’clock. The children began to play – they held each other’s hands and
spun around, singing, “O, our beautiful land…”
Sana got up and went to the restrooms. They noticed her absence and stopped playing.
She came out, eyes reddened, her beautiful features strained by the gnawing of inner
anguish, but trying to keep her composure. They gathered around her. “Will Uncle
Saleh come?” Raja asked her. She didn’t answer. It was past ten thirty, and Sana was
looking towards the gate, and they looked with her. She went again to the restrooms. I
guessed she would weep there and then come back.
“Let’s play,” Diya shouted. The little one cried. “I’m hungry,” she wailed. Sana got up
and shouted, “We’ll play together, me included.” They made a big circle and started to
spin around, with uncle Saleh’s papers in their hands: “O, our beautiful land.” I smiled
and went out. The dance lasted a long time. I went back in. Desolate tears shone in
Sana’s eyes once more. She couldn’t continue. She pulled back to the bench and put her
small hands to her face, breaking into deep, bitter sobs. They all ran to her, Uncle
Saleh’s papers falling from their hands, hugging her and weeping.
Back to Top

Joud and Hashem

The ringing of the phone came like a sharp slap. I woke up. “Who is it?â€
“I’m Tony,†a man’s voice said. “I’m very sorry to wake you up at
this time.†I looked at the bedside clock. It was 4:40 A.M. My sleepiness instantly
evaporated.
“I couldn’t find someone else at this time who could speak Arabic. It’s a
tragedy. Police station 111, south of Chicago, off I-94, two blocks to your right. Is it
far?â€
“Yes, but that’s okay.â€
“The roads are empty at this time. Please hurry up.â€
I sprang up from bed. I didn’t wash my face. I donned my clothes with all haste.
The freezing wind of Chicago slammed against my face. The blizzard had dropped one
foot of snow on the city, but it will end soon. Only a few snowflakes are coming down.
The soft snow will surely turn icy from the cold wind. I had to warm up the engine for
at least five minutes, but I didn’t. The car is colder than ice and quietly crawled
forward. I should be careful, there are several layers of ice on the backstreets and any
sharp stop will make the car skid. The snow has shrouded everything with a thick
white blanket, concealing their identity. “The temperature is twenty five below,â€
the announcer’s voice drifted by. They are broadcasting updated weather
conditions every five minutes to warn motorists. I am used to the metric system. The
Americans have inherited from the Brits this complicated scale – the Fahrenheit.
What a cold night! It is about thirty five degrees Celsius below. Had this happened back
home, the Tiger and Euphrates would have frozen and children would have played on
them. But here they don’t allow anyone to play, walk or skate on the icy lake –
permanent watch even in bitter cold like this one. How repulsive are the streets in such
weather! The snow has piled up in ruts of brown slush from road salt and vehicles. Few
motorists are stranded on both sides of the road. Who knows what could happen to this
cold piece of metal and her poor driver in such cold.
I know the police station, but I have not been inside. I greeted a black big-bellied
policewoman, eyelids heavy from needed sleep. She didn’t smile. “This way,â€
she moaned. “An Iraqi; she refuses to talk.â€
I followed her. How did they know she was Iraqi if she refused to talk? And why
wouldn’t she talk? Every Iraqi has become subject of interest nowadays – the
news of Fallujah, sectarian killing, kidnapping and bomb blasts. Everything spreads
terror. Who would imagine it! She is Iraqi and I am Iraqi! My heart winced.
It is hot inside the station. I took off my gloves, my coat and my hat. The room’s
door was open, the light was comfortably abundant. A single bed was there in the
middle of the room, on whose side sat a frightened girl. She’s four, is she the one
concerned? She was gasping, eyes filled with tears while a two-year old boy, was
sleeping on his right side behind her. I couldn’t see his features – black hair, a
small palm holding a pistachio green plastic teether. The girl’s skin was olive and
kept its freshness despite tears. Maybe the presence of the policewoman with me added
to her fear, she almost exploded, sobbing even harder. I stared at the policewoman; she
stepped out. I threw my stuff on a chair. I crouched before her. She recoiled back from
me and screamed, frightened.
“Don’t be scared sweetheart, come,†I said quietly.
I held out my hand to her. I don’t know how the words in Iraqi accent worked a sort
of magic on her. She jumped and wrapped her little arms around my neck. She started
to cry and called out aloud, “Mama, Baba.†She remained like that for a few
seconds, crying and repeating ‘Mama, Baba’. I stroked her hair until she calmed
down. I put her in my lap. Her hair was jet black, straight, soft like silk, reminiscent of
that of Orientals from Japan, China, Thailand, etc. I caressed her hair once more; a
purple flower was pinned at the base of her pony tail. I began to wipe her tears. On the
bed, was a white coat on which were some drops of blood. Whose blood is it? Her
mother’s? Her Father’s?
I pointed to the cup of water on the nightstand. “Do you want to drink?†I asked.
She nodded a ‘No’. She was still weeping. I wetted the tissue and wiped her pure
olive face. “Mama, Baba,†she repeated.
“Enough, sweetheart. What about them?†I asked.
She drowned in tears. “Please don’t cry. Tell me, are you hungry?†She
nodded in affirmation. I carried her in my arms, her white dress was damp from
behind; she might have lost control from the shock of the accident and wet herself. I got
up and she was still against my chest. No sooner had I reached the door that she turned
to the boy and screamed ‘Hashem’, trying to let go of me.
“Okay, sweetheart, we’ll not go out.†I stepped back and placed her back on
the bed. “Calm down. We’ll not leave him,†I said, smiling. I stuck my head
out the door. “Mam?†I screamed.
“Ye…s,†the sleepy policewoman’s voice came back. Seconds later, her big
body filled the doorway. “What?â€
“Is it possible to get them breakfast?†I asked.
“We have everything here; there is a lunch room.â€
“But she refuses to leave her brother behind.â€
“Fine, I’ll bring her everything she needs.â€
I held her in my lap. I patted her long hair once more and went on, “How beautiful is
your hair!†She leaned her head on my chest, her breathing uneven with tears that
dampened my shirt. I wiped her eyes once more.
“What’s your name, pretty girl?†I asked.
“Joud,†she mumbled.
“What a beautiful name! Your brother is Hashem. Isn’t it?â€
“Yes.â€
The policewoman said, as she was placing the breakfast tray: “Her father was
driving from Indiana, and a truck didn’t heed an intersection’s red light and hit
their car and ran. One of the pedestrians saw the accident and took down the truck’s
license plate number. The driver has been arrested. What a dreadful accident! The car
turned into an iron ball. They needed a blow torch to open the door. It’s a miracle
the two kids survived, the seat belts saved them.â€
I advised the officials to take the children to a nursery ran by Dr. Nancy. She speaks
Arabic at least – a kind Egyptian, a real person. I didn’t have the address on me,
but I described the location – North, on Lawrence and Campbell, one block west of
the train station, across from a supermarket. They agreed immediately – a strike of
luck that I didn’t expect. I was thrilled. Joud wouldn’t leave me – she clung to
my neck while sitting in the car to my left, her brother Hashem to the right, sleeping.
We arrived at the nursery at 7:00 A.M. Nancy is an elegant brunette, slender, with
typical Egyptian features, sweet tongued and warm-hearted. She welcomed us with
smiles and chuckles. “Welcome, they will be in safe hands,†she assured. There
was no one in the nursery. We were early; the children will start to show up soon. Joud
and Hashem yielded to her and we entered a small room – two small beds on each
side of a window overlooking a small garden covered with snow. There was between
the two beds, against the wall,: Bears, monkeys, dogs, cats, etc. There was a train on an
oval track at the left side on a night stand. Hashem ran to it and I don’t know how
he managed to turn it on. The train began to move and whistle, sending its particular
warning while I had to keep talking to Joud so that she might overcome the shock of the
accident. The arrival of the children gave me a big relief. I didn’t leave the nursery
until I saw Joud and Hashem get along with the children, playing freely in a big room
packed with oodles of toys.
From the documents the authorities had at hand, they learned the father was a karate
trainer. He was laid off two weeks ago. Luckily, there were documents for the entire
family, American passports, titles of a house and a car in Indiana, employment and
service termination documents in several places over the past twelve years, two bank
statements, one of them in the name of Jalal and the other Housn. They provided me
with all the information they extracted from the papers and asked me to find their
relatives here, in the US, or in their country of origin, with the hopes of finding someone
who could adopt the children. The father was an Iraqi from Bagdad, the mother Syrian
from Aleppo. I didn’t get lucky finding any clue that would lead me to them. I
couldn’t find anything that would prove their belonging to one area in the
homeland – no picture IDs, passports, work contracts, or graduation certificates. I
couldn’t trace their roots. I am not sure until now about their full names. I guessed
them, after I solicited more than one opinion. ‘Jalal’ is written from Arabic into
English without any confusion, very clearly, but the family name of the father is written
in English as KAFF which is not possible in Iraqi society. That is why I thought the
father’s family name could be Abdul-Kaffi. When they applied for the American
citizenship they had the option to change their names. Jalal’s choice was a good one.
He got rid of the word ‘Abdul’, averting racial harassment, and secondly it was
easily pronounced by most Americans who like abbreviated and non complicated
names. Kaff is a nice shortened word, easily pronounced. As to his wife’s name it
was written in English as ‘Husson Hassan’. This is confusing too. It could be
pronounced in Arabic as two different full names. And since we don’t have any
functioning Iraqi consulate or embassy in the US, I resorted to inquire about them
among the well known figures of the Iraqi community in both Chicago and Indiana, but
in vain. A few days later I had to go their house in Indiana. It is located on a beautiful
street in the suburbs, overlooking from the rear a small artificial lake, and in the
background a landscape of green slopes rising to a hill where upscale homes are
perched and seem hanging in the sky, except for a lush forest that keep them from
falling. The house façade look similar to those of other houses along the street, with a
front door garage. Four cedar trees distinguish the house from the others and seem not
to exceed four years of age, separating the front window from beds of myrtle and roses.
I learned indirectly from their Mexican neighbor who didn’t speak English, and
through her eight-year old son who made the translations, that Jalal bought the house
through a real estate agency and didn’t know its previous owner. The rest of the
neighbors are non-Arabs; they remember Jalal and Housn but don’t know if they
had any relatives. It seems they didn’t mix much with their neighbors even with the
Indian family that resided across from their house. The limping Indian neighbor
answered the door, followed by his wife. His wife wouldn’t answer my questions. I
turned to him and he asked me about Jalal. But when he saw the patrol car that
accompanied me, he went back inside, not listening to my answer. My heart wrenched
with pain. Here, nobody notices the disappearance of the other; no one cares about the
fate of the other. In addition, the Syrian embassy couldn’t fill us with any piece of
information on Housn or any Syrian citizen married to Jalal Abdul-Kaffi or Kaff. The
employee at the Syrian embassy wouldn’t talk to me directly, rather she asked the
legal official who was assisting me to give her his name and rank. And before he could
answer her, she asked for a full description of the tragedy. I saw a look of dismay on his
face and great effort to keep his calm – he handed the phone to me. She surprised me
when she asked among other questions for my name and the reason I’m involved
with the children! I think she was typing every word I said on the computer, because
she made me pause a few seconds after each sentence; at times I thought she hung up
on me, and I would ask her ‘are you with me’ and she would say ‘yes, sir’.
Then suddenly, for unknown reasons, she became very respectful and diplomatic with
me and promised to send a fax within one hour or so. The second day a fax came back
– an apology; there is no Syrian lady under this name in Indiana or any other place on
the American territory. Nothing. Did the two emerge alone, and as strangers, from the
bottom of the earth to go back to it alone?
I stayed with the children for a long while. Shortly after I had left the nursery, Nancy
called me. It was around 4 P.M., and she asked me, in her sweet proper way, to go back.
The problem is the two children are alone after business hours. It seems she found
herself in deep trouble; I have to stay with them.
“A big problem, only you can help me,†she said apologetically.
Joud ran to me. She hugged me. Hashem was reserved. He ignored seeing me. “If I
were not around, you would have taken them home with you,†I said.
“I’m responsible for them,†she replied, “but I saw how much the little girl
loves you, that’s why I ask you to stay with them. It’s against the law, but to the
children’s best interest. I don’t think they can be comfortable at my place. My
house will be crowded soon. My sister, her husband and children will arrive from Los
Angeles tonight at eight. They never saw the snow before; they want to see it in the city.
I’m embarrassed. I don’t have enough time to call the officials to find a family
for them to spend the night with.†She checked her watch. “I have to be home. My
children will be back from school in half an hour. Do you agree or not?â€
Her frankness startled me. “Does the law allow me to take them out to the nearby
supermarket?â€
She nodded. “Unfortunately no. But why? The fridge is full – Nestle, fruits, drinks.
Everything. But if you want to go out don’t tell anybody and don’t stay out late.
I’ll be in ruins if someone knows they’re not at my place. Come; let me show
you what you might need at night.â€
She showed me around – telephone, TV, VCR, microwave, keys…etc.
The nursery sounds like a jail after the business hours – heavy sadness that lays its
weight across the body. I am an adult and feel this way, how about these children?
After a while and with the beginning of the night’s darkness, Hashem began to cry,
maybe he remembered his parents; “Mama, Baba…†he repeated. The train and
toys had lost their effect on him. Nothing would quiet him. I crouched before him. I
asked him if he would come with me to the supermarket and nodded his head in
agreement. I carried him, but he wanted to walk. We crossed the street, our hands
interlaced. The minute Hashem saw the shopping carts, he grabbed one and looked at
me, mumbling some words that I didn’t understand. “Put him in the cart,â€
Joud screamed to me.
He stood inside the cart, the teether in his right hand that holds on to it, and left hand in
his pocket. Then he pointed to me to stop at the cookies section. He put his both hands
along with the teether in his pockets. He stared at the cookies.
“Lata,†he said. There were loads of brands. I didn’t know what he meant.
“Chocolatta, chocolate covered cookies†Joud translated.
During the brief time I had spent with them, I understood his language – ‘peps’
means Pepsi; ‘gager’ means hamburger. He acts like a king. He slides his hands
inside his pockets, gazes at the stuff, and repeats few letters that we’re supposed to
understand and give him what he wants. Then he will move the teether to his left hand
and insists on taking the money in his right hand to pay the cashier. He takes the
change from the cashier and places it inside his pocket, while Joud would scream,
“No, return the money to uncle.†But he is like any king, he doesn’t care for
others. Afterwards, we played in the main room and built a house from wooden cubes.
Around 10 P.M. I read to them the story of the pretty mouse who loves her neighbor
and whose parents refuse to marry her to him. Their eyes were twinkling with joy and
compassion. Hashem fell asleep in his place, the teether in his hand. Joud began to
yawn. She stared at my eyes and surprised me saying, “Where did the children
go?â€
“Home,†I replied.
“And will we go home?â€
My eyes teared. I might be the most stupid person – I didn’t ask Nancy what I
should say in such a situation. The truth is painful, hard to describe. Lying is painful
too. What should I say then? I hugged her and caressed her silky hair.
“How beautiful is your hair!†I said.
“My mother says the same; when do we go home?†she asked.
I changed the subject. I expected she might have met a new child. “What’s the
name of your friend?†I asked her.
“She’s a girl, not a boy, and her name is Aisha, from India.â€
I had noticed several children with Indian features in the nursery. “Do you like
her?†I asked.
“Yes. Aisha went home, when will we go home too?â€
“Did you hear what happened to the flying turtle?â€
She opened her eyes wide, nodding her head, “No.â€
“Do you want me to tell you the story?â€
She nodded and pressed on my hand. I began to read to her. She slept while I was just
at the beginning. When I turned off the light, I was deeply stirred. I let my tears flow; I
haven’t cried in years, why do I do that now?
I didn’t leave the nursery the next morning when Dr. Nancy arrived around seven
o’clock. I had waited until the children streamed in, and for Joud and Hashem go
mingle with their likes.
A few days went by in this way; I was able to bring them to my small apartment several
times and we even slept there together. I let them have my bed and I slept on a blanket
beside it. And then one afternoon I left them with Nancy. I went back to my apartment
to take a shower, change and go back to the nursery by four in the afternoon. This is
how the circumstances controlled my time schedule. I have to work around it. I decided
to run some errands on this day. I wrote my rent check, but I didn’t mail it. I
prepared the clothes to take to a nearby dry cleaner, at the intersection of Ceramic and
Daymon. I have to do some shopping too, The electricity, gas and telephone bills,
shopping, a selection of children’s stories.
but as soon as I stepped out of the shower, Nancy surprised me on the telephone line,
“Hurry up, someone came to adopt Hashem.†I was appalled. Ahh, that fast? I
didn’t know what to do. I went out without putting on my coat. The cold air
slapped me. I didn’t care. I opened the car’s door and realized I forgot my
gloves. My fingers will freeze. I went back to the apartment and I found out that I forgot
my key chain in the car. I went back to the car. I didn’t find the keys. Where did
they go? I was confused. What shall I do? I calmed myself down. Five minutes went by,
thinking and searching, until I finally found them between the seat and the door. I
resisted speeding, fearing something would happen and delay me.
“You’re late,†Nancy said, “I thought you were not coming.â€
My heart fell to my toes. “Did they take him?â€
“No, he’s with her in the other room.â€
In Nancy’s office was a very tall, bald man with thin features. He is very elegant
and wears a blue suit and a blue-striped shirt. He was signing attentively the papers
that Nancy was handing to him. He smiles, no, actually he is utterly happy. He signs as
if he’s practicing a fun hobby! He must be one of the spouses. I darted to the other
room and found a tall woman in her thirties – around six feet, light chestnut hair,
slender, beautiful voice. She was seated on the floor before Hashem. She piled the toys
she had brought him, showing them to him one by one. He was excited and laughing:
Before him was an iron armed soldier, walking, making different sounds, producing
repetitive shots and colored light from his machine gun; a dog that walks, rolls over,
and barks; a naked newborn that cries and giggles; and other toys. I thanked God that
the toys had got all his attention. I motioned to Nancy to talk to her privately. I asked
her to mention in the contract that he could see his sister every once in a while, and to
keep his address. “There is a clause in the law that allows for that,†she replied.
“As to the address we have it. Don’t worry.â€
When the couple left, Hashem was playing with the naked newborn, held against the
woman’s chest, and the husband carrying the rest of the toys. I went down the stairs
after them – long stairway, more than twenty steps. I was equally happy and sad.
Happy because I expect his foster parents will make him happy. Sad because he lost his
entire family and doesn’t know that. A taxi cab was waiting for them. I knew later
that they were from Florida.
I went back to Nancy, feeling crushed to the bone. My expressions might have revealed
my sadness. “Don’t be sad,†Nancy said, placing her hand on my shoulder.
“The world is filled with such incidents.†I smiled. It is nice for the person to learn
from the younger ones. I spent the whole day preparing for the moment I would see
Joud alone. What shall I tell her? I forgot once more to ask Nancy to teach me what to
say.
Around four in the afternoon, the expected happened. “Where is Hashem?†Joud
asked. She went around the building searching for him frantically, like a possessed soul,
his teether in her right hand. She ran from one place to another screaming ‘Hashem,
Hashem’. She would bang on the restrooms door with her both hands, crying out
his name, the madness of his loss haunting her. Then she broke into long sobs. She
threw herself onto my chest. “Where is Hashem? Where is Hashem?†she
implored, waving his small green teether. Her little mind couldn’t assimilate the
idea of him going somewhere without his teether. “Hashem, Hashem,†she
repeated, her voice raspy. I washed her face from the traces of tears. “Do you want to
go eat hamburger?†I suggested.
That was the harshest night of endurance since that of the accident. She couldn’t
forget Hashem at all. I distract her for half an hour, only to go back to square one. She
weeps. She screams ‘Where is Hashem? Where is Hashem?’. She refused to eat.
She refused to play. She refused to listen to any story. She cried herself to sleep. In the
morning she walked to the play area weary, breaking the heart of everyone there. She
didn’t play. She was screaming ‘Hashem’ until she fell asleep. I was worried
she was not getting enough nutrition. She woke up at night and began searching anew
for Hashem. As to me, I was living the non-time. I forgot whether today was
Wednesday or Thursday, Sunday or Monday. I forgot the date – the ninth or
nineteenth. The tragedy sucked me in and consumed me. The liquid tranquilizer that
the doctor prescribed her was the only thing that calmed her down. It made her almost
drugged up the whole next day, even when she woke up the third day she seemed tired
and exhausted, but she ate avidly. Then, a big slam came, blowing my mind completely
– a surprise. The nursery is closed on the weekend. It means I will go crazy. I will stay
with her alone – no group play, no children during the day or at night. I have to
manage alone; yes…me alone. I learned about that accidentally, it never occurred to
me.
“And what about you, what did you plan for the weekend?†Nancy asked before
she left. “How are you going to spend it with Joud, alone in the nursery?†She
laughed when she saw me surprised.
I tried to collect my composure. “What would you do if you were in my shoes?†I
said.
She chuckled. “But I’m not in your shoes. I don’t know. Think about
something.†She bid me good bye and disappeared.
The empty nursery started to weigh down on my chest. “We’ll go out,†I said
to Joud as soon as Nancy left. “Okay, come on,†she answered, grinning. I had
Nancy’s mobile number and I called her to get information on cartoons show times
and theaters location. “I am in the car right now. I’ll call you as soon as I get
home,†she replied. She got back to me within thirty minutes and gave me the
address of a movie theater in the suburbs. The movie starts at 8 P.M. I put Joud in the
back seat and fastened her seat belt. We got there two hours early. The movie theater
was in a big plaza filled with big retail stores. We dallied around, checking out the
stores. The first thing Joud did was buying stationary. She would look at me before she
picks out something. “Do we buy something for Hashem?†she asked. She flipped
the coloring books. She didn’t like any. She led me to the shoes section. She took a
pair of shoes out of their box. She tried them on, checking in the mirror. She didn’t
like anything. She took it off. She tried another pair. She didn’t like it either.
“How do you like this skirt?†I asked. She tried several pieces of clothing. She
liked only the pink silk hat, laced with a blue ribbon, with two pearls on the front. She
wore it before we left the store, with the tag hanging over her forehead, trying hard to
remove it. We sat twice in the stores cafeterias; the first time for dinner and the second
for ice cream. We bought popcorn in the movie theater’s lounge. She held the
popcorn tub, but she had only few pieces, Hashem strongly present with us. When the
lights went out, she got frightened. She almost cried, she pressed on my hand. That was
her first time to the theater. The cartoon was famous, about the queen ant, she liked it a
lot. She felt sleepy in the car, but we didn’t go to the nursery, instead we spent the
night in my apartment, not heeding the laws. She took my bed and I slept on the floor.
Saturday morning I fixed her lentil soup and helped her comb her hair. That was
Nancy’s mission, and then mine, but an easy one since her hair is silky soft.
Afterwards we went to the zoo. We had a bag filled with sandwiches, refreshments and
Nestle’. We raced in the zoo, she beat me several times. I was panting while she was
laughing at me. She hurled snow balls at me, and I ran away from her in vain, my face
covered with the cold snow. And when she saw from a distance a little boy strolling
with his parents, she screamed ‘Hashem’ and sprinted to him, coming back
crying. But I surprised her with an instant camera. We took dozens of pictures. She
would look at the picture and keep the one she liked, dumping the ones she disliked in
the trash bin. The peacock mesmerized her with the beauty of its feathers. She sat to
walk like a gorilla. I imitated the braying of a donkey, the mooing of a cow, and the
screeches of monkeys. When she saw the American lion pace around agitated in his
cage, she said, “He’s hungry.â€
Despite remembering her parents several times, my strategy – to wear her down with
non-stop activities – had worked. I did the same on Sunday. We went to the play
land. She tried all of the low intensity rides. We had enjoyable time. She surprised me in
her happiest moments, mentioning on multiple occasions her mother, father, Hashem
and his teether.
Nancy had called me several times, reminding me to return to the nursery Monday
morning by eight, fearing the possible arrival of inspectors. That was utterly difficult,
especially since I had to carry Joud while asleep after I wrapped her in a blanket. She
woke up in the car. I removed the blanket. “Am I going to see Aisha today?†she
asked.
“Why not?†I answered.
“I say: will I see her today?†she pressed, as she shook my shoulder.
I laughed. “Of course.â€
“I’m hungry.â€
“We’ll get there soon.â€
I arrived before Nancy did. I left the nursery’s door open. I began to fix Joud
breakfast while she was jumping around me. She was helping me set the table. “Why
didn’t the children come yet?†she asked several times despite my assurances.
Then she remembered the hat and insisted on wearing it. I was trying to remember
where I had put it since I don’t recall taking it to my apartment. It must be in the
car. I promised her to bring the hat before she finishes her breakfast. Then we heard
Nancy’s chuckles as she stormed into the room.
“Where is my sweet, pretty one?†she asked. There was something over
exaggerated in her gestures as though she was hiding something.
“Did you see the peacock?†Joud asked, as she threw herself into Nancy’s lap.
Nancy mulled over her words for a few seconds and laughed. She put her down to the
floor. “Is he the one who walks like this?†she said.
Joud giggled. “No, Nancy. This is the gorilla. The peacock has nice feathers, he walks
like that.†She started to walk like him, chest puffed out. I took this opportunity to go
get the hat from the car. Meanwhile, the children began to stream in, preceded by their
jubilant voices.
After I had fixed the hat on her head, with Aisha, the skinny Indian girl of similar age
next to her, she insisted on checking herself out in the mirror of the big lavatories. She
held Aisha’s hand, and both ran disappearing in the hallway. It dawned on me that
I have a long day ahead to finish my postponed chores. I didn’t mail yet the rent
check, I didn’t shop for groceries, I didn’t return the rented video tapes, I
didn’t launder my clothes. I have to do all this today, but I was surprised at the
arrival of a plump forty-year old woman, with a man of her age, slender, salt and
pepper hair. They were dressed elegantly in black. The man’s face is familiar to me.
Where did I see it? Where? Damn! The memory failed. How does it let me down in time
of need? They both entered Nancy’s office. ‘The Paulers’, this is how they
introduced themselves. My heart began to race. Nancy didn’t sound surprised at all.
Ah! This is what she was hiding from me behind her unusual morning start off. I
stopped. I didn’t enter the room, fearing to reveal my nervousness. His wife
introduced him as the singer… Ah, I remember him now, a humble level singer.
Robert Mohamad had invited me last summer to an open house in the town of
Countryside. He was singing, and his wife was selling tickets sponsored by the town.
They showed Nancy the legal adoption approval.
The singer’s wife, sat out to explain amicably, with heated compassionate
expressions and hand gestures: “We didn’t want to have children when we first
married. We wanted to enjoy life freely and stand on our feet. After we grew certain
that we could provide our child with a decent life, we couldn’t bear children.
Isn’t it a paradox! You know these things!â€
Nancy concurred, “Of course, this happens often.†Then the Paulers got up and
stood in the lounge’s door, Nancy in front of them.
“She’s the one who wears a pink hat,†Nancy said, pointing to Joud.
“Ah, she’s gorgeous,†the woman uttered, trying to control her excitement.
“Oh my God, even if I had a baby, she wouldn’t be like her. O my God! Jesus!â€
Her tears started to flow with joy while the singer managed to hide his admiration and
glee with a wide smile. Then the singer’s wife turned to her husband, “Steven,
honey, get the box from the car.†Nancy rushed bringing Joud into the office. Aisha
wanted to follow her, but Nancy stopped her after she kissed her. She patted her on the
head. The singer gave the box to his wife and worked with Nancy on signing the
papers.
The woman’s genius is perfect when it comes to making seductions of all sorts. I
don’t know how the lady managed to find a doll, of approximately Joud’s
height, that dances, walks, bends, closes her eyes and jumps in the air to land on her
feet with the help of a staff she always carries. She also makes more than ten moves,
various sounds, speaks funny words, yells ‘stop’ and ‘shut up’, giggles,
sings, etc. Joud broke away from us and came back bringing Aisha along. “Look…
Look…†she screamed, elated. Then the children swarmed into the room, laughing,
clapping and wanting to touch the doll, until the singer was done signing the papers
and Nancy took the children back to the lounge. The singer’s wife held Joud in her
arms, the doll in her hands, and went to the door. I don’t know how Joud realized
she was leaving with them – she threw the doll on the floor and dropped from her
arms, sprinting to me crying. I hugged her. I held her against my chest.
“Fine, I will come with you,†I told them, “I will drive after you.â€
That was a middle solution suitable for all. “Would you allow me to come with
you?†the singer’s wife asked.
“Of course,†I replied.
The road to the south-west suburbs is very long. During the one hour or more of travel,
the singer’s wife was joking with Joud, tickling her, kissing her, imitating the voices
of cartoon characters, to the extent Joud went inside the house, holding hands with the
lady, all the way up to her room. I slid outside before Joud could notice.
“Would you allow me to see her from time to time?†I asked the singer.
“What about Friday afternoon?†he suggested, shaking my hand warmly. “Just
give us a call so that we stay home.†He gave me his phone numbers. I hurried to my
car, intensely wrought-up, my lungs almost burst.
It was Friday, and I had to wait seven long days, which felt like eternity. I felt crippled.
I couldn’t leave my apartment. I didn’t do the laundry. I didn’t shave my
beard. I couldn’t do what I intended to. My body felt too heavy to move, and I
would eat only a few bites and flop down for hours before the television, flipping every
single channel and watching all programs. I was brooding over the upcoming meeting
with Joud. On Thursday, I needed to report to the police station that summoned the
night of the accident. I had to finalize some paperwork that I didn’t get the chance
to finish earlier. Before that, I decided to check the accident site. It was noontime, no
snow coming down. The truck’s wheels had left apparent tracks on the street,
thrusting the small car to more than sixty feet forward, and landing together thirty feet
up the green divider. The tires plunged into the earth one foot, where the snow
didn’t erase the groove but covered it with a thin layer. I could have found splinters
of glass if it were summer, but this is hard with this scary snow.
I woke up early on Friday morning. I couldn’t stay in the apartment. I strolled
around for a long time. I had breakfast at al-Bortokala restaurant, on Belmont and
Clark. I had to kill time. I had waited around one hour in the line and another hour
inside the restaurant. I left around ten and drove my car very slowly, imagining Joud.
Did she get over the accident? Did she adjust to her new environment? Did she like the
humble singer and his wife? How does she spend her time? Numerous questions had
been crowding my head all week long. But what kind of gift should I get her? My mind
had shut down, but I finally got her a coloring book with crayons. I stood at the door,
the pinnacle of happiness filling up my soul. I pushed the ring button. Who is going to
answer the door? Steven or his wife? I didn’t wait long. The door opened. Joud
appeared radiant – the pink hat, long black pony tail, a white sleeveless dress with
blue rim, white socks. She sprang on me and hugged me, wrapping her thin arms
around my neck, the way she did during our first encounter. But things are different
now. Today is hope, despair was then. Here is an abundant life, death was then.
“Come, come,†she said, pulling on my hand.
There must be something important. I walked after her while the Paulers stood
watching and welcoming me. I shook hands with them and we followed Joud. It
seemed she got adjusted to her new life. Her happiness crept into me; my soul soared
across the vast skies. The Paulers’ footsteps behind me told about their happiness.
She pulled her room’s door open. The Paulers had changed the colors of the
furniture according to Joud’s wishes and painted the walls from pink to pistachio
green. The room is packed with toys. I went with her inside and she stood by a chest
and pulled the top drawer.
“Look, look,†she pointed with her small hand.
The drawer was filled with chocolate covered cookies, the kind Hashem loves. Then she
turned to the bed and rolled her small pillow, revealing Hashem’s pistachio green
teether.
“Look,†she said, head ducked in with holiness. Then she gazed at me intensely
with her big, limpid eyes, “When will we go visit Hashem?â€

2005

Mahmoud Saeed
Mahmoud Saeed, a prominent Iraqi novelist, has written more than 20 novels
and short story collections, including Port Said and Other Stories, his first
collection of short stories, which was published in 1957.

Even before this collection was published, one of Saeed's short stories was
awarded a prize by the newspaper The Youth of Iraq in 1956. The first military-
Baathist Iraqi government seized two of his novels in 1963, one of which was a
manuscript in the possession of the Iraqi Writers' Union. The Iraqi authorities
also destroyed another of Saeed's novels, An Old Question, which was ready for
publication.

Saeed was imprisoned several times and was frequently interrogated by the Iraqi
police, and he eventually left Iraq in 1985 after the authorities banned the
publication of some of his novels, including Zanka bin Baraka (1970), which
nevertheless won the Ministry of Information Award in 1993. Saeed's novel
Nihayat An Nahar won the Story Association Prize in 1996, and one of his short
stories won the Al-Shaykha Fatima Award for Children's Literature. Saeed's
novel I Who Witnessed was translated into English (2003) by Saqi Books
(London) and into Italian (2005) by Edizioni Spartaco, appearing under the title
Saddam City.

He has published hundreds of articles in Arabic literary magazines and

newspapers including:
Aladab Magazine (Beirut, Lebanon)
Almada Magazine (Damascus, Syria)
Almuntada Magazine (Dubai, U.A.E.)
Al Ightrab Aladabi Magazine (London, U.K.)
Al mawkif Aladabi Magazine (Damascus, Syria)
Story Magazine/ Majalatu Al Qissa (London, U.K.)
Al Rafid Magazine (Shrja, U.A.E.)
Alkhalij Newspaper (Shrja, U.A.E.)
Al Hyatt Newspaper (London, U.K.)
Albaian Newspaper (Dubai, U.A.E.)
Al Quds Newspaper (London, U.K.)
Alitihad Newspaper (Abu Dabi, U.A.E.)

Four works of his fiction were lost during the period of 1970-1985.
He has five novels in arabic waiting to be published.

PUBLICATIONS:

1956- first short story award, from Mowsel newspaper.

1957— Port Saeed and Other Stories Published in Baghdad, there was a copy at
the public library.
Unfortunately, no one knows who burned this library after the American
occupation of Iraq.
1963— An Old Case Published by the Iraqi Writer's Union in Baghdad. Banned,
then burned.
1963— The Strike he manuscript was written in 1959, the government banned
and burned it in 1963.
1968— The Sound and the Rhythm Was published in 1995 by Almada House in
Damascus, Syria.
1970— Bin Barka Ally ( Zankat Bin Barka.) Published in 1993 by Dar Alkarmal in
Amman, Jordon. Won Best Iraqi Novel Award the same year. The second
edition, by Dar Aladab in Beirut, Lebanon, came out in 1996.
1981— I Am Who Was Seen A fictional manuscript about Iraqi prisons. This
novel was written under a pen name (Mustafa Ali Noman) because of my family
in Iraq— I was afraid the government would punish them. Written in 1981,
published by Almada House in 1995, Damascus, Syria.
1996— The End of the Daylight Published by Alhiat House in Beirut, Lebanon.
Won the First Place Award in Egypt, by Story Club, Cairo.
1997— The Birds of Love and War Short-story collection, published by Dar Sina
in Egypt, Cairo.
1998— The Beautiful Death Published by Almada House, Damascus, Syria.
1999- award from Abu Dhabi (Shiha Fatima) forth award for children stories.
1999— Before the Love, After the Love.
 Published in Damascus, Syria.
2003—“Al dhalan” Two Lost Souls Published in Arabic by Dar Aladab, Beirut,
Lebanon.
2003— Saddam City This novel is the English edition of I Am Who Was Seen,
published at Dar As Saqi London,
England. The publisher changed the title to Saddam City.
2005 Kipped down “al Munsadeh” Short stories collections.
2005. I Am Who Was Seen, The Italian version, by name of : Saddam City. Prima
Edizioe.
2006 .Two Lost Souls, English version of Al dhalan” Chicago.
2006, I Am Who Was Seen, complete addition. Dar alhilal. Cairo.Egypt.
2006. Addunia fi oion almalazka. Dar Merit. Cairo. Egypt.

Gate of Confusion Excerpt from a novel by Yahia al-Qaisi

Translated by Dr Omnia Amin

Every morning

I used to walk from Alhabeeb Bourkiba Street towards the old city avoiding the
pedestrian crowd, the sound of car horns, the clattering noise of the metro with its
squeaking rails, birds flapping their wings on the dense trees in the middle of the street
and the chattering of those at the cafes and bars. I used to go into the narrow, shaded
Arabic Souq where the sound of the coppersmiths’ hammerings mixed with the
shouting of leather sellers, the smell of the tanners, the decorations of the potters, the
allurements of the skilful cloth merchants whose tongues twisted with every language.
They were able to draw foreigners who seemed fascinated by the arts of the East. They
got dizzy by the smell of incense as they climbed up towards the shrine of Sidi bin
Arous and Al Zaytounah Mosque. Close by the smells of tasty foods rose from the
restaurant in the corner: the cuscus made with fish or meat sprinkled with raisins and
dipped in a paste of hot pepper!
Many a time did I wander with the crowd which led me to discover a new market for
saddlers, shoemakers, tanners, and tailors of traditional outfits before I took a turn into
the street of the spice dealers where the National Library stands filled with ancient
manuscripts. One time I had no option but to drift into the alley of Sidi Abdullah Kash
as I heard so many stories and enticements about it. That alley is crowded with
prostitutes, people searching for secret pleasures, vagabonds and many things that
would take pages to record but here I have no chance of mentioning them.

I no longer know
what kind of changes occurred to me, to my circumstances, condition, where lies the
outer from the inner and the dream from the reality!
All what I know is that something happened to me when I entered the library and got
addicted to reading the manuscripts that were stacked up and kept for a thousand years
or more!
That strange manuscript turned my head over. I cannot find a way to describe it except
to take out some extracts or copy from it. I have become so confused and I no longer
know if what I am writing here is taken from the original or from what has been added
by copiers and translators who originally found it written in an ancient language . I do
not know the limits of my own words, what I have imagined, what has been whispered
inside of me, what has crept in from the other manuscripts I had a look at, or what
actually happened to me then in the lands of Tunisia and Houran. But I invoke God
against a pen for atheism, apostasy and profligacy, against that which was written in
the righteous heart by the hand of the wicked writer, with letters that have the potency
of fatal poisons. I also am extremely amazed that I read in it the levels of faith,
asceticism and benevolence by which a person gains the satisfaction of the
Compassionate who can place him in Paradise if he follows them. After that, many
strange and suspicious events happened to me as a result of the overflow of this
manuscript which I will mention when it is time for them!

There is no escape then

from what has happened to me. I no longer know how to return to what I used to be
before. I did not desire to know all what I have known but this has happened and the
matter is over. That is why I sometimes hallucinate and I am overcome with fever every
now and then.
Hadia Alzahery came to me in my flat and saw my papers scattered on the floor and the
bottles thrown here and there. She told me that I have exhausted myself with drink,
staying up late and reading a lot. She asked me about the text I was writing and
whether someone had seen it or read it before her. I assured her that no one had seen it
except her and that I would like her to sit beside me and read some of it in her own
voice.
She said, as she gathered the scattered papers and placed them carefully in her
handbag, that she will do so the next time. She bid me to come out of my habitual
isolation and depression and join her for a walk to Sidi Busaeed to drink some green tea
with mint in the cafes by the sea. I had no choice but to follow her. After one whole
hour I discovered that I was just sitting next to her and gazing where the water meets
the cloudy horizon and was inhaling fresh air that revives the heart. I started to expel
what was inside of me. At one time I would scream with outrage and another time
laugh. Meanwhile, she listened to me overcome by surprise from my story about the
time before I came to Tunisia, drowned in the depth of its sea and learnt something
about its people’s customs.
I told her that once I am overtaken by ecstasy, memory storms inside me, sorrows
scrimmage with me and the earth becomes too narrow for what I accommodate. At that
point I like to climb a lofty mountain and once I reach the summit, I desire listening to
Indian music played on the sitar, or the Qawali of Nasrat Khan, the singing of Shajrayan
on the beatings of the saunter, Andalusian music, or the grief of Saliha . You might not
believe that I also wish to listen to the praises by Nakhshbandy and the Chapter of
Mary in the Koran in the voice of Abdel Baset. At this point Hadia I start to sob, then
cry then scream in such a loud voice that all creatures get to hear and cry with me and
for me until the stones, trees and birds mellow towards me. When the fit is over I feel
peace, serenity and purification as sorrows, burdens and the oppression of time
disappear from my chest!
She told me: You are strange, real strange and your condition perplexes me but despite
everything I want to remain beside you and she added in jest:
- What do you say to climbing the mountain of Bu Garnein? Look how high it is.
I told her: Under one condition that I go alone!
She fell silent for a little while then said with a ringing laugh:
- I said from the beginning that you will drive me crazy. All right go alone you
scoundrel.
I told her:
- Believe me I don’t know what is happening to me. I sometimes feel that I am a
scoundrel for real or I am like an accursed Satan and sometimes I see that I am one of
the purified angels. Am I crazy or what? I am really tired and I am bored don’t you
say so?

I can never ever

erase thirty years of war or of waiting for it. You do not know Hadia the meaning of
waiting that has no reason before it and no hope after it!
You ask: “What’s the matter with you, you’re always frowning and
worried?â€
But there was not enough time for joy and happiness and for this reason our facial
expressions froze and hardened from lack of laughter!
You have no idea how we used to wake up to the sound of soul stirring war songs:
“They say that the Jordanians are always frowning…..â€
The pompous speeches at school and in the barracks. We used to sleep on their sound
and drink them with the morning tea:
“Welcome our dear armored warships…, our tanks,…. are you off to
Ramallah…, we are ready for death, ready for the sword…., the Jordanian red
troops…, hey, hey come on Abu Abdullah ( King Hussien) we want to go to
war…†.
The group of the Islamic Brotherhood used to chant the songs of Al Turmuzi and Abu
Rateb and say: “Come on brother to jihad†… and “Rise nation of Islamâ€
and they distributed out to us the ten commandments of Sheikh Al Banna!
A pair of heavy black boots swung over my shoulders on my first day in the
compulsory military service. I received on that day my military outfit, a helmet, a rain
coat and empty cases for military supplies. There was no other way for me to carry the
boots together with all this load except to place them over my neck and leave them to
swing from their strings. It was a surrealistic scene. Believe me I used to spend many
hours in polishing their surface, I mean the boots, in order to save my face in front of
the officer. I discovered from the previous soldiers new ways for polishing by using
burnt kiwi and a spoon so that each of us could shave his beard in front of its shiny
polished surface. There was a high level of discipline and training. But I did not fire one
bullet at them… I mean the Israelis… we waited a long time for the war and it never
happened. When it happened at one point I was a child. By the way the idea of killing
terrifies me. How can a human being kill another human being?
How can any of us turn into a cold blooded killer as if he were slaughtering a chicken?
This is what I witnessed with my eyes on a dingy day under an olive tree that was
neither facing east nor west. The killer was telling the young man who was stretched
out underneath him and begging for mercy: “Forgive me. There is no way out of
killing you. There is no might except through Allah.†After that he slit his throat
with a knife and furthermore pierced his head with a bullet!
He killed him twice. Nightmares kept chasing me in my sleep, repeating fragments of
the scene. I used to rush to my mother who made me drink water from “the bowl of
fright†to calm me down. The people who lived close by the grave kept hearing in
the solitude of the night screams that gave one Goosebumps!
Forgive me Hadia for I am confused and perplexed. I know you will not understand
much of what I said or what I am saying now but I want to open my heart over here
and no one will listen to me except you I swear by the sea of Sidi Busaeed. Put up with
my ravings and let me continue telling you what happened after the coercive
awakening and its strange rituals at the end of the night. This took place just before the
break of dawn as the voice of the corporal screamed out: “Praise God soldiers… get
up†and of course there is no way we would wait for another call from him else the
cold water would splash our faces.
We used to start the day by running until our hearts reached our throats from panting,
from tiredness rubbed in with scowling phrases. When our bodies got worn out from
running, we found one boiled egg and a piece of halva waiting for us with a cup of
boiled tea with added camphor. According to the recruits the camphor was added to
curb our desires so we would not get excited! You ask me what camphor is like? There
is no way you could even imagine what it is like!
I once asked the pot-bellied cook, who wears a white vest painted with tomato juice and
marks from wiping his hands, about the story of adding camphor to the tea. I remember
that he gave me two conflicting answers. He once said that the matter is true and on
another occasion he swore by the Koran and by God the Compassionate that the whole
thing is no more than a rumor that the soldiers had spread around because they are
afraid for their masculinity and their wasted semen in the toilets!
I used to perform my morning prayer in a group let alone the other daily prayers before
the readings and controversial discussions destroyed my fragile serenity. I constantly
prayed that God would make us victorious over our enemies who are the non-believers
and Jews but the war never took place. The state signed a peace treaty and they told us:
“Everything is over… there is no war or fighting…†I felt at that moment that
everything went with the wind as if they had made fun of us and poured cold water on
top of our heads. But thank God the war did not take place, do you know why?
Because what would have happened to us would have been the same as, or even worse
than, what took place in the two infamous years in 1948 and 1967. Don’t think that I
am a pessimist or a defeatist coward!
We are killed by the emotional blackmail, sermons and the ruminated prayers. Now
Hadia we have to admit that we are a defeated Arab nation with an extinguished
message. We should not be stickling or promising the self with lies. Maybe after this we
can start anew for once the reason is known there is no blame. I feel that I have now
started to mix things up and you will not understand me but I swear to you by God that
I myself no longer understand anything I say!
She said with a great deal of surprise on her face:
- God forbids. I don’t know how to rid you of these nightmares. You East Coasters
your lives are full of wars. By God please forget the matter and let us hope for
something good. Forget the story of the Moslem Brotherhood we do not need any more
headaches. Let us talk after that. Ca va?
I said after her own manner: Ca va but I know that I am not ca va!
She gave me a close hug while her playful laugh got lost in the noise of the sea and said:
- You want to say ca va pas. My dear you really don’t know French?
I muttered: Not even English!

Figure in ReposeBy Mahmoud Saeed

“Did you hear the doorbell ring?” He asked her, his eyes still closed.
“Go back to sleep--it’s the athan(1).
She turned her back to him, and her head sank under the quilt as faint echoes of
the athan reached her. “Prayer” it said, “is better than sleep.”
“That’s strange. It isn’t even five O’clock. What athan is this? Somebody is
messed up.”
“Go back to sleep, will you? It’s the Shafi’i athan. It’s always earlier than the
others. Let me have some sleep.”

He groaned and pulled the quilt over his head.

The doorbell ran again. He pushed the quilt away and said, “I say the door bell,
and you say the Shafi’i athan!”

She tuned the lights on. Who would come at such an hour? She thought. She sat
up. For a while he didn’t know what to do, and then he got up. His face was still
showing the power of sleep.
“Don’t open the door,” she said terrified. Don’t even go downstairs.”
“Does this make sense?”
“Please ignore them. Stay here.”

“They’ll keep ringing the bell and if they believe no one is home, they might
break in and kill us.”
He put on his robe de chambre and made sure it was tightly wrapped around his
body. He opened a drawer and took a gun. She watched in horror.
“Do you know how to use it?”
“You just press the trigger. Abu Khalid taught us. It’s not rocket science.”
“I’m coming down with you. Careful when you go down, you’re in your sixties.”
His heavier steps made up for his lack of mobility.
“Don’t open the door,” she said. “They gunned down Umm Sami’s household as
soon as the door was opened.”
“I know.”
“Perhaps they have already broken in and they are hiding around the house or in
the driveway behind the car, the way they did with the jeweler Abu Amir. They
slaughtered all of them.”
Distracted, he felt the gun was heavy. Couldn’t Abu Khalid have found a lighter
one? There are guns half this one in size and weight. The size of the palm, and he
brought me one from the Ottoman era. At least two kilos. ‘Yes, doctor, it’s heavy,
but it’s the sure thing,’ he said.
“I’ll switch the lights on” he said, “and you look at the driveway and around the
house.”
“But don’t rush to open the door before I get down.”
He switched on all the lights on the upper floor, the garage, and the driveway,
and went to open the door after he heard her descending steps. He went out to
open the house gate. The biting January air seemed to penetrate his bones and he
pulled with his free hand the upper end of his robe to cover his neck. The gun
was in his other hand. From the darkness beyond, the athan was still coming
intermittently. His wife, glum, walked with him whispering her wonder who
would be coming at such an hour. As they approached the gate, she separated
the door key and the key to the additional chain and padlock from the rest of the
keys. His frozen fingers managed to unlock the door, but not the padlock, and he
pushed the door slightly. He could see a man in his forties in military uniform;
his wide smile betrayed tired features. A black Mercedes was parked at the door.
“Don’t be afraid. Open the door,” he said.
“Who are you?”
“From the Presidential Office.”
His heart shot fresh, hot blood into his body, and sweat banished the freezing
cold. His wife leaned against him to control her shudder. She tried but could not
repeat what the man just said.
“There’s really no cause for fear,” the military man’s voice came through the
frozen door. “It’s nothing--just a few minutes. Just come with us.”
“Where to?”
“To the Presidential Office.”
“Why not wait till the morning?” she asked with a quivering voice.”
The military man’s smile nearly vanished, but he seemed determined to get what
he came for, and the smile persisted.
“His Excellency the President himself asked for him,” he said.
He looked at his wife, who struggled not to cry.
“What for?” he asked.
“It’s just a matter of five minutes.”
He hesitated and feared the man on the other side of the door might interpret it
as unwillingness to comply. The military man facing him at this frozen hour of
the night knows nothing but compliance. He won’t be patient for long.
“Give me some time to change,” he said slowly, dogged by fear and anxiety.
“Take your time.”
He walked back toward the house and suddenly felt cold again. His wife walked
ahead of him, visibly upset.
“Do you want to go?” she said as soon as they were inside. “Who knows what
they’ll do to you? They must have been watching us. They must be aware Dr.
Ibrahim was here yesterday. That’s why they came for you. His cousin and the
father of his eldest son’s wife died while in Dr. Ibrahim’s care and you think
they’ll let the doctor go? You believe that? This is not Europe. Not in your
wildest dreams.”
“Why would they punish him? What has he done? He told me the story a
number of times. The whole story. You laughed when he told it in front of you.
They brought him that relative forty days after the dog’s bite. What could he do
to save him? The viral infection destroyed his nervous system.”
He could visualize Dr. Ibrahim’s face as he told the story. He could also invoke
the sympathetic face of his wife, Wadia as she listened. Ibrahim said he thought
the hospital turned into a war zone when the republican guards brought him in.
A row of armored vehicles followed by a procession of presidential automobiles.
The blaring horns and the deafening sirens. The whole hospital was besieged,
and soldiers with semi-automatic rifles rushed in throngs. All one could hear
was comrade Rakan Mihqan Mizban, his Excellency Rakan Mihqan Mizban,
Lieutenant General Rakan Mihqan Mizban(2). We all laughed when Ibrahim
asked if we heard of him. Rumor had it he was a herdsman who made it to the
rank of Lieutenant General in no time.
“The door to the examination room was kicked open,” Ibrahim told us one day,
“and a special force lieutenant colonel, armed to the teeth, forced his way. I was
examining an old lady, and for a second I didn’t know what to do. He looked at
me defiantly, and I left the patient and went out with him. The corridors were
swarming with soldiers and one could hardly move among them. On our way to
see Rakan Mihqan Mizban I told the colonel that the soldiers should vacate the
hospital. They could do what was necessary and leave so that we do our job. He
was nearly gone when I saw him. Drooling, his eyes red, high fever. They said he
had bit everyone he could--his wife, two of his sons, his daughter. Then he bit a
few animals--his dog and horse. They locked him up in a room till he collapsed.
We had to quarantine him. We got the vaccine from Jordan that day via a
helicopter, and vaccinated his four wives, his children, his thirty-seven
grandchildren, his battalion of shepherds. I went myself to the Presidential
estates--huge and swarming with all kinds of cattle. I told them that he might die
in two days, and that he should be quarantined. They insisted on taking him
away, and signed papers to that effect. I kept the papers with his sons’
signatures.”
“But they’ll go after Dr. Ibrahim,” my wife said. “You’ll see.”
“You’re exaggerating. Ibrahim called me today from the hospital and told me a
bunch of jokes. We had a good laugh.”
“Why do they send for you at such an hour then?”
“How can I know?”
“This is your problem. I have been begging you for ten years to leave and join
our kids abroad. All your colleagues left. Is this life we lead here? We die a
hundred times everyday. Why are we staying behind?”
He was still putting on his clothes. He picked up the pieces quietly. A silk tie
with fiery red dashes on a pristine blue background. He didn’t forget his favorite
eau de cologne.
“What are they going to do to you?” She was crying now.
She wiped the tears away before she said good-bye. She did not feel the cold this
time, but it took her quite sometime to secure the chain and padlock. The lock
was certainly frozen this time. The loneliness she felt then terrified her and kept
her at the door for a while. The Mercedes left followed by two military escorts.
She had no idea where these two vehicles came from. She started crying again.
His look and smile and wave before he disappeared into the car were still fresh
in her mind. Was that wave to assure her or bid her farewell? She hoped he was
as quiet as he looked, because he used to think if he was then no harm could
happen to him. Perhaps that was why he smiled. A signal that he would come
back. She was almost sure of that.
The military man asked him to fasten his safety belt, and when he was surprised,
he said these were the orders. Then he pulled a black blindfold from his pocket
and politely asked to blindfold him. He was relieved that they did not handcuff
him.
He was not as much concerned about himself as he was about her, being away
from her children, and now lonely and terrified. She would surly go down if he
was to disappear. Life can be an inscrutable trap for this vulnerable, silly thing
we call man. Only a few hours ago he was the owner and director of one of the
county’s best hospitals, and now he’s blindfolded and as much in control of his
fate as a goat on the way to the slaughterhouse. His fear increased as the car
started to speed up, its brutal raw power violating the quiet of the night. He saw
why the man insisted on fastening the safety belt. They always dart on the streets
crushing on their way not only traffic rules, but the property and lives of those
not fortunate enough to escape them. He had no idea how long the nightmarish
trip took. When the man removed the blindfold, he looked at his watch and was
surprised when he saw it was merely twenty minutes.
“Don’t say any thing to those you come across. Live cameras are everywhere. I
hope you heed this advice,” the man told him before he was let out of the car.
It did not look like he was a guilty person and he felt somehow assured. He
found himself in a garage surrounded by dark gray concrete and yellowish
lights. What a depressing environment. A row of new cars of all models crowded
the vicinity. No war or embargo even touched this place, he thought. He was
there for perhaps five minutes. The freezing, blowing winds suggested that the
place was in a desolate area out of town. The man motioned him to stay in front
of him, and soon they stopped in front of an elevator. A sparkling, gray metal
door opened as soon as the man pressed the keypad. The elevator was big,
elegant and warm, and it somehow gave him the impression it was familiar, but
he could not remember where he saw it. Its sides were of polished hard wood
and mirrors and they bore pictures of national archaeological pieces. Was this
similar to an elevator he saw in a five-star hotel he stayed in two years ago?
What a dead memory!
The elevator descended fast and when it stopped its door opened on the other
side. A wide, long corridor, with beige sides on which hung copies of celebrated
world pieces. Again, he had the feeling of familiarity with the place. Where?
Where?
“This way, please.” The military man said. In front of him was a short, bald man,
heavy with no facial hair. He was wearing dark glasses and the green uniform of
the Popular Army.
“The doctor?” he asked. His voice was sharp, his features frozen. When he saw
the man’s face was fixed in one direction, he realized he was blind.
“Yes,” he said.
“He was not sure how to behave with the blind man. The military man has
disappeared, but the blind man came to his aid when he gestured him to walk
along his side. It was rather warm, so he took off his coat and carried it on his
arm. They turned and soon came to another elevator. The man dexterously
pressed the button and he wondered if he was indeed blind.
“Go ahead,” he said. The elevator looked like the first. Is this deliberate to give
the comers the illusion they’re in the same place? But that did not make sense.
The elevator descended one floor, and again its door opened on the other side
where another blind man was waiting for him.
Had he not been a little taller than his predecessor, he would have suspected his
faculties. Same outfit, same clean-shaven face, same stern features. Perhaps they
were brothers? That didn’t really bother him, but what did was the mystery of
repeating the elevator routine five more times. When he reached what would
have been the seventh underground floor, he didn’t find a blind man, but a slim
young man in his thirties. Perhaps a nurse. He signaled him to follow him.
He dumped the thoughts that were occupying him about the blind men and the
single floor downwards rides, and somehow convinced himself that he was more
like a goat. Yes, just that. The corridors again struck him as familiar, even though
now they seemed circular and endless. They approached one with doors on both
sides, and he had a feeling that there were people behind those doors watching.
All the doors were ajar. Were there gun barrels sticking out of some of them?
“This way, please”
A door opened to his left, and he saw a lavatory over which hung a big mirror,
an examination table, two closets, chairs, a desk, and a physician. A beaming
smile and brown eyes, big and lively. These features were familiar, too, like the
elevators and the corridors. Perhaps, his mind had began to falter. This was not a
dream, was it?
“In here, please.”
The nurse was standing behind him.
“Undress,” the doctor said as he pushed his fingers into examination gloves.
He was silent and merely looked at the doctor.
“Undress, please.” He repeated.
“Take off my clothes?” he finally managed to say.
“Yes.”
The nurse took his coat and hanged it on a white plastic hanger. Then he helped
him out of his jacket, and even smiled when he helped him with his tie and shirt
and under shirt. His chest was fully exposed, covered with white hair. Well, the
hair on his arms was still black. Then the nurse unhooked his belt. That surprised
him, and his look implored the doctor who was in a world of his own watching a
sea program on television. A shark ferociously attacking an unsuspecting prey.
When the nurse gently pulled his underwear, he hanged on to it with both
hands. The doctor turned away from his sharks and said with a sweet smile:
“Everything, sir.”
When he heard “sir” he thought the doctor was a former student of his, but he
could not remember his name or when he taught him. That was a trivial matter
now, and what mattered more was his humiliation, standing there completely
naked. The doctor smiled when he covered his genitalia with his hands.
What was the point behind all of this? And the military man told him it was a
matter of five minutes. The doctor motioned him to lie down on the table. The
nurse took away his watch. As he lay down, stressed, he covered his middle with
both hands. He saw two cameras hanging from the ceiling. Why two? Perhaps
one for him, the other for the doctor? He closed his eyes and recalled the military
man’s worrying about the live cameras and about talking to anyone. He was
about to cry when the doctor asked him to open his mouth and say “ah.” He
tried to avoid looking at the cameras as he wondered why would they examine
him while he was a doctor himself? The doctor was doing his routine quickly as
if he wanted to get over with it.
“Turn around.”
What a shame! Naked and flat on his belly. No problem with the doctor, but
those behind the two cameras! He was able to tell the course of the stethoscope
before it moved from one spot to the next. When he thought the exam was over
he wanted to get up and put on his clothes.
“One minute, sir.”
He felt the doctor’s finger poking at his rectum. He himself has done that to
patients, but why is it done to him here?
“That’s it, sir.”
He leapt to the floor. He wanted to speak his mind, but remembered the military
man’s warning. He headed toward his clothes, but the doctor stopped him. In no
time the nurse was helping him into a white cotton apron like the one he used to
wear, and he gave him matching pants and white rubber shoes. The nurse knelt
on the floor to help him break into the shoes.
They left the examination room and shortly stopped in front of a dark glass
panel. When it opened, the nurse asked him to step in by himself. He did, and
the glass panel closed behind him. He took a few steps in an elegant big hall and
came to another glass panel. When it opened, he found himself in a massive hall.
In the middle of the room, a man in dark green silk pajamas was laying down on
a rocking chair. He was watching a wrestling match between two giants on a
wide screen television. The reclining figure was rocking quietly, its eyes closed.
When he looked carefully at the figure and recognized it, he nearly froze. The
reclining figure continued to rock, eyes closed, features worn out. He could see
his skin color clearly--light brown with yellowish-bluish shade. In the hall’s
foreground, there was a massive bed, and behind it a floor-to-ceiling case that
had a few books on one of the top shelves, but was mostly filled with exotic
artifacts. The other side of the hall had a huge fish tank with exotic fish of all
colors and types.
He was becoming unsettled, and it was becoming harder and harder to control
his emotions. The reclining figure luckily spoke without opening his eyes.
“Is rabies contagious even without contact?”
He was not sure he understood the question. The words were clear, the voice
powerful, but what was he asking for exactly?
“I beg your pardon?” he blurted out.
The reclining figure’s eyes remained closed, and he neither looked at him, at the
clashing giants on television, or the nearby two purple fish that seemed to
exchange a long passionate kiss.
“Does the flue virus travel through the air?” the figure asked, his eyes still shut.
“It depends on the distance.”
“This same distance between us.”
“There’s a chance of possibly 10%.”
“What about rabies?”
“What about it?”
“Is it contagious without contact?”
“No.”
“Does one catch the virus because of a hand shake?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
The reclining figure opened his eyes for a second. He could see redness in the
eyes, perhaps due to some ailment or lack of sleep. One giant was dancing on the
back of his opponent, raising his hands in gleeful euphoria. The two purple fish
had disappeared in the massive tank.
The glass panel opened behind him and he heard a voice from the distance.
“This way, doctor.” He had no idea how the reclining figure communicated to
his entourage that the meeting was over.
He turned around and left.
In the examination room, he saw neither the physician nor the nurse. He put on
his clothes in a hurry. He felt an urge to cry but the presence of two cameras
stopped him. He was tying his shoestrings when the nurse came in.
“This way.”
“Where to?”
“Home.”
He stood up elated and stepped out of the room, the urge to cry still tormenting
him.

Baghdad 1999.

(1) Athan is the call for prayer. The Shafi’i is one of the four major Sunni
doctrines.

(2) For Iraqis, the name invokes names of former Iraqi president Saddam
Hussien’s relatives who had prominent official and party positions, especially his
two half brothers Barzan and Watban. “Mihkan” in Iraqi Arabic means funnel.
. The news first leaked from a synagogue in Damietta. Careful study of the numerology
of the Old Testament had unveiled a cataclysm that would strike before the week was
over, probably on Saturday. Damietta’s priests and sheikhs concurred, and the
prophecy was sealed.

As word of the impending doom spread, Layl Basal remained steadfast and went on
with her daily chores. Her sister, Sanania, was on the other hand, overcome by fear and
passion and was captivated by the quickly approaching fateful day. Her anxiety was
fueled by a recurrent dream of strange people with changing features pulling her to a
dance floor. An old woman interpreted the dream saying, "my little girl, you will face
great danger, but will be rescued from your plight."

Covering their shoulders in long scarves, Sanania and her friends joined the crowd
heading for the northern ruins. Tonight, they intended to have fun, to allow their
laughter to flow and their bodies to sway to the music. As they made their way to the
ruins, they could see rats and cats running around in panic amidst a cacophony of
barking, mewing, grunting and neighing. Snakes sprang from the bottom of the earth
and crawled their way into nearby fields and orchards. After all, weren’t these the
expected signs?

Sensual Scorpio merged with loving Venus, fuelling people’s passions and earthly
desires. In the full moon of that Saturday night, with a soft melancholic melody playing,
the dancer known as "Kitty" showed up, naked except for a long transparent scarf. With
her right arm twisted into the shape of an Egyptian cobra, the belly dancer's slim body
swayed to a spontaneous tide, her scarf gliding over its every rise and ebb.

The crowds stretched their arms begging to touch her body, or at least, to touch the air
in her vicinity. Kitty summoned all the girls to join her. In the moonlight, they were all
transformed into houri nymphs. The men tied up their turbans and sprung into the
wild dance of Dervishes.

The Gypsies took advantage of this golden opportunity to sell opium, hashish, local
liquor and Salonika wine. One Gypsy woman asked, "what use will the money we
collect now be to us. Isn’t Doomsday at hand?"

"For the first and last time," her fellows responded, "we will enjoy money for its own
comfort and warmth, not for the commodities it may purchase."

In a humanly cynical moment, a number of deformed figures emerged out of nowhere.

Each showed off his physical impairment; a hump, a paunch, a wide toothless mouth or
a shiny bald head. Together, they produced and an assortment of diabolical sounds
coming from every crevice in their bodies. They gained acceptance, admiration and the
appreciation of the crowd, so they accepted themselves in the knowledge that they were
bestowed individual and unique bodies. In the revelation that they were a special
constituent of the body of the universe together with the earth, rivers, trees and other
people.

Among the ruins, people abandoned their reserve and social decency, not knowing if
they were liberating themselves of their inhibitions for a few hours, only to later restore
their composure and regain their ordinary lives, or if this was indeed, the last scene.

Then, the crowd fell silent as Kitty reappeared in a short gown covering huge buttocks
despite her slim body. She walked across the stage in a trained poise. People started
laughing after each of her elegant steps, infected by the vibrations and waves of joy that
reverberated through her body.

A woman with a frown on her masculine features went up to Kitty and presented her
with a beaver fur, the Sultan's robe of honor, thus mocking the Sultan himself and
decrying his injustice. In the prevailing jovial spirit a man mockingly asked the woman:

"Brother! Where did you get that fur?"

Without responding, the woman removed her present from the dancer's shoulders and
replaced the beaver fur with a heavy crown of lighted candles, which she carefully
balanced on Kitty's head.

Kitty performed a new dance with astonishing poise. As molten wax dropped from the
candles onto her huge buttocks, she jumped in acrobatic moves. The audience
drunkenly applauded her when she plunged her arm behind her dancing dress and
pulled away her artificial buttocks.

On the other side of the ruins, witches held rituals in front of a number of sheep before
butchering them, for the last and most delicious roast in the world.

Everyone engaged to enjoy themselves to the full, wishing that the sky would rain
pretty women.

At Basil’s home Ghaith Eldin was reading from the Quran, and his twin brother Layth
Eldin was proclaiming to God his repentance, solemnly vowing to abandon piracy in
the Roman Sea. It would have been safe, however, to predict that this would not
happen.

As Kitty's performance of a variety of dances came to an end, a moment of stillness

passed before the eruption of church bells. The crowds around the ruins were taken by
surprise. Everyone was aware that the Sultan had forbidden the ringing of bells. Maybe
they rang them today because there is no sultan on Doomsday!!
Then, the earth shook and the houses twisted. Was this the earthquake of Doomsday?
Those who got tired of waiting for the day to end, and chose to stay at home, will never
know what happened in the ruins because they slept forever. Only the houses in the
poor narrow lanes were spared and remained intact as they clung to each other.

As the aftershocks followed, the earth around the ruins subsided and water gushed up
from the bowels of the earth. From now on, children would call this spot the “Arabian
Jasmine Island”.

A paradoxical feeling of ecstasy, fear and comfort spread among the people at the ruins.
They were safe.

The ceramist, a wanderer just arrived from the south, at this moment, gave up his
loneliness and cold heart. Intuitively, he gazed into the darkness, searching for the
source of a voice, not a soft one, but a deep voice betraying sensuality and the pure
desire of Eros. The voice rang out again, but it was frightened this time. Briskly, he
came to face her. His body a dam, prevented her from slipping away like a fish.

Sanania, paralyzed, surrendered to him.

Meanwhile, the Sufi women said their prayers and discussed the secrets of God’s love
as depicted in the biographies of the great Sufi women.

Having finished her prayers, Layl sat down in the back yard of her family house and
tended to the okra cooking in the earthen pot. She thought to herself that even as the
hour of Doomsday approached, the body had pressing needs to satisfy; eating, drinking
and urinating. This simple woman dismissed with a casual wave of her little hand the
specter of distress; thinking that succumbing to fear can never be an amulet against
catastrophe.

Overnight, underneath the feverish lovers’ bodies, hundreds of Arabian Jasmines were
blooming, their dizzying scent spreading out for miles.

The sun finally arose on the first day after Doomsday. The people at the ruins woke up
satisfied, but after a while they felt ashamed of what they had engaged in, the very orgy
they had longed for.

The Nile waters surrounding the area were shallow, allowing the group to wade across
with caution. Only Sanania crawled on all four, pulling behind her the genius artist
with whom she had made love all night.

It had been a sterile night which bred silence, alienation, sleeplessness and the scent of
Arabian jasmine which wafted around Damietta for a whole lunar month.

Before the next full moon, Sanania and the ceramist were married. The water around
Arabian Jasmine Island became deeper and deeper. Adults ignored the spot and
children forgot it. With the years' passing and a flood following another, the Nile finally
submerged the Arabian Jasmine Island and it has since, disappeared forever. Nagwa
Shaaban
A Piece inspired by Nagwa Shaaban's novel "the Karm Gale"

******

Suspense.
In the past few months, Gamila's life has known an unexpected but welcome
feeling. And Yassine is, of course, at the centre of it all. It is as though her long
years of silent desolation have suddenly come to an end. Like a sentence served
or a long fast broken. An awakening of her blunted senses. From now on things
will happen. Unlike her mother’s slow fading away, sad but almost
imperceptible. Unlike her grandmother's low-intensity abuse, annoying yet
totally monotonous. Even unlike her yearning for Yassine, unpronounced and
unfulfilled. At last, things started to happen, events to unfold. And, though
somewhat predictable, the chain of events still take her by surprise.
These last few months her heart has throbbed and the blood rushed through her
veins as never before. For the first time, she has felt like imitating the little boys
she used to watch jumping into the air, making a full summersault, and, with a
dull thump, falling on their backs on the sand.
It started when Yassine, accompanied by the elders of his family and village,
paid her father a visit. It was a delicate situation since, naturally, it was out of the
question for Yassine's elders to name one of their host's daughters as the bride
they sought for their young suitor. They simply stated that they sought the honor
of strengthening the ties between the two clans. If he accepted, which was in no
way assured, it would be up to the father to choose which of his daughters he
would give away. If custom were to be observed it would be Aisha, the eldest.
Gamila’s father did not respond immediately, he needed time to think and
consult with his own clan. But as soon as the guests were out of the house, her
grandmother confronted her son with her furious rejection. A Sayed's daughter
must only be given to another Sayed. Had he forgotten that his lineage was
traceable across eighty generations to the Prophet, Allah’s prayers and
salutations be upon him? Had he forgotten that noble blood must be passed on at
all costs?
In her desperation, Gamila found no option but to confess her love to her
grandmother a few days later, and take whatever vengeance the tyrant, her
cousin Sondos and she had so often made fun of, could throw at her.
"Have you disgraced your father, daughter of the cursed one?" Snapped the old
woman.
"I have done nothing to shame my father."
"From the first day your father wed that woman, I knew he was finished. She
was touched by the jin, I could see their cold fire looking out of her eyes. I told
him to give her back to her clan, that she would only beget him burdens. But he
would not listen. Maybe he, too, was touched, to hold on to a woman who foams
at the mouth and begets only daughters."
Gamila could not believe her ears. Her mother had been the purest person she
had ever encountered. She had never heard anyone describe her in such base
terms. People had always referred to her as a very special person, an angel of
sorts.
"Maybe she cast a spell on him." the old woman's protruding chin floated
sideways as her toothless mouth spoke, like a camel chewing. The three tattooed
lines on her chin got more and more pronounced year after year. Three or four
long white hairs, growing between the tattoos, gave her a witch-like appearance.
Gamila had to control her urge to pluck them.
"My mother was no witch." A lump sat heavily in Gamila's throat.
Her mother had smelt like death, and there was death in her eyes. As a living
being, she was incomplete. Only in death was she at last whole. She may have
been a spirit, but certainly no witch.
"I have always suspected that you too, have inherited her evil ways."
"She was a pure soul, so far above the likes of you. You old hag, full of venom
like a scorpion." The girl could no longer control her anger.
"You devil, daughter of a witch, sister of Shaitan. For your insolence you will pay
dearly." The old woman was shuddering violently. Her face was a dark violet,
and her eyes were the blackest Gamila had ever seen them. As the door slammed
shut behind her, Gamila could do nothing but await her grandmother's dire
vengeance.
But her agony was short lived. The old woman must have overplayed her hand,
for Sondos read her a favorable coffee cup, and the following day her father
summoned the head of Yassine's clan to inform him that he had decided to give
them Gamila, his youngest daughter.
Gamila had showered her two sisters and Sondos with kisses, she wanted to kiss
her coffee cup and even the old falcon tied to its T-shaped stick in the yard. The
grandmother, her face still black and blue, proclaimed in subdued tones that the
wicked girl had received her just punishment, as she alone among her sisters was
to be given to a commoner.
Nevertheless, Gamila's impatience grew by the day. She could not wait for the
wedding to take place. Marrying Yassine would be the only meaningful act of
her sixteen years, and the old hag was lurking in the shadows, waiting for a
chance to demolish her happiness.
Then, this strange caravan appeared from the desert, to provide a thousand
possibilities for disaster. To redouble Gamila's malaise.
And exacerbate that burning in her gut called suspense.
*****
Like a cactus from hell, Gamila's impatience is growing by the minute. Her left
eye has been twitching for the past few days. A sure sign of impending disaster.
The twitching started a full sun and moon before the strange caravan appeared
out of the horizon. Since then, three days have passed and her fatigued eyelid
has not stopped flickering. Even during her restless nights her eye’s light kept
turning on and off, like a procession of night clouds obscuring a pregnant moon.
Caravans, purveyors of sensuous Omani scents, mouth-watering Abyssinian
spices and the bright silks of Serendib, are also known to transport the green gin
who has escaped from the night of all nights. A black cloud had overseen this
caravan’s slow progress across the Sahara. All the waterholes it had encountered
had turned sour, one-eyed Hawari, the caravan's guide, had sworn. And the
mysterious silver camel had been repeatedly witnessed around its campsites.
Nothing short of catastrophe can be expected. Gamila’s twitch can only confirm
this terrible prophecy. Let fate’s blow come, she challenges. Anything, so long as
it comes swiftly. Anything, just to relieve the agony.
Sondos, as usual, has come to her rescue. The two girls sit cross legged on their
small hassira just before the azan called the faithful to the sunset prayers. It is
their favorite hideout at the edge of the sandy cliff. Their isolated knoll,
unnoticed from either plateau or valley, which provides an imagined sanctuary
for both girls and scorpions.
The sun's glare has mellowed and the wide flat wadi is a mirage of paradise,
lying there just below their bare knees.
“Let us listen to the scorpions,” she says. For the first time, it is Gamila who begs
Sondos to perform her trick. They have never found a suitable name for their
game.
It is Sondos who taught Gamila the wisdom inherent in all scorpions. Her wild
cousin has, of course, accumulated a wealth of knowledge and expertise reserved
for the chosen few. After all, who else confers with the likes of cross-eyed Khadra
who lies on her belly for hours conversing with the ants, or the old woman from
Tolab who speaks in different voices and throws stones at the sneering boys, or
Zakia whose back, it is whispered, is covered with reptilian scales? After some
hesitation, Sondos acquiesces to Gamila’s request.
Sondos stands up and takes a few steps closer to the edge. Deliberately, she
overturns a loose stone, uncovering a scorpion’s lair. With a practiced eye, she
contemplates the three or four scorpions as, alarmed, they scatter in different
directions with their tails menacingly high above their heads. She hums as if she
were playing a game of chance with the little brutes, or simply studying their
personalities.
Her selection made, with lightning speed she picks up the chosen scorpion by the
tail. The creature lashes out in terror, but in vain. Held by the girl’s firm fingers
just beyond the sting, the potential killer acquiesces, suddenly no more
 threatening than a locust.
Gamila cannot bear the idea of losing her best friend. She wrinkles her cheeks to
ensure that her eyes are kept firmly shut, lest they slide open in distraction or out
of curiosity. She drifts to that moonless night, when just before dawn she awoke
to a hushed commotion. The women’s subdued gasps, and hurried footsteps
were more alarming than the social shrieks and wailing that would come later.
The sight of her relatives with swollen eyes and faces covered in black nila, told
Gamila what she already knew. It was an ugly, physically repulsive affair. Death.
But not the earth shattering event she had been led to assume.
And then there was the loss. The sense of irreplaceable loss. Her mother had
passed and she was lefty alone with her helplessness.
She remains sightless until Sondos’ teasing prompts her to reopen, in time for the
coup de grace. With a quick twist her friend chips off the tail's tip and holds the
scorpion head up. Mesmerized, the two virgins watch the venom droplets as, like
a man’s unwanted seed, they drip onto the sand.
Sondos then wombs the wretched creature in her cupped palm, raises it to her
left ear, then to Gamila's and intently, they listen.
To the scorpion's whisper.

By M.M. Tawfik
Offshoots VII - Geneva 2003
From a novel in progress about a desert expedition in the early 20th century

"MY husband is mine

to do with as I please,

to wash and to iron,

to crumple and to crease..."

I can still hear Shoosho's girlish song, which takes me back to those days, when
marriage for us was just another word, light years away from our earth, in a dream-like
galaxy inhabited by illusion, fantasy, poetry and romance. Her laughter still resonates
in my ears, as in pursuit of her girlish song it fills the house with its magical music and
impregnates my heart with uncomfortable combinations of joy and premonition,
ecstasy and hesitation, admiration and jealousy. In short, throwing my soul into total
disarray and turning my world upside down with just one of her carefree giggles.

That was the effect Shoosho had on everyone, then.

As darkness approaches, our uncertain mirth has dissipated and silence engulfs the car
as it speeds towards Cairo, home and bed. The roar of the laboring engine prevails,
insulating us from one another. A lonely island surrounded from all sides by a mighty
ocean of monotonous mechanical noise.

Shoosho sits next to me rocking in silence. Her plump body gently moves back and
forth. Her beautiful black hair has preserved its magical shine, but her cheeks are
bloated and her rose petal complexion has lost a pink blush color that painted a lasting
expression of joy on her face. A violet-brown bruise covers part of her right cheek, just
under the eye, forever erasing any remnant memory of how it used to be.

But when did this glutinous mass of flesh replace that delicate romantic figure which so
aroused our admiration and envy?

It must have been sudden, the change, although it occurred over a number of years.
Anyway, who could have ever imagined that this is how Shoosho would look like,
before she even turned thirty?

Maybe she has fallen asleep. It has been a long time since I heard your wild giggle,
kitten. Has it wilted away? Evaporated into thin air? Was it smothered or simply chased
away by that new more dignified laugh, the less daring one you use these days? Or is it
still there, hidden away in a safe part of your heart, where you shield it from others and
from yourself?

Quite an agreeable day at Momtaz's desert farm. The kids chose instead to go camping
with Mostafa in Sokhna. A male scheme with no place for me. Such a cruel desert with
sharp-edged rocks, its color a harsh red that burdens the eye. Its sea teeming with
ferocious sharks and blade sharp corals silently lurking beneath the waves.

So different from Momtaz's white desert of gentle sands, now gliding away on either
side of us like an enchanted flying carpet that has neither beginning nor end. Distant
from the sea, yet rolling in her very own waves. A desert laden with femininity. Cruel
in her rebellion but capable of giving boundlessly. Willing to sacrifice to the extent of
jeopardizing her own identity. If only she would receive the attention she deserves and
the tenderness she yearns for.

It is indeed a great feat that Momtaz is accomplishing by turning the desert into a green
heaven, selflessly rewarding everyone with her opulence. Yet the transformation is not
without a profound sadness.

"Leave the desert to the rats and the lizards!" Retorted Fatma when Momtaz broke the
news. Without telling her beforehand, he had applied for a lot of desert land to farm.
She was angry, but the choice she was left with was either to jump onto the bandwagon
or forever stay behind.

Fatma's head sways with the car's motion. Her dyed blond hair has been cast by the
heat and minute sand particles into a shape somewhere in between a pyramid and a
truncated cone. A visit to Antoine, the hairdresser, will no doubt be on the top of her
list.

I thought I would miss the kids today, but frankly, I enjoyed above all a delightful
solitude. A rare rendez vouz with one's self. Among the sand dunes, my present
problems seemed to fade away. Memories took over and even old miseries brought a
faint smile to my lips...

Suddenly we come to!

An explosion! The squeal of tires on asphalt. The car loses its balance and the world
shakes violently around me. Momtaz's swearing comes out in screams.

Then, the sounds die out. The vibrations stop and matters take a different, more
composed perspective. And the day ends in silence as it started in resounding
laughter...

"With the broads I'm stuck,

the others are having fun,

and I'm out of luck

'cause there's no where to run,

from the broads, from the broads."

Momtaz finds tunes for his words, as if life were nothing but a big song.

Three women and a man merrily heading towards a so-called farm in the middle of the
desert. Each is looking for a dream, or at least a moment of serenity, a breath of fresh air
away from the crowd and the noise. Away from Cairo, which engulfs us like a chronic
disease that, we carry wherever we go.

We're there.

Out of the car we rush in joy and anticipation. Momtaz immediately indulges in his
farm chores. The clean air takes me back to my college excursions. I always took Fatma
and Shoosho along. These were usually one-day trips organized by the faculty of
engineering, to Kanater , Sakkara or Fayoum. My two sisters were still in high school,
and thus through me they had an almost full taste of the beautifully rebellious
university life. I later relived it through them when Fatma, and a year later Shoosho,
enrolled in the faculty of arts. I had graduated by then and was shedding my
spontaneity in the whirlpool of reality.

Fatma has brought a pot of stuffed vine leaves and a dish of roast lamb and potatoes,
which she warms over a little gas stove. She and Shoosho have started to make the
salad when I enter the living space used as kitchen, dining room and living room, in
this tiny cottage. I cannot resist uncovering the vine leaves, stealthily tasting one
followed by another then a third and a fourth, until Fatma bursts out laughing:

"Slow down, Chief Engineer. Slow down, dear. Lunch will be ready in five minutes."

"Fatma, how can you explain the fact that you are the only one of us three to inherit
mother's cooking talent, despite the fact that you are the slimmest, and as far as I know
the least of us to enjoy a good meal?"

A statement I utter with my mouth full, and my hands busy stealing even more rolls of
vine leaves. My only intention was to prolong the conversation so as to grab some extra
rolls, but the bitterness of Fatma's response takes me by surprise:

"One of you was blessed with all the beauty, the other landed all the brains, and
frankly, luck and success, so why do you grudge me my modest gift of cooking what I
don't even enjoy eating?"

Shoosho lets out a short nervous laugh, which reminds me that she has not uttered a
word since morning. With a confused mind and a full mouth, I stand there, simply
unable to say anything.

After a quick lunch punctuated by an interrupted, sometimes unintelligible,

conversation, Momtaz sets off to the workshop. Then he heads for his young palm trees,
barely showing their tops from the ditches they are planted in. He carries a wooden
plank in one hand and a huge hammer in the other. Around the arm carrying the
hammer he wears a roll of steel wire like an oversized bracelet. Intentionally, he passes
in front of the terrace where we are leisurely sipping tea, and looks at us with apparent
disinterest, adding, without actually addressing us:

"The broads, the broads,

the broads, the broads..."

"Would you like a cup of tea?" I offer him out of habit.

Fatma nods slowly. A vague grimace on her full lips is partly camouflaged by the thick
layer of violet lipstick. With shifting eyes, she follows her husband's pronounced
silhouette, until it disappears amidst his palm trees.

"Let him be," she says, "over here he is an overgrown child playing in the sand and
building castles. He forgets himself here. He forgets everything."

I hardly miss the sarcasm in her words, but I don't really care to pursue the matter. My
eyes roam the sea of sand and palms until they focus on the point where Momtaz has
disappeared.

I peek at Fatma with the corner of my eye. Her gaze is also fixed on Momtaz's vanishing
point, as if his absence added a certain appeal to an existence that fails to generate the
least interest.

"What then is the job of the Lady of the farm, or to put it better Mrs. Fellah?"

A provocative question on my part, but her extreme idleness irritates me.

"It's no business of mine."

A predictable answer, Fatma. Everything you ever said was predictable, my dear.
You're dull, to put it simply.

"He should be thankful that I accept to waste my days in this dump, while my friends
enjoy their time at the club, in the company of civilized people."

After an uneasy silence, Fatma picks up a magazine that was lying on the table. Idly,
she turns the pages, looking only at the pictures. But that's okay, the things they write in
those magazines induce stupidity and you, my dear Fatma, already have your fill of
that.

As for Shoosho, she is still playing the role of Rodin's 'The Thinker' and quite well too,
except her palm is on her right cheek, instead of under the chin. An unconscious
attempt, perhaps, to hide her bruise. This bruise business sends a chill through my
body. A subject I avoid, if I can. It irritates me. I shout in her face 'You're crazy!' She
answers meekly: 'Perhaps. But what about the children?' Then I always end up venting
my anger on poor Shoosho. Definitely a matter that is best left alone.

Fatma closes her magazine in boredom. I wait for her to put it down. I could do with a
dose of its gossip myself. Before letting go of the magazine, the picture at the back of its
cover attracts her attention. She takes her time studying it. I'm growing a little
impatient. Her gaze is lost in the picture. What is it, I wonder that has grasped her
attention to this extent?
I come closer to Fatma, until I find myself sitting on the edge of her bamboo chair. The
page attracting all this attention is merely a cigarette advertisement. The chair is
unstable under me, so I lean on Fatma's shoulder for support.

"Hey girls, let me join in."

A huskiness in Shoosho's voice. She is making an effort to sound youthful. I had

completely forgotten Shoosho was next to us.

"What's the matter with you girls? It's just another ad. Obviously nothing worth all this
attention. None of us even smokes." Words that pass through my mind, but my eyes are
still glued to the photograph.

"Where in the world is this beach?" Asks Shoosho eagerly. "I'll jump on the first boat
going there."

"It must be an island in the Caribbean," whispers Fatma as if to herself, " look how clear
the water is, and the soft white sand and coconut palms almost reaching up to the
ocean. Sometimes, I find it hard to believe that such beautiful spots actually exist in the
same world that I live in."

"Even if you found the beach, where would you get a guy like that?" Notes Shoosho
softly, "look at those biceps, and the blue eyes so confident and tender. There's a man
worthy of a woman's love, a man worth dying for."

"What's all this talk, girls? Have you forgotten that our men are the handsomest money
can buy?" I interrupt slyly, "Momtaz with his enormous belly, Mostafa with his shiny
bald head and the Lady's husband whose name will never cross my lips."

Shoosho is silent, but Fatma giggles, adding:

"Besides, such a man would never pay attention to any of us ugly ducklings. Look at the
gorgeous creature holding his hand, and her eyes, romantic yet bold. She was definitely
not raised in the house of Ismail Elkattan, the respectable under secretary. Nor was she
taught the fundamentals of proper feminine behavior by Mother, God rest her soul,
who was known as the pilgrim although she has never visited the House of God or
even left our neighborhood."

Fatma stops for a moment. Her eyes lose their previous concentration on the picture.
Perhaps memory has taken her back to our late mother but she quickly takes a hold of
herself. She turns back to the girl in the ad as if seeing her for the first time:

"Look at her dress wet with the ocean spray, pressed against her thighs by the island
breeze, revealing her glorious figure. Which one of us would dare behave that way?"
Fatma looks at me, then at Shoosho. Maybe she is looking for an answer to her question
in our faces. She soon loses hope and resumes:

"Besides, what do you expect to happen in the next shot? A girl bursting with beauty
and desire. A man whose heart and soul have been captivated by her charm. The entire
beach is only theirs. The waves are playing a wild sensuous tune, just for them. The
sand, underneath their feet, spreads into a boundless bed, gushing with tenderness and
warmth, and the youthful ocean breeze caresses their bodies, arousing their emotions
and lighting their fire."

"You mean...?"

Shoosho's question stops short. Her voice gets stuck in her throat, perhaps by a
succession of queries that crop up at the same time. No sooner does she starts uttering
one, than the other closely catches up. Only a few of her queries manage to escape:

"Just Like that, in the open...?"

"Wouldn't she worry that someone might see her...?"

"Doesn't it scare her that a crab could bite her in the behind...?"

We all join in one big laugh. Then Shoosho continues:

"She has no shame. No doubt about it."

Our giggles tear through the farm, shaking the endless rows of palms, the frail
watermelon bushes, Momtaz's workshop full of nails and scrap metal, the abandoned
pigeon-house, the watchman's three wretched dogs, Momtaz's Lada parked outside the
cottage, and Momtaz himself, singing in the middle of the sands. And we don't stop
laughing until all three of us are on the floor with tears running down our cheeks...

Before we realize what has hit us, Momtaz has stopped the car by the side of the road.

Thank God we're safe. But what has happened?

Momtaz leans on the steering wheel. A long lock of hair from the side of his head,
which he usually spreads carefully across his scalp, hangs to one side revealing his
baldness. Shoosho, awakened from her rosy dreams by the panic, is sobbing, silently.
As for Fatma, her hands are busy in a fruitless attempt at adjusting her hair. How cold
you are.

"Is everyone all right?" I need to set my mind at ease.

"Yes, thank God." Answers Fatma, while Shoosho wipes her tears and wonders:

"What happened?"

"An ominous day right from the start," whispers Momtaz after his voice regains its
outward calm.

Then he goes out of the car, turns to the its right side, and stands with his hands to his
waist. It is difficult to discern his features in the reddish rays of the setting sun. He nods
then gets back inside he car.

"We've blown a tire."

I am not sure whether he means to inform us or if he is just talking to himself. He

moves the stick shift into gear then goes out again. He opens the boot, then stops
outside Fatma's window.

She rolls down the glass. Her dyed blond hair flies in a crazy dance with the incoming
draught. I catch myself envying her for the first time in my life. In the past, I used to
scorn women who dyed their hair --let alone those who chose Fatma's fake imported
blond-- but suddenly, it occurs to me that Fatma has been spared, thanks to her dyed
hair, from my present suffering. Strange. Could it be that my principles are eroding
with every new white hair that appears on my head?

Momtaz puts the car keys in Fatma's palm:

"Hold on to them, we wouldn't want to lose them in the sand."

He turns his back to us and sets off towards the desert.

"What's happening? Is the man going to abandon us three damsels in distress in the
middle of the desert? Will he leave us at the mercy of the monsters and the bandits?" As
if Fatma's sarcastic tone held a real worry.

"Bandits. Where? How welcome they are to our virtue. At least we would get to meet
some real men for a change. Just point to where those bandits are hiding. I'll kidnap
them myself."

Shoosho's melodious childish voice gives way to her naive naughty laughter, for the
first time in ages. As if the near accident's shock had set her free from the past seven
years' depression.

A broad smile fills my heart. How I longed to hear that laughter. Fatma, on the other
hand, is cackling in a rather exaggerated manner, which leaves me uneasy.
Actually, Fatma has been like this all day. I have tried hard to forget her weird
comment, but how can I ignore the fact that Fatma is the only one of us not to have
borne any children. As if this were a matter we can be held responsible for. As if I,
personally, were at fault for her biological shortcomings. An irrational sense of guilt,
which is my only inheritance from Mother. An indefatigable sensation, ceaselessly
buzzing in my head, which knows no sleep at night.

"What's the matter, Fatma?"

My question surprises her.

"Nothing."

"There is more to it than your usual hatred of the farm," intervenes Shoosho. " Admit it."

"On the contrary. You may find it hard to believe, but I have become more attached to
the farm than even Momtaz. I swear it. It's the truth. I'm still convinced, though, that it'll
bring us nothing but ruin, but the farm has become a major part of my life. But you're
right, anyway. It's more than just the farm."

Fatma stops. Her eyes search for Momtaz who has walked to the top of a sand dune a
hundred meters away. She rolls down her window.

"Roll up your windows. The desert wind carries sound farther than you think."

Her features are strained. The words flow freely. All along, her self-control was just
hanging by a straw. Now it has collapsed, and she reveals what no eye should have
seen and no ear should have heard. All morning she must have been waiting for a
chance to pour her feelings out, but courage failed her, while each of us floated in her
own universe, oblivious to her pleading looks and silent cries for help.

"His Royal Highness is having an affair."

"The son of a bitch!" Retorts Shoosho with instant impetuosity.

I'm not sure why Momtaz's form, arrogantly facing the endless ocean that is the desert,
urinating into its horizon, and perhaps singing faintly: "The broads, the broads,"
reminds me of the girl in the advertisement who makes love to her man on a sandy
beach by the ocean.

Maybe that is because both of them generate in me such a sweeping incomprehensible

anger.
On my first visit to the farm, I eagerly asked Momtaz about the profits it brought him.
In evident embarrassment, he explained that the project was still in its initial stages and
that these things do not happen overnight. I went on in a senseless persistence:

"So when exactly will the project become profitable?"

"Well, not for a while."

I pressed even further. He says Allah will improve matters. He says all depends on the
will of Allah. He fidgets. He grumbles. He digs his boots in the sand, but all in vain. I
am adamant for a precise answer. Unyielding, I fire my questions like cruise missiles.
Finally cornered, he submits:

"I don't know. It might take a hundred years, it might take five hundred. I just don't
know."

Never have I seen Momtaz as disheartened as he was that day. I believe it was the last
time I managed a serious conversation with him.

"Are you sure?" I ask Fatma in an attempt to deal rationally with the issue.

"I'm afraid so."

"How did you find out?"

Fatma chuckles nervously:

"Well, some women, the bright ones, discover these things by intuition. Others, the
lucky ones, find out by mere coincidence. As for me, I found out that my husband is
cheating on me through sheer stupidity."

She laughs again. Shoosho joins her this time, but only until the look on my face
reminds her that this is no laughing matter.

"The mistress told me herself."

"What are you saying?"

"Just as I tell you. One day, the phone rang. I had just come back from work and was
busy preparing lunch for Momtaz. You know how he hates not to find his food ready
when he returns from the bank..."

"That's how they all are. Care about nothing but their bellies," interrupts Shoosho.
"Anyway. The phone rings and this woman explains how she and Moozo have been
having an affair for over a year, and that their love is the purest and most intimate ever
known to humanity. Then, she has the nerve to tell me that Moozo has only found
happiness with her."

"Moozo?" Shoosho interrupts angrily. "The bitch!"

"I thought at first that it was just a bad joke, a prank like the kids play these days. I was
about to hang up when she started telling intimate details only known to Momtaz and
myself. When she realized that she had me, she burst out laughing and added that I
should understand that Moozo keeps nothing from her."

"Moozo, the son of a bitch," interrupts Shoosho again.

"Anyway, I found out that Mr. Moozo has been having an affair with the lady for over
two years, and I, in my sheer stupidity..."

"The sons of bitches," interrupts Shoosho for the tenth time. I turn to her and try to
throw some light on the matter:

"My dear Shoosho, even when people choose to utter obscenities, it is still advisable to
have some kind of variety, and thankfully the Arabic vocabulary is abundant in such
words."

Shoosho is about to say something. The first syllables are about to take shape on her
lips, but before the words are set free she screams in panic. A short shrill cry that soon
freezes in her heart. To my right, I spot Momtaz silently watching us through the glass
window.

"Lock your doors. Quick." Shoosho whispers anxiously. Spontaneously, I obey. Fatma
locks Momtaz's door as well as her own.

"What's the matter with you, Shoosho?"

Her face, drained of color, is convoluted as if she had seen death with her own eyes.
Her face seems to have grown smaller as the bruise on her cheek has broadened until it
almost covers its right side. She bites her lip and lowers her eyes to avoid our
scrutinizing stares. She finds nothing to say.

"Don't be frightened, silly. It's only Momtaz, not what's his name. In spite of being
scum, I'm sure he's not capable of acting in an uncivilized way."

No sooner has Fatma spoken than signs of doubt show on her face. As if her words
instead of reassuring Shoosho had awakened hidden fears in her own heart.
Momtaz taps on the window. We had forgotten, for a moment, his presence. A look of
astonishment is on his face. No. An expression of imbecility, to be more precise.

"The Ladies may wish to step out of the car for a moment while I change the tire... That
is, of course, if it doesn't inconvenience the Ladies in any way."

For some reason, I have never made up my mind all these years, whether to consider
Momtaz a villain or a comedian. That may partly be because his facial expressions never
coincide with what the situation calls for; smiles that reveal no happiness and singing
devoid of emotion. As if he were embarrassed by the whole messy business that is his
life.

"No. No, don't open. Please, I beg you..." pleads Shoosho, faintly.

"Don't be frightened, kitten." I take her in my arms like I used to when she was the most
beautiful and delicate child in the world.

"Just get on with it, Momtaz. Get on with it, man." Fatma impatiently gestures to
Momtaz as she does to the little peddlers who sell lemons and boxes of tissue paper in
traffic lights.

Momtaz seems to lose hope of reasoning with us. He walks away talking loudly, but as
usual to no one in particular:

"What punishment does the poor jack deserve to have to lift these elephants?"

It crosses my mind that the only one who fits this description is Shoosho. How
treacherous the world can be.

Shoosho remains in my arms for a few silent minutes. My side of the car starts rising.
Shoosho looks up at Fatma and myself from her low side of the car. We seem like giants
to her. As if time has taken her back to being a happy little pampered child again.

She looks towards us but her eyes are drifting in distant space. Who can tell what is
going on inside her head or where her imagination has taken her?

We can hear Momtaz chanting his cheerful yet melancholic song:

"The broads, the broads,

the broads, the broads...."

In silence, we sit, inclined to one side. Surrounded. Imprisoned. Awaiting the car to
return to its horizontal state. It seems like Momtaz's senseless song has raised the car
and will just as well bring it down.

"Well, Fatma, what did you do when you found out?" Asks Shoosho suddenly, as if the
conversation had not been interrupted.

"Oh! I've thought about it a lot. I pictured myself catching them red-handed and just
looking them over with disdain. I elaborated fiendish schemes in which they end up
drugged and tied up, and I'm free to torture them in ways only I can devise. I dreamed
up all sorts of plans, but when it was time to act, I did nothing."

Shoosho does not offer any reaction. there is sadness in her eyes. As for me, well
frankly, I am confused by Fatma's story.

"But Fatma, all this doesn't make sense. Why would your husband's lover phone you
just to let you know what's going on between them?"

Fatma returns my perplexed look with one that is even more confused. A sense of
confusion engulfs the car. Each of us ponders on the unexplained events in her life. To
our surprise, Shoosho's voice is clear and self-assured:

"Little do we understand what's happening to us. We can't believe what people are
doing to themselves and to us. We get confused for a while, then we retreat into our
shells, we don't even have the courage to complain..."

With every one of Shoosho's deliberately spoken words she rises. Her features fade in
the shadows as if her bruise has spread to cover all her face. Then the car is back to its
horizontal state, and darkness claims its postponed control over the desert and us.

Momtaz's face shows up in the dark at the driver's window. He sticks his nose on the
glass. An irregular circle of vapor spreads until it hides his features. Momtaz seems like
a ghost lost in the desert.

"We are truly phantoms. We live in a world long gone never to return. We do not
understand or accept the world we were born into. Poor souls. Lost in time and blinded
by illusions."

Shoosho's words pick up the rhythm of Momtaz's nervous tapping on the window, as if
the two of them, each in their own way, were playing a common tune, composed by
their agony. Momtaz cries out at the top of his voice, still singing to the same tune:

"Unlock the door, you crazy women!"

Nobody moves. It occurs to no one to respond to him. Shoosho picks up where she has
left, in a clear rhythmic voice:

"They beat us up, humiliate us, yet we still believe it's our own fault... That's the way we
were brought up. That's the way we shall die."

"Unlock the door or I'll break the damn window."

His words go unheeded. He picks up a rock and lifts it in the air, only to discover that
he cannot bring himself to smash the glass. Quivering in anger, he dashes around the
car, and still holding the rock above his head, he screams:

"The broads, the broads..."

Instinctively Shoosho chants:

"The fox whirls, and whirls..."

Unconsciously, I join in, together with Fatma:

"And his tail has seven twirls."

The anger grows. Momtaz's rotations around the car gather speed, while our chant
grows louder.

"The fox whirls, and whirls...

and his tail has seven twirls."

The rage spreads in waves. I realize that Momtaz is about to smash the glass and
pounce on us, yet Strangely enough, the prospect does not scare me any more. On the
contrary, I find myself looking forward to the confrontation. Yearning for him to
pounce on us, and us on him.

Our fury develops to a maddening rhythm. Breaking free of my control, the cries escape
my throat:

"Moozo whirls, and whirls...

his tail has seven twirls."

The outburst lasts for a period of time, my mind cannot determine. It might have taken
several seconds; it might have been hours.
Until, for no particular reason, I find myself feeling sorry for Momtaz, for Fatma and for
Shoosho. I even feel sorry for Shoosho's husband, whose name will never cross my lips
until the day I die. My pity for each of them has its reasons. But above all I grieve for
myself, with no good cause, at least none I can announce to the world. They all have
their excuses while I have none.

"Now stop fooling around girls."

Everything comes to a standstill. A simple sentence that I uttered, unaware of its

magical effect. Out of breath, the three of us suddenly look at one another, in silence
and bewilderment.

Everything goes back to normal. The door is unlocked. Momtaz holds the steering
wheel. The car speeds towards Cairo and silence sets in, engulfing all... But the image of
that girl in the ad, so beautiful and so bold, passionately making love to her man on the
ocean beach,will just not leave me alone.

The following story " Sex on the Beach " is from a collection written by M.M.Tawfik and
translated by A. Amin entitled
"The Day the Moon Fell

by Ali Tal

Eventually, Saturday was born from the darkness of its night and the city of Irbed
began to stir from its state of slumber to another flaming, blue summer's day. To the
sides of the north, extending into the azurean haze of dawn, was Mount Hermon; a
wall of snow built across the upper slopes of the Golan Heights. They stood tall and
fast shielding the brown plateau of Hawran from the marauding ships sailing the
roaring White Sea. Extending eastward the flat plains of Hawran met the Syrian desert
in a perpetual skirmish of life and death between the fertile fields and the arid sands.
Westward, at the edge end of the brown plateau was Irbed, sitting precariously at the
tip of the Jordan Gorge and spreading southward to the feet of the Ajlon Mountains.
When the city's inharmonious calls of muezzins broadcaste over loudspeakers from
various minarets and rooftops of mosques broke the silence, beckoning the faithful to
rise to the Fajr prayer, Wedad deeply sighed a morning hallel with relief, praising the
first glow of daylight on her bed. Although she had hardly slept a wink, nonetheless,
she felt fresh and wide-awake, eager to face up to the uncertainties of her new day.

The morning light was gradually emboldened and began to peek into the bedroom
from in-between the closed flaps of the window shutters, making discernible the
furnishings within. No longer able to resist the impulse to get up Wedad turned her
head to steal a quick glance at Nader, her husband. He was quiet and still with his eyes
shut, lying on his right side giving her his back. Aware that he was not sleeping and in
order not to provoke him she gently slid from under the quilt cover and slipped out of
bed. Waiting for the wedding day to begin for the past four hours the pair had been
laying motionless side-by-side, watching the slow passage of darkness. She spent the
time vigilant, staring through the dimness at the ceiling and walls, trying to square up
the circles of her life. Although aware of each other's sleeplessness, the man and
woman only exchanged a few words. When they had first come to bed Nader tried to
make love to his wife but she gently turned him away saying, "I'm tired. Besides it is
too late." But she held her tongue from scoffing at him, "You're soon to be a
bridegroom. Shouldn't you be saving your energy for your new bride?" Wedad
assumed his attempt at lovemaking was more of an apology than a desire of love for
her. She was right. The pair had been married for ten bellicose years and knew each
other's various moods very well. Both in an agitated state of mind they were fearful
their discourse might descend into a tedious argument. As if by consent they preferred
to dwell alone and in silence upon their private thoughts. He turned on his side facing
away from her and closed his eyes.

After leaving the bed with anxious haste Wedad changed from her nightie into a blue
anckle legnth smock she had taken out of the white wardrobe. She smoothed her
dishevelled hair with a comb she picked from the dresser and tied a blue scarf with big
red flowers around her neck. In mechanical, well practised movements she silently
gathered up her husband's clothes as he had left them scattered around the floor after
the previous evening's merrymaking. She bundled the garments together and placed
them on top of a chair in the corrner. Quietly opening the door to leave she could not
help first turning her head sideways to peek a final glance in the direction of the bed.
Her anxiety eased. The man was curled up pretending to be fast asleep. A short-lived
emotion of tenderness seeped into her bosom followed by a sudden surge of jealousy,
like a snake slithering in her belly. The whole of her body shook in pain and bitterness.
The feeling lasted a passing moment before its fervour was soothed. It disappeared
without leaving any sour taste as she tiptoed out of the room.

Wedad was a thirty four years old woman with a lean and slender figure of an average
man's height. Her black hair just touched the tips of her shoulders, framing a long plain
face, more handsome than beautiful. She was prim and always sensitive to criticism
about her looks. When in company her large brown eyes never seemed to know where
to settle. Obstinate and proud to prove to everybody, especially her mother-in-law, that
she approved of her husband taking a second wife and against his wishes Wedad had
insisted on giving a party the night preceding the wedding day. Although there was
tightness in her stomach and her chest was full of apprehension, she volubly received
her guests, smiling and joking. To annoy her mother-in-law in particular Wedad noisily
joined in the song and dance and even played the lute. With great success she had
managed to hide the turmoil that had been wrangling inside her troubled head.

As if after a second thought Wedad went straight to the newly refurbished bedroom of
the couple-to-be. Its shutters having been left open the room was bathed in the early
morning soft light. Making sure that everything was clean and in its proper place and
that the bride's clothes were neatly hanging in the wardrobe, she stood at the bottom of
the bed and let her eyes stray around the light brown beech wood furniture. Satisfied
that all was as it should be, her lips quavered a pale, stiffened smile. As she walked out
of the room she felt wetness forming inside her eyelids and her face flushed. But the
teardrops were of jumbled up emotions; more of joy mixed up with relief that was
tinged with some anger. To calm her nerves she lopped across the darkened hall to the
kitchen and brewed up a coffee pot and sat with it in the veranda which overlooked the
street. In the common style of the Levantine dwellings of those in favourable
circumstances Nader and Wedad's home was a flat roof detached villa. Built of white
chalk stone blocks it was surrounded by a small garden that was fenced off by a low
wall from the road. The house consisted of three bedrooms, a long reception hall and a
large, oblong-shape living area in-between which was lined up with chairs. Behind the
big sofa was the access to a stairwell which led to an air raid shelter underneath.
Calming the tempest of thoughts that was blowing inside her head Wedad slowly
sipped her coffee, watching life waking up in the street as the August morning light
spread across a cloudless sky. By the time Ali, her three year old son woke up in his bed
Wedad had already cleaned up the mess left by the revellers of the previous night and
set the breakfast on the kitchen table. Because of their expectant mental state Nader
and Wedad had no appetite for food and only managed a little to eat. To escape the
confinement of the four walls of their kitchen they carried their glasses of tea to the
veranda. Whilst the two adults sat in silence sipping their drink playful Ali got on with
his noisy games and articulations in-between mouthfuls of food his mother was
encouraging him to swallow. The boy ran into the kitchen after his dinky toy followed
by her. Feeling very tense Nader was taciturn and looked perplexed. He took no notice
of his wife and son. Still in his green and white stripped summer pyjamas he reclined
on the settee, whiffing his cigarette, mulling and gazing at the road. The smoke rose
from his black moustache which covered his upper lip in the fashion of the men of the
east Mediterranean. He was nearing his fortieth birth day with a balding head, hairy
chest and a bulging waist line. Tall and darkly handsome he had big facial features.
From behind the blue column of smoke swirling upward in front of his face his
Amorite-grey eyes stared ahead under their thick-framed glasses. Unlike his worked
up wife the man was constrained, if reconciled, to his imminent second marriage rather
than hopeful or thrilled by it. A little incomprehension would surface on his
countenance now and then. He would animatedly gaze into space baffled before the
furrows of concentration on his forehead would level again.
After breakfast Wedad took Ali to her mother to look after him for the day. To show
their disapproval her parents had refused to attend the wedding reception and called
their daughter reckless and stupid for apparently allowing her husband to bring into
her house a sister-wife. They were both rancorous and in a voice had warned her, "The
new wife will see to it that you are a divorcee before her first anniversary is out." But
Wedad shrugged off their criticisms in defiance.

By the time Nader's mother, sisters and other female relatives arrived Wedad had
tidied up the house and made it fit to receive the new bride. Out of malice the mother-
in-law, only her long wrinkled face showing through her full length grey garb, went
looking around the place. She checked everything, making certain all that her son
might need to entertain his male friends, who would keep him company until it was
time for them to bring him to the wedding hall, had been prepared correctly. By mid
morning the house was full of women who arrived to share in the day's merriment. On
entering the living hall a few of the younger ladies removed their scarfs and shook
their heads to loosen their hair and cool off. However most women kept their hair
hidden. Some men also came and joined Nader on the veranda. As other guests arrived
the hubbub grew louder and everybody was rushing about talking and asking
important questions. All kept an eye on the time. High up in the shimmering blue
flames of the sky three enemy military phantom jets in their usual daily show of force
broke the sound barrier. Thick and long white vaporous tails trailed the shining silver
aeroplanes. There was a brief menaced hush at the sound of the sonic booms which
reverberated throughout Irbed, rattling everyone and everything. Although outwardly
unconcerned all were fully mindful of the meaning of the flying objects in the sky.
Regardless, life carried on as before.

At noon a fleet of hired cars showed up in front of the house and double parked next to
those which had already arrived, hooting and revving their engines, creating a great
commotion in the searing heat. Everybody inside the house came out to see the
motorcade and admire the bride's car. It was a red Mercedes decorated with coloured
ribbons and big bows. A few of the closest female relatives began to yodel. There were
kids everywhere, all excited, running, arguing and noising at the same time jostling one
another to get into the vehicles. They wanted to accompany their mothers and sisters
to Amman to bring home the bride and enjoy the usual raucous wedding procession
through the streets of Irbed.

Vying with one another the arch rivals Wedad and her mother-in-law separately
quizzed Nader that he knew where everything was and that he was all right. Carrying
suitcases and boxes in which they had packed the clothes they would wear at the
wedding reception later that evening, the women bid the tense bridegroom and his
friends farewell and hoped to see them again at eight thirty at the Petra Hall. In
accordance with other common theatrical customs of wedding festivities in the Levant,
the bride would arrive at the reception hall before her intended. Dressed in white and
bespangled with golden jewellery she would be made to sit veiled and alone on a
raised dais dressed with lavish and bright hangings and adorned with flowers; such an
extravagant throne was called a loge.

And so it was. At eight o'clock that Saturday evening on the sounds of the all male
Beirut Musical Band the father of Swary led her wrapped in his black abyeah to the
loge, enacting the ancient symbolic gesture of giving the bride away. The bonds of
matrimony had been agreed upon and signed three months earlier. To spite her
mother-in-law Wedad appointed herself mistress of ceremony which surprised all the
guests, both male and female. They had all expected her not to attend and that if she
was persuaded to she would sit sulkily, acting hurt and resentful.

But Wedad had never been an ordinary girl. To her mother's vexation, apart from her
school uniform she would only wear a smock when indoors. As a teenager if she ever
went out she invariably wore jeans and a loose blouse against her father strictest
orders. If he got sight of her dressed so immodestly in trousers he would punish her
and ground her to the house for weeks. Unlike other girls Wedad kept her hair cut too
short and hated putting makeup on her face, painting her lips or colouring her nails.
She never took notice of any of the amorous youths who marched up and down the
pavements outside the girls' secondary schools, nor any other boy had ever written her
name on the inside covers of his books or sent her his poems. Whilst her younger sister
giggled girlishly and dressed and behaved to show off her femininity, Wedad was
ordered and polite. Although as a child her temper was like gunpowder, as she grew
older she consciously cultivated a disciplined mannerism, straining herself to behave
correctly in order not to attract the attention or be in the view of a prospecting mother-
in-law. In fact, Wedad secretly envied her two brothers for their apparent freedom and
licensed privileges. When other daughters filled the idle time of their maidenhood in
frivolous pursuits, awaiting marriage - which she thought was all that was occupying
their timid minds - she dreamed of work and financial independence.

After the early turmoil of her marriage Wedad's life settled down into a familial routine
and Nader learned to live with his wife's peculiar ways. Despite his strong and often
violent objections she disobeyed him and wore trousers in public. It took him a long
time to come to terms with her flagrant waywardness. To repress his jealousy of other
men staring at his wife's round bottom he had to spend a great deal of effort to master
self-control. Never really comfortable with just being a housewife, early on in their
married life Wedad started to join him in their shop which he had named 'Boutique
called Moonlight'. On the pretext of saving time, she brought her sawing machine into
the store and took over any dress alterations needed by their patrons and learned the
art of selling. The couple's financial situation improved even further. So when the
women of Irbed saw her made-up in the Petra Hall they were not just surprised but
amazed. Contrary to common knowledge Wedad had painted her lips red and covered
her face with a light layer of make-up. She wore a sleeveless long, red dress which
closely followed the contours of her body and exposed the tip of her cleavage. Red
being her sister-wife's favourite colour, Wedad had specially selected the dress from
'Boutique called Moonlight' to wear at the wedding reception.

And when Nader was led into the Petra Hall surrounded by his closest male relatives
and bosom pals who were loudly carolling him, to prove to everybody that she had no
concealed enmity or hatred towards his bride Wedad joined his mother and sisters and
began to yodle to greet the arrival of the men. With an ear splitting falsetto voice
drowning everybody else's Wedad sang as she grabbed Nader's hand and guided him
by herself to sit beside his bride. To be seen by the guests who were clapping and
making a great deal of merry noise the three stood on the raised loge. It was filled with
flower bouquets from well-wishers and draped with pink and blue pleated silk drapes
and colourful flickering lights. The Beirut Musical Band played even louder, singing
popular folk wedding songs. With shaky hands and sweat streaming from his forehead
the nervous bridegroom lifted the veil from his bride's face. In front of the loge his
friends shouted, "Kiss the bride. Kiss the bride", their aim being to make Wedad jealous.

Feeling that he was too old for such a noisy wedding reception, Nader was too
embarrassed to oblige. He reclined on his seat exhausted and felt he was submerging in
a pool of his own perspiration. His two wives remained standing amongst the flowers.
Astounding everybody by her assertiveness Wedad jovially replied, "My husband and
I are one. I'll kiss him and I'll kiss the bride."

There was a fleeting pause, a stunned silence before the guests laughed and returned to
sing and dance. Wedad, bold as brass, guided the bride back to her seat which was
what her groom should have done. First leaning over to Nader with her tall, slender
figure and avoiding any eye contact, Wedad printed a little kiss on his wet forehead
and then she stood erect facing Swary, the young bride. The two women's eyes met for
a long moment. Extraordinarily Wedad suddenly hesitated and stopped dead on the
spot. She was overcome by an abrupt and overwhelming emotion which the solemnity
of the occasion had evoked in her. She felt self-conscious and began to tremble visibly.
She thought her nerves were about to give way. Swary guessed the mental state of her
sister-wife. To reassure her she smiled and held out her hand and touched Wedad's
shaky fingers and pressed them hard. Swary obviously had lost none of her courage.
Her quick, subtle reaction alerted Wedad and she regained her balance and self-
composure. With clouded eyes she leaned over and put her hand on the bride's left
shoulder. As the two women's cheeks met Swary whispered into Wedad's ear, "May
Allah bless this marriage."

A woman from amongst the astonished females who on the whole thought that
Wedad's happiness seemed real enough and not a bit artificial, told her company of
female guests, "The accursed woman! How powerful she looks! I swear by all the
names of the Most High if I were in her place I'd have exploded with rage."
One of the men who always preferred to stand at the back of the hall to watch the
women and to envy the groom commented to his mate, "May both his wives prove
wholesome to Nader. The man will turn over beds of pleasure." In Arab society's
wedding receptions males and females mingled gregariously and openly. Nonetheless
everybody was polite, respectful and acted with circumspection and with the utmost
propriety. On such occasions no social limits were breached, at least not in public. So
whilst the young unmarried girls were dancing to the tunes played by the Beirut
Musical Band and exhibiting their beauties to catch the eyes of men and of match-
makers, the married women sat down around the tables, exchanging the latest rumours
and tittle tattles circulating in Irbed. Seeing and not believing her eyes a woman told
her friends, "I can't believe that this is the same Wedad who ran away from Nader on
their first wedding night!"

Knowing the conversation was going to be about what males and females did in bed
the women around the table stretched out their necks and huddled their heads
together. They all pricked their ears which were weighed down by earrings hidden
under their scarfs. Wearing their fineries in the fashion of the women of the Levant
their faces were covered by thick layers of make up and from their powdered necks
hung down gold necklaces and chains. Speaking in a faint voice lest the men would
hear them the woman continued telling her companions, "When Nader was alone with
Wedad for the first time he tried to lift the hem of her wedding dress. At once she took
fright and lapsed into silence, almost cold fear. She froze and became frigid and she
refused to let him touch her."

To prove she was also privy to Wedad's wedding secret another woman jingled her
bracelets and interjected, "And for their first night together Nader had reserved the
bridal suit at the four star Hejazi Hotel."

A third woman lowered her head and whispered, "Woe upon the enemy! And didn't
he sleep with her on their wedding night?"

The first woman answered in the same faint voice with which she had begun to talk
lest she was overheard by anybody she didn't want to her the subject of their topic of
conversation, "Oh no, you defeated of expectations. He thought his bride was shy and
to reassure her he went to the bathroom, leaving her to calm down. She was trembling
with terror, being left alone with this stranger and with no one to stand up for her. I
swear to God, Wedad was still in her wedding dress when she opened the bridal suit
door and let her legs race the wind down the stairs. She grabbed a taxi back to her
parents' house. When Nader came out of the bathroom ready for love and amour there
was no sign of his wife. The first thought that came into his head was that she was not
a virgin and was afraid he would find out and expose her secret like many men do to
their brides. Guessing that she probably went back to her parents' home, and to avoid a
scandal, he followed her there."
The thick layers of makeup just managed to hide the reddening faces of the listening
women. Some were embarrassed out of modesty for the delicate subject. Others were
choked by private thoughts and gathered their breath. One of the masked women
asked in disbelief, "And was she soiled?"

The speaker didn't take much notice of the question. Her kohl-blackened eyelashes
blinked rapidly as she carried on in the same faint voice, "When he saw Wedad back at
the doorstep of his house her father thought that Nader had found that she was
damaged goods and sent her back to her family to deal with. He was enraged for the
dishonour his daughter had brought upon his name. His moustache twitching with
wrathful rage the father of Wedad roughly dragged her inside almost breaking her
wrist, fearful that any of the neighbours might have seen her disgracing return. Whilst
in his rabid mind he was considering which was the best way to kill her to cleanse his
honour with her blood, he exploded with fury, demanding to know why she was back.

When Wedad explained what Nader had wanted to do to her the father felt relieved
and sighed deeply to calm himself, mumbling, 'Thank You God, the girl is just
inexperienced.' When Nader arrived his father-in-law took him aside and explained to
him man to man why his bride had fled. Then he ordered Wedad to go back with her
groom, warning her of severe punishment if she did not let him have his way with her.
After Wedad's mother came back from her daughter's wedding reception, unaware of
the drama that had taken place, her husband told her what had happened and then
asked her, 'Didn't you explain to the girl what to expect'. The mother laughed with
hearty laughter then said, 'What do you think, my Baal? Of course I did. But you tell
me, is there a girl in the whole world left in these days of cinema and television who
does not know?"

The hushed audience of listening females round the table burst out in tense laughter to
loosen their tightened nerves. One of them remarked, "The consumptive bitch! Did she
never hear of the many differences in-between the thighs of men and the thighs of
women."

When Wedad's mother-in-law became privy to what had happened at her son's
wedding night, out of spite and jealousy she spread the tale around Irbed. She had
wished Nader to marry her niece.

Having no ambition for academic qualifications, at the age of sixteen Nader left school.
His father found him a job as a trainee sale's assistant at one of Irbed's big ready-to-
wear stores along Cinema Street, the commercial heart of the city. Like all adolescents,
sex was at the forefront of the youth's mind. However, in the didactic culture of the
Arabs sex is sanctified and open relationships between boys and girls outside marriage
are tyrannically prohibited. Guided by his older colleagues at the store, Nader, who did
not lack intelligence, before long learned how to flatter and flirt with women. He soon
began to observe that they, whether married or unmarried, frequented the stores
because they were mostly bored and some were in search of excitement to fill their
empty time. His colleagues swore by all the names of Allah that many of these women
were not only easy to seduce but were actually looking for 'it'. Realising that his son
was being led astray Nader's father, a wily businessman and sensible to the needs of
young men took him aside and warned him, "Listen son, just as your mother and you
sisters' flesh is inviolable to us so is the flesh of other men's mothers and sisters." And
to make it worth his son's self-restraint in keeping his name above suspicion and gossip
the father promised to help him finance his own store if he acted wisely and proved
himself to be ready to trade and run his own shop.

Being brought up on paternal obedience Nader heeded his father's advice. Like many
unmarried men, to satisfy his excitable libido he visited what everybody derogatorily
called 'a respectable house' and paid for sex. Five years later he saved enough to pay
key-money for a one window-front store in an ally off Cinema Street. With a little
financial assistance from his father and a small bank loan, Nader furnished it and
stocked it with ladies fashions, naming it 'Boutique called Moonlight'. Each day he sat
alone for many hours in his shop waiting for customers. After reading the sports pages
in the daily newspapers he would puzzle as what to do next. He was a typically
ordinary man and only thought of basic bodily needs. He very rarely read a book or
took interest in political or social issues beyond the front page headlines. Finally,
boredom out weighed the fear of scandal and exposure as he actively began sizing up
his female customers in search of 'easy' women. After a few abortive attempts, mostly
due to unsteady nerves, he touched a woman's hand whom he had assumed was 'easy'.
She did not object. To his surprise, when he tried to allure her to the back of the shop
and into the changing room, she willingly followed him. In fact the woman was much
bolder than he was and frequented 'Boutique called Moonlight' a few times after that.
Nader quickly learned which ones were 'easy' amongst his clients. Soon, some visited
him for sex alone. His colleagues advised him, "Married women are better. You can
have intercourse with them without worrying about pregnancy or fear of emotional
involvement." Irrespective of religious faith, males of the Levant think of themselves as
the bricks that built society, whilst the females were merely the decor on the walls.
However, by the standards of his environment Nader was considered liberal in his
outlook to the female. Although he did not quite consider her as his equal in
intelligence or social standing, nonetheless he respected her opinion and was willing to
discuss the important issues with her. Because his manners were both polite and
courteous, women flocked to his shop and he began to make good profit.

As Nader neared thirty years of age his parents started to urge him to get married. His
mother selected her eighteen year old niece for him. To draw his attention to the girl's
beauty and suitability she particularly pointed out her niece's high hips and heavy
breasts, which indicated fertility. Though he did not tell his mother so, Nader found
the obvious way his cousin was parading herself before him loathsome, and he could
not bear to think of her as a wife. He was more attracted to strong women who looked
him in the eye and smiled. It was at that crucial moment that Wedad suddenly
appeared upon the stage of his life. The first time she came to 'Boutique called
Moonlight' with her friends he took note of the simplicity of her dress and the lack of
makeup upon her handsome face which immediately attracted him to her as a girl who
made up her own mind. Wedad sensed his glances. Though she blushed, to her
surprise she was not startled nor frightened and her eyes met his.

Wedad visited 'Boutique called Moonlight' many times afterwards and became its most
regular patron. Each time she brought with her a different company of girls to advise
them on the quality of their purchases. She impressed Nader with her free spirit and
her unregimented conduct. To his delight he did not recognise the behaviour of an
'easy woman' in her. If he touched her hand she would withdraw it with a natural
spontaneous reflex, as if she did not understand his intention. During the long hours of
sitting alone in his shop, Nader found himself frequently thinking of Wedad. Born out
of intrigue a sort of love for her developed in his heart and soon it became his business
to find out more about her. When he announced to his parents that he had found the
girl he wanted to marry, his mother objected strongly. But he refuted all the objections
his mother had put in his way. When all else failed to convince him to marry her nice
she screamed at her son in anger, "Wedad is a spinster. She is nearly twenty five years
old." To the surprise of her parents, Wedad agreed to marry Nader when in the past
she had refused other suitors.

There was nothing special in Wedad's upbringing to distinguish her or make her
different from other girls of her generation. Like Nader she descended from a working
family who owned their own home in the respectable suburb of the Roman Lake. Her
early child hood was happy and she preferred to play boys' games, which gained her
the nick name, 'Hassan suby' (Tomboy). Her inwardness began as she was approaching
puberty. Her mother forbade her to mix with boys and forced her to stay indoors. Ever
since she could remember, Wedad found girls' submissive attitudes towards life silly,
and she felt an outsider in their company. Not being able to express herself, she hated
school and became taciturn. She failed all her exams not due to any stupidity but
because of a personal complex which was brought on by a sense of not belonging. She
left the classroom when she was eighteen. Wedad spent the next four years
housebound, dreaming private dreams of independence and solitude. Fearing her
daughter would end up an old maid, Wedad's mother sent her to learn dressmaking
with a renowned seamstress. Wedad quickly mastered the sewing machine and started
to take on simple tasks, alterations, button sewing and so on. Before long she found her
vocation and began to make good money. As a seamstress the girls, especially young
brides, used to ask her to accompany them to the shops to check the quality of the
clothes they would buy. It was on such an outing that Wedad met Nader in his shop.
Their marriage survived the traumatic experience of its first night. Gradually it dawned
upon Nader that his wife was not just afraid of sex but actually hated it. If they made
love it was out of duty and obligation on her part. He heard the grating of her teeth and
felt her tense body under him. Wedad's obvious lack of sexual enjoyment hurt her
husband's masculine pride and made him feel inadequate as a man. The feeling that he
was making love to a masturbation machine angered and degraded him very much.
Furious arguments erupted between them for any paltry reason. It was not long before
Nader began to beat his wife, laughing at her slow useless attempts to defend herself.
He drove his hands down the back of her underpants and squeezed her bum hard then
up her dress to her breasts, holding them and pulling at them. He began to get a certain
morbid pleasure from humiliating her, showing her who was the boss. He would take
her anywhere he found her in the house, at the stove cooking or mopping the floor -
even if she was having her period. The slightest resistance she showed to shrug him
away, his playfulness would slide off like his trousers and he would take her down
there and cover her with himself. Once he even beat her with repeated heavy blows in
the garden with the neighbours and passers-by watching him hit her with horror until
she was brought down and he raped her behind the shrubbery. Wedad must stay still
until he ejaculated. If she cried he would shout and threaten to do his worst and throw
her out naked onto the street. When he finished, he just got up, wiping his front with
her dress and leaving her lying there too terrified even to cry. Early on in their
marriage Wedad even thought, "May be if we have some time together alone, without
worrying about war and the next meal, I might make him see how I love him." But she
never did. Her life was very sad and she hardly had any friends she could actually
confide in and she began to feel very restless. When she was alone she wept and
thought of suicide but only once did she attempt comitting it by throwing himself
before a bus. Wedad was truly wretched and had nowhere to go.

To defend his manhood, Nader decided that his wife was frigid and began to think
what sort of a desperate man would masturbate inside such an ice cold creature and set
out to look for 'easy women' amongst his customers. Once Wedad realised that her
husband had become less demanding upon her body, she guessed he must be sleeping
with other women and felt neither jealous nor did she mind. On the contrary she felt
strangely relieved. Slowly their married lives settled into a loveless routine which both
learned to accept. Naturally Wedad rejected the company of women. The wasting of
their energy in idle gossip had always nauseated her, both mentally and physically and
so she avoided their gatherings. On the special occasions like weddings or funerals
when she had to be in their company she felt alienated as if she were in a foreign
country. To Nader's astonishment she started to join him at the shop. Once she felt
confident enough running it, she suggested he should go out to the cafe for a little time.
Though he trusted her to run things efficiently, at the beginning he refused to
contemplate the idea, for fear of what the men of town might call him.
But Wedad kept on saying, "You look bored. Why don't you go to the cafe for an hour
or two to amuse yourself. Don't worry about the shop I'll look after it." Nader's
absences slowly increased until Wedad was fully in charge of 'Boutique called
Moonlight'. He travelled to Amman and Damascus seeking in particular the relaxed
company of Russian and European prostitutes. The newness of the concept of a woman
running a shop in the male dominated society of Irbed, though not quite unique, made
'Boutique called Moonlight' famous. In their sixth year of marriage, late one night he
came home and forced himself upon her. She was unprepared and had taken no
precautions.
Nine months later Ali was born.

After the siesta of a flaming Wednesday mid afternoon in July, Wedad left Nader and
his son at home and went ahead of them to 'Boutique called Moonlight'. To attract the
attention of the cafe waiter a few doors down the ally she stood at the shop's entrance
and called out to order a glass of iced, mint tea. In a modest, short sleeved red dress, a
nervous Swary walked hesitantly in front of her and with an uneasy smile trembling on
her lips. She bid Wedad, "Good afternoon", and carried on her way with sluggish foot
steps. For a moment the shop proprietress thought the young woman was going to
stop. The lightly made up youthful face seemed familiar to her, but she could not
remember where or when she had seen it before. Casting a glance after the petite figure
with the silky, long black hair cascading over her small shoulders, Wedad mumbled,
"She must have been a past customer!"

To catch the cooling afternoon breeze, Wedad placed her chair just inside the entrance
to 'Boutique called Moonlight' where she sat, perusing through the pages of a
newspaper. When she lifted her head to sip her iced, mint tea she saw Swary dragging
her feet on the pavement and peeking shyly into the shop window. Wedad was
suddenly gripped with an obscure emotion that shook all of her body and it trembled
with the heat of sexual desire. With hungry looks, her eyes voraciously gazed at the
shy, young girl. This sort of feeling was not new to Wedad. But on this occasion it was
like an earthquake that shook her to the very core of her being and made her face flush
red. Unable to gather enough courage, Swary felt awkward and she bashfully stepped
away from Wedad's view. Aware that it was not the first time that strange sensations
had griped her, Wedad managed to restrain the desire to stand up and look for the
young girl. She slowly sipped her glass of iced mint tea then buried her face into the
pages of the newspaper. When she lifted her head again, Wedad could hear the
pounding of her heart. Her limbs involuntarily began twitching so that she could not
stand, for before her stood the coy, frightened young girl, shivering. Her pretty face
pale as death; all blood had drained from it. Neither of the two women was able to
utter a word. Trembling all over, a few minutes had past as they just gazed into each
others eyes, awakening deep sexual urges. Finally Swary, who knew exactly what she
had come into the shop for, mumbled in a dry, deep, hoarse voice, "Hello."
In studied movements, as if to conceal her shaking, Wedad folded the newspaper
slowly and then placed it on top of the glass counter. Steadying herself she rose from
her seat and stood erect. For their tautness her nerves almost echoed the word, "Hello"
back. After stepping behind the glass counter to serve her customer, she added, finding
some of her voice, "How may I help you?"

Having overcome the first hurdle, Swary's heartbeat quietened down somewhat and
her shaking eased. With every thing having been rehearsed several times in her head,
Swary replied, "I am looking for a red summer dress."

Puzzled and considerably confused as if not fully conscious or able to think, Wedad
politely inquired, "Is the dress for yourself?"

Swary answered, "Yes." She was now studious and measured. A mysterious beaming
look glowed in her gentle brown eyes. Hesitating for a moment she then interjected in a
conscientious attempt to break the ice between them and make conversation, "Don't
you think red suits me?"

Wedad felt unnecessarily embarrassed by the look in her customer's eyes and didn't
know how to answer. She diverted her gaze. Mentally guessing the young woman's
size, she walked with unsteady steps to one of the racks and said, "These dresses are
the latest assortment to arrive."

Whilst selecting a suitable dress the two women took their time and became less tense
in each other's company. Their normal complexions gradually returned to their faces as
they discussed the various dresses their colours, styles and quality of cloth. Swary
choose a red frock and began to admire it asking with a beckoning look in her glazed
brown eyes, "Can I try it on, please?"

Wedad felt the hot flame of desire scorching her face and knew that she was more than
eager to respond to the call. With her erect breasts heaving she gestured with her head
to the changing room and with a dry voice she stuttered, "Of course."

Swary took the dress on her arm and slowly ambled to the back of the shop and went
into the changing room pulling the curtains behind her. With the whole of her body
standing to attention, the proprietress waited. When Swary called," If you don't mind,
please", with big strides Wedad walked into the cubical. Whilst Irbed was stirring from
its siesta, Wedad looked down and Swary looked up as they stood face to face holding
each other. Their heads were fevered, and the flames in their eyes echoed the lustful
desires that were brewing within their heaving, erect and touching breasts. They
stared into each others' glowing eyes silently. When, finally, their quivering lips met
for the first time, they felt an engulfing fire melt them together. They both knew that
moment was their whole eternity and that they must never part again.
Accompanied by a warm and close friendship, strong love penetrated deep into the
two women's yearning hearts. There was not an afternoon that Swary missed visiting
'Boutique called Moonlight'. After Nader had left for the cafe, she came. Between their
never ending talks and the many cups of coffee and glasses of tea, they stole hot kisses
in the changing cubical. Swary was the expert at love making and Wedad was not the
first woman she had fallen in love with. Reemah was Swary's school sweetheart. The
two girls grew up in the same neighbourhood in Amman and had often stayed
overnight at each other's homes. When they were preparing for their secondary school
certificate examination, and in order not to waste their valuable study time going back
and forth between school and one another houses, they begged their mothers to allow
them to spend the fortnight proceeding their school finals together. Reemah being an
only daughter, her mother suggested the girls studied at her place. Late one night she
was woken up with a dry throat and decided to visit the kitchen to get a glass of water
to drink. She noticed the light was still on in her daughter's room. In order not to
disturb the rest of the sleeping house, she gently opened the door without knocking.
Her aim was to advise the girls that they had studied enough for the night and should
go to sleep to get some rest. To her horror, shock and disgust she saw them lying on
bed. Their naked bodies were entwined, hugging and kissing each other with passion.
The woman's instinctive reaction was to veil her daughter's honour and protect her
from exposure. Although the whole of her body was shaking with indignation, she
held back her screams and managed to control her raging wrath in order not to awaken
her husband and sons. Soundlessly she forcibly separated the two mortified and
embarrassed girls. Next morning when the house was emptied of males, the woman
threw Swary out and forbade her never to come anywhere near her daughter. Reemah
didn't dare to utter a word nor show her face for days and locked herself up in her
room consumed by guilt, shame and fear. If she saw her mother, Remah sobbed and
shed bitter tears to avoid a severe drubbing and punishment, claiming that she was fast
asleep and unaware of what Swary had done to her. Reemah never went back to school
again and was not permitted to sit the examination. A few months later she was
married off.

That painful experience had shaped Swary into a hardened up sparrow. She lived
through terrible few days, expecting her friend's mother to acquaint hers with what
had happened. But the woman kept her silence to safe guard her own daughter's
reputation. When Swary realised that her secret would not be exposed, she gradually
recovered her equanimity and concentrated on her studies. Despite that dreadful
experience and somewhat disturbed state of mind, Swary, who was both sagacious and
innately intelligent, passed the secondary school examination with reasonable grades.
Disappointed with the timidity of Reemah, Swary left Amman and enrolled in the
Yarmouk university in Irbed to read business. In a conscientious effort to understand
her own sexuality she searched through literature and learned that she was a
homosexual. Once she saw Wedad, her sixth sense told her that she also was a lesbian.
For months Swary had been passing by 'Boutique called Moonlight' and on many an
occasion she had stopped herself from entering the shop at the last minute before she
finally gathered enough courage to walk across its threshold and face Wedad.

The relationship between the two women remained thus for over two years; stealing a
few hours of love whenever the opportunity allowed them. For her strong desire to be
near Wedad, Swary rarely visited her family in Amman. Despite her mother's strong
objections and under the pretence of early graduation, she stayed in Irbed for the
summer semesters. She was nearing the end of her studies, when fate intervened in the
strangest way. Nader had seen his wife's young friend in the shop on many occasions
and thought to himself, "What a pretty girl!" At the beginning he kept a respectful
distance. Compared to Wedad, Swary was confident of herself and her womanhood
and she flaunted her femininity which made her quite attractive in his eyes. He
wrongly guessed that she must fancy him when in fact she had always avoided him.
He started to dally in the shop to steal glances of her. To the amusement of both
women, Nader suddenly began to make the usual advances towards Swary as if she
were an 'easy woman', seeking her sexual favours. But she did not respond. It was not
long before the women simultaneously stumbled across a permanent solution to their
predicament, which would not only keep Swary in Irbed but would also keep them
under one roof.

They agreed that on separate occasions Wedad would leave Nader alone in 'Boutique
called Moonlight' with Swary for short periods of five minutes and never longer, Swary
insisted. Nader, being the man he was, tried to seize the opportunity, but Swary played
her part well. When his eyes conversed with hers, she looked directly into them then let
her gaze slide over him. Lust hazing and focusing his sight almost before he had time
to register her persence, there she was, smiling as if she had stepped over into his
outstreched arms. Swary made him think she loved him and wanted him, but she
could never betray her friend. Nader's passion for her grew stronger and he lusted for
her.

When the two women judged that the moment was right, Wedad said to her husband
one morning, whilst they were eating their breakfast, "Swary is a good girl. We'll miss
her when she graduates." Nader thought that his wife had no idea of his love pursuit
with her young friend. Fearful of exposing his secret he held his tongue. He was
startled when Wedad continued, "I think you fancy her." He was even more surprised
when she playfully said, "Why don't you marry her?" Over several weeks she would
bring up the subject reassuring him that despite the great age gap Swary was keen on
him. Wedad insisted that she could never be jealous of his happiness. To assuage any
financial worries he might have she told him, "Swary and I are like sisters. Our house is
big enough for all of us." (Legally the man has to furnish a separate home for each
wife.) When Nader came to ask for her hand in marriage, Swary accepted him against
her parents' strongest objections. After her graduation they were married. Each night
Nader slept in the bed of one of his wives. Both women hated to have sex with him
except out of matrimonial obligation and to smooth out their daily life. To avoid
intercourse, quite often they sent him to bed drunk. Men refused to believe him when
he spoke of the concord and harmony within his household. It was well known, "The
husband of two wives is fatigued" they insisted, but he looked refreshed and happy.
Swary found work in the Jordan National Bank. "To keep her eye on our account."
Wedad suggested to Nader, "We should transfer the Boutique called Moonlight
business account to her bank." He did and gave his first wife a power of attorney.

Nader and his two wives lived harmoniously for a year. Whilst Wedad was in charge
of 'Boutique called Moonlight' and Swary went to work, their husband spent his idle
time wandering between cafes drinking and playing cards or dice. Wedad became
pregnant a second time and gave birth to a girl. To amuse Nader, and perhaps
encourage him to spend more time out and even travel, his wives bought him a car.
Failing to carry and in response to an inner maternal desire which she could not curb,
Swary went to the gynaecologist. After taking a coarse of hormones, she carried. Being
a petite woman, her pregnancy was difficult and she suffered terrible pains. To nurse
and look after her, Wedad slept with her. Swary gave birth to twin boys which made
Nader very jubilant. Under the pretext of helping Swary to look after her babies,
Wedad continued to share her sister-wife's bed. Occasionally one of them would visit
his room, but the younger wife could not keep up the pretence, and refused to sleep
with him. The women realised that their husband's usefulness had lapsed. It was time
to be free of him. It was Swary he was more keen on sleeping with, but her constant
rejection of his sexual advances made him lose his temper and he took to the bottle.
Their fights degenerated into physical violence. To protect themselves they locked
their bedroom door against him. Not understanding what was going on, and out of his
depth, he threatened them that he would bring onto them a third sister-wife. Wedad
answered him boldly, "Please do! The town is full of foolish spinsters."

Nader entertained a certain doubt that the situation in his home was not normal, but he
could not fathom how. He thought that he was no longer the master in his own domain
and felt redundant and useless. It was very hard for him to accept that conclusion. He
sulked, refusing to eat or speak to anybody. The atmosphere was so charged that
thunder could roar at any moment. One hot, dusty and oppressive Friday afternoon,
towards the end of October, a row erupted between the three. Resorting to violence as
usual, Nader dragged the screaming Swary to the bedroom and attempted to rape her.
Shaking with rage, Wedad thought that was the final chapter. She could no longer
stand back and decided that she must run the risk of facing up to their tormentor.
Telling her son, Ali, to keep an eye on his brothers and sister, she locked the frightened
children in their room. Wedad was courageous and valorous when she rescued Swary.
The two women for the first time fought back together and gave as good as they got.
Nader felt that he had lost all authority. He slammed the front door behind him,
threatening to divorce both of them. Although unaware of it overtly, divorce was
Nader's ultimate weapon against his wives. For it would not only cause his parting
from their lives but also the separation of Wedad and Swary as each by tradition a
divorcee would return to her own parents' house. The two women felt the manner of
their life was endangered, but decided to wait and see what their husband would do
first. On the third morning after his departure, Swary rang Wedad at 'Boutique called
Moonlight' from the bank. She informed her that from a cheque that had just arrived on
her desk, Nader was at the seaside resort of Aqaba on the Red Sea and that he had
withdrawn a very large sum of money from the account. When the house and shop
were in his name, Wedad thought it prudent should they be deserted and to protect
themselves, else they might end upon the pavement living on the charity of others she
should immediately act. She possessed one thing which she had to make use of at once
before it became too late and Nader cancelled it. Since he spent most of his time idling
in cafes and Wedad ran 'Boutique Called Moonlight', he put into her charge its
finances. That evening after they had put the children to bed, Wedad and Swary sat
down to decide their future. They both agreed their marriage to Nader had ended and
that they should find a way to secure their own and their children's future together.
The following morning, they opened a new joint bank account in both their names at
the Jordan National Bank where Swary worked. With her own power of attorney
Wedad transferred to it every penny that had been left. Claiming that they were
planning to expand their business and using 'Boutique called Moonlight' as security,
she borrowed a maximum bank loan and also transferred the money into the new joint
account.

The absence of Nader did not alter anything in the lifestyle of his two wives and
children. Swary went to the bank each day at the usual time. The school bus collected
Ali. Before leaving to 'Boutique called Moonlight', Wedad saw to the morning
household chores, then deposited the little children at the nursery. After work, Swary
shopped at the downtown market where prices are lower than at her local shops, then
collected the children. To take care of the housework and help with the children,
Wedad and Swary imported a Srilanki maid.

It was late at night in December, when Nader parked his car outside his house. The
autumnal winds had abated and the winter cold had begun. Irbed lay still but for the
screeching wheels of a speeding car or the barking of stray dogs. He sat behind the
driving wheel for a long time, waiting for the light in Swary's window to be switched
off. Nader wanted to speak to Wedad first. He felt he might be able to have a
discussion with her as she was nearer his age. Nader had come back to Irbed several
days before and took a room in a hotel. He spent the daytime spying on his wives and
the evenings he wasted in the bar getting drunk. To his surprise, Nader discovered
nothing suspicious. Though somehow he doubted the possibility, he really hoped that
they were having an affair with a man or even men, for that he could comprehend and
knew how to deal with. Not for one moment did he want to consider the obvious
which had been staring him in the face for years. It was too hard upon his masculinity
even to contemplate the truth. Finally he made a decision to come back home. He
wanted his relationship with his wives to go back to what it was before the twins were
born.

But Swary's bedroom light kept burning. A group of boisterous drunken youths went
by. Nader examined his watch. "It has passed one o'clock." He muttered. After the
youths had disappeared round the corner, he looked up to the light in the window and
told himself, "Swary cannot still be awake. She must have forgotten to switch the light
off." He got out of the car. With utmost care not to make any noise, Nader turned the
key in the lock and then very slowly and gently opened his front door. The light from
Swary's ajar bedroom door streamed out into the dark hall. He tiptoed towards
Wedad's darkened room. Nader heard women voices and halted. Wrath thundered in
his chest as he snarled under his breath, "The bitches are sleeping together." He
changed direction and still tiptoeing, he moved toward the light. Through the crack
between the door and its frame Nader peeked at his wives. His nightmare scenario was
true he had to accept what he couldn't outer in words inside his head. They were
sitting on the bed in their nighties. Reading from a book in her hand, Swary's head
rested against Wedad's shoulder. He heard his young wife read, "And Sappho of the
violet hair said, 'If there was a jot of beauty and purity in your longing heart, then
shame would have not touched your eyes and you would have declared your love
openly'."

Stunned, Nader froze for a while in his place, watching the two women in love.
Confused and bewildered, he slowly and noiselessly retreated. He shut the front door
behind him very quietly and stepped into the sallow light of the cold night.

Feeling idiotic for being so outrageously abused, Nader drove off. It suddenly dawned
upon him that really there was no place for him between Wedad and Swary and the
problem was his alone. One wish began to swirl in his turbid mind, "I wish I were
dead, rather than facing up to what is happening under my own roof. " The stillness of
the night was shattered by the screeching of a car which came out of the road junction
just ahead of him. A death wish made Nader push his foot hard on the accelerator.
There was a mighty crash before everything went dead silent again. Feeling numbed
with pain, Nader opened his eyes. He immediately realised that his head was sticking
out of the smashed windscreen but he could not feel the rest of his body. The blood
was streaming down his face and he saw the limp, bloody body one of the youths he
had seen earlier, stretched over the bonnet of his car. The silence lasted a few more
minutes before Nader heard the distant sounds of sirens and his mind began to dwell
again upon the truth in his house.

The accident paralysed him from the neck down. Although he did not entirely lose his
power of speech, at forty five years of age Nader lived the rest of his remaining days in
a bitter sullen existence. Each morning after cleaning and feeding their husband,
Wedad and Swary would wheel him onto the veranda. Reminding the Srilanki maid to
keep an eye on him, the two women would then drive off together for work as he
sorrowfully glared after them.

-CINEMA STREET BOUTIQUE

The Empire's Flaming Ebon Chair

Wishing the repose of death, in the bowels of a featherless crow, the swain to the far-off
Empress of Earth came. Seven and ten hours the force of the cosmic winds the metal
bird bore, soaring over black nebulas: flashing and booming with storms. Upward,
Heaven overflowed with lambent stars tossed aloft palpable desolation, obliterating the
Darkness Ocean’s expanse in an emptiness of gloom. Downward, the vanished
pendulous realm of man was but a silent echo of a ruined globe adrift in the hub of an
unknown universe.

It was a flight unwilled, I spent in deepest desperation, constantly trembling from head
to toe of the roaring noise and the shock waves. Million explosions of suppositions
rocked my brain, pounding like drill bits, drop hammers and punch presses against my
skull; they were mere thoughts at other times. Within, the Voice was belling fierce, red
anguish, ‘Will I find the strength to outstare elMnat? Her habit is to fleece the work of
Reason, making Joy Past!’

On a suddenty the crow dived. The vaporous clouds adumbrated and the sight cleared.
There, through gauzes of hellish mist, a diaphanous show of red tinted land appeared,
rising from wild, desert waters - dark and deep. An entire terrible landscape tumbled
through my porthole. Stern, my light roved a mournful terrain. I beheld flames
sweeping near the coastline, shadows toppling over the Atlas Yam, rousing from far
beneath the surface foams, ceaselessly lashing laval shores.

Slow, I made out more and more of what was concealed behind the gauzy brume that
had been clogging the air. There loured what seemed fiery monstrous ranges to sky-
scraping heights upright bolted. Approaching closer, bit by bit, tall edifices I saw,
spreading out rashly betwixt indefinite fissures wreathed with infernal magma flows.
Twines of lava rushes round and round looped. Soon my scornful gaze traversed the
whole hellish nightmare that had been in the shadowy horror shielded.

I made out what seemed to be clusters of volcanic cones, in a permanent state of

eruptions, out stood north and south, ending in the infinite void of Space. The saturnine
image they presented was a belt of scoria, crooking between high erections; all
ferociously burning. In the centre of that enormous, burning dominion there yawned
very deep descending precipices the structure of which was hard ebon of glass and
steel.

Evermore its viscera shut against the sun, the woeful topography wound some fifty
miles around. I had never seen such sanguine clefts before. My eyes, clouded over with
tears, were drawn lower: I discerned the streaky slime stood mean at the rock face,
straight and still. The sight of this Igneous Beast coming straight towards me brought
my spirit so low it doubled the fear that had seized me.

Stirred from my deep abstraction I heard a fellow passenger asserting whilst his eyes
over my shoulders through my porthole poring - 'Look down, Yusuf, and you'll be
pleased. It makes the labours of the journey easier to bear, seeing these lights shining
beneath our feet. That is the Imperial City lying ahead, sitting upon her holy bower. A
great metropolis of palaces, noise and the uproar of Life pressed full.'

Though all I could feed my lachrymose eyes upon were tombs in the face of glowing
rocky steeps cut, indulgently I quizzed him: 'How many engineers it took to bind this
Brute?' In In puzzlement, into my face for a while he stared then proclaimed’ Because
you’re trying to probe this amazing vista from such enormous heights, you’re confusing
the truth with your imagination. You'll clearly see, when we alight, how much the eye
by distance may be deceived. And so, just wait a little more. But now, before we go
down, I tell you, these, which are hiding the ground underneath, aren't cliffs they are
giant buildings. There they rise around the River from bank to bank.'

Rapt, my fellow-passenger harangued some stalwart tales that were meant to beguile
my mind with regard: How the Empire's grim legions of Doom, with headlong force in
the fields of feuds and fights in some far puny skies the cussed rebels routed, as
soundly as they wished, with smart missiles! How the Kshatriya’ triumphant
motorcade, with pomp and ceremony slow progressed, filling the city with revel and
brawl! I ached to those volcanic apices, exciting enmity and hate, with the whet longing
of a corpse. I did try to follow with my eyes, but I could only see flames, jostling the
smoke, rising high. The crabbiness, souring my soul, was as the infernal ranges
spreading all over the land down.

‘My dear, dear son! Just as Jehinm’s boiling fluids of Woes are lined up with needle-
sharp crags go up to bleary heights adorned in terror eternally benighted with scalding
plumes of miasmas, so it was on the banks of Mot Nahar. Bulwarks of curving ramparts
ran all around the spires, reddening the sky with fires. That furnace of afflictions, which
man's art and craft for his comfort designed and adorned in terror, was the Lords of
iniquitous weaponries most visible proof of Temporal power.
Thither, downward in the intestinal depths of those chasms, winding along host of
shafts that strewed the darkness of the high edifices, I discerned glowing linear flows -
endless miles of them - fastened end to end. Some were incandescent and hurried, most
slow coruscated in an ever-shifting crimson display. These petroleum-fires that did the
Environment great pains and harms, were conveyed in little soldered copper pipes by
Electricity which combusted in many brilliant colours. Alas! None of the powers of
Darkness it ever lightened.

My eyes grew small, sated with that bitter sight, and all of a sudden my confusion
cleared and my fear took on a horrid shape. Keeping my narrow gape still turned that
way down, drifting over the raging fathomless abyss expanding beneath me, my
anguish-ridden soul augured: 'Yusuf, there is a crevice in that boundless Below made
dolorous by the screams of the untormented griefs of shades numberless, meant for me.
Woe! Erelong, I’ll also join the burning mortals, dwelling inside that Abode of Torment.
Allah! For how long will your wretch be chained to this Negation of Your Goodness?
Dungeoned in this Blight walled in brimstone, where shall I learn to get my peace
again? Hail Infernal Worlds of the profoundest Hell receive your newest recruit'

For quite awhile above that vast, unbottomed Pain of the senses, the metal crow
hovered before reaching the port of landing. As far as I could take in with my eyes,
sitting there inside the featherless machine, Jehinm was in full view with livid
declivities, offering the shades no means to climb. At the root of the rising yaws were
networks of flaming decussations of straight chasms, cinderous as the pits of Jaheem.
Later, after I had joined the suffering inmates cramming the depths of that boosted
cruelty, I learned the effluvium, flowing with metallic ores and nitres, were called
streets and avenues. Marked by yellow lines, they criss-crossed and slithered, encircling
the tall buildings that walled them just like a grand-plan of a bewildering labyrinth.

It was fixed so on one side a press of hurtling shiny metal automobiles, whose
combustible entrails exhaled harmful obnoxious fumes, in the same direction must roll.
Driven in billows of their own contamination, along the macadamised chasms of the
horrid canyons, shades of black smoke with fetid smoke palled. The probates, each
known by his mark, were led in crowds and had to come and go across loess-strewn,
grubby walks, brimful with filth. The damned living skipped and lifted their heels as if
whipped by visible Jinn. All bound together, pacing at an incredibly distorted haste no
one it seemed could spare a moment to stare. They just passed one another rued with
vain regrets, drawing in the capital’s villainous breath. Unbelievably, amongst such
hubbub there were no recognisable faces to glance at: even with a faint smile.

Nader! Passed by those hastening crowds your father still whines: 'Here, in the remotest
regions of gloom beset with gusts of woe-hurricanes, lies a nook beyond the confines of
Life made for my soul to wander in trance and squander my existence. Merciful Allah!
What kinds of damned shades, with bodies that breathe, wander this penumbra
restless?’ Ever in dispute and self-recrimination, the mute, afflicted animus, inhabiting
the candescent volcanoes, spoke their presence in silent, strident sounds. Within rents
gouged in the steel face buried griefs abounded and shrieks of pain never heard, only
wordless mourns. In mausoleums of stones the rich stowed wealth far greater than
Qarun’s - yet none ever felt well and calm. No newborn despair anywhere that does not
trace its existence to this proper adumbration, home of every ill, where pale grows the
tree of Zaqqum.’

Mot Nahar embraced the necropolis on all sides, squelching its concrete banks,
slithering as if the Serpent coiling and ringing the dark limbs of Tartarus. There, at the
harbour’s portal, where the putrid flow of Death merged into the rolling Atlas Yam, on
an islet stood an umbra of Hel, enormous above the flames. From within the abyss a
clay colossus rose: its feet drowned in goo of Ymir. Wrapped a turban of spikes around
its huge head, skyward the idol drew its torch, blazing fiercely. Nemesis of Freedom of
Self, Hel devoured Liberty and corrupted the life of the world with promises of
debaucheries.

Unwilling I walked the umbral chasms of bedlam where Mot lived and Pity was dead.
As winter's silence hanged icily upon the woof of Desolation, furnishing a bleaker
scene, my neck learned wherefrom the bitter winds of the north would stab. Gnawed by
the incisors of Old Time, the bags of vagrancy grew too heavy for my week arms: adrift
stray on the streets of no return. A cold, degraded tramp, your father was cursed to
roam without home, to creep along unseen in Cimmerian lonesomeness; a noisome
shadow, endlessly searching the sodden waysides for some cheerless hovel to curl up
in.’

When the captain from his cockpit in voice of terror hailed: 'Get out, here is the exit', My
skin tightened and shivered. My heart plunged deeper into despair where it remained.
The dread I had first felt was many folds; my jaws and fingertips they still tremble. I
kept looking backward searching for a place to hide, but there was none to be found.
Selfsame anxious trooper roused from his silent fears by war-cries ‘sally forth’ to
confront the war tools in gloom arrayed against him, unprepared I was hurled into the
horrific world of wheels: to endure the battle of my life in this unpitying darkness,
alone.

Nader! With much confusion, your georgic father to the Empire's Flaming, Ebon Chair
came. At your ambitious grandsire's command, I shook its Freemen by the hand, one by
one. The overbearing fanatical priests of State to me a great many facts made known.
Those wealth devouring clergy of Empire seemed happy and without fear: but their
days were with stress strewn, and failure meant hunger for success lest Life's needs
oppressed them with care.

Crowned with their ilk's dainty cheers, thence the unctuous crew grew superciliously
bold, perverting Sweet Democracy with judgements false, slaying the Scared Ideas as
offerings to Avarice. Favouring their own by the might of their lordly Nation States, in
flowing scientific terms they argued into me the many differences between the
Developed and the Underdeveloped countries - to them humankind were types. The
words of the men blind in sensibilities were nothing to me and I raged in pain. Grave-
faced the mischief hypocrites affirmed, at tiresome lengths, the Third-World's life was
grim - mere collateral damage in wars.

Provoked, it took all my innate fellaheen strength to go on being restrained. At last the
Voice inside rebelled, 'Fools, don't boast. You can't touch the sovereignty of my soul
with all your larcenous charms', and on no uncertain terms I refuted their extreme
claims. Hence, contrary to your grandfather’s commands I mutinied, demanding to
return home. The proud man, shamed on hearing that his favoured son had turned to a
worm, forbade me to show my face in his sheikhship. ‘Grief consumed my soul, I am
here the simplest vice.’ I wrote back to the old man. My appeals went to waste: his
breast in wrath and of love weary.

Damned into the bosom of Satan’s corroding hell, I beheld science in His control. Thus I
turned my back to the raven-waste of Moral Law and burrowed in contumacy and
tunnelled deep and hid myself therein. Exiled from the face of Light and morning shine,
within my mind recrudesced to Ur’s florid fields far, drinking the comfort of their warm
sun.

The prosperous demagogues of ranks were well-born and from Allah’s Righteous Law
away had turned. Swollen with arrogance they attended White’s Capitol, a shrine of
war: by destructions and by cruel murder bullied everyone. The temple of the worldly
things god had six gates. The seventh was guarded by White, a graven image seated on
stone.

In penumbra, the elite Brahmans wove forth a most disdainful paradise of Lucre:
believers were led in crowds enthralled with vain discourse, mistaking propaganda for
truth. They knew not nor understood the poor man's cause and scorned and mocked
when I exalted the ease, fruits, drinks, milk, blossoms and bees of blithesome Ur.
Boastfully the cruel fanatics ranted: 'We're the Empire's highly favoured greats through
the choice of our ilk rose. Coshly on the dais of might we repose. Without dread, strong
is our grip on power nor the danger of its loss we need to fear. Revenues in abundance
we receive to have and squander.’

Woe upon them, the malevolent men of Nation States whom I deprecate! Blind and
unthinking and their inner vision diseased, they lived sheltered lives and flourished in
little barbed groves of their Albion agnates. Howling through the murk domain, they
roused their brethren to deadly hate, and made Mammon their fond hearts venerate.

My son! At the realm of Hatred's most merciless portal I was placed, none but the cup
of misery all I tasted. Immured in graves anywhere I went, there were no more gay
fields to tempt my wandering feet to stray, but a dismal scene before me each morn
started; a strange forest of wild beasts and enemies brimful. Along the vast, bleak
expanse of levelled streets, where soil refused the roots of any plant: shade or shelter
couldn’t be found - plumes of fire smoke everywhere.

Mot Nahar engirded this blazing wasteland thick with towers of glass and steel, but
there were no water to drink in pond or pool; not a even a spoonful for a sparrow to
quench its minute thirst. A never-ending scurry, without a moment's rest, the still-
discordant hum went on, neither living nor dead.

In rusting metal tubes, smitten with germs and disease, the dwellers of the cliffs
commuted to town each morn. Bursting with furious madness, day after day, the
Vaishya wrought in vain, dreaming of sunny breaks to dissipate the shadows of their
hell: forever Dari was their core. To me, a fellah, it was enough to work to fill a life, to
lay in honour and dignity under cool shades; enough to pillow the night and dream
about dreams.

Nader! So perfect was Misery in the Capital that naught did it permit to endure and
naught did it leave alone. Lo the misbegotten rabble of all rabbles who crowded such
realms inscribed with woe dissected by streets so dark that had sunk so low! They, in
whom the workers have placed their trust, alleged that none had power over them.
Clasping at things that pulled them away from humility, not once the Brahmins
perceived their foul disfigurement, but toasted themselves to be more comely than all
natives: to sway and rule with pleasure in sensual sties. Their souls' nugatory
pretension had risen so high they created false belief in the men whom they ruled, that
amongst the nations like them were no others - balancing the weight of Civilisation’s
corbels upon their vacant skulls.

This unreality gave the Vaishya real anguish and few seemed to think that their avarice
for power was only weakness, urging them to commit more evil. Through their tears
these visionary foretold, 'This can't go on. All's knavery', and were most eager to
advance towards the Green and again make bloom that wild wasteland of theirs. O
vainglory of all human power! Soon it fades and becomes as venal as an old whore?

Living in the face of these towering awkward cliffs, where they had with some
difficulty constructed a zone of security, the burghers would wait, as if on tenterhooks,
for their ‘slice of the cake.’ From time to time, out of tedium, they would put on a tragic
look and contemplate death.

At night, with odious fumes wafting around, the cliffs' residents packed the
bacchanalian halls of Valhalla in orgiastic worship, swooning on the savage beat of
drums. Thenceforth, a heightened sense of surviving, a heightened sexual appetite
would imbue the infernal pits and grip the crush. On their permitted day of rest from
their cramped nooks at the side of the tall cliffs, restless, they would come out and fancy
anything foolish, then meekly pay their fare from here to there. Nothing out of the
ordinary would matter; like infants who can only can trust what gets done to them is
right, they never worried when winter came and when the leaves fell.

To them it seemed wars would always rage on somebody else’s land. Their dailiness
never disturbed in anger and protest, they would return at the end of the night to live
inside the towers; anonymous, sighing, rolling their tired eyes.

Compelled by the dazzling charms of the ambitious Priestly Cast, whose fine art and
soft words had the power to seduce and deceive the wandering minds, the good
citizens hearkened good. Their own complacency followed so they might reap well
circumventing God's Reign. 'If you give us your vote' - concealed under their kindly
cowls, confident and bold, foaming with hunger in the flames of mendacity, the disciple
of autocracy belched- 'assuredly, the president will let you say what you believe in is
right: even say it with your own voice. Answer to none, he will decree how you can
express your choice. No one anywhere has it so good.' Insensibly resistant to the Fount
whence sweet Nature sprang, and though their hearts' desire had possibly been
expressed, alone, bare of laurel, the ghostly Vaishya lived and died.

Cast off amid the thick of such huge anonymous crowds in a strange, scorched and dry
forest of towers - not a vestige of green anywhere - I declined. Within woes like this and
such like awes, too huge for me to comprehend, my solitary days like my desolate
nights stretched on and strewed me across this concretion. The shortest flash of memory
prompted the unbidden tears to swell.

Forlorn in this faraway land beyond the perilous roar of the Atlas Sea, drunk with fear
and grief, I soughed my days out: wild with all sadness. Nightly, my hole I made a kind
of a grave and sobbed inside my head aloud for Ur’s dulcet sounds. I yearned and
yearned for that spellbound swain whose eyes once had rested upon rolling plains,
passionately aglow with steady earthbound beams. Whence I began to conjure up the
glimmering scene of the humming amorous beaux, gathering by the love shrine,
ambling all the way to where the fig tree and grape vine entwined. In the long sundown
shade, along the tree-lined rill, with glancing eyes and harkening ears and low words of
cheers upon panting lips, Ur’s young lovers gathered together in the gold, dappled
shades of the low drooping boughs. The love-crazed hearts huddled, clinging to
branches to steal chaste glimpses of the bashful damsels advance, uplifting earthenware
water jars with dainty hands.

Under gossamer veils with demure charms and half shut eyes, headlong the village
gazelles darted like bright beams. Down the pathway they came: their flapping hearts
had the wish to leap and dash to tease and tantalise the marvelling boys. Among the
virgin-pure silence reigned and all stood glowing like flames. First she came and
Fawzeah was her name. With slightest move of eyelash she waved to the one paralysed
with admiration for a trice. Scarcely finding breath enough to sigh, our bashful eyes
conversed of intimate holding in arms: rubicund lips caressed shy smiles 'Allah! Bless
that which is mine!’

With misery sore, like old women at the bier, in a voice as from a tomb, though peals
my cries were, I threw my plaint in wail: 'Everything is now hidden in darkness beyond
the tears. There are thunderlike voices keening in my head, but for the oppression of my
spirit, I do not hear.'

10

Pressed by thirst and hunger, vexed and perplexed, drowning in a deep place of glare
and clatter, alone onward I marched wide over the cinderous streets, with addle faces
lined. The oleaginous polis was worldly, forlorn of every Spark Divine. A barren
nefariousness devoid of Justice and any Kindly Traits. A starless gloom overflowed
with voiceless shrieks and eerie wails of the debased Shudras: around them plaintive
ruins of interminable wastes spread.

Bordered and barbed with lies and watchtowers rose the city: no joy to all kinds - a
monster stretching its villainous sceptre to bruise meek Nature in the womb. The
bipedal fanatical crew, tracing their ancestors back to apes, reigned over the Empire.
Power did to them what the Forbidden Fruit to Adam did. This drive to Fundamentals
was so foully done it had Eden to a slave on Her naked knees broken. Her renunciatory
beauty became past. The Capitol enjoyed Her rabid pleasures feverishly and without
covering itself with veils of modesty, luring the world's Puny Nations to poor
supplicants and ate them, at will, like worms.

But understanding was not the same as believing, and being at places at once desisted
as part of everyday jargon; whether a speck of dust could chose where to be in the
Universe! Business stood at a pretty price, and the profit margin was always on the rise;
no one would surrender a morsel without a fee, or had time to gaze whither flowers
were at his feet, nor to ponder what sweet scent hanged on the boughs.

To banish thoughts of that most beloved land, from hour to hour my illimitable walks
went on, circumnavigating Time. Still in the midst of streets clogged with the press of
traffic, with the clouds of smog, black above. The Broadway's livid the lambency: the
stalls with blazoned names, shop after shop with dazzling window wares, the quick
dance of furious flames, the violent fights, the flash of guns, the din of sirens, the
endless stream of women, men, and hurtling machines, the dead bodies, the scavengers
who begged with their plastic teacups, struck me numb.

Wherever my tired feet might tread, it seemed all hope had resigned! Irksome
motorcars, their polluted wind afflicted mankind, moved at such remorseless speed:
young drivers struck right across the crowds, veering round with timely skill.

Whither I stood a huge procession passed me. How many people? How many faces?
Still more came that none had a space to breathe. A weary mass of comers and goers,
face to face, face after face, each spent so much of his time inside himself. Here, it
seemed only dogs sniffed each other; everyone else lived alone. Alas! Never a trace of
Kindness was descried, even to remove a whit of mote from rheumed eyes. With black
lasers beam, glowering straight out from the inmost of my oppressed soul, I struck
down those who never pitied my estrangement in that Jaheem.

Lost in that place of ambush, with longing sighs I measured each painful step I took: at
every turn fixed the faraway Ur. Amidst sorrows and such fears too huge to bear, with
a vast horror I struggled to escape to the stars without names. Doomed among these
desert wilds to languish exiled, in bitter anguish I sobbed: 'O Allah! This world is dim
amid the blaze of noon! Allah! I am beset with foes more fierce than the most accursed
fiends of Eblis bereft of any face that smiles! By the end of day, I could no longer endure
the bustle and I locked myself in. Like a rudderless boat in a sea of sorrow my life was
adrift. Still I couldn’t dispense with love and my heart remained unhampered by its
ordeal. My head tidily packed with hopes, like a blind man is unhindered by the gloom,
I leaned forward out of the wind and hurried my reminiscences eastward and pictured
the moon, the dreamy face of Wadd, drooping above, showering through the grape
vines and olive trees His delicate beams. In the warm breath of night, forth I marched
with the young swains, dreaming in one another's eye.

Nader, my dear boy, sometimes I looked up and saw the smiling morn, parting the
lucid mist whilst all around me unstirred, before their daily scramble resumed. Hungry
and homeless, each day near a thousand doors your vagrant father stood and pined for
food. Once with mirthful songs of the dawn, my youthful days with bliss were adorned;
then I became this old voyager, whom sorrow he named his friend. Though I knew that
what I sought I could not find, with heartfelt chilliness in my veins my restless footsteps
rambled far, treading the unbottomed pits, wasting Time. Walking ghostly in the fog
where gales tore, a trance would come over me and so deeply I’d recall old Earth's
faraway youth when my days in transport rolled with thoughtless joy; a loss which the
rolling sun would never again restore. Even as my mind labours with the taste of joy
that memory may evoke, no second spring is for me, but pain till Death's releases sets
me free

Translated from the Arabic by Hala Kamal

Ezzat Amin Iskandar. My classmate in first prep. with his short stout body, big head,
soft black hair, spectacles, meek smile to the point of pleading and his tormented look; a
mixture of evasiveness, suspicion and fright, or alternatively profound thought,
submission and guilt.

Ezzat Amin Iskandar. With his single crutch and artificial leg. A piece of rubber was
attached to the bottom of his crutch, preventing noise and sliding. He covered his
artificial leg with the school trousers, dressing it in a sock and shoe to appear normal.

Every morning, Ezzat hobbles into class, leaning on his crutch, dragging his artificial leg
and vacillating step by step on his way to the last bench. There, in the corner next to the
window he sits, dropping his crutch to the floor, while no one pays any more attention
to him. He entirely engages himself in the lesson, carefully taking note of the teacher's
every word. He listens, frowns thoughtfully then raises his hand inquiring (as though
by immersing himself in the lesson he slips into the crowd, hides amongst us, and for a
few hours becomes just a good pupil among other pupils, unhampered by neither
crutch nor lameness).

When the bell rings for recess, all the pupils cheer in joy. They drop their work, push
and shove towards the classroom door and head down to the courtyard. Only Ezzat
Iskandar, receives the recess bell in the manner of old and expected news. He shuts his
notebook, pushes it gently aside, and picks up the sandwich and magazine from his
schoolbag. He spends recess sitting in his place, reading and eating. Only when a pupil
looks at him in curiosity or pity does Ezzat feign a big smile, pretending to enjoy his
book, as though it were the joy of reading -- by itself -- that prevented him from getting
down to the courtyard."

I brought my bicycle to school for the first time on a Thursday afternoon. The courtyard
was almost empty except for a few kids playing soccer on the other side. I started riding
my bike across the courtyard, circled around the trees, and imagined myself in a
bicycle-race.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the International Bicycle Race!" I shouted. I could
see with my mind's eye the spectators, flags and my competitors. I could hear my fans
cheering and whistling. As always, I touched the finish line and won first place, and
received congratulations, kisses and bunches of roses.

I kept playing for a while until I suddenly felt I was being watched. Turning around, I
saw Ezzat Iskandar sitting on the lab steps. He had been watching me from the
beginning, and when our eyes met he smiled and waved, so I headed towards him. As
he got up: he leaned with his hand on the railing, hugged his crutch and then raised his
body slowly to his feet, descended the steps one by one, and when he reached me he
started examining the bicycle. He held the handlebar and rang the bell several times,
then he leaned down and touched the front-wheel wires with his fingers, and mumbled:

“Nice bike.”

“It's a Rally 24… a race bike … it's got three speeds,” I retorted full of pride:

He looked again at the bike as if testing my words, the he asked:

“Can you ride it with your arms in the air?”

I nodded, and darted off. I was an expert biker, and I showed it off. I pedaled full speed
until I could feel the bike shaking under me. Then, I raised my hands carefully above
the handlebar till my arms were parallel to my shoulders. I remained this way for a
while, then I turned around on my way back to him.. He had proceeded a few steps
towards the middle of the courtyard.. I stopped in front of him and getting off the bike I
said:

“Did you see that?”

He did not reply, but stared at the bike as though considering a profound issue. All of a
sudden he hit the ground with his crutch and stepped forward touching the bike, and
then took hold of the handlebar and leaned towards me whispering: "let me have a ride
please".

When I hesitated, he nagged, "please … please."

I didn't understand what was going on and I just stood there staring at him. He seemed
like someone overcome by a whim, incapable of stopping or going back, and finding me
silent he started shaking the handlebar forcefully, shouting furiously this time: "I said
let me have a ride!" And he jumped up trying to ride the bike, so we both lost balance
and almost fell to the ground.

I don't remember what crossed my mind then, but I just followed him. I found myself
helping him to get on the bike. He leaned on my shoulder as well as on the crutch, and
after several attempts, managed to lift his body and send his normal leg across the bike,
positioning himself on the seat. His plan was to stretch his artificial leg to the front
away from the pedal, while moving the other pedal with the power of his healthy leg.

It was difficult but eventually Ezzat settled down on the bike and cautiously, I started
pushing. When the bike began to move, he started pedaling. I let him go without
warning, so he lost his balance, and tottered, but he held on, straightened up and
gradually, gained control of the bike. He made a tremendous effort to pedal with one
leg while maintaining his balance. Several moments went by as the bike moved slowly
forward. Ezzat passed the big tree then the canteen, and I found myself applauding and
shouting:

“Bravo Ezzat.”

He pedaled on until he almost reached the end of the courtyard. This was where he was
supposed to turn around and I started was worrying. But he managed it cautiously yet
masterfully. On his way back in the opposite direction he seemed self-confident and in
full control of the bike. He increased his speed and then increased it again. His hair
blew in the air.

The bike sped between the trees, and Ezzat’s figure started vanishing and re-appearing
behind the entangled branches and leaves. He had done it. I saw him on the bike -
darting like an arrow- stretching his back behind, raising his head and letting out a long
loud shout that echoed all over the courtyard. An extended crackling sound like a
scream that had been locked up in his chest for a long time, and only now managed to
escape.

"Loook aat meee…” He shouted.

When I ran up to him, the bike was lying overturned on the ground. The front wheel
was still spinning and buzzing, and I saw the artificial leg detached from his body,
thrown away in its sock and shoe, its dusky color and dark hollowness, as though it had
been really severed from his body, or even as if it were a separate creature with its own
independent internal life. Ezzat was lying face down, with his hand on his amputated
leg, which had started to bleed, creating a stain expanding on his torn trousers. I called
his name. He raised his head slowly. His forehead was bleeding and lip sliced. His face
seemed unfamiliar without his spectacles. He looked at me for a moment as though
collecting his thoughts, and then asked in a faint voice with a fading smile:
“Did you see me riding the bike?”

In the clean white gown they had just dressed me, I followed the professor, supporting
myself on the arm of the fat impatient nurse or alternatively pressing my weight against
the moist corridor wall. The urine bag attached to my thigh swayed and seeped yellow
streaks down my leg giving out the pungent smell of medicine and before long,
moistening the gown.

In silence, I suffered. I bit my lip and exhaled a moan, which, in my throat, froze into a
croak. I sweated. My legs were scarcely able to carry my weight. The names of things
and features faded from my exhausted memory. Upon entering the hall, the professor
stopped. He waved to the group awaiting our arrival. I too, came to a stop gasping for
breath. Despite the diminished significance of faces, shapes, words and colors and the
haziness in my eyes, I saw her.

It may have been someone who looked like her, but I realized she was the last offering
the world held in store for me before my departure. Like a Greek goddess she stood tall
and upright among the women and men in white, the mother emerald in a royal crown.
The white silken cloth carefully styled to wrap her ebony body highlighted her hidden
beauty and added a uniqueness to her unabashed femininity. Like the others, she
turned to me, but with a slight twist of her neck she gave me a Mona Lisa smile.

Her coarse hair was carefully combed into fine uniformly spaced pharaonic braids. As
she embraced me with her primeval eyes, I realized that even if it were she, she would
have to make a considerable effort to recompose the fragments of my features of years
gone by.

Over there south of the cataracts, our white domed homes were spacious as were the
hearts of their inhabitants. From the foot of the mountain, they extended all the way to
the river. Bright colorful earthenware and white flags whose tips were dipped in henna
hung over their doorways. Mud dolls spread their arms in adulation towards the palms,
the Nile and God the creator. Crocodile hides and small stuffed foxes occupied the
ledges. Charms wrapped in goatskin were placed along their side as a protection from
the evil eye and to chase away the wicked spirits that dwell on mountaintops and in the
riverbed.

A creature of unknown sex and age, I followed the professor with some difficulty, up a
step to the slightly elevated platform. The doses of chemicals had taken away every hair
on my skin and turned me into one of those inhabitants of far away planets we imagine
in our movies. My age, posture, height and composure had all gone with the flesh and
the fat, with the atrophied muscles and the bent back, under the gnawing of the
insatiable cells, which after years of scavenging, still remained hungry.

On the squares of white soft sand in front of the houses, we play and dance and sing as
the distant horizon swallows the sun's blazing disk. The same sand carried by groups of
girls from the valley's belly, on the tops of their heads, to be lain in golden carpets
stretching from the houses to the edge of the Nile, in anticipation of the festivities and
weddings of summer. Intimidated by neither scorpions nor the crocodiles yawning
nearby, not even by the howling of wolves across valleys and corridors of ancient
temples, we continue our merry-making, even as the moon bids us goodbye and retires,
and our mothers slumber on the mud mastabas totally devoid of any signs of femininity
during their men's long absences in the North.

Among the girls, Fatim always stands out. She never hesitates to storm into our house.
If she finds me asleep she wakes me, if I am lying down she pulls me to my feet and if I
am just standing she pushes me outside.

As in previous times, the nurse pointed in disgust to the bed specially prepared on top
of the platform behind the professor. I took my time as I lay my body. My eyes were
fixed on the unlit lamp that hung from the ceiling. In an attempt at encouragement, the
professor jokingly knocked on my skull. He then turned to the group of doctors and, as
in previous times, I heard him say my name and announce that I am a male of about
thirty years of age. If it were she, I expected she would jump out of her seat and rush
towards me, but she didn't.

On the squares of white sand, barefoot in our short white shirts and long pants, we the
boys choose our brides. The girls select the places for the homes and with our palms we
erect little walls of sand.

In our dialect we sing and we dance. We touch and hug in innocence until the last
wedding of a boy and a girl is over. When we have our fill of weddings we take our
song to the Nile. We implore him that his waters may recede so our mothers can harvest
his shoulders and we can eat good food from our labor and the cattle can gain strength
and the sheep and foul grow fat, and so we can pick up the fruit of palm trees, and
those who are away can commend our industriousness and strength in their letters and
boast of us when they meet at night in the cafes of Cairo and Alexandria. We also
implore the Nile not to inundate in winter and flood the houses and erode the walls and
rot the grain in the mud granaries, and beg him to return to us those who are far away.

As we dance, we eat dried dates, popcorn, lupine and peanuts. When thirsty, we drink
turbid water from the clay pots outside the doorways. We tease dogs and old people
but if one of us suddenly cries out, we know for sure that he has been stung by
scorpion, so in panic we jump on top of mastabas and high rocks and the mothers rush
to get their oil lanterns and the village mobilizes all its medical potential to save the
afflicted child.

The rubber pipe whose tip lies in the ureter snakes between my thighs. The cold air
pumped by the air-conditioning numbed my frail body. I fidgeted and managed to
clutch the woolen covers and pull them over me. Between the professor's legs, I could
see her, sitting in the first row taking notes, sometimes listening attentively. However,
my name, which had just been mentioned, had not aroused in her the slightest interest.

On the squares of white sand, it was always Fatim I selected as my bride. None of the
friends ever dared to challenge the rules of the game. She stands by my side and incites
me with her looks in full knowledge that this is our unavoidable fate. I hold her
hennaed palm and we pick a spot to together build our matrimonial house of sand. I
can hear our two mothers whispering at a distance and suddenly they burst into shrieks
of African laughter. This is the entrance and here is where we will receive our guests.
For sleeping there is more than one room; this one for summer, that one for winter, the
third for the sons and the fourth for the daughters. Over there is the pen for the foul and
another for the sheep. We don't forget the stable for the cows and at the far end of the
house from the south side we place the oven, the store for dry sticks, the granary, the
pigeon tower and the storage space for hay and fodder.

Unheard by the others, Fatim whispers that she will knit me numerous takeyas and
make me colored belts, hand fans and prayer rugs made of palm branches to sit on cross
legged and read the Koran and pray to God in the proper way, so that baraka prevails
and the children grow up to be devout and God fearing.

Having concluded some time ago that the matter was no longer a secret to me, the
professor allowed himself to explain the extent of my suffering and elaborated on the
areas of destruction left behind by the gnawing of the insatiable cells. He said a lot. He
pointed out locations, named organs and added that the heart could no longer tolerate
the damned doses.

On the squares of white sand, boredom falls upon us. Tired of repetition but not
exhausted, we lie on our sides and bellies and pile under our heads pillows of sand in
which we dig our hands to avoid the stings of mosquitoes. Our whispers whimper
down. As night progresses and the mosquitoes quiet down, we spread our arms and
legs across the sand. The cool breeze flirts with our warm bodies and in silent
communion we listen to the heart breaking ballads that reach us, faint and fragmented,
from the surface of passing feluccas and fishing boats. Some of us make mental images,
before succumbing to sleep, of their fathers' and elder brothers' homecoming laden with
gifts, soft accents and endless stories of the distant country to the north.
On the lit screen, the professor explained the different stages of the disease. The organs
of my body passed interlinked, mysterious and totally alien to me. As usual, in order to
highlight his efforts, the man did not forget to mention that I had come to him at a
critical stage after the disease had spread and taken control and after the killer cells had
already devoured to their heart's desire.

The first blow had come suddenly, a knife stuck violently into the side of my neck, as I
read one of my poems at a gathering unattended by a single one of my people. Then the
blows came again and at closer intervals, under the armpits and where the thighs meet
the belly. I used to blame it on my constant hunger and poor living quarters, on staying
up until the early hours of morning, on my feeble financial resources. I bore the pain
and took refuge in cheap painkillers until I was struck in the innings of my guts. I cried
out aloud as I sat with friends at the cafe. I cried like I had never cried before, then I lost
consciousness. When I came to, I found him to my side, frowning. Tens of times, he had
previously torn up my files and slapped me. He had locked me up in cramped rooms
with killers and drug addicts.

“You're lucky.” he said.

“Even in my illness, you mock me.” I said, and the sick people around me listened.

“We where about to take you somewhere else.” he said. I smiled, and in turn, he gave a
yellow smile and asked shrewdly:

“Do you know where?”

“The Natron valley Sir, where else? Many of my friends have preceded me there.”

“Wrong. You suffer from insanity. How could we possibly take you there?”

My hair stood on edge as I realized what he meant.

“Just because I tried to help my people." I responded meekly.

The man stood up and shouted at the doctor who was there:

“Give him all the paper and pencils he needs.” Then he looked at me and added in
earnest:

“Write all the poems you want, you don't have much time.”

When I asked the doctor what the man meant, he said he had been joking and would
say nothing else. The two men exchanged angry looks.
At dawn, we allow our sheep and cattle to roam and mingle on the lush meadows at the
river's edge. We make mud dolls and horses and catch small fish, always avoiding eels,
as an eel once swallowed our great grandfather, besides, female eels menstruate.
Sometimes, we swim carefully in shallow areas. Fatim throws her colored shawl on the
green grasses, lays a loaf of corn bread and some lettuce stalks on it, then takes an oath
to weave me a winter gown, a shawl and a barda out of white goat's wool, and to bear
us tens of boys, so we can send them to the north, one after the other as they grow up,
to return to us laden with valuables, status and a broad knowledge of the world.

In turn, I promise that our house, which I will build with my own hands, will be so high
and spacious that it will be the talk of villages. Even camel riders and palm tree
climbers will not be able to see its interior. Its numerous doorways will face the Nile,
and it will extend all the way to where the sun rises from its resting place behind
Ramses the Great.

The young doctors start asking questions and the professor explains, and the smell of
urine attracts the flies to the bed sheets. I am unable to shoo them away. The waves of
pain chase away the retreating painkillers. I feel them gathering in my guts and
intensifying. I can barely make out the lamp hanging from the ceiling. The nausea
overtakes me but I resist and curl myself.

On feasts and religious occasions, on our way back from visiting the graves, after
distributing alms to shepherds and drifters from the valleys, we used to visit our friend
Ramses the Great. At his enormous feet where there is always shade, we would rest.
The elderly women would chew tobacco while those in need would perform their
ablutions behind the rocks. Some of the women and girls would creep inside the temple
to sift the dust for small scarabs and colored beads, believing in their potency in
engendering pregnancy and increasing the flow of milk in women's breasts. My mother
clears a small area of sand with her palm. Just enough to throw her seven shells
consecutively, the seven shells that almost never leave her pocket. She then starts
distributing prophesies to the women and girls that gather around her. Invariably, I
accuse her in her ear of trickery and the inability to see the future and she laughs and
pulls the lobe of my ear. Her small silver ring hurts me.

Last night, with no introduction, the fat nurse asked me to say my name. I gave all three
names. She then asked me if I knew the date and I answered without hesitation,
knowing what she was trying to establish. She asked about the foods I had had, so I
listed what I had eaten by name and quantity. I was surprised when late in the night the
fool asked the resident doctor about the significance of my incorrect answers. The
doctor gave her one blaming look and walked away, cursing stupidity. When I dosed
off a little, I dreamt of my mother in her white shawl. She was standing on the shoulder
of Ramses the Great and was ready to take off on a beam of radiant light which she held
in her right hand, trying to grasp me with her left, but I avoided her hand and moved
away from her.

At first, my mother and the other women of our village had insisted that the news that
drifted to us little by little from the north aboard the passing boats, was no more than
exaggerated rumors. We had stopped playing on the white squares of sand,
apprehension loomed over our heads, confusion surrounded us and the demons held
us in their grips. The dam about to be constructed, even if the stories were true, would
be nothing like the barrage that was built decades ago, they stressed. Only an act of god
could inundate all the houses and make the waters rise above the minarets. With the
confidence of past experience, they advised us to go back to our playing and dancing
and not to stop holding our make believe weddings.

But when everything had been confirmed, my mother and the other women announced
decisively that dying here was to them a thousand times better than to be transported in
the barges like sheep, to places we knew nothing about. To narrow houses built in a
hurry in the land of Saiid, far from the river, were the heart would contract, and which
would repel the children as soon as they grew up. To lands newly reclaimed from the
ravines and mountains lacking the Nile's rejuvenating silt, with no palm trees or grasses
that grow as the waters recede. The cattle would die and children go hungry, and as
long as we lived, we would curse our bad luck and lay the blame on the new soil, in
reality innocent of this grave injustice.

Fatim asked me if their house in the new place would still be next to ours. I said that
even if the houses were next to each other, even if they moved the houses themselves
and reconstructed them together as they would the temples, the land would be
different, the mountains and even the sky would not be the same. My mother said to
my father, who had come back from the north with the other fathers to take us to the
new country, that all the loved ones were here in their graves close to us, their spirits
hover around us at night and we visit them on fresh mornings, distribute alms and feed
passing travelers, be they human or those gin who are believers and live in the river.
We shade their graves with giant *** and camphor trees, she said, and repair them if the
Nile touches them in its winter swell.

I overheard Fatim tell the girls that we would plant palm trees, lemon and mangos and
ride in cars and trains and be near our fathers who love to travel and migrate. That they
had built us schools and hospices and tar roads and our houses there would be lit by
electricity like the houses of the north.

She seemed to have absorbed the advice of those who moved from one village to
another to calm fears and promise a bright future in which our children would eat and
their children would have their fill. I shouted in her face asking how long it takes for
palm trees to bear fruit and for lemon trees to blossom. Since then, nighttime merry
making lacked taste and meaning. Dancing and singing became a bad joke deserving
blame and curse. Apart, we sit in front of the houses, which little by little are losing
their decoration, listen to our fathers' stories about the new country and to the howling
of wolves and yawning of crocodiles. We ask when the time will come for our
departure to the unknown.

A few days before our departure, my mother got dressed in black and refrained from all
talk, food and drink. She sat on her own by the doorway, her sobbing incessant by night
or day, and when she did stop crying, she would look into empty space, her complexion
pale and her features hard like a flint statue. I called her name but she did not respond.
In tears, I sat by her side. She held me and took a deep breath. Over her head, the
sheikhs read from the Koran, incense was lit, my father spread raw ambergris over her
head and fixed a pharaonic scarab of green agate in her hair. When I asked him what
was wrong with her, he said: son, your mother is a firmly rooted tree, today being
uprooted.

As the crying and moaning grew louder and circles of sad chanting formed on the
river's bank on the hour of departure, they looked for my mother in all the barges
among the sheep and cattle. They called her name over loudspeakers and still could
find no trace of her. My father together with a few men stayed behind and with us on
board, the barges left screaming whistles of farewell to our dear homes. Not bearing to
look at the riverbank, I dug my head into the bosom of Fatim's mother and broke down
in tears. I caught a glimpse of Fatim close to us, sitting in silence with a dancing gleam
in her eyes, which she did not try to hide.

In the houses whose wooden roofs, doors and windows had been removed, my father
and his party only found dogs and cats, some stray sheep and a few pigeons resting on
the walls. On the fifth day of their search, they found her dead, at the feet of Ramses the
Great. She was upright on her knees, unscathed by wolf or vulture, with her eyes wide
open like the living, looking ahead towards the Nile. In her closed fist, she held her
seven shells. My father washed her in the Nile's opulent water, in his white robe and
headscarf, he shrouded her and, by the loved ones, she was put to rest.

In the narrow room in the narrow house in the new country, my father said in her
eulogy that she was a blessed shield, a safe harbor in which ships take refuge in the face
of raging winds and God's fury. Fatim's mother called her an opulent palm tree and an
acre of fecundity. When my turn came, I said that out of all women, she had kept her
promise; her grave was the last in the old country and her funeral was the first in the
new.

In the narrow room in the narrow house in the new country, as my father and I were
preparing our departure for the north, I told him I did not wish to dress in the
traditional white kaftan and red belt, nor to stand like him at the sides of tables, but that
I wanted to go to school to become a teacher if God so wished. As for her, Fatim boldly
announced that her objective was the study of medicine and when I told her that all the
doctors around us where white, she scratched me in the face and went to my father in
tears to complain. The next day I caught her in a corner of the room that housed the
oven spreading ashes on her face.

The professor turned to me and asked if I would, as in previous times, lend my body to
the fingers of the interns. I nodded my agreement anticipating a closer look at the dark
woman's features, and held tightly to the edge of lucidity to avoid slipping into the
depths of delirium.

The gentleman for whom my father had worked for over quarter of a century was
drunk at the dining table one night and no sooner had my father placed the soup in
front of him, than he threw the bowl in my father's face, and laughed in ecstasy. After
that my father, with large parts of his face having lost their skin and turned white, had
the choice of either skinning his remaining black skin or finding some way of growing
back the original. His disfigured face was not appealing and incompatible with
attending the tables of important gentlemen. Instead, he chose to go back south
penniless, to the new houses.

At the train station, he advised me to save a little in order to have a doctor check me up
before the disease got out of hand, which I promised to do. Back home, from what I
heard, he sold newspapers and magazines at the train station and bribed school
children with candy, the pictures of movie and football stars and reading my poetry to
them, so they would bear his disfigured face long enough for him to tell about his son
who was a known poet and a teacher who spread knowledge in the villages, and repeat
the details of the letters he had sent with regularity to high offices to take interest in his
only son's treatment.

Then, his stories to the school children became limited to the unanswered letters he had
sent to doctor Fatim appealing to her to take into her own hands the treatment of her
childhood companion. When someone told him she had married and traveled to the
countries of the Gulf, he stopped his chatting and even refrained from selling
newspapers, contenting himself with hanging around the train station in the daytime to
carry the bags of those who arrived from the north, and at night spending his meager
earnings on cheap liquor. He slept under parked taxis and in the city's dark corners
muttering about the lifestyles of pashas and important people and the types of dishes
he could cook, cursing the revolving times. When things got worse, he started pulling at
arriving peoples' clothes instead of carrying their bags, asking them about me and
about Fatim, and if they denied having met us they would become the object of his
wrath and cursing.
I woke up one day to find him standing over my broken body, sobbing profusely and
trying to hide his disfigured face with the tip of his head-shawl.

“Poetry has been my ruin. Yours, Father, was the seduction of the north.” I said, joining
him in his weeping.

“Do not unfairly blame poetry and lands, my son,” he said and I could barely make out
his words.

He sat by my side, silent and distraught, until visiting hours were over, then he bent
over me and said:

“I forgot to tell you, the palm trees have borne fruit and the lemon trees blossomed in
the new country.”

“I knew from the beginning that Fatim's predictions would ultimately come true, it was
just my illusions, Father.”

“No. It was fear of melting in the land of Saiid.”

“Maybe.”

At the edge of the bed, the dark woman stood in her uniformly spaced pharaonic
braids, her round face beautiful as a full moon. My body contracted and a shiver rocked
me as I meekly asked her name. Karima, she said. I asked if she knew Fatim who
resembled her so much. In turn she asked:

“And who is Fatma?”

As sadness squeezed me to a pulp, I said:

“She is a girl who, among other things, excelled in drawing conclusions, and entrusted
the running of her affairs to reason. She sits in my heart since childhood and refuses to
leave.”

In spite of me, my vision drifted south. The squares of white soft sand, the noisy
merrymaking of children and the laughter of women who exercise patience to mythic
proportions came to occupy most of my mind. In my short white shirt and long pants, I
found myself surrounded by my companions as, as usual, they prodded me to sing,
clapping and shouting to me to start the evening off. An evening of burdens shed and
patience subdued. With initial difficulty that quickly dissipated, my voice rose in song. I
would gladly give up whatever living was still in store for me to be able to stand on my
own two feet and surrender my body to the relentless rhythm. Beside me, the voice of
the beautiful doctor rose accompanying my song in our Nubian dialect. When she had
come closer and held my hand, it was not difficult to see the great surprise in her eyes.
When we had both come to a stop at the end of the song, in a quivering voice she
announced to her colleagues that we both came from the land of Nubia in Kom Ombo.

“No. From the land that shines at the bottom of the river.” I shouted.

The crowd around me took a step back, and she was silent for a moment before waving
her hand and turning around.

“Where is he now?” I asked the fat nurse as I walked beside her like a child encumbered
by the lesion of recent circumcision.

“Who, the professor?”

“No. The tricky one, whose coming I have so feared.” I said, as I started to make out the
shoulder of Ramses the Great.

The woman looked at me with the tenderness of mothers and did not reply.

The Land That Shines At The Bottom Of The Riverby Ahmed Rabea El-Aswani

Translated into English By Amani Amin

Believe me, I understand all that you've said. The horrible life of an asylum seeker is
something I am reminded of many times each day. I also know that our dark faces
stand out like sore thumbs amongst these people to whom colour and race are the
paramount civilising traits. Bulging with their emptiness, flaunting their imported
names in grand cathedrals with lofty belfries, there they pray, seeking the blessings of a
foreign God. Yet they're hostile to all colour penetration, professing a faraway disdain
for those not of their kin, never thinking that mankind are related in the bond of
humanity. To them we're underdeveloped, third world scum, fleeing some horror that
since long had not been seen upon their land.

Free of guilt and moral constraints, my neighbours, tenants stacked up in

condominiums, architectures of neglect and paranoia scatter on my appearance. Dead
to their dreaming, many in chemical limbo, they perceive refugees as their principle
antagonists. In hatred, their kids are the most vociferous. They taunt us with words,
broken glass and car hoots. This, of course, illustrates the collapse of the social with the
paranoid, the ego with rumour. They are here conjoined to such a degree that it seems
to make us reputable beings who live on the rumours we imagine are circulating about
us.

I apprehend the dilemma we're in; all of us do. Are we not just immigrants who could
never emerge from the spent interiors of themselves? Although we survive in
purgatory, squashed between exhumation and narcolepsy, we feel that we're being
watched by invisible stalkers, which makes a few of us have the need to conceive
themselves as being important enough to be stalked. Yet some of us, a few, are brave
enough to look into the cragged maws and smell the disdainful scent of those
bottomless pits of skyscrapers.

We, the sons of the red deserts, where vile and black deeds spread to the far corners, are
forced to take flight with only dear life to these green lands. Hell-bent beyond all
comprehension to save their interests above all else, in this vicinity sapient thinkers,
exploitative entrepreneurs and their democratically elected manipulative leaders are all
blind to our human rights; exciting enmity and hatred amidst our lugubrious tyrants.
They're regularly summoned to the White House to altercate their pitiful disputes and
have their beards plucked. Yet, the most extraordinary thing is that the great northern
nations are holding us on bent knees. Seduced and time-lost by the apparent
philanthropy of these cold climes as seen from afar, it seems that we can never hope for
full release.

**

My frail body was made impotent by electric shocks. Now I'm a wasting old man with
no wife or child to keep me company. The nights I sleep in a locked room not wrapped
in anyone's arms. Torture and beatings cost me the use of my left hand. The nails on my
toes and fingers were yanked. They may appear to be the most severe of my visible
injuries, yet the mental blackouts and fits of epilepsy are worse nightmares. Woe betide
me! In my loneliness, I'm never blithe or gay. My friend, within me there is something
lost, forever lost. I'm a wretched forlorn being, thrown upon these far off icy, shores like
a rock or a stone. The vital things have gone out of my heart.

Oh sweet reverie how I long for starlit night skies. Through the vast mist of the cold
climes, there comes this song of atavistic land, of bitter yearning without a space.
Sometimes through remembering, that empty and unbearably ubiquitous hurt grimly
begins to groan within me, aching to return. Like the underdogs that we've become we
pine to roam the red desert dunes once again. Oh Allah! How I yearn to see that which
once we were, to pass again through those warm evenings of a time that is no more. It
dwells lonely and anguished in memories' halls of recall. So many years have passed, I
don't know whether any of it has survived.

Even now, after the passage of so many years of which I've lost count in this, my host
country, when the October evenings wax the afternoons with huge shadows and they're
already too cold for us, I still go down those long, feral and morose landscapes of
pavements which the autumn mist has veiled. Verily, if the face of the moon is full and
shining clearly in the winter sky, or crisp with frost are the gritted pavements the
provoking sounds will drive me out. Even though my frame is fragile and my eyesight
is getting defective, the whole of my long day I feel a strange eerie calm as I leap right
into the arterial vortex of the city, muttering to myself as I go. Hunger and hard foot
slog have roughened my form and sapped any bloom that might have been left by
imprisonment on my face.

Our flight into inferiority in these alien landscapes to champion freedom within the
context of ambivalence and personal angst makes our revolutionary proclivity looks
ridiculous. Disparate and forlorn upon this empty space, we meet in solidarity and
attendant hard work. In empathy we greet each other to exchange views on various
experiences, honing our consciousness. We live on hope, yet none of us is stupid
enough to admit that. Hope buried in scepticism leaves my emotions drained.
Nonetheless, take heart my friend, the Spirit of Freedom is abroad, prickling like the
daystar. Man's idiosyncratic arm shall forever bear the torch of liberty in the darkness of
oppression. It will never be put out. In truth being an innate light that shines from
within there will always be many who'll undertake to kindle it again.

We all know that our fight seems futile from such faraway states. Our burden is greater
than we can bear. We have many enemies from within and from without frustrating our
struggle. The strongest in blocking our message from reaching the fatherland are those
pharisaic elements within our own society. In defence of their warped faith and to gain
advantage with our quarrelsome oppressors, the sanctimonious maintains that
mythology, symbolism and devotion are the essence of faith. Very strict in every step,
they walk under the hem of Iblis, influential amongst our tethered, ill-informed crowds.
It is an established fact, these men of deceit sanctified the control of the Arab homeland
by the most lethal nations of the north.

**

With rapid steps and cheeks wet with religiosity, the iniquitous fools and mockers go
beneath the shade among congregations amassed in mosques amidst scattered shoes.
Drawing in their breath, from thousands of mihrabs and mimbars, the yellow bellied
black snakes burst with fury, realigning minds disastrously awry. To replace the
reverend love of merciful Allah that is eternally and tightly held in the gentle hearts, the
Imams bellow images of the horned Angel's Domain. Foaming at the mouth, spraying
spital, they rant, 'In garments of fire you'll be marched in chains to burn in Ibis's blasts
of Hell fires with shades of black smoke. Alive, you'll dwell therein, where there is no
time. He will roast your skin and renew. His punishments shall cover you from above
and below. To satiate your ravenous appetites, you'll pick in between the thorny bushes
of Zaqqum. Its fruits are spiked heads of devils, crawling up the thorny bare twigs.
Hell's only tree grows bottom of the Pit in Satan's stagnate bogs of black water. In pain
the fist-sized heads scream pitifully, begging for mercy to spare their lives. The fruits
smell disgusting and taste bitter and vile, yet you can't stop devouring them. With your
teeth you'll gnash at the heads, devils' brain and blood streaming down chin and neck
from either corner of the mouth. No sooner a sinner had a bite, he would froth on his
broken lips for more.'

Perfecting its emptiness, theologians made our land barren of ambitions and of dreams,
making it an easy prey to every aspiring foe, wasting our wealth for civilisation to
travel to the rich lands, making roads to travel on in shinny cars. Although religion is
the Semites' heritage, myth is now their daily fodder, nourishing the blood of those who
go without food. In heated debates, they spend hours guessing at the size of Angels and
their wingspans. Have we not been here before! Upon all our lands, inventiveness and
entrepreneurial spirit is dead. Yet when with the tyrannical scions of Arabism whom
they serve well, the hypocrits laugh and mock us, then they throw up in disgust,
confiding, "Your excellence, feed them their bread with tears. Make them drink their
tears amongst themselves." Such self-righteous men make my rage swell to the verge of
villainy, on the verge of attack.

Although they never fail to impress, candour and humility are very much the
demeaning traits of our people. In chastisement and bonds, they're yoked with the rope
of slavery to evil. Their faces meek and their movements dignified, the fathers lead their
children to drink their fill of the black froth gushing from oil wells. And in their stink
the small heads rock and lift as their hair, like tumbleweeds tangled with skinny twigs,
is blown in Simoom's tempest race. In fear, our oppressed masses reticently fight and
squabble to gnaw the scraps off bones, carefully and neatly organised on their plastic
dinner plates; in piety they never waste God's bread.

At the end of Friday prayer, in terror and darkness they are marched by the
conspirators against shame to the square of the central mosque. There they're made to
linkup in circles around the beheading blocks set on a plank and scaffold platform
swathed in red crepe. Passing through and into darkness, the worshipers stand
whooping and chattering to observe the arrival of the damned who dared to cross the
line, bringing dishonour upon the name of the clan. The town's men passively witness
the killings then disperse, subdued, homeward to their loved ones.

**

Is it not a testament of love that I could still raise my burning longing high and map the
march of youth with age? I was too young to seek martial fame, a mere youth still
mindful of boyish games when first I found books and began to feel their power. It led
me on to feel with passion and think of man. Yet it is with fonder memory of that youth,
who is my inner self, I speak. Enlisted by a noble cell with a liberating mission, a time
bomb waiting to go off, it fast taught me that character development, motivation and
personality supersede the individual's function and his status symbol. Whilst all around
me the young men were gradually perfecting their emptiness, my mind grew keen,
intense and frugal. I watched more closely than ordinary men summoned up to the
mountains. I climbed with vigorous steps which impressed so many incidents upon my
mind; the tragic sense of history, the fidelity towards one's ancestors and man's eternal
hope to reach the stars.

At the age of nineteen I felt ready to duel with that which warded me from being a man.
To please my heart, for one second I laid it bare. Believe me I had no wish to challenge
Mot into a death duel. But to have done nothing would have destroyed me. I had the
conviction that I carried an important message. It was like an indigestion that went
from nausea to spasm, until I was made ready to foam in the mouth with constant rage
against that which surrounded me on all sides, preventing me from ever speaking my
mind. On a suddenty and uncontrollably my despair erupted into insult and into
threats. The jolt, when it came, was exactingly tragic.

In the dead of night I stole myself to place posters on lampposts at various spots in the
city to cry my rage out.

According to the judge, due to the seriousness of the crime of which 'I was guilty', the
court was not empowered to give me bail. I was unceremoniously carted off to face
dread horror of the Mukhabarate prison until the judge arrived at his verdict. I knew
what it meant. He was waiting to be told by the emirs what judgement he should reach.

Yet the punishment for my crime was clear. Anybody in the fear-smitten countries of
the Arabs could tell. Subjects daring to question the divinely guided tyrants deserved to
wear the red uniform. But my clansmen were powerful. They interceded on my behalf,
but to my face they bade me 'go away'. With my stigmatised father amongst them, the
irate sheikh of the clan simply enumerated and explained the importance of tribal ties
and loyalty. There was not a word of love. They gave me no money and drove me out
of the tribal place and shut the door. I still envision the bruises and cuts visible under
the stubble on father's saddened face. He, my brothers and friends were beaten then
questioned by the demons of the Mukhabarate.

Pitiable and my eyes downcast, all self-assurance was erased from my forehead. I wept
and sighed, "Oh Allah, who will now forbid my entrance to the halls of grief!" In silence
I was dragged away by the hell-hounds of the Kingdom. Fixing my stare in horror into
the darkness of my dungeon walled by barriers of high indifference, I sat in the corner
of my cell, taciturn. No one could see my hurt body curled up on a grubby mattress in
the muffled dolour of the interrogation cells. For months I wallowed in the stink,
tormenting the life that I had cut out for myself. Torture was a daily thing, hanging
from the ceiling or with electrodes applied to my body on a wet floor. Naked I was
thrown in ice-cold baths; I never felt so cold. Not even Shamash, mounting high upon
the empyrean pale fury of noon, could bring warmth to me. The water bubbling in my
stomach, there forlorn I sat with my hand on my heart obsessed by all to which I, in one
single act, had turned my back. Suddenly I found myself transported to an isolation cell
in the remand prison.

**

The men's remand prison was like a dead building constructed of boulder size stones.
The once Ottoman jail, was now overlooked on the west side by tall, modern block of
flats. For seven years I was interned in that place of darkness and torment as if in Hell,
longer than any other inmate had ever served. Anger, filth, villainous smells and the
city's smog all belonged around me. My cell of incarceration and pillorying was within
the mean skeletal Ottoman-style dungeon in the middle of town. Past the bleak, bolted
isolation cells of the damned, totally devoured by baneful gloom, you felt your way up
the well of a set of stone stairs, stooping all the while. In a dim slash of light escaping
from above, you'd climb up out of that submerged obscurity to emerge into a large,
bony dormitory.

Still below ground, in this dungeon room, lit by a single bare light bulb dangling from
the ceiling, you'd always see men loitering in deep pools of shadow, blue columns of
cigarette smoke rising above their heads. Rats, flying cockroaches and swarms of
mosquitoes nibble and sting. Due to my agitated state of mind I was unable to get used
to the bites on my legs from the small creatures which crawled through the
uncomfortable bed clothes at night. Although awfully sad and eerie, the disembodied
sounds of the men's footsteps, surly grunts and the hushed vocalisations of their whines
cursing the woeful miseries of their fates, were somehow comforting to the inmates of
the musty, barren taciturnity of the cells below. Never seeing the daylight, in the bowels
of the dungeon, often I was left behind bars for months of solitary confinement,
drowning in the silent despair of the doomed men in red uniforms.

Repeated arson and vandalism over two centuries by the cooped up inmates battered
the large dormitory, lined up in rows with sodden and lumpy dirty old mattresses.
Threadbare and cheap, black blankets were untidily flung on top. A few men stretched
prone upon the beds, their eyes tracing the deformities of the ceiling. In a few places the
walls had been slashed with yellow paint as if someone had urgently tried to cover the
ugliness. Within the deep cracks betwixt the huge granite stones, generations of
prisoners hid books and left messages.

Along three walls of the dungeon there were tiny arched doors of small cave-like
burrows swallowed by pitch darkness. Each cavity was about a meter and half in height
and no deeper or wider. Some of those rabbit holes were sought after by the more
belligerent prisoners as prime residences. Several were set aside to be used as toilets.
Lined up with overflowing buckets of urine, there were circular holes in the floor,
clogged up with faeces. The noisome smells permeated the whole atmosphere. In the
flickering golden glow of a candle lit inside an alcove concealed by column there were
two men laying close together in embrace; pictures hung all around them.

The dormitory was gutted; iron bars dangled low from its concrete ceiling which caved
in. To give it much needed support, six erect iron columns thrust out around the room,
with pipes and wires clinging on. Dangerous potholes seared the concrete floor; wires
protruded from under the garbage. The mangled remains of rats, mice and all sorts of
live and dead insects littered this place of despair.

To leave or enter this lockup at daytime, you'd stoop under the oxidised bars of a metal
gate. The sharpened ends of its flat spikes were like the blades of guillotines lowered
midway. I heard prisoners say, "Long term penitentiaries are much worse, hidden from
sight, away in the desert." But I couldn't imagine any place on earth being more
degrading than that home of humiliation.

Climbing up a dank flight of stone stairs within a shaft of solid wall, you'd finally arrive
at the ground level, entering a narrow, but quite long room. It was cut in half by a
barred separating cage wall that split the prisoners from their visitors. Reflecting on the
windows of the tall blocks of flats on the west side, slashes of sunlight shined in sequins
through the prison's front door, located on the callers side. The grid gate on the
shadowy side was raised half way. It opened into a paved courtyard behind high walls.
Once there was a well in the centre. The place was completely safe, enclosed on all sides
by the walls and parapets of the more recently built two-story police station and
courthouse. The upper floor had portholes. The barred kitchen window where we
queued for our meals opened straight onto the yard.

To escape the white flames of noon, a large number of anguished prisoners fused
together in the waiting side of the room; flies buzzing overhead. Squatting on the
concrete floor to cool, the men looked scared as if it were their first time many puffing
hard at their cigarettes. The rest sat with mouths wide open. Those appeared as though
they were about to cry. The sound of words was an intrusion upon their thoughts. All
stared rigid with apprehensive eyes at the heavy, wide open wooden front gate. Woe's
me! How timid we've become! Mere metres from freedom, none ever tried to flee.
Outdoors, there was a small garden with tall, leafy palm and acacia trees; bushes of
oleanders were in flower. Two policemen, each with a loaded gun at his side, lazily
stood on either end of the prison gate. Other guards, in loose fitting grey uniforms
gathered, drinking tea in a shabby little mod brick shack at the garden entrance.

Hungry, the men spent the noon hours patiently waiting for a glimpse of relatives
plodding up the pathway. Soon after the midday prayer, the town's philanthropists
would bring lunches, from which as a permanent punishment, I was banned. I was only
allowed to eat the prison vomit gruel.
The exterior of the old Ottoman building was rough; the desert winds had eroded it on
all sides. Under the shadow of the thick walls of the windowless northern side hoboes
slept under newspapers amid the rubble of crushed glass, metal pipes, tangled wires,
crushed cans and plastic bags. Tattered bearded men banded about night-fires,
illuminating the pocked wall. Some sat smoking, staring out towards the blankness of
the night. Heaps of rubbish would stir nearby. Awakened momentarily, dirt-caked
tramps shifted their positions on the floor.

**

My seven year stay in the remand prison, where there was nothing cool nor a thirst
quenching drink wasted my youth. As if a drowning man clinging to a straw, I hung
onto the reassuring words of my mother and sisters. On the few occasions they were
brought to visit me, they told me that the Sheikh of my tribe was working ceaselessly on
my behalf. Heading delegations of worthies, he knocked at the doors of the kingdom's
influential men, asking for their help before the emirs of the ruling clan. The remand
prison was mostly inhabited by small time petty criminals and frail tempered foreign
labourers. There were always a few who were caught not keeping the daily prayers by
the morality police. The saddest were the bewildered Beduin men. Starved and
possessing little comprehension of money, they'd stray into town to steal bread. They
stayed only for a few days before their verdicts came through. They were normally set
free. The rest were distributed to other prisons. Occasionally a lucky man was sent
home, whilst I was left behind. The really serious law breakers of ignoble birth were
confined in secure prisons.

Daily, at seven o'clock each morning we were filed out of the cells and dormitory into
the courtyard to queue outside the kitchen window for breakfast. We spent the rest of
the day wandering aimlessly within the closeted space of the prison. Most of us
remained in the courtyard. Even though its walls were high and covered with barbed
wire, two guards manned the watchtower. In turn, every few minutes one of them
would brave the blazing sunshine to peek on the inmates whilst the residents of the
modern block of flats overlooking the yard stood on their balconies to watch.

To get rid of the musty smell of the dormitory that lingered in their clothes, the
prisoners used to line themselves up along the eastern wall, facing the sun. Never being
good at shoving and pushing, I'd rarely find a place. Instead I'd take off my sweaty
smelling black and white striped jacket and shake off the bugs and flees, and whatever
other insects that stuck to my hair. Then I'd wait until the sun got to me. I would sit
down and gaze up at the blue patch of sky that roofed the high stones walls and dream
of release.

Being the longest serving prisoner, each morning I searched for the familiar ones. But I
would find that a few of them had gone. Everyday new faces would appear in the yard.
Strong, instant friendships quickly developed amongst the remand prisoners like
flames in dry hay. We sat in rings, exchanging secrets and telling stories of our lives as
if it were the last chance for any of us to talk. We were ships that passed in a storm. The
next day men were sent away and a new batch came in.

**

Almost every Tuesday a group of miserable prisoners in red uniforms arrived. Their
number always fluctuated between two and four, never more never less. The skeletal
men appeared like signs of danger amongst the black and white striped uniforms.
These prisoners who wore red were to be hanged or beheaded after the Friday prayers
in the public square of the central mosque. The brutal spectacle would be announced by
loud speakers to the people of the town.

The first thing I used to do every Tuesday morning after we were let out, was to look
out for the prisoners in red. If any were brought in during the dark hours of the night
they'd already be gathering the rubbish in the yard. They looked incongruous, their
clothes careless, yet self-conscious. I felt more than just seeing their intense eyes and
they looked scared. Though mostly young men, they were haggard and frail and could
barely walk. Their clothes hanged baggy and loose on their thin and deformed bodies.
Always divided into groups, there were sweepers and rubbish collectors. Shaking with
fatigue, the sweeper bowed on the broom stick, gathering dust and rubbish in small
heaps.

The collectors dragged black polythene bags behind them and plodded around the
courtyard. With the palms of their hands they picked up the rubbish piles; scraps of
leftover food, cigarette butts, squashed rats and whatever filth they found. With
hopeless, forlorn looks fixed permanently in their long thin faces, they toiled at a snail's
pace from either end of the yard. Sad and taciturn, they maladroitly bent down, picked
up dirt and put it in the sack. They never spoke to one another except in stolen,
resigned glances. Sometimes there was weeping in their glazed eyes.

In sympathy or perhaps more out of fear of facing a similar fate the remand prisoners
kept out of their way. Worse still, anyone caught speaking to the damned men, the
guards might accuse him of knowing of the men, of being a saboteur and subversive.
He'd get a beating on the spot. He might even be passed on to the interrogators to make
him confess. Even in secret we avoided them in order not to hear their nightmares. We
just kept out of their way, walking with heavy hearts, rarely nodding to the prisoners in
red uniforms. Although their names were whispered by everyone in the dormitory, yet
none could bring himself to call the men. They remained just sad faces without
identities.
Some guards watched them with pity, but those fiercely loyal to the regime scrutinised
them with spite. They never hesitated to hit or kick any of them if they thought they
were slacking. Knowing that my crime was similar to theirs, in the early years of my
incarceration in the remand prison I watched them with the same great fear and
apprehension that one day I, too, might wear a red uniform. Bit by bit I began to
appreciate that the sheikh of my clan had had my death sentence abrogated. I started to
believe that I was being kept in the remand prison as a favour to my clan. That was a
sort of comfort to me which gradually led me to think that my release was only a matter
of time.

I used to sit alone and watch the damned men with a heavy heart, wondering what
haunted thoughts were swirling in their heads. I saw the weeping pain that sprang
startled in their eyes. they'd glance around and tremble in fear as if they could hear the
footsteps of their tortures. I listened to the sounds of the ugly sorrow that from the
depths of those miserable souls arose.

Soon after the remand prisoners were let out into the yard, the damned men were sent
to clean below. At midday, when the searing heat of noon baked the hard stones and
the black tarmac felt like glowing cinders, they were brought up again. Whilst
everybody sought the shade, the prisoners in red uniforms sat alone and separately
from one other in the sun to warm their weak bodies. Their sacks and brushes beside
them, they leaned their backs to the hot walls and closed their eyes. I do not think they
felt pain any more as though their senses had been drained. But you could guess what
torture or beatings they had endured from the way they walked. When eating their
dinner, their eyes came alive, looking around in mad stares. But soon the stares would
change to surprised looks and a permanent glumness would descend upon their forlorn
faces.

For a while they seemed to sink into a coma of despair and their chins fell onto their
chests. Suddenly they would wake up and dash around the yard sweeping and
dragging their sacks behind them as if to forget who they were. They seemed to be
careful that their sacks were equally full. If one had more in his, he would slow down to
let the other catch up. I often wondered why that was so. Mid afternoon, the prisoners
in black and white striped uniforms would be sent back to the dormitory and cells. But,
as if specially privileged, the ones in red remained out, wandering singly in the empty
yard. They always found something to pick up. A leaf or a piece of paper blown in by
the wind, a dead mouse thrown out of the upper portholes of the police station. At
sunset the guards ordered them to stop. The prisoners in red dragged their sacks to the
gate and tied up the tops. They were bodily searched then escorted back to their lonely,
dark cells.

Thursday mornings, their last day alive, whilst the other prisoners queued outside the
kitchen, where there was the smell of freshly baked bread, the prisoners in red leaned
against the wall and stared vacantly at the blue sky arched above the high stone walls.
By Friday morning they would be taken to the clinic to be narcotised and made ready to
be killed. We always knew when they were executed. A sudden, dreaded eerinees
would grip the town. A morbid, silent fear filled the dormitory with all sorts of
speculations that afternoon. Out of respect the prisoners would not speak except in
gestures and whispered voices. As if the guardian Angel had gone and the Daemon
reassumed His throne, none dared to speak his thoughts. Thus we sat and saw the rest
of that day pass.

PORTSMOUTH JANUARY 2001 On Remand

A Conversation from the Third Floor

She came to the place for the second time. The policeman stared down at her from his
horse.

The time was afternoon. The yellow-coloured wall was stretched right along the
road. Inside the wall was a large rectangular three- storey building; its small identical
windows looked more like dark apertures. The woman stood a few paces away from
the horse. The policeman looked behind him at the windows, then at the woman. He
placed both hands on the pommel of the saddle and closed his-eyes. After a while the
horse moved. It was standing halfway down the street. Then, a moment later, it made a
half-turn and once again stood itself at the top of the street.

The woman came two steps forward. The horse bent one of its forelegs, then
gently lowered it.

“Sergeant, please, just let me say two words to him.”

His eyes remained closed, his hands motionless on the pommel. Above the wall
stretched a fencing of barbed wire at the end of which was a wooden tower. Inside there
stood an armed soldier.

The woman took another step forward.

“ You see, he’s been transferred ...”

The sun had passed beyond the central point in the sky. Despite this the weather
was still hot. A narrow patch of shade lay at the bottom of the wall.

The woman transferred the child to her shoulder.

When she again looked at the policeman’s face, she noticed two thin lines of sweat on
his forehead.

Quietly she moved away from in front of the horse and walked beside the wall.
About halfway along it she sat down on a heap of stones opposite the building.

The prisoners’ washing, hung by the arms and legs, could be seen.

She took the child between her hands and lifted him above her head.

She noticed his arms suddenly being withdrawn inside and his hands gripping
the iron bars of the window. Then his face disappeared from view. For a while she
searched for him among the faces that looked down. She lowered her arms a little and
heard shouts of laughter from the window. She spotted his arm once again stretching
outwards, then his face appeared clearly in the middle.

“Up, Aziza. Up. Face him towards the sun so I can see him.” She lowered her
arms for a moment, then raised him up again, turning his face towards the sun. The
child closed his eyes and burst out crying.

“He’s crying.”

He turned round, laughing.

“The boy’s crying! The little so-and-so! Aziza, woman, keep him crying!”

He cupped his hand round his mouth and shouted, “Let him cry!”

Again he laughed. A few shouts went up around him. She heard their words and
shouting. Then she saw his large nose poking out through the bars,

“Woman! Don’t be silly, that’s enough! Cover tile boy- he’ll get sunstroke!”

She hugged the child to her chest and saw the soldier withdrawing inside the
tower,

“Did you prune the two date palms?”

She shook her head.

“Why not? Why don’t you talk? I’m being transferred. Pass by Abu Ismail and
tell him I send him my best wishes. He’ll do it as a favour and prune the trees, then you
can bring along a few dates. Did you bring the cigarettes?”
 She made a sign with her hand.

“Talk. What are you saying?”

“You’ve got ‘em,”

“Louder, woman.”

“You’ve got ‘em, I sent them to you.”

“When?”

“Just Now.”

Her face was against the sun. She shifted her head-veil slightly from her head.

“They took a couple of packets. Never mind, Aziza. Never mind.”

He laughed. His voice had become calm. The other faces disappeared from
above him, only a single face remaining alongside his.

“Did you build the wall?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“When Uncle Ahmed lights the furnace, I’ll get some bricks from him.”

“All right. Be careful on the tram. Look after the boy.”

She remained standing.

“Anything you want?”

“No.”

She gazed at his face, his large nose, his bare arms. She smiled. The face
next to him smiled back.

Suddenly be shouted. “Did you get the letter? I’m being transferred.”

“Where to?”
 “I don’t know.”

“When?”

“You see, they’re pulling down the prison.”

“Where will you go?”

“God knows-anywhere. No one knows.”

“When?”

“In two or three days. Don’t come here again. I’ll let you know when I’m
transferred. Has the boy gone to sleep?”

“No, he’s awake.”

He stared back for a while in silence.

“Aziza !”

Again there was silence. The face alongside his smiled, then slowly slid back
inside and disappeared. Her husband remained silent, his arms around the bars.

Suddenly he glanced behind him and quickly drew in his arms. He signalled to her to
move away, then disappeared from the window.

She stepped back, though she remained standing looking up at the window.

by Mohamed El-Bisatie

The Search forHappiness

Humor By Khalid kishtainy

Tranlsated by Ramsis Amun

Goodday!

My first intellectual foray as a child was an attempt to discover what happiness was and
how I could find it. I was thirteen years old when I borrowed “The Story of Greek
Thought”, hoping to find answers to this question from Greek philosophers. I was
sorely dissapointed. All I found were a few short paragraphs on the subject and I
discovered that these philosophers only tasted misery in their lives and that one of them
- I think his name was Socrates - ended his life by drinking a cup of hemlock. I closed
the pages of the book and spent the next three months suffering from headaches. I still
suffer from headaches and, of course, from that sickness called the search for
happiness.

In my intellectual journey I came across many further speculations on the subject, of

course. The English said that the happy man is one married to a Japanese woman, and
who lives with her on the French Riviera, and employs a Chinese cook. I am still
uncertain of the third stipulate. Do they mean to cook Chinese meals or to fulfill the
needs of the Japanese woman? The Chinese themselves have their own view of
happiness. Why not? Are we not enjoined as Muslims to “seek knowledge even in
China”? The Chinese say that if you wish to be happy for an hour you need to drink a
glass of fruit juice, and if you wish to be happy for three days, get married, and if you
wish to be happy for eight days, slaughter a sheep and eat it, and if you wish to be
happy for a lifetime, become a gardener!

This is of course a free translation of the Chinese saying. The Chinese didn’t say “drink
a glass of juice”. They said "drink a glass of wine”. They never said “slaughter a sheep”
but actually said “slaughter a pig”. But as a Muslim of course I may not utter such
profanities in public.

Others have taken Chinese sayings and developed them according to their own
understanding of happiness. In Britain, for example, Lord Mason (sp?) adapted the
same Chinese saying and said “If you wish to be happy for a day, go fishing, and if you
wish to be happy for a week, get married, and if you wish to be happy for a month,
slaughter a sheep (actually a pig, once again), and eat it. And if you wish to be happy
for a lifetime, smoke a pipe!

The reader will without a doubt wish to know the secret of Lord Mason’s passion for
pipe-smoking. He was the President of the Pipe Smokers’ Society in Britain. He became
its president because he owned a factory which produced smokers’ pipes.

This is an excellent opportunity to draw a comparison between the English and the
Chinese. The Chinese can tolerate the institution of marriage for three days, whereas the
English can tolerate it for a week. This is a clear indication of the coldness of the English
and their great patience. The Chinese can consume a pig in a week whereas the English
takes a month to consume it. This is a clear explanation of the thinness of the latter, and
his blandness.

How can we adapt the Chinese saying to Arab society? I think we should adapt it thus:
If you wish to be happy for a day, slaughter a sheep and eat it. If you wish to be happy
for a week, get married. If you wish to be happy for a month, get divorced. If you wish
to be happy for a lifetime, don’t listen to the news.
Sleep
The flower dropped into the well.
The boys disbanded.
Oh! My eye,
Your eye has become a minaret and ash.
Sleep
Time was almost dawn
And no one housed you: who houses us?
Your palm was empty except for the scent of myrtle
And of a dream extended to fuse the circle of people
Into flowers, Euphrates and date palms.
Running after the years tried us.
A letter like a hot bull tried us:
How could we tame it by our nails?
Our nails were full of the moaning,
Of blood and head.
Sleep
You who dropped the flower into the well
You who dropped the flower into the guards' well.
Now you have become no more than a blind dervish
Weeping in the darkness for God's sun.
Sleep
At this moment there is no one to protect you from
The people's action
The people are asleep…..asleep.

What I will

I will not
dance to your war
drum. I will
not lend my soul nor
my bones to your war
drum. I will
not dance to your
beating. I know that beat.
It is lifeless. I know
intimately that skin
you are hitting. It
was alive once
hunted stolen
stretched. I will
not dance to your drummed
up war. I will not pop
spin beak for you. I
will not hate for you or
even hate you. I will
not kill for you. Especially
I will not die
for you. I will not mourn
the dead with murder nor
suicide. I will not side
with you nor dance to bombs
because everyone else is
dancing. Everyone can be
wrong. Life is a right not
collateral or casual. I
will not forget where
I come from. I
will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved
near and our chanting
will be dancing. Our
humming will be drumming. I
will not be played. I
will not lend my name
nor my rhythm to your
beat. I will dance
and resist and dance and
persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than
death. Your war drum ain't
louder than this breath.

jerusalem sunday
jeru
salem
sun
day
three muezzins call idan
where one's allah begins another's
akbar ends inviting the last
to witness mohammad's prophecies
church bells ring the sky
an ocean shade of blue above
christ's tomb and the stones
of this city witness man's weakness
boys run by the torah
strapped to their third eye
ready to rock their prayers
the roofs of this city busy as the streets
the gods of this city crowded and proud
two blind and graying
arab men lead each other through
the old city surer of step than sight
tourists pick olives from the cracks
in the faces of young and graying
women selling mint onions and this
year's oil slicking the ground
this city is wind
breathe it
sharp
this history is blood
swallow it
warm
this sunday is holy
be it
god

The Valley of the Culprits

In the valley of the culprits

be patient.
Remain planted on your legs
to be struck
by the newcomers and leaving them
never look behind you,
so that each one can see
the hairstyle on the nape of your neck.

In the valley of the culprits

while insults fuse
do not say anything, especially
make like the nightingale which ate a blackberry
while the human one depreciates.
The bump at the end of your nose
must not have an impact on your spirit.
Know that your language burns if you eat while pricking
and your backyard burns if you speak bitterly.
Above all
forget your mother, and your father.
It is not necessary to worry about their fate
or that they are weakened physically
and drag themselves along.
Do not say anything.
Drop...
Let your efforts break down.
Let the mast be reversed...
Carry on your way simpering.
If you see a fallen friend
above all have no feeling
no pity
and if you have envy, give him another kick.

Do you know that nobody is thinking of you at this moment?

If you come across a large turkey
cut its throat without saying anything to anybody
and eat it!
Have no panic, remain still
where you are well hidden!
In any event
You are in the valley of the culprits.
You will be viewed badly if you work much.
You will be driven out if you speak the truth.
You will be crushed
if you go the way of love.
You will be beaten in various ways
if you resist tyranny.

You know
that there are things not to be neglected.
In any event
you are in the valley of the culprits
Be pitiless!
You know that integration is spoken about uniquely,
that at least your indentity card is like theirs.
One demands it from you insistently.
If in spite of all you do not like
all that I have just said
do what you want, act according to your desires
as well as your accomplishments.
One never knows
Perhaps you will be accepted!

Lace
By Mona Omar - Egypt

A bride in white
laced with love
and longing, her hair silk black
strewn with white jasmines
tender palms, hennaed feet

Incense fills the air

drums chant, hearts gallop
then, the roar of a B52
splits the night sky
rapes the white dress bloody

stains of lies
the young groom stabbed
that snake they call Freedom
this virgin wed to Death
one sad March 20th .

A Lesson To Be Learned
By Abir Zaki - Saudi Arabia

nature swam upon great waves

crashing upon eastern lands
destroying man, woman, and child
cries were heard with fearful fright
followed by silence in endless night…

a deep breath.
sunk into the fear itself
standing firmly
in “who” you are
and “what” you are
and blew to listen
that was made by your sound…
against the wind a voice was heard
in a soft whisper yet once again
enlightening of our own making
giving a lesson to guard this precious gift of life
and learn to live with each other without strife
for this disaster was made by man’s un-spoken knife…

now,
walking by quietly
hearing the cries of choice
pausing to look
thinking how frail and breakable
a man is
in a silent tear
rolled down
and couldn’t speak.

now it is time
to let go
let this be a lesson
to those alive,
let it be a warning
and give birth to new dreams
…………………to mankind

Thank you Tsunami.

A small village near Cairo,

a narrow gravel road,

the chilly evening breeze,

a pile of drinking glasses,

a pot of boiling ``ink tea'',

and prayers in the silence

as we await the master.

The rumors said that he

is stopping here tonight,

and rumors never lie

in our village town --

that's what they always say.

The rumors say that he

will sit and tell the story;

the one which has no ending

and which never begins.

Perhaps he'll come tonight,

perhaps he never will,

we do not really care.

The story has been told,

and it will never end.

So catch it in the middle,

or catch it at the end,

or chant it in your prayer.

Those present who have ears

can hear it all the time

without the story teller;

and those who need to wait

to hear it wait until

'tis they who tell the tale

A worthy tree
stepped out of her colors one evening,
ruffled cellophane papers,
and scattered the heavens' gifts
over children’s pillows.

She is the tree

who memorizes all the dates
and allows not
the seasons to beguile her.

She will chase the butterflies

That keep falling asleep on my papers
and goad them to fly away
to where boundaries melt
with the outlines of places.

There,
where meadows ignore names,
a basket is swinging,
with masked memories
and no alternatives,
held by angels’ hands
soon to be tossed into the air

’O gentle fir,
show mercy
grant me more time,
for many a task
still calls.

Story by Margo Wayman

Raqib, the lizard, lived in a small hole that had been carved into a boulder by the
howling desert winds. There were many large boulders scattered around the area, all of
them sat sizzling in the hot sun.
Raqib preferred to stay in his hole where it was nice and cool. He didn't like the heat at
all.
One day, as he was lying around, not doing much of anything, he became very thirsty.
To ge to the oasis and get a drink of cool refreshing water, he had to run across the hot
sand. Raqib didn't like that because the hot sand burned the bottom of his feet. But he
was thirsty.... He stuck his head out of the hole and looked around. How was he going
to get to the oasis without burning his feet? Not too far away sat another pile of large
boulders. The sun was behind them, casting shadows onto the hot sand. That meant
shade for Raqib.
He took a deep breath and
ran across the burning sand.
"Oooooh, eeeeeh, oooooh,
eeeeeh! Hot sand! Sore feet!"
he cried out with each step.
When he made it to the
boulder's shade, he sat down
and rubbed his feet so they
wouldn't hurt. "Ahhhhh, that
feels much better," he sighed
with relief.

As he sat there, rubbing his sore little feet, he heard a noise that sounded like snoring.
"Zzzzzz."
He stopped rubbing and listened more carefully. What was that noise?
"Zzzzzz."
He stood up and walked over to where the noise was coming from.
"Yikes!" he cried. "It's Batin the viper!" Raqib backed away from where Batin lay
sleeping, all coiled up. "Vipers love to eat lizards!" he remembered. Then it hit him, "I'm
a lizard! I'd better get out of here!"
He ran as quickly as he could across the burning hot sand. "Oooooh, eeeeeh, oooooh,
eeeeeh! Hot sand! Sore feet!"
Raqib saw a date palm growing tall up ahead and darted towards it.
"Oooooh, eeeeeh, oooooh, eeeeeh!" He lept onto the palm, his tail landing on the jagged
trunk. "Ouch!" he screamed. He reached back and lifted his tail up and looked at it. It
was sore. He glanced upward and saw some pale yellowish flowers growing towards
the top of the date palm, so he climbed up to them and rested. He rubbed his tail and
his feet tenderly. "Aaaaaah, that feels much better."
The pale flowers provided a little bit of shade and smelled nice too.
Raqib looked around. He could see the boulders where he'd rested in the shade, right
near Bating the viper, and he could see the pile of boulders where he lived. They
seemed so far away. He looked up into the sky. The bright yellow sun was still there,
shining down on the desert.
He turned and looked the other way and could see the oasis. It didn't seem to be that
much further away.
Just then he heard some rustling on the ground below him. "What was that noise?" he
wondered, looking down. He couldn't see anything, but climbed down the trunk of the
date palm to investigate. No sooner had he reached the ground when a large bird came
rushing towards him. "It's Areebah, the Egyptian goose!" he screamed, and ran back up
the jagged trunk.
The goose stopped and looked up at Raqib with her dark yellow eyes and pink bill.
"Kak-kak," she honked.
Raqib hid among the palm fronds and watched Areebah. "I know that Egyptian geese
like to eat lizards. I'm a lizard, so I'd better get out of here fast!" He ran down, poking
himself on the jagged trunk. "Ouch, ouch, ouch," he cried as he made his way to the hot
sand below.
"Oooooh, eeeeeh, oooooh, eeeeeh! Hot sand! Sore feet!" Raqib complained as he quickly
ran across the sand. Up ahead he noticed a camel's skull laying in the sand. He quickly
made his way to it. "Oooooh, eeeeeh, oooooh, eeeeeh!" He scrambled inside a hole and
into the shade. He rubbed his sore little feet. He looked at the bottoms of them. They
were red and burned. He gently massaged them until they felt better, then curled up in
a ball and fell fast asleep.
A few hours passed by before Raqib woke up. Right away he sensed something was
wrong. He wasn't lying peacefully; he was being tossed around. He climbed up and
looked out of the hole and saw Faatina the fennec, or desert fox. She was nudging the
camel skull with her snout.
First she moved it to the left to see if anything was under it, then she rolled it to the
right to see if anything was inside of it. Raqib knew that fennecs ate lizards. "Fennecs
eat lizards, and I'm a lizard, so I'm getting out of here!" he yelled, as he ran out of the
skull. He dashed under Faatina's paws and kept running until he was far away. He ran,
and ran, and ran, as fast as he could, across the burning sand. "Oooooh, eeeeeh, oooooh,
eeeeeh! Hot sand! Sore feet!"
Up ahead he could see the oasis surrounded by desert palms, wild red roses, beautiful
pink carnations, and bright yellow sunflowers. "Just a little further, oooooh, eeeeeh,
oooooh, eeeeeh!" he told himself. His feet were so hot that it felt like smoke could come
billowing out of them, but it didn't. When he got to the little stream that ran through the
oasis, he jumped right into the water. He lay in the coolness until he felt refreshed. He
drank, and drank, and drank, until he felt like he would explode if he took one more
sip. Then he felt good! He climbed out of the stream and lay in a bed of soft yellow
sunflowers that grew in the shade of a short palm tree. "Ahhhhh, that's much better," he
said, just before he dozed off.
When Raqib woke up, the sun was down and the moon was high in the heavens. The
desert sky was ablaze with twinkling stars. Raqib knew right away that he was in
trouble. All the animals that slept during the day to avoid the hot sun were now awake,
roaming the sand, looking for something to eat. He made his way to the edge of the
grassy area near the stream. He felt the sand and it was still hot. "How am I going to
run back to my hole in the boulder?" he asked himself. "Well, here goes," he said, and
began to run across the hot sand. "Oooooh, eeeeeh, oooooh, eeeeeh! Hot sand! Sore
feet!" he cried out. He had to run fast.
He didn't run past the boulders or the date palm. Finally he came to a hole in the
ground. He ran down inside of it and sat there, taking deep breaths, then rubbed his
sore little feet.
Suddenly something tapped him on the tail. Raqib turned around slowly.
There stood Khabir, the scorpion. His sharp stinger was aimed at Raqib's back. "Yikes!"
he screamed, and ran out of the hole before Khabir could sting him. He ran across the
hot sand, crying, "Oooooh, eeeeeh, oooooh, eeeeeh! Hot sand! Sore feet!" He didn't stop
until he'd made it safely back to his hole. He flopped himself down on the ground and
rubbed his sore little feet. He took some deep breaths and relaxed. "All that running,
and all that rubbing have made me tired."
And do you know what else all that running, and all that rubbing did to him? It made
him thirsty again!

Story by Margo Wayman

Aziz the crocodile was lying in the soft black dirt along the banks of the Nile River. He
was enjoying the feeling of warmth from the sun beating down on his dark, olive green
hide. He yawned, opened his eyes, and looked up at the sky. He noticed that it was
starting to get cloudy.
Just then a wall of muddy water sloshed over the top of him. Aziz began to gasp and
cough as he was picked up by the force of the water and carried down river. After a few
minutes of struggling, he was tossed up onto a large boulder. He held on tightly with
his short scaly legs as the water cascaded around him. "What was that?" he said out
loud. He looked all around and noticed that the river had flooded, covering the reeds
and tall grasses along its banks.
Out of the corner of his eye, Aziz spotted something struggling in the water not too far
away from him. He slipped back into the Nile and, using his tail, swam over to see what
it was. "It's a tortoise," he noted and dove down under the water. He came up right
under it. As Aziz floated up to the surface, the tortoise found himself safely on Aziz's
back.
"Thanks," the tortoise said,
gratefully. "My name is
Wali. I nearly drowned.
What on earth happened?"
"Oh, the Nile flooded again.
There must have been a lot
of rain upriver. Now hold
on tight, don't let go. We'll
swim along with the flow,"
Aziz told the tortoise.
Wali looked around. There was nothing to see but swift-flowing, muddy water. "I think
that's a good idea. I'll hold on tight," he agreed.
Aziz flipped his long tail back and forth and continued up the river.
Wali was looking all around. "What's that up there?" he asked, pointing.
"It looks like a feather pillow."
"I see it. Let's go check it out," Aziz said. Soon they reached the pile of white feathers.
"Why, it's a bird. It's a pink-headed dove," Wali noted. "Get closer,
Aziz, and I'll grab it by the tail feathers and pull it up onto your back."
Aziz moved in as close as he could. Wali reached down and hoisted the bird up onto
Aziz's back. It soon began to cough. "Why thank you. I was in that eucalyptus tree over
there when a wall of water hit it and I fell into the river. I must have been knocked out.
Thank you for rescuing me." She sat up and said, "My name is Taroob. What are you
two doing swimming about in this flood?"
"The Nile has flooded once more. I found Wali, the tortoise, and now we've found you.
Hold on tight, don't let go. We'll swim along with the flow," Aziz told the dove.
"I can see much better from up here," Taroob said as she climbed onto Wali's shell.
The three swam up the river. A few minutes passed and Taroob began to whistle
excitedly. "Over there! Over there! I see something shiny," she said, and pointed to a
papyrus reed sticking out of the mud.
Aziz flipped his tail as fast as he could, and soon they were staring at the most beautiful
thing any of them had ever seen.
"Well, are you going to look at me all day, or are you going to rescue me?" the large
insect said with sarcasm. Aziz moved in closer. "Jump on top of my back," he told her.
She let go of the reed and jumped right onto Aziz's scaly back. She looked up at the
pink feathers on top of Taroob's head. "Those are pretty pink feathers," she said, looking
thoughtfully. "But not as pretty as my metallic green wings. By the way, my name is
Fareeda. I'm a scarab beetle; the most beautiful insect in Egypt."
They looked at each other, then at Fareeda. "You are a beautiful color, but we are each
beautiful in our own way," said Aziz.
Fareeda brushed all the mud off her wings. She shrugged her shoulders and asked,
"What happened anyway?"
Aziz answered, "There was a flood. All the marshes, reeds, and trees are under water. I
found Wali, Taroob, and now you. Why don't you climb on top of Taroob's back and I'll
swim up river. Now hold on tight, don't let go. We'll swim along with the flow!"
"I'll do just that," Fareeda the scarab beetle said. She climbed up onto Wali's shell, and
made herself comfortable on Taroob's soft feathers as Azia swam away.
A few minutes later, all four of them noticed a purple jacaranda flower floating down
the river towards them. "Isn't that pretty," Taroob spoke.
They watched as it passed by. Since Fareeda was the highest, she was able to look down
as it floated by. She saw a butterfly inside the flower. It was jumping up and down,
trying to get her attention. "I think the butterfly in that flower needs our help," she said.
Aziz turned quickly and swam towards it. Taroob flew down, with Fareeda still on her
back, and grabed the jacaranda flower in her beak. She then flew back and landed on
Aziz's tough, scaly back. "Whee, what a ride!"
Fareeda laughed.
Taroob set the flower down. Out crawled the butterfly, it's long probiscis was bent in
half. "Thank you for rescuing me. I got caught in the flood when I was inside the
jacaranda gathering pollen." She looked at the other four animals. "My name is Ahlam.
That was a terrible flood, wasn't it?" The others all nodded and said yes.
"Why don't you climb onto Fareeda's back. Hold on tight, don't let go.
We'll swim along with the flow," Aziz warned. He looked up into the sky.
The sun was beginning to set now. "I'll swim around and find a place where we can rest
for the night." He swished his long tail back and forth as the five swam down the river.
Ahlam climbed onto Wali's shell, stepped on Taroob's soft pink feathers, then pulled
herself onto Fareeda's shiny green back. "I'd better hold on tight," she said.
After searching for a while, Aziz found a small patch of dirt to lie on. Soon all of them
were asleep. That night, the Nile's floodwaters began to ebb, and by morning the river
was back to its normal level.
When the group woke up, they were surprised to see the tall grasses blowing gently in
the morning breeze. The tree trunks were a little muddy, but as strong as ever. The
papyrus reeds were swaying back and forth as the river water passed through them.
"It's over!" Ahlam cried out. "I can go back to gathering pollen!" She thanked the others
for helping her and fluttered off towards the jacaranda tree.
"Well, I guess it's time for me to say goodbye too. Thanks for everything," Fareeda
called out. She wiggled her antenna and shook off her metallic green wings. "I'm off,"
she said, then flew away.
Taroob, the pink headed dove, spread her wings. She flapped them up and down a few
times to make sure they worked. "Thanks again, Wail and Aziz.
I'm off too," she called out as she flew off towards the sunrise.
That left only Wali and Aziz. "I suppose you're leaving too?" Aziz said, looking up at
the tortoise. Wali thought about it for a few moments. "If you don't mind, Aziz, I like it
up here on your back. The view is great and I feel very safe. Besides that, I'm a tortoise
and move rather slowly. You are much faster. May I stay?"
Aziz smiled a huge crocodile smile, "Why sure you can. Hold on tight, don't let go.
We'll swim along with the flow." The crocodile, with the tortoise on his back, swam off
as the sun began to shine brightly on the calm river water.

by Margo Wayman

Malik was a very big, gray elephant with ivory tusks about four feet long. They
were sharp at the tips. He polished them every morning by rubbing them against big
leaves that grew on the nearby trees. Malik was so big that he wasn’t afraid of anything.
He wasn’t afraid of the crocodiles, gorillas, ferocious lions, giant anacondas, or striped
tigers. He wasn’t afraid of lightning or booming thunder, or of stampedes of gazelle or
zebras. He wasn’t afraid of the wind that sometimes blew so hard that the tallest trees
blew over. There was only one thing that Malik was afraid of, and that was spiders. He
hated spiders, especially the kind that moved really fast or jumped.

One day a rampaging storm came through

the jungle. The thunder boomed louder
than he’d ever heard it before, but he
wasn’t afraid. The lightning flashed across
the sky, fingering its way across the
blackness, but he wasn’t afraid. The wind
began to blow so hard that the trees bent
over and touched the ground. Parrots
couldn’t fly and were blown into the
bushes. Even the snakes had to wrap
themselves around the trees and hold on
tightly. Malik stood there, bravely, until
the storm passed.

Story by Margo Wayman

Hakim was the biggest, noisiest, and laziest of all the hippos in the river. While the rest
of the hippos swam, ate, and played, Hakim would sleep.The others were always
getting angry with him because he took up so much space in the mud at the side of the
river. Sometimes there was no room for any of the others. When they wanted to sleep,
Hakim would snore. He snored so loudly that all the birds and monkeys had gone off to
live in another part of the jungle so they could get some sleep.
One day, one of the hippos went over to Hakim and said, "Hakim, you are just too
noisy. None of us can sleep, and you are so big that none of us get a chance to lay in the
mud. And, besides that, you are lazy. We want you to leave. We want you to go and
move down the river by the elephants. Keep them awake all night!"
Hakim was surprised. He hadn't realized that he bothered the other hippos that much.
"If I promise not to snore or lay in the mud anymore, can I stay here?" he asked.
The three hippos looked at each other, then one said, "All right. But you have to be
quiet!"
The whole day long Hakim tried
his hardest to be as quiet as he
could.
He stayed awake so he wouldn't
snore, and he didn't go near the
mud. He sat in the middle of the
river, watching a bird dive into the
water to catch a fish. He watched as
a white feather flew off the tail of
the bird and floated down to where
he was sitting. Hakim looked all
around but he couldn't see where
the feather landed. Suddenly he let
out a big sneeze
.
"AAAAAAACCCCCCHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
All the sleeping hippos woke up. They looked over to where Hakim was.
"Uh, sorry. I just sneezed. It won't happen again," Hakim apologized, but soon he
sneezed again. "AAAAAAAACCCCCHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
The hippos looked at him angrily. "Uh, sorry again. Just another small sneeze, guys," he
apologized once more, but then he sneezed again.
"AAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOO!"
Hakim felt very bad. The hippos were angry with him now. He didn't want that, so he
left and swam slowly down the river. The AAAACHHHOOOOOOOOOOOO's got
quieter and quieter until the others couldn't hear them anymore.
"That's much better," one said, then they all went back to sleep.
A group of elephants from down river had their eyes on the spot where the hippos
usually lay. They had heard that Hakim had left, so they came to check it out. They
looked around and didn't see Hakim. One of them yelled, "Hey! You hippos! We've
decided that we want this spot in the mud. You guys are going to have to leave!"
The startled hippos looked at each other in surprise. One of them called back to the
elephants, "Oh yeah! Why should we care what you want?" The other hippos agreed
and yelled, "Yeah, why should we care?"
The biggest elephant, Tough Rashid, walked over to the muddy bank. "See these sharp,
pointed tusks? Well, in case you haven't noticed, you don't have any. If you don't leave
right now, we'll jab you with them!"
The hippos looked at each other. One said, "Why now? Why do you want our spot?"
Tough Rashid sneered, "You used to have Hakim here. He was the only one we were
afraid of. Now he's gone, and now you have to go. We have always wanted this spot."
The elephants filled their trunks with water and sprayed the hippos,
then cried, "Go! Go! Go!"
The hippos had no choice. They were not as big as the elephants and they had no tusks.
So they left and went further down the river. One of them mumbled, "Maybe if we find
Hakim and ask him nicely, he'll help us get our spot back!"
They searched and searched for Hakim, but they couldn't find him. Then they heard a
faint, "Accchhooooooo!"
"That's him!" one of them cried. They followed the sneezes until they found Hakim. He
was laying on a bunch of leaves, and looked very sad.
"Hakim, we want you to come back and live with us again. We're sorry for chasing you
away," he apologized.
"AAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Hakim let out the loudest sneeze any of them had ever heard. A little white feather
came flying out of his nose. It flew up into the air, then fluttered back down to the
ground.
"A feather? Is that what was making you sneeze?" Hakim was asked.
"I think so," he answered, waiting to see if he would sneeze anymore, but he didn't.
"That's it! I'm cured!" He was so happy.
The hippos then told him about Tough Rashid and how the elephants had taken over
their spot in the river. Hakim got very angry. "Well, we will have to show those
elephants just who is the toughest!"
They stomped back to the river bank near their spot. There were the elephants, blowing
water on each other and having fun. "I hope you boys are enjoying yourselves," Hakim
yelled loudly. The elephants stopped and looked over at the very big, and very angry
hippo. "All right, Tough Rashid. I'm back! This is our spot. You get out of the water and
back down the river, where you belong, or I'll really get mad. You don't want me to get
mad, do you Tough Rashid?"
The elephants were scared. They ran out of the water and down the river bank as fast as
they could. "And don't you ever come back!" Hakim yelled after them.
That night Hakim snored loudly, but the others didn't care. They were back home and
didn't have to worry about Tough Rashid and his gang, ever again....as long as they
heard Hakim snoring, they knew they would be safe.
Would Sindbad...

Would Sindbad be sad or glad

To be back in Baghdad?
Would he be happy
To stay amid boys and tanks?
Or rather say, “No, thanks!
Bye!I’ll fly to New York!”
Would he eat camel meat or pork
In New York?
Would he have milk and dates?
Or chips and Coke in New York?
Would he play the guitar?
Or the lute and flute in New York?
Would he study democracy at N.Y.U.?
Or tell the Arabian Nights in Jersey City?
Would he miss Layla in New York?
Would he like the people there
On Washington Square?
Would he fall in love in New York?
Would he say, “Get down, baby!”
Or, “If only you knew how much I care!”?
Would he go on air
And say, “Hi Bush and Blair!
No one’s lost, no one’s won.
Stop the war! And let’s move on!”

Would Sindbad ...

Would Sindbad...

King US President

Oh what a peaceful morning!

On Aljazeera today, they say,
The top story is perhaps the collapse
Of a three-storey-
Building in Beijing;
The next biggest news on BBC NEWS
Is about Madonna whose daughter’s gonna
Meet the man who deflowered her;
And then there’s the story of the glory
Of Africa, which, they say, today,
Will be purchased by Bill Gates
And will be prosperous
And its story wondorous.
No wars today on Aljazeera
No terror today on Aljazeera
For the world is now more peaceful
Without Saddam & Zarkawi
With only Karzay & Badawi
With only Chris Finch & David Lynch
And King US President
On top of the World!

King US President

King US President

King US President

Darling

“Darling,” said Blair in the morning,”

"I had a dream;
That’s why you heard me scream.
I saw myself in Manhattan
Having tea with Bin Ladin.
He looked me in the eye
And said, ‘Why can’t you and I
Convert Bush to the Faith of Jesus
And remind him that Jesus
Preached love and brotherhood,
Not war and cowboyhood.’
And then he served me dates
And said, ‘Tell Bill Gates
To rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan
Or else America will become
Americanistan!’”

I love your veil

What’s all this tale about the veil?

Fred and Gail shout and hail
Straw as hero
For his hail of fire on Aïsha’s attire.
Did Straw want Aïsha to show
Herself from head to toe?
Let Gail wear a mini-skirt
For her flirt.
And let Aïsha wear on her face
Or on her hair
Whatever piece
That would bring her peaceVis-à-vis God and vis-à-vis Man.
Oh, man!
Why d’you wish her to disclose
Her beautiful eyes and nice nose
Or her lips or her hips
If that belongs to her?
Come on, Sir!
That body you want her to show
Is a diamond dearer than the glow
Of the face of Marilyn Monroe!

I love your veil

I Love Your Veil

Somalia

Emelia?
What about a trip to Somalia,
The land you dreamt of earlier,
Where people dream on their feet
And eat bananas instead of meet
And chat about love of the dove
And have fun with the gun
And can't stand their enemy whoever they are
Be they from nearby or from afar?
Oh, let's go and see the guys
With brown skin and smiling eyes
As they fight for their women
With the verse and the sword
From dawn to moonrise!

Lies

They tell me
There's the moon and the stars
And the skies and nothing beyond the skies.
Lies!
There's God beyond the skies,
I tell you.
When that woman gave birth
To her little son
She didn't feel that the Earth
Travels around the sun.
It's all one to the tellers of lies
Who believe the Earth and the skies
Were not made by the One
Who never behaves out of fun,
But were made by chance
Like the meeting of a girl and a boy
Who came to dance.
Lies!
They call themselves wise
But would they tell me why
A girl doesn't look like a guy
Nor does sunset look like sunrise
Nor do I look like my siblings?
Would they please tell me
Who made the soul that makes the flute weep?
Who made the bird's twitter
Different from the bleat of sheep?
Would they be bitter
If I asked why
A vulture flies high in the sky
Whereas a peacock won't go that far?

Lies

Muhammad

What can I say on your day

When every day is your day?
O Muhammad ! O Taha ! O shafi’na on the Last Day!
From the day you stood to say:
O Man ! I’m but a man
Sent to save you, sent to tell you
The way that’ll lead you away
From the one who led you astray
To the One Who made you ’n the best way
And gave you beauty and bounty in every way
And will yet give you joy where you’ll stay
For ever and ever, as you say !
From that day,
O Muhammad ! O Taha ! O shafi’na on the Last Day !
Men came to you on foot and horseback;
They said as you said
And prayed as you prayed
And when attacked, they fought back.
You lived in a shack
While your beauty was brighter than the moon ;
You ate with your hands
While one with your beauty would use a gold spoon ;
You sat on the sands
While one with your glory
Would build himself storey upon storey :
And that’s why your story
Has gone as far as Brunei and Zinjibar
And London and New York
Where people eat with a knife and fork,
They too say as you said
And pray as you prayed
And when wrongly questioned, they answer back.
O Muhammad ! O Taha ! O shafi’na on the Last Day !
What can I say on your day
When every day is your day ?
From just a few those who came to you
Filled every hill, swamped every dale,
They made Time stand still till their tale
Made the mightiest kingdoms frail
And brought the Muslim flag as close as Prague !
The Arabian Nights tells of made-up knights
And of Harun al-Rasheed
Whose life the Truth of your Message
Made eed upon eed !
And yet someone came to draw
A pic of a man whose peer he never saw,
And papers and commentators
Seeking cheap money and fake glory
Made every story
Out of the Story of the man whose glory
Defies all Posts and all Tribunes and all Times !
O Muhammad ! O Taha ! O shafi’na on the Last Day!
What can I say on your day
When every day is your day?
When your name has brought fame
To a Dane who became insane?
What can I say on your day
When night and day
Souls repeat your words
As if they were songs of jungle birds!
Peace be upon you and all those who followed your way!
O Muhammad ! O Taha ! O shafi’na on the Last Day!

Muhammad

Life is rough

Run for money, run for fun;

Show your honey, none will shun
Your company, run, run, run!
Rough, rough, rough, life is rough:
I, he, she will laugh, laugh, laugh
At those who don’t have enough.
Laugh, laugh, laugh:
That’s rough stuff. But life is rough.
So run for money, run for fun;
Show your honey, none will shun
Your company, run, run, run!

Ya Subhanallah!

Cheer up!

What’s wrong with your tongue?

Can’t you say Subhanallah?
Can’t you say Ma Sha Allah?
Shake off that gloom!
And let your face bloom!
Or did your team go down in esteem
By losing Three-Nil to Brazil?
Or did you lose your job?
Oh, no, don’t be a snob!
Don’t ape those in good shape!
Say Subhanallah! Say Ma Sha Allah!
And pray and pray to Allah
Till hope comes your way,
Ray by ray!
No, don’t think of Tsunami!
Think of the beaches of Miami!
Think of Amazon flowers!
Think of New York towers!
Don’t think of King Lear or even Shakespeare!
But think of Allah and you’ll steer
Right for the Light of Faith –
The Faith that’ll give you powers
And blessings in showers,
And your face will excel all flowers
In beauty and freshness!
Blessed be Allah! And Allah bless you,
For your goodness!
For You

For you,
It’s cool to drive home
An almond-eyed cool blonde
Picked up in Paris or in Rome.
For you,
It’s cool to score a goal in Liverpool
Against Real Madrid or Lazio Rome.
For you,
It must be fine to savour wine
And spaghetti while listening to Pavarotti.
For you,
It’s great to have £ 8,000 in hand
Or to land a higher rank in a central bank.
For you,
It’s a delight to the eyes
To watch sunrise in the dunes of Morocco.
For you,
It’s beyond telling the joy of jogging in Monaco.
Let alone the joy of shopping in Hanoi
Or riding a mule in Illinois.
For you,
Time is Now, life in Now,
And there’s nothing to be said
For there’s no other life ahead.
For you,
Life is the kitchen and the bed.
Well, that’s you.
As for me,
Life is Now and Tomorrow.
Life is joy and sorrow.
For me,
I would love to hear Allahu Akbar
From a minaret in Madagascar.
I would love to hear an imam
Talk of Islam in Amsterdam,
Or speak to the children of Leeds
About the worth of good deeds.
I would love to see girls pray
To Allah at Broadway.
I would love to see boys making a lot of noise
Simply because they say
It’s just as lovely
To be a Muslim in Sydney
As in Harlem or Boston!
I would love to see people
From all over the world
Flying as one bird
To meet round the Ka’ba
To say what the Queen of Sheba

Now and then he raised his eyes to the higher slopes of the mountain to the left and to
the rolling vines and olive country to the right. Few other people shared with him this
long, sandy road. As he approached the village, more and more people appeared. But
when he reached the prison gate he found nobody. He only found foot tracks, some of
which he recognized easily. His elder brother’s foot tracks were too clear to be
mistaken. These foot tracks led him to the beach. All the gang was there, gathered on a
rock facing the sea. They did not stop talking when he greeted them. Even his brother
did not rise to embrace him. They were all arguing about names. “Let’s call him Sidi
Brahim,” one said. Others suggested other names: Moulay Ahmed, Sidi Abbad, Sidi
Saeed, Sidi Larbi… Finally, someone rose and said, “Listen! We’ll call him Sidi
Bushashiya!” Everyone else agreed, and, as if they had just noticed the one who was
listening to them, uncomprehending, two of them said in unison: “Hafid, if you want to
keep on the safe side, then watch your tongue.” Hafid just bowed his head in thought
and said nothing. Then, all the others sprang to their feet and soon were by the roaring
waves.

With mouth shut and wide opened eyes, Hafid followed the gang as they looked
for a wreckage, which they found nearly three miles away. They all joked and laughed
while they dismantled the wreckage, out of which they then made a coffin. Four of the
twelve men carried the empty coffin on their shoulders and took the lead. The others
followed on their heels in silence. Then they stopped by the remains of a dead donkey.
“Here it is!” a voice exclaimed jubilantly.

Hafid watched and listened in amazement as his fellow hamlet men picked up
the dry remains of the dead donkey, wrapped them in a white cloth and placed them
horizontally on the coffin. Then, the procession headed for the hamlet, the hamlet of
Hafid and all the others. Two hours later, they were there. Someone came to Hafid, and
asked:

“What’s this, Hafid? Who’s that those people are carrying on their shoulders?
How dare they come back now––only seven months after their banishment? Weren’t
they banished for a whole year? Speak! Answer me!”
 “I don’t know,” Hafid said, moving on.

The Imam of the local mosque asked similar questions and more when the
twelve men stood in the small square in front of the mosque, lining up behind the
coffin, out of which came a curious, unpleasant odour. A huge crowd gathered around
the square and listened in astonishment as one of the “gangsters” started answering the
Imam’s questions:

“You’re right, Honourable Imam! I can understand that you can’t understand
how we became what we are now. You always looked down upon us as a gang. And a
gang we were, indeed. We drank wine and when we were drunk we would come close
to your homes and say bad things that hurt you. We know that you were angry with us.
You beat us up so many times because we had failed to repent, and then you banished
us for a whole year. And when we were away, we did awful things, for which we were
put in jail. The jail was meant to be a punishment for us, as was the banishment. But,
fortunately, it turned out to be a good thing for us. And that’s no lie, Honourable Imam.
We did indeed meet in the jail a man who transformed us. He lit the way to repentance
for us. And then we were all freed on the same day, and this man –May God be pleased
with him– was coming with us to our hamlet, but then he suddenly died on the way.
We couldn’t bury him–I mean, we didn’t want to bury him anywhere but in our hamlet.
This is a good man––what you see in this coffin is a saint, Honourable Imam! That’s
why we brought his corpse over here in the hope of burying it amidst us. We trust –and
you can trust us– that as long as Sidi Bushashiya’s tomb is nearby, we shall never be as
we were before. We beg your pardon for all we did. We promise we shall never hurt
you again. That’s all I can say, Honourable Imam.”

The talk went on for half an hour or so, and in the end, the villagers said yes to
the Repenters’ plea for mercy, no to their plea for burying a stranger in their lands. So
the Repenters took up the coffin and left the hamlet with tearful eyes. They went on to
the weekly market. They went around, with the coffin on their shoulders, explaining
their story to who ever wanted to listen. A man came up to them, and said: “I shall give
you a plot of ground where you can bury this good man for the time being. Meanwhile,
I’ll try to persuade your people to change their minds.”

The place the Repenters were given was a tiny plot of ground near the beach. It
was there that the donor used to throw his waste. But the Repenters cleared the place
and buried the corpse and planted shrubs around it. Then, they made a habit of coming
to the shrine every Friday to pay their respect. They offered candles, pieces of sugar,
and coins. Other people soon started doing likewise. Sidi Bushashiya was increasingly
becoming just like any other saint, after rumours spread that he made miracles. All the
sick came, and so did all those who needed a child, a life partner, or just good health or
good luck.
 The Repenters themselves became very important persons. Hafid’s brother
married the most beautiful woman in the hamlet, and his wife became Sidi
Bushashiya’s Ambassador in the neighbourhood. Hafid feared for his reason when he
saw his own mother kiss his brother’s head and heard her plead with him to pray for
her during his visits to Sidi Bushashiya. Even the Imam declared publicly that he was
sorry for having denied Sidi Bushashiya burial in the hamlet. Let alone what many of
the hamlet elderly men said! When, two years later, Hafid learnt that an annual
moussem would be held for Sidi Bushashiya, he nearly broke down.

Meanwhile, more land was donated to the shrine, and so a splendid mausoleum
was built for Sidi Bushashiya, and the first moussem was held a year later and Hafid
could do nothing about it. In fact, he went there in search of a wife. He wanted to find a
woman more beautiful than his brother’s wife. He wanted to prove to people that God
gave to the Faithful much better than what He gave the idolaters and the pagans.

And they were innumerable the women, young and old, who came to the
moussem–on foot and on donkey. He could not see all the women (because of their
veils), but he kept going around the vast ground on which all sorts of merchants and
vendors had set up makeshift shops for the occasion. Hafid went particularly around to
the shops and stands that sold women things. Suddenly, he heard quarrelling voices.
Like many others, he rushed towards the mausoleum to see what was happening. He
thrust his way through the flocks of sheep, goats and chickens brought as offerings to
the shrine. And then he saw one of the Repenters brandishing a knife and threatening a
middle-aged man with a long white beard. A whole lot of people were trying to stand
between the two men. But the white-bearded man was saying things even the most
patient soul in the moussem could hardly bear to hear. “Let him kill me!” he
said defiantly. “I know him very well. I know all his fellow gangsters very well. I had
got a premonition they would do it. I knew they were the kind of people who’d die for
money. I said to them, jokingly, ‘If you bury a dead donkey in a tomb and start
worshipping it, then people like you will do likewise, and then you’ll be important
people, and so you can profit from that by selling to the visitors in one moussem more
than ordinary shops would sell in a year!' O people! Listen to me! This Sidi Boushashiya
is nothing but a dead donkey! And these men you call “repenters” are nothing but
people who want to make money out of this moussem!” At that moment, someone came
out of nowhere and stabbed the white-bearded man in the back. As the white-bearded
man fell to the ground, people started running away in all directions. Hafid darted a
bewildered look at his brother and scurried away.

The next morning the news came that the shrine had been burnt down. As to the
Repenters, nobody knew where they had fled.

THE EVIL EYE

The child was playing with other children in an open ground. He was the most
handsome of them all and the worst-dressed. Some children teased him about his old
jellaba that he wore everyday while today was a day of eed. An elder cousin of his
rebuked the teasers, saying they were jealous of him because he was more good-looking
than them. A young man stood at the edge of the open ground and waved to the
handsome child, who went to him hesitantly.

“Hassan ould Muhammad, is it you?” said the young man.

“Yes, it’s me,” replied the child.

“Where’s your father?”

“He’s in the cemetery.”

“What’s he doing in the cemetery?”

“He’s sleeping there.”

“Sleeping? How long has he been sleeping there?”

“I don’t know.”

“How so?”

“My father is dead.”

“I see.” And after a moment, the young man said, “Do you go to market?”

“Yes, sometimes, why?”

“Where do you have tea when you go to market?”

“At El Hashmi’s.”

“Right. Now goodbye!”

Hassan stared as the young man turned and moved away.

The next Tuesday Hassan was sitting with his uncle at El Hashmi’s tea-shop when
the young man appeared at the door and greeted everybody.

“Can I have Hassan for a while?” said the young man to Hassan’s uncle.

“What for?”
 “I just want to buy him something.”

“Right. But don’t go too far.”

The young man took Hassan to a nearby shop and bought him a nice jellaba and
leather slippers. Hassan thanked him with a smile, and said:

“Why are you doing this for me?”

“I am now a teacher, but as a student I used to read books by your late father.”

“Did you know him personally?”

“No. but I knew him through his books and through other people.”

“Where are we going now?”

“Not far. Not far.”

They stood in front of a female calf in the animal market. The young man smiled at
Hassan, and said:

“How do you find this?”

“It’s beautiful,” said Hassan with a big smile.

“It’ll be yours in a moment?”

“Mine?”

As soon as the young man paid for the calf, Hassan ran to El Hashmi’s, and cried:

“Uncle! Uncle! Look! This gentleman has bought me a calf! It’s beautiful! Look!”

Not only Hassan’s uncle, but everyone in the shop looked at the calf.

“Why all this?” said Hassan’s uncle suspiciously to the young man, who promptly
replied:

“Hassan’s father was good to me. I’m doing this for his son in return. May I now
take Hassan and the calf home?”

“Right.”

On leaving the market, the young man said a few prayers. Hassan listened, then
said:
 “I heard you say “the Evil Eye”. What’s the Evil Eye?”

“When people like something that others have and are jealous of them because of
that, they look at that thing in a bad way, and their look will often bring some kind of
disaster either to the thing itself or to the one who owns it. Also a rich man or a
beautiful woman, for example, can attract the Evil Eye.”

“People say my father was very handsome, so was it the Evil Eye that killed
him?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that the Evil Eye is very bad indeed.”

“How can I avoid it?”

“I don’t know how one can avoid it when he has things other people don’t have.”

“So what should I do?”

“Well, do something good in your lifetime. Do it as soon as you can!”

“Something such as what?”

“Write books, as your father did.”

“But I can’t.”

“You can’t now, but you can later.”

“What if I couldn’t do it even when I grew up?”

“You’d then do something better if you tried. But now forget all about this. Think
of your calf. Take care of it. And avoid children who are jealous of you.”

Hassan’s calf soon became the talk of the hamlet. His uncles came to him one by
one and asked him to sell them the calf. “No, no, no!” was Hassan’s reply to all his
uncles and all the others who came to him in the hope of buying the beautiful calf. Very
soon indeed, the calf was Hassan’s only friend. He gave her a name: Batool.

But where would Batool find food to eat and water to drink and a place to sleep
in a hamlet where all the males and many females wanted Batool for themselves?

The most urgent thing was a bed for Batool, and for this Hassan had to beg. He
went to the local imam and asked for his help. “Go to Yamna,” said the imam
reluctantly. “She’s just lost a child, you know. Maybe she could take pity on you. But
why don’t you just sell the animal and save yourself all this trouble?” Hassan didn’t
wait a second. He flew to Yamna and shed tears in front of her, “You see, Aunt Yamna,
I am an orphan, you know, and everybody wants to rob me of my calf. No one wants to
leave me alone. I just want a tiny space for my calf to sleep. I don’t want anything else!”
“You’ll have it, my son,” said Yamna thoughtfully. “But you’d still need to bring it food
and water. How would you do that?” “I’ll do everything for Batool!” Hassan cried.

Yes, for Batool, Hassan did everything he possible could. He washed her in the
river every morning, although the river was miles away. He helped his uncles and
others in the fields in return for bush for Batool. He went to mosque to pray and on his
return he would take two buckets of water from the mosque-well to Batool, who waited
for him on a tiny plot of ground in Yamna’s lands. When he had nothing to do, he
would push himself on a tree swing while Batool watched tenderly. Sometimes, he took
her to other parts of the hamlet just to show her beautiful flowers or to let her listen to
music as hamlet boys played the utar in a nearby orchard.

But then came hard times. The river dried up. His uncles and the others could
hardly find any bush for their own animals. Even the water in the mosque-well went
deeper and deeper into the ground. There were still a few flowers here and there, but
no one had the heart to see them, no one was in the mood for music anymore. The crops
were dying away, the animals perishing everyday. And so Hassan looked tearfully at
his agonizing Batool, who had just turned three years old. He shared with her the little
food he got for his breakfast, he brought her bunches of flowers nobody wanted to see,
he brought her bowls of water from the mosque-well, but all to no avail. Batool died,
and he cried.

http://arabicwithlagouader.blogspot.com/

Excerpt from Walking in the Dust

Short-listed for
the International Prize for Arabic Fiction

this excerpt is translated by Paula Haydar

I was nine years old and had no idea what was going on around me or inside me the
day my brother and I set off, along with all the other displaced people, into the
unknown. It all happened according to the plan my uncle Majid had made right after
the massacre when he decided, following the example of numerous other children who
had met the same fate, to send us out of the country through an international
organisation that took in orphans from all nationalities and looked after their education.
The decision was not in our hands. We were like two puppets whose strings were being
pulled by a stranger’s hands, submitting completely to their control after everything
came tumbling down. All I was able to salvage of my vanquished childhood was my
tongue, imprisoned in silence with my blood-covered mother hanging in its knot. My
fingers were intertwined with my brother’s; gripping tightly so we would not be
separated, not lose our way back to our demolished, vacated house. That was what I
was thinking as my brother and I wended our way into exile, not exactly
comprehending the terrible extent of our tragedy. The gap in my comprehension
widened when we reached the port of Beirut. I did not realise what was happening
until I was actually on one boat and my brother was on another, screaming for me to
hasten to him, exactly as he had screamed that night when my mother protected him
with her own body as it bled itself to death and I hid behind the curtain holding my
breath so the killer would not detect my presence. I didn’t move. I didn’t say a word.
Something down in that place from where my voice once sprang had been
extinguished. His wailing from the boat that rocked with the weight of all the
passengers travelled with the waves into the distance, while my screams crumbled into
heaps inside me. Fate was fiddling around with the grape cluster of my life, plucking it
one grape at a time.

I was in a state of extreme caution, unaware of how much time had elapsed since
getting on that boat as it propelled us towards a dark estrangement from our homeland
to where strangers who, driven by pity or politics, were taking it upon themselves to
shelter us and secure our continued survival. That was what my uncle was saying to us
on the way to the port, along with promises to bring us back to our homeland as soon as
peace prevailed. However, despite the innocence of my young age, my intuition told me
not to put much trust in his words, not to trust a person who, upon his brother’s
abandonment of us, had done nothing but shower us with abuse.

Crouched in my corner, I heard a woman say, “Give the mute girl something to eat.” A
young woman handed me an apple. I nodded my head in thanks, or gratitude, and put
the apple on my lap. The taste of blood on my tongue was putrid, stinking with the
stench of death. My eyes gazed into the horizon, not troubled by any question, and not
begging for solace. It was as though a void had opened up on everything around me
and within me. In their rush along the surface of the sea, the waves scratched out the
howling of the wind with their razor’s edges and effaced the traces of a howl that sank
and settled at the bottom of my depths.

A day, a sunset, a pitch-black night, and finally a dawn passed as we voyaged. Dawn,
that thing which is designed for new births, was ready to deliver me as a new person
from the womb of the sea onto the writing of my destiny, though I didn’t know a single
letter of its alphabet. I was completely surrendered to it. Had there really been any
possibility of my asking, my shouting, my digging into the rising dawn to find my
brother who had slipped from my hands and my childhood, which had become lost in
the autumn fog and the muddle of forced emigration?

My mute tongue had sentenced me to a deceptive silence. Would there really have been
anyone among the hundreds of people crowded at the port of exile who could stop the
roar of the sea and hear my screams had I been able to speak?

My pain had been held in check until that moment, for fear of giving myself away as I
crouched behind the curtain, watching my mother’s demise and taking my brother’s
cries like a pummelling of bruises upon my chest. As I sat on the dock of the port
awaiting my fate, a burning grief leaked out, like sparks from a sleeping ember that had
reawakened, and with each spark I lost one more cell of my childhood and a chapter of
the story that had held us in its warm embrace only yesterday.

One of the benefits of death is that it extinguishes memories, snuffing out their lanterns
little by little, and leaving in their empty folds illusions of faded images, half of them
taken from pale reality and the other half from vivid, multi-coloured imagination. As
the two became mixed together I began writing in pitch-black ink. I wrote as if I were
imitating myself, as if I were discussing a matter from another time, and so bubbles of
scenes would rise up from deep down inside me along with indistinct features that
would begin to flash in my mind only to die out, leaving behind on the white pages
unfinished marks which, in order to heal, required the courage to delve into the deep
well of sadness.

How strange is the memory. It retains the insignificant things and everything else it
tosses out into the great pit of fate.

This handful of insignificant memories in the recesses of my mind, like dregs in the
bottom of a wine bottle, were compensation for my impediment, for the words I wished
I could use to bring the events back to their beginnings through the trusted spoken
word.

Out of the substance of darkness and death, the lines began to pulse with life and light.
Like a patch of irrigated soil I waited for spring to come so the sleeping seeds could
sprout up as wheat stalks reaching for the sun. The thorny brambles and vines, with
which I had fenced in my past and allowed to grow high as adolescence busied itself
with my developing body, my studies and all those achievements that I trusted would
free me from the iron bars of the orphanage, I now started to tear away. The thorns
bloodied my fingers as I latched on to a memory I had deliberately forsaken before, for
my aim was to come to a clear reconciliation that would not fail to restore the scattered
pieces of the past to what they had been. Not some descriptive composition on a
hypothetical page. Not illusions or shadows of realities. Rather a shock that would
pierce the channels of my mind, become deeply embedded in it, and ferment in its vats.
Then the journey of writing would become an unavoidable, painful, existential act.

The words that often times crept unconsciously onto the page were painful to my hand
– my tongue’s substitute – and my soul. I was compelled to make that astonishing
transition from the tangible to the intangible, until the act of writing became my only
method of expressing things that could not be said with movements and gestures, or
even the right word – that unique pearl we choose from among all the others and set in
the shiny metal of the page.

In my feverish attempt to bring back what once was – the features of my father who left
us when we were young, my mother’s face, the house girded with orange trees, loquat
trees and the wild persimmons with their shockingly sweet fruits – I searched inside the
recesses of my mind for that child I used to be. More than a search for her eyes and her
dress and her hair, my search was for her voice. A word from her, just one word, no
matter how insignificant it might have been at the time, just as long as I could catch it
between my fingers like a shooting star, would be the fulfilment of a vow. I needed that
word that was soaking in my brain so it could bear witness to what I once was, to a
gleam of light that carried in its sparks my own voice rolling off my own tongue, my
own lips, like a bird soaring on its wings in the skies.

***

Everything had been semi-organised the day we were divided up – children and
grown-ups – at the port to estrangement. The signs of the catastrophe were all over our
faces and inside our hastily stuffed suitcases. My muted voice had strengthened my
sense of hearing. Silence sounded to me like screaming and chaos. That was what I
eventually tried to embody in my writing. I tried to write the screaming the way
musical notes describe the exclamations of the soul.

International aid delegations came to us that early morning charged with humanitarian
orders to protect those who had survived the massacres and were carried off by the sea
into an unknown that might be more merciful than death. We set foot on the land of
that unknown involuntarily, each one of us surrendering to our ultimate fate.

The woman who was in charge of us – I tried to explain to her with desperate hand
gestures that I had a brother who was taken by the sea on another boat and that I had
completely lost track of him.

It was as if I hadn’t said anything. As if my internal bleeding hadn’t leaked a single

drop of blood that might make her understand what I wanted. I departed with her and
those sea companions of mine who just yesterday were youngsters living the age of
recklessness, playfulness, and merriment. We reached the centre for émigrés, for cast-
outs, with wrinkled souls, aged souls, greyed by the disastrous course of events. We
were taken in by benevolent people from humanitarian organizations ready to console
human beings after their disasters. That reality became clear to me over time when the
oppressive workings of that world became evident, the way the politicians of great
nations contrived plots to separate and scatter flocks of people and use them to test out
their experiments which were more brutal than an earthquake.

When writing came over me, like severe labour pains I could not help from pushing
forth with all their blackness and thorniness, I challenged all my mental prowess to face
what had really happened on that day when my family bonds were severed to pieces,
and when I became an exile, like a new person with no past, no roots, and no language.
Time had made sure to cut off my natural impulse to react, leaving my imagination to
venture an impossible task.

The image before me was futile, the work of the devil. In an instant there he was in our
own yard, breaking our world into little pieces and pulverizing them into dust and
blood. It wasn’t the devil from myths and legends that entertained us along with the
jinns and the sorceresses. This one was the real thing, trained in unforgivable sin.

Can someone who is asleep, dead to the world, get any rest? There was a woman who
came secretly to me every night in my dreams. She had no face and no distinguishing
features. The house we met in was dead; time had stopped in it. A house with no smell,
no footprints on its floor, no sounds echoing in its corners, and no rumours about it in
the past tense, no sighs.

She would say to me, “I’m waiting for your letters.” And I would answer her in the
language of the country I used to be from, promising to write soon. The dream kept
recurring. And that woman, I would hear what she said even though she didn’t have a
voice, while the sounds of my own voice came to me in a quiver deep inside me. I never
imagined that I would one day return to that house with its stones piled up like a grave.
The souls buried under it couldn’t ask for a better resting place than in its rubble.

Many times she asked me where we were going as the caravan traversed the city
streets, carrying young girls and boys of a tender age who had surrendered themselves
to a present with neither a tomorrow nor a future.

She was a lamb, part of that flock of sheep on the speed train to exile. Her recurring
question went unanswered, and her eyes stayed nailed to my closed mouth, waiting for
some movement from my lips that might appease her fears.

She was from the same country as me, another one of its victims. Yesterday we suffered
together the same catastrophe and now here was my muted tongue opening up
distances between us to the point where we had become two strangers on a bench
crossing the destined line with all its unknowns and our foolishness. If only words
could have been exchanged between us and each one embraced the story of the other,
despite our youth and innocence, then we could have constructed a homeland that
suited us in that exile. Together and with others like us we could have created a co-
operative society in which our concerns would increase but which we could conquer by
dividing them amongst ourselves.

She was older than me, or so she seemed to me with her short haircut and her black
dress that was lightened up by a white belt. She turned away from me when I gestured
with my hand that I couldn't speak and went to search among the faces void of youth’s
bloom, lowered like flags at half mast after death, trying to find an answer to appease
her fears or find a familiar glance that might encourage her to release the suppressed
tears that I could detect on her trembling lips. She did not find anyone to share the
burden of her grief. All the eyes were staring into nowhere; they had become arid, their
sprouting wheat stalks harvested before the season and their springs ran dry even
though springtime had just begun.

In the courtyard of a tall building with a white flag fluttering atop its roof we piled up,
waiting for the next episode of our fate to begin. The hands that offered us cups of juice
and sandwiches restored moisture to our dried out eyes. I wept salty tears of gratitude.

A voice inside me urged me to be resolute and brave.

After a few hours of rest, we split up into cars bearing the same white flags, so that by
the time we reached the airport there were only four of us children from among the
dozens who had come from my country’s inferno. Numbers and names had been
distributed here and there while we were busy satisfying our hunger and our thirst.

Our next stop was France and the start of a new life.

With my few belongings and my impediment I entered humanity’s orphanage. It was

run by lay nuns who had devoted their lives to taking in orphans, educating them, and
building their moral character.

This harsh transitional phase at first was like entering hell, with no alternative but to get
used to it and walk over its hot embers without feeling the burn. That hell taught me
not to compare it to death, but rather to life when it opens up wounds in our flesh that
bleed and never scab over. I tried, with an unconscious drive, to give birth to myself out
of its fire, to yield to its flames and rise up high, so I would never shame myself by
being too weak to face my fate, and in order not to surrender to some blind obedience
forced on me by my disability, in order not to use my exile as a kind of obstacle before
my right to exist.
That was what I learned from being in that orphanage, in that chemical concoction with
all its occupants. Children from all races and nationalities had been uprooted from their
homelands by wars and revolutions and massacres and natural disasters only to land in
this institution that had branches on every continent. Within months of their new birth
this carefully planned experiment would do its job on their memory, straining out the
sediments of a painful past, traumas that most often would plant the seeds of mental
illness, but also the yearning for mother, home, school, and friends.

But the chopped off past always leaves a trace, no matter how faint, just like an
amputated leg that sometimes calls out unconsciously for a hand to rub it and lessen its
pain. The hand reaches out to find an emptiness more painful than pain.

***

In the playground that twice a day was transformed into an arena for battles, games,
and races, I isolated myself in a corner, protected under a eucalyptus tree that over time
had become my own little palace. From there I would track the amazing ability of
children to overcome their afflictions and cover up their feelings of estrangement with
that mad dance atop the volcanoes of their fates.

The knot in my tongue wasn’t the only thing impeding my ability to express what kinds
of fear and confusion troubled me. There were many psychological problems that
restrained my body parts and robbed them of their spontaneity. I needed every boy and
girl to tell me the story of their miserable childhood, but my tongue was too useless to
help me penetrate into the inner layers concealed behind all the recklessness and
excited commotion. Though the forced seclusion that hounded me coincided with a
silence that suddenly stood at the brink of the void, I tried filling it up with reading
while the others poured into it their unconscious despair and a roar that purged the
terrors raging inside them.

At that time I did not have enough of an ability to really comprehend the chemical
effect disasters have on the behaviour of children. I was, with my impediment, on the
other river bank. While I was an orphan just like them in that place that took us in so we
could heal and maybe even forget, and equal to them in our striped navy blue uniforms,
in order to join in with them I lacked a tongue and words that we could weave bonds of
friendship with and lighten the burden of a memory laden with nightmares.

Every once in a while, a Cambodian girl named Amalia would leave the playground
and come to me. I would sit her beside me on the stone bench and she would hold my
hand. I would shut my book and try to read in the blackness of her eyes the secret of
that comfort she found with me. She would talk to me with her Asian accent in the
correct French she quickly picked up in our school, and I would talk to her with
movements of my lips and my hands which now echoed what my tongue wanted to
say, though less clearly than the pen. My hand would go up spontaneously, propelled
by an internal intuition, obeying an urgent impulse, to the point that often I felt it was
ahead of my thoughts. Maybe the reason for that hastiness was its concern for me and
its desire to be ready to express what was raging in my mind without scrutinizing its
contents. Many times I wondered if there was an actual connection between the brain
and the body parts and if the commands of the brain that were obeyed and carried out
were what characterized the human body as an ideal creation. I used to attribute that
difference to the chaos that destroyed my existence that day when all the furnishings
and the inhabitants of my house were turned upside down.

Without any trouble, I found in writing what had been lost to me. The scenes that were
stuck in my mind like soot, that were intent on adhering to my memory, became works
of descriptive art on the page, as our teacher attested to by writing encouraging remarks
below the grade in red ink. The images I wanted to erase from my mind in order to
keep my balance became the matter from which the text was woven and adorned with
that bright black ink from which all colours radiated. Even when I entered the field of
journalism and covering daily events became my occupation and concern, I never
recovered from that obscure infatuation I had with the letters of the alphabet that were
so strange looking and strange sounding from each other. It is amazing when those
letters join each other how they are able to embody what passes through a person’s
mind, be it fear or joy, tranquility or disorder, jubilance or anger. The repeated miracle
in each word transformed me into writing’s captive: I would wake up sometimes to a
rustling sound under my covers, the source of which was my index finger continuing to
write through the night in place of my pen. That captivity flung open before me the
doors of freedom and travel without having to leave the institution that gave birth to
me as a citizen without borders. I had a debt to settle for the cost of my patronage and
my education and the gift of self-confidence that warded off my tongue’s affliction.

With a strict system of order and frowning faces that had been charged with caring for
children who had been swept to that institution by the ebb of crime, that same
institution took on the role of embracing the tragedies of childhood and planning their
future. It aimed at making us forget maternal affection and the semblance of prosperity
we had felt in our former homes. The phrase I was greeted with by the directress of the
orphanage the day I arrived with the chattels of exile, orphaned of my mother and my
father and my brother, was meant for a nine-year-old girl at the beginning of a new
path from which she had no escape. “Forget the past, Maria, and move forward with
your whole heart and your whole mind so that you can pass the unfair test of fate.
Don’t let it get the better of you. We’re watching out for you.”

What I hadn’t understood at the time became clear later on when I was at the onset of a
new life studying journalism during the day and working nights at a press, which was
my inroad to the newspaper that later appointed me to the investigative reports section.
My signature on that page eventually became proof of my existence in this world.

Excerpted from the novel

Anta'il al-Ghubar wa Amshi Walking in the Dust],

Published by Riad El-Rayyes Books, Beirut, 2006

Short-listed for the 2007-2008 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, that is popularly
known as the Arabic “Booker” Prize

The Trilogy of Abdul Jalil Ghazal

Translated by Thomas Aplin

I found a bag and filled it with all the bread and dates I could carry, along with some
tins of meat I’d found in the guards’ room under the rubble. I collected water from the
blue water tank and filled some canteens, the ones soldiers carry to the frontlines or on
long missions into the desert. Then I doused my head under the spout of flowing water,
relishing the sensation as I washed and rubbed my face and hair. I wished the water
could seep inside me and cleanse the blackened depths of my soul.

I shook my head rapidly from side to side like a wet dog . . .

I looked into the sublime expanse . . . the desert stretched out before me with all the
majesty of its desolation.

I trembled . . .

I had neither the strength nor desire to walk. I didn’t know which direction to go in:
west or east, north or south. There were no directions there. All directions had been
erased in that moment. They too had been lost to the desert . . .

There wasn’t time to think anything through.

Things were done without planning. There was only something obscure within me, like
the desire to walk or plunge into the emptiness. . . I assumed it came from what
remained of the shepherd in me, from my days in Suleiman Hill, the homeland of my
people, our second homeland after our dispersal from Tears’ Valley . . .
I left through an opening in the wall, through which poured huge beams of light. And I
walked . . .

I heard barking behind me like the sound that used to tear through the night silence
during the breakout attempts that were set up for the prisoners with the aim of getting
rid of the surplus and those who had gone mad . . .

The barking was less fierce, and less insistent, but it frightened me. I redoubled my
determination, filling my spirit with a desire for life that I drew from a tree of abundant
green that in my memory swayed in the blowing of the wind . . .

And I turned my face towards no place . . .

My left foot didn’t help me. It was a weakness, or a “burden” as they say. Excess
baggage. It had absolutely no use. I dragged it behind me like an old rag, or like a dry
branch . . . and I lent on my crutch.

My crutch came from a doorpost torn free during the bombing that night. Most
probably it was from the door to the guards’ room. I knew the wood from its smell. I
love the smell of wood.

I don’t know how it came to be in my hand or how it became my crutch. I made a grip
so it would be comfortable to hold. I picked it up to test its weight and renewed my
resolve. I became intoxicated, like a knight prepared to enter the final battle . . .

A thin piece of wood to compensate for my emaciated form!

I smiled and told myself: “Writers rely on the use of metaphor to strengthen their texts.
I have borrowed a crutch to strengthen my body. The crutch is a substitute for being
lost.” I found this comparison pleasing; I was pleased by it being in my mind while I
was in a state of bewilderment. Outside of time and space . . . I continued to limp,
taking my first steps into the desert as a test of my capacities and of my scorn at the
failed project that is me, Abdul Jalil Ghazal. The barking sounded hostile . . . hunt and
attack. A familiar scenario.

I began to imagine my broken body as prey between the claws of that bastard if my
determination were to flag or I were to give up.

I doubled my pace. I failed, and cursed my leg. I swore at it, despising both it and
myself. I continued to walk as best I could. After a little I was troubled by a pang of
regret, and I thought about going back.
But what was I going to do there?

There in an abandoned prison practically in ruins, from where the smoke of death rose
as ghosts of men moaned in its cells.

What would I have done, had I stayed there?

Who was I to wait for?

Who would have come to or passed by that destruction?

There were only clouds of regret that had come from the unknown and floated above
me. I began to weigh up the chances of my survival or my death; of remaining in a
prison without jailors or prisoners except myself, or walking into the unknown. They
were the same: both held slim chance of survival and there was little possibility that
someone would find me, or that I would encounter anyone in that utterly deserted
world, abandoned to dust and oblivion.

Here and there were the same in the middle of that desert, to the extent that I didn’t
know how I had been brought there or from which direction they had carried me years
ago, in that truck of which I recall only the roar of its engine and the voice of its driver
who would sometimes sing:

I will walk to you by night, you stubborn thing

My father

I will come, I will come

And if my legs become tired, you stubborn thing

My father

Then I’ll walk on my hands . . .

There were four other men beside myself. I estimated their number from their coughs
and their moans as we were all blindfolded, with our hands and legs bound by the
same chain.

We walked for a whole day. In the evening we were exchanged with others at the
border.
I know the border from its scent. I know it from its accents. I know the scent of my first
country, my first homeland and the accent of my people. These are some of the things
that time has not erased.

There are many things I can recognise by their scent. This is one of the qualities or one
of the gifts I have inherited from Suleiman Hill. The first scent that was engraved on my
soul and remained there was the scent of Damask Rose between Maryam’s breasts.
Maryam died and the scent remained. I used to be able to tell who was approaching
from their scent, even before they reached me and opened the cell door. And I was able
to distinguish between the scent of the prisoners and that of the jailors.

I could detect the smell of change in the air, when they dragged me from my cell to the
interrogation chamber. I knew the rooms by their scent, and I would know immediately
the type of torture that had been practised, whether it was by hand or machine. When
they put a bag over my head I could tell if the bag had held post – I could recognise the
scent of the ink of the postal marks – or whether it had previously been put on the head
of Shayban or Mustapha or Amer al-Duleimi, or whether it had contained grain or fruit
...

Once they put something over my head and I failed to discern its scent. It was
something a bit hard. A hardness that was yet fragile, liable to shatter.

I discovered later that it was a hollow skull. The prison warden in his hours of boredom
used to amuse himself by placing skulls over our heads. He would guess who we were
from our forms.

He could recognize me easily from my distinguishing mark, my limp.

He would make a mistake and call someone by the name of another, Falih instead of
Amer, and he would burst into raucous laughter, clapping his hands. I was more afraid
when he laughed than I was during his treacherous silences.

Soldiers, soldiers are the same everywhere . . .

Before they exchanged us at the border, on the evening of that day, the situation had
sunk to the lowest depths of depravity. I experienced and heard things I will tell of later
if I am saved from this labyrinth of mine. Such depraved, base things . . .

After they had transferred us from the back of one lorry to another, the level of
depravity dropped. Perhaps they were wearier, those soldiers who accompanied us on
the truck to the desert prison. Their questions were brief and mocking and their
punches lighter, even though one of them did cause a trickle of blood to flow from my
nose.

I held my pain in the cage of my soul and crushed my anger between my teeth. A
quarter of a century had passed since that day, twenty-five years ago; the day I
disembarked from the ferry from Beirut to Cyprus. After that I don’t know how fate
brought me to this end. Perhaps it was desire.

It was my desire for Huda that had led me back to Beirut. But it wasn’t able to hide me
as Huda had done that first night, when she held me close while I burnt with desire.
Desire was to no avail and neither was Huda when they came knocking at the door.
They carried me like a crippled sheep, rolling me down the stairs to the boot of the car.
They closed it on me and drove off. For me to spend my life in that wretched prison in
the midst of that emptiness, over which I dragged my leg, leaving a furrow in its wake
that was like the hole left by the years in their fatal passing. A deep hole in the self, like
the furrow of age. An incurable pain, twenty-five years that had passed very slowly in
the counting of their days . . .

***

Nothing changes there. It is chance that stirs the stillness of time and space. Like the
chance of my escape and my haphazard movement across the desert. There are no
changes there except for those caused by the wind as it reconstitutes the sand dunes,
erasing and composing. Like how I erased and wrote love poems for Huda, in Wadi
Abu Jamil, in Beirut during those days . . .

I noticed that I began to be visited by sudden moments of contemplation that would

take me out of the situation I was in. Like my thoughts on the illusion of time, or my
comparison between the act of writing and that of erasing, or the breeze blowing on the
sand dune stretched out before me like a sacrificial woman . . .

I thought of the companions whom I’d left behind. They were dead without a doubt,
even if some of them still looked towards the light with lustreless eyes. The holes in the
walls caused by the bombing became visible when the sun emerged from its night’s
resting place, cascading torrents of light and smoke, giant belts that had fallen to Earth.

As though God had shone the lights to inspect the scene of the crime, and count the
number of dead . . .

I saw them, I saw all of them. Only one was still alive, Shayban al-Hamsi. I don’t know
if that was his real name. When he saw me picking up the tins, he looked at me
imploringly. But what can a dead person do for another dead person, Shayban? He
lifted his hand a little, gestured and then collapsed onto the corridor floor, not ever
having known what he was accused of, but for which he had been given a life sentence
in the desert prison. He used to tell me he was a shepherd. He had nothing to do with
anything. He was herding his sheep in the seclusion of his village when the fatal hour
struck, as they say. Hassaan, his nephew, came to him to entrust him with some books
and letters that he would retrieve after he came back from military service. Shayban
couldn’t read or write and he didn’t know what he was to do with the stuff or where he
was to hide it except in his shed. During one of those nights on which the state security
services searched for “hostile forces and traitors”, they discovered the books and letters.
They were enough, in their view, to make him one of the “top organisers” and one of
the leading planners of the coup movement. “An organiser concealed in the form of an
illiterate shepherd.” That was how it was put in the investigator’s report.

I would often tease him, when boredom reached suicidal levels, by repeating this
accusation. Shayban used to laugh and curse his nephew, who had disappeared
without a trace . . . “A dangerous organiser concealed in the guise of an illiterate
shepherd . . .”

I left them all, Shayban, Adnan al-Asadi, Mustafa Shibli and . . . , and the ghost of a
woman crucified on the window. I don’t know what happened to her after that distant
night, during which, as usual, they brought me blindfolded to a darkened room. There
had been no need for them to blindfold me in that pitch blackness. When they removed
the blindfold, I couldn’t see. I thought I’d gone blind. I screamed at the pain that tore
through my spine, the savage jab of a bayonet, and found myself on my knees. With my
scream, the lights came on. I saw a woman fixed to the metal frame of the window, as
though she were crucified. Her head lent against her left shoulder while her loose hair
covered half her face. Her flowered dress was torn at the breast, naked. There was a
long trickle of blood running down from her thigh. It was as though she were dead . . .
Do you know her? Do you know this whore, the uncouth voice blasted me. He walked
up to her and flicked the hair from her face. Do you know her . . . ? The earth spun . . . I
wasn’t conscious of what happened . . . that night . . . when I woke up I found myself
naked . . . and close to me was the wreckage of that woman.

I found out later that she was Haifa, the wife of the prisoner, Farhan Daoud. Who
doesn’t know the tale of Farhan and his poem?

Who entrusted you with what you could betray?

And even if you were a traitor . . .

The poem came to be repeated on every tongue . . .

Imagine, Mustafa Shibli told me, that those bastards had brought her to the prison, and
stripped her in front of her husband and . . .

That day he didn’t finish the tale for me. He was overcome by one of his fits of
imploring, calling upon God to put an end to this degradation.

Are you testing my faith in you, O God . . . ? And he screamed. The prison shook. Are
you testing Ayoub in the wreckage of that lady? And . . .

Later he finished the tale of Farhan Daoud. I found out I was among those who had
been brought that night to take turns in raping her in front of her husband . . .

All I did . . . and all I recall.

I screamed at that animal that stripped me in front of her . . .

How can the dead eat the flesh of the dead? Do you want me to eat my own flesh, O
creature of God? . . . And I entered a realm of unconsciousness after the bayonet had
torn my spine and penetrated to the marrow. My consciousness was paralyzed. Then
when I came to and tried to get up, I learnt that my leg was paralysed too. I began to
drag it behind me, like my days . . .

Mustafa said: I’ll finish the tale for you . . . Now leave me to rebuke my Creator.

More than twenty years had passed since that night, but it turned into a permanent
nightmare that pursued me even in my waking hours. That image never left me, and
when I emerged towards my second birth in that desert, she emerged with me, crucified
on my retinas . . .

And the remains of my companions remained there . . .

***

Should I have buried my companions? I didn’t consider it when I was searching the
guards’ room for anything that might help keep me alive. I hadn’t even planned that or
the route I’d take a little later, when I’d picked up my bag and seen Shayban in the last
agonies of death. I hadn’t even intended to leave from that opening in the wall. I could
have left from the door that led to the courtyard. But I found the opening waiting before
me. Beams of sunlight and dust pulled me towards it like a rope of gravity pulling me
outside. I found myself in the open air . . .

A cloud of smoke on the horizon suggested the aftermath of a battle. As far as I could
see lay the wreckage of machines and other objects, and from the barbed wire that
topped the walls dangled human remains. On the horizon a heavenly incandescence
glowed, at least that was how I saw it . . .

It was as though what had happened had occurred in my absence. I woke to that
enormous destruction and death . . . When I emerged into the light and began walking,
I didn’t know where I was walking to, it was as though I had simply stumbled upon an
opportunity to escape.

In this way, it was as if what happened had happened without me being aware of it.
Even the distance I had travelled seemed impossible for a lame creature like me. The
barking alone brought me back to my senses . . . and reminded me of my fragility . . .

I began to walk as though I were walking in a dream . . . the desert stretched out before
me.

After I had walked some distance, I looked behind me for the desert prison to appear
prostrate like some creature of legend breathing its last. For the first time I saw it with
such clarity. The last clouds of smoke rose to the accompaniment of the sounds of
collapse . . . and a wailing, the source of which I couldn’t at first discern . . .

I began to walk a little, slowly. Then I stopped again to look behind me. I don’t know
why I stopped and looked behind me . . . There was no one left for me to be afraid of,
and the barking that had sounded vicious had become indifferent and intermittent,
suggesting failure and defeat . . .

I was certain that no one had survived and that my own survival was a miracle. For a
long time I continued to doubt that I had actually survived. I examined my body,
feeling it all over. I spoke to myself in order to hear my own voice, to prove to myself
that I still existed. Despite all of this, I was not reassured. I thought I’d gone mad. But I
knew the mad cannot know they’re mad. I knew this but how could I prove it to my
own mind?

Therefore, my stopping to look back to where I had been was not the result of fear at
being exposed, or my escape being discovered as I wasn’t escaping. For the first time in
years, I was freer than was desirable. Freer and more alone than I wanted to be. But my
choices were virtually non-existent. I was free to make one of two choices, to remain
and die, or to walk and die. There was no third choice and there was no-one to make me
choose between the two.

Naturally, I chose to walk and die, this being in my nature. Something I did
instinctively, unconsciously. My mind had almost shut down, even as I tested it by
trying to recall an expression or a thought . . . I thought about when Shayban waved at
me. I realised later that he was saying goodbye. I didn’t go near him. I passed over the
bodies of my companions like a terrified animal. But in all honesty, I wasn’t terrified
when I saw the “Hyena”. The “Hyena” was my “favourite” torturer during the first
years of the “taming process”. With one slap from his right hand, which resembled an
oar, he would knock me to the ground unconscious. When he began to torture me he
would be overcome by a fit of rage accompanied by both laughter and crying. No-one
knew if he was laughing or crying. When I saw him stretched out like a dead animal at
the top of the stairs leading to the balcony that overlooked the prison courtyard, he
seemed a fragile creature, who had lost all his capacity to inspire terror. I looked at him
for a long time. His eyes were closed. He was the only one of them I’d seen with eyes
closed. His features suggested he had died painfully. His left hand was wrapped
around his neck. He looked like an orphan. It was as though I were experiencing
sympathy and forgiveness for him . . .

I began to walk a little, slowly. I stopped. I turned to look behind me. The prison was
growing distant as I moved away. I don’t know why I thought about desire. A thin cord
of sadness was coiled around my neck, and another of longing pulled me backwards. I
felt a mixture of fear and confusion at my predicament, at these conflicting emotions.
Then I began to open the windows of my mind to say: perhaps longing for what I knew
is a natural thing, before this great unknown into which I am headed alone, with one
leg, half a soul, half a mind and half a body . . .

I told myself, this analysis is crap, and drawing on my capacity for self-ridicule I said:
“Boy, you felt longing, not for the place itself, but for those who died, for the faces you
left behind the wall, illuminated by shafts of sunlight suffused with dust and smoke
falling from the holes in the walls and the ceiling . . . ”

I thought: “When I reach a resting place I will descend from it towards the sunset.” The
desire to take one last look at my prison caused me to stop again. I was amazed when I
felt that place to be mine, my prison! What a hideous thought! I turned around like a
soldier about to take a final look at the graves of his comrades. I dragged my leg
forward to take its place beside my right one, and I looked at the prison for a long time .
. . I dwelt on it like one bidding farewell to the family home, or the house they have
built with their own hands and are about to leave forever . . .

In the distance it was signalling to me from behind the desert dust. Plumes of smoke
seeped from it, dispersing into the sky. As for the wailing that I continued to hear, it
was but an echo I had stored away in my head and which had accompanied me for
many long years.
From Hafat al-Nisyan [The Edge of Oblivion], the first volume

of the author’s trilogy

Thulathiyat Abdul Jalil Ghazal,

Dar al-Mada, Damascus, 2007

THE PHASES OF THE MOON IN LONDON

She and I were talking about the weather, the rusty key that opens conversations here in
London. Mrs Morrison, our old neighbour, is the last English woman on our street,
where the English have dropped off one by one once the population balance tipped
toward the Asian immigrants. She said: “The London sky was not like this in the past,
but must have resembled your sky in India.”

I said: “I am from Jordan,” but she did not stop at my correction, which she may not
have seen as a correction in the first place. She continued, in the English manner where
emotional resonances are difficult to discern, that they too used to see the stars and
detect the phases of the moon

I was not convinced, but I played on in this game of English politeness, so I said: “What
caused the stars and moon to disappear and the sky to turn, even on those nights clear
as a rooster’s eye, into a blotted-out sheet?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe the change in the weather, or our insatiable
consumption of electricity, this excessive urbanization. We light the earth and the sky
disappears. You’re probably in better shape in this regard in India.”

“In Jordan,” I said.

Again, she did not pause at my correction. She smiled and began to steer the trolley she
used for her daily shopping toward her house announcing the end of a conversation
that politeness had imposed on two neighbours who otherwise try all they can to avoid
each other when they meet at the door.

I wanted to tell her that the skies of eastern cities, bent under military rule and
corruption, are also blotted out, and that the stars that freckled our childhood with
comets have also disappeared, but I feared to lose the only gift for which she envied me.
A RESEMBLANCE

I was slurping a mug of cold beer on a hot summer day

when I kept hearing someone loudly puffing at his cigarette and striking his hand on
the table every now and then. He was telling his friend that the women he clung to, in
his tiresome search for love, were the ones who refused him or let him go.

The first was the neighbors’ girl who rejected him despite his willingness to slit his
arteries for her. She opted for a young, muscle-bound baker who had a fierce mane on
his head. He never forgot her though he saw her several times walking with slumped
shoulders dragging behind her an army of children who leapt around her like
ducklings.
(They must be the progeny of that cursed baker.)

As for the second one, she left a bitter taste in him,

a taste that was never shaken from his throat,
after such sweet kisses which he now suspects could never have happened.
How could she have refused him before cockcrow while the spittle of her desired
mouth still wetted his lips?

The tone of his last words struck a bell within my depths. My ears turned and widened
like radar dishes.

She was a flight attendant working for a foreign airline.

He had met her in this very bar and with him was another friend, a player who was
more wily than him. He wished he had never introduced him to her and that he was not
with him on that day now engraved on the plates of eternity.

I stopped caring for the story when I predicted its end.

But the voice is what sculpted me, like a two-headed statue, into my seat.
It was the same voice,
the same timbre dripping with sorrow,
the same fist that banged fiercely on the table,
the same story that still leaves a bitter taste in the throat.

I feared to turn around and see myself.

Just two out of eight newly translated poems featured in Banipal 30

All translated by Khaled Mattawa from the author’s collection Hayatun Kasardin
Mutaqataa [Life like a Broken Narrative], Riadh el-Rayyes, Beirut, 2004

MUSE OF LEPTIS MAGNA

Not even angels can traipse past,

their paws scrape the ground,
their wings bump into columns and statues,
and when they come close
their eyes bulge, ready to leap out of
their sockets back to heaven’s shade.
Only mortals can enter these halls.
Fear and resolve silent like guards,
the air and light are so pure
you can see a drunk’s stupor
steaming out of his head.

Every word that had come to me

remains in my chest’s wardrobe.
I’ll gladly give them back.
But soon the echoes will begin
to compose you. They will lay
before you objects you thought
buried away into your cave’s pool.
When your life towers before you then,
be sure to stand in its shade
and when it teeters, as surely it will,
raise an arm to hold it up.

HOW I LET THE NIGHT BEGIN

I travel into a storm

as if toward
a shape of my hand beckoning.

In it are faces I’d lingered upon,

then flicked away like flies,
or stories I never saw ripen and unfold.
There are griefs to choose from and friendships
that rendered me
like a shop owner with riches on display.

The stones I’d carried evaporate into half spirit,

half mist,
unburdened by their particularity.

And the unfeasible, as if it were my hands’ work,

articulates itself
by simply falling into my arms.

This is how the night begins: voices swell,

houses placate,
my blood scampering to build encampments, digging wells.

I let the night slide into me

and break
into herds and clans tussling through seasons and hours.

I let it people me with uncharted joys,

and catastrophes
drawn taut, pulled to fraying.

And it goes on tumbling, naming grass shooting

up April fields,
naming my calling, climates that grow into labyrinths.

MY MOTHER'S EYES

My Grandmother’s departing eyes fixed upon the vast heavenly expanse, and this was
the last thing she said:

– Man sees what he wants to see.

My mother gently lowered her eyelids without letting a single tear fall, but she burst
into tears when your plate of broth spilt and burnt my thigh on the day of ‘Ashura. Do
you remember?

Mother spent the whole of that afternoon preparing food. The duck was killed and she
prepared fattah with vinegar and garlic just as you like it, in the hope it that would
bring back your lost appetite. You were struck by an illness which affected you after we
moved to our new home and away from Grandmother’s house, which in spite of its size
seemed to us too small, as Aunt was mistress of it and took every opportunity to
torment Mother. She was submissive to start with, but then began to give back as good
as she was given; and the sound of their voices raised in argument shook the heart of
the house and radiated out into the neighbouring streets, to the point that we became
the talk of the town.

You sold the two square measures of land that were your entire inheritance from your
father in order to build a small, separate house for us. I still remember you standing
beneath his picture, with your head lowered, crying soundlessly.

The picture of Grandfather was the first thing we hung up in our new house, which
exhausted the money before the final bricks were laid in its walls. You always said in
response to the worry lurking in my eyes:

– It will be a balcony so we can look out onto the world.

You spent most of your time on that balcony, drinking tea and grilling corncobs, which
you used to like a lot before you gave them up, like most kinds of food, when you
became ill.

You gave up sleeping, eating, and . . . Mother, who had great success in performing
miracles, making up her face with powders I had never seen before. I used to think she
looked like an Easter egg with her loud colours – I didn’t imagine then that I would put
them on my own face every day as I do now. She began to wear a strange dress with big
holes in it that reminded me of a fishing net. That was on the day she cooked a fattened
duck for us, and refused to give me the liver before we had all gathered around the
table to eat together.

Frustrated, I went out into the world, and I saw her . . . the woman who lived alone
opposite us, the one whom I heard our neighbours talking about. They said she came to
live in the safety of our land after being abandoned by a city scumbag; and then they
made up their minds she had joined a wandering jinn who had caused her to scorn
talking to people and wear a transparent dress – strange and shameless. There were
also those who declared she was deranged, crazy, so everyone avoided her, even my
mother.

My eyes were following her out of curiosity when I saw you at that same moment
walking along with confused steps, head down. Were you following her shadow after
she disappeared behind the door, left ajar? Her shadow – which seemed to me in that
moment tall, wild, and likely to be one of the ghosts they used to frighten us with so we
would stop crying. Or were you following a shadow far from her, hidden at that time
from my view by my short stature?

One thing I will never forget is that when you reached the house you passed by me
without saying a word – as though you hadn’t seen me. And when Mother called us
and lined us up around our banquet . . . you choked at the first sip of the broth and the
bowl fell from your hand, burning my thigh. My mother withdrew to her room,
bewildered, crying; and after I swallowed my pain and followed her, I saw her tears
falling, the colour of the broth. I felt at that moment as though the broth churning about
inside me would be the last. It was as though I was afraid of something obscure, that I
had not encountered before even in the most savage quarrels of my mother and aunt;
but I didn’t realise exactly what.

I saw my mother a little while later hugging the black veil of her own mother as though
she had lost her that very minute. She cried a great deal, then dried her tears and came
out in her black gilbab, in the company of our elderly neighbour. I heard them
whispering strange things about the Sheikh, who could open the Book and discover
secret things.

After a while, her features brightened again. She took a folded paper which she hid
under your pillow, and three incense sticks, which she burnt one after the other
throughout the following three days. Then she gathered up the ash left over and on the
morning of the fourth day threw it into the river. She kept on observing you from afar,
as I was observing you, and her and our strange neighbour and the ghosts of distant
space.

Gradually your lost appetite came back. My mother cried out for joy when she thought
you were cured. She poured a cup of water outside the house and stood plaiting her
wet hair in front of the window, receiving the congratulations of our good neighbours.

You finally got better . . . you laughed, and chattered and slept. You ate so much that
there wasn’t enough left for us . . . you laughed so we laughed, but your absences from
the house increased after you got your new work. Apparently your absence was
necessary for half the week on alternate weeks, so we just praised God for all things.

And as the days went by, it was as though we hardly saw you; until you cut us off
altogether, and you left us.

I used to hang your picture up in front of me for many years. I would fill my mouth
with saliva and spit it at you every evening, because you left us on a moonless night,
without concerning yourself as to whether we would sink or swim.

I used to conjure you up in my sleep, and you came to me shrouded in a halo of

mistrust. You tortured me for many years. Although I had no proof against her apart
from a few half-words and snatches of sentences, I never dared say to Mother that I had
heard our good neighbours whispering about your elopement with that woman.

You came to me in my sleep, and I slapped you until my hands were numb and you
vanished; afterwards I began to cry. In the morning I wandered streets which led
nowhere. They brought me from unknown boulevards to ones even stranger to me. I
kept my eyes peeled for a face I resembled in the endless stream of faces flowing past
until I lost my way, and lost myself, and I returned to my mother. I found her talking
about you as though you had just come back to us.

I needed many years to forget the little girl I was . . . I had to get rid of the black down
which linked my eyebrows and kept growing back so I could obliterate the picture of
you that was carved into me, and move on . . .

My colleague at work told me I didn’t speak much – though she didn’t confess that she
was afraid of me because of that. And our new colleague complained he didn’t know
how to dodge the bullet aimed by my eyes every time I looked at him.

I look in the mirror and I see you, standing and clinging to my vocal chords, or a
renewed fantasy of revenge straying through my eyes, unabated in its excess by the
thoughts passing through my head that some misfortune had perhaps befallen you and
made you leave us in that contemptible manner; even death would be no excuse for
your long absence.

You alone know how much I needed you and how much I suffered in my battles with
myself so I would stop waiting for you.

You alone made me see how I did not resemble my mother – whom, whenever I wanted
to row with her, I would tell that you would not be coming back; and she would fly into
a rage, insisting that someone had “bewitched” you and that God was capable of
healing you and bringing you back.

My mother, whose gaze never left the door, waiting for you, never omitted to set aside
your portion of the fattah made with vinegar and garlic that you like, and always kept a
tenderness for you in her heart – which, thanks to you, I would never know.

My mother, who, when I mocked her Sheikh who was no good at reading, closed her
eyes for a long time, then muttered strange words and shouted furiously:

– Curse the devil and sleep.

I close my eyes to the letters scratching at my eye, writing before me a bewildering

question with no answer:
– Why does man see only what he wants?

Translated by Jenny Steel

Three Poems

DESTINY

Far away
at the edge of the earth
a man stands
and leans over to stare into his abyss
Then comes the ox of memories
and butts him into the emptiness

THE HEROISM OF A THREAD

My enemy will pass after I do

Please help him
Provide his camp with dogs and fresh dates
Open the gate of wind for his soldiers
I don’t mind
I have passed through the narrow opening
I laugh
because the one behind me is . . . an elephant

CINEMA

In the cinema there is a lot of killing

The screen is full of imaginary blood
The murderer throws his gloves into the onlooker’s faceand fear is provoked by sound
effects
from a drum in a symphony of pistols
Killing
has become as necessary in the cinema
as in life

These and more poems are featured in Banipal 30.

All translated by Issa J Boullata from the author’s collection, Al-Su‘al Alladhi Yatba‘ al-
Dahik [The Cough That Follows Laughter], published by Al-Intishar al-‘Arabi, Beirut,
2006.

CREATION

“WHAT fills temporal and spatial voids?”

This question, which tormented me when I was a small boy, has been deferred for a
lifetime, until now, as I remember and recreate that night. Ghosts prowl around me
without my being able to see them. Their palpability is assumed by my muddled
consciousness. Although many voices are audible, fear springs into existence. Even
though I hear all their voices, they can’t shield me from this fear. I am alone. They have
left me, locking me inside – the members of the household.

The voices are outdoors, beyond the locked door, outside the window, which is half
covered by a curtain of heavy cloth. They have gone out – I don’t know where – leaving
me to await their return. Alone inside, I am held hostage by the lock, and the house is
totally empty. The ghosts. I glance around me and can sense them, as if I were breathing
them in. They prowl through the two rooms as they please. I do not actually see them.
This fact helps fear climb onto my shoulders and dangle its legs toward the ground,
past my knees, before entwining them around my neck.

I remember that I was sweating and regretted not having paid attention to what they
said before they left. Perhaps they had told me where they were going. I reflected. It
was the cursed pictures, scissors, and glue container. That was why I paid no attention
to what they said. Evening was gradually becoming pitch-black night, and I was
building a new world from pictures I cut out of old magazines and then juxtaposed,
sticking them beside other ones from my own magazines.

The surface of the white pasteboard slowly filled, and with each image that I added, a
new arrangement of relationships – contrived by me, not by their creators – emerged.
Tahiya Carioca danced beside the Eiffel Tower, looming high above it. Farid Shawqi
could throw a punch at Hitler while he extended his arm in a Nazi salute. Umm
Kulthum’s head fit on the neck of a svelte blonde clad in a bikini. Gamal Abdel Nasser
was flexing his arms and spreading his fingers as he prepared to grab the revolvers of
the cowboys on either side as he readied himself to confront his evil nemesis. Ahmad
Ramzi hid as he eluded Zorro, who wore a black mask and rode a white stallion that
reared up on its hind legs.

I was distracted by my world and felt something, which I can’t name now, while my
new creation unfolded, filling the surface of the white pasteboard. I possessed complete
control over the creative process and had more than enough supplies.

But I grew tired.

And I felt bored.

Then I realized that I was alone, surrounded by stillness, and felt afraid.

I remember that I sensed a breath of air to my right. Then I felt another on my left. So I
anxiously asked, “Where are you?” Undeterred, the two ghosts continued to press
against me from either side. My perception of them and my certainty that they were
preparing an ambush of me immobilized me. As if evil were tightening its grip on me,
the other empty places acquired their own discernible wafts of air.

My fear flared up, tyrannizing my body. I shivered like a sparrow and trembled like a
leaf.

Looking at the dark pane of the window, I saw on it the constant drizzle that for some
time had hidden the sky. I was trying to flee the contents of the empty house and this
long period of time. My eyes searched the drizzle-coated pane for water that wasn’t
from the rain. Intermittent bursts of pain stung my bladder. My senses were prepared
to seize the place’s ghosts at any moment, and my heart was looking for a light that
would illuminate the gloom outside and recover the stilled voices.

***

I don’t remember when they returned.

Perhaps I’ve slept since that night right to the present moment. If that’s not the case,
how could I have forgotten? But I didn’t forget completely. I actually witnessed, as I
now remember, a silver bird that passed swiftly between two stars, one on either side.
After that the whale of the celestial gloom swallowed it up.
This was the last thing I saw last night
before the residents of the house returned
and were alarmed to find a small boy motionless, his head hanging over his chest,
asleep,
while a trickle of water zigzagged gold in the ceiling lamp’s glow as it
ran beneath him, from between his legs,
and emptied in front of him,
turning his new creation into wrinkled pasteboard, ruined by a small child’s water.

***

I was a small boy,

and the query about the contents of time and space has been
deferred to this moment.

Translated by William M Hutchins from the author’s short story collection al-Mala’ika fi
al-‘Ara’ [Angels Outdoors], included in the author’s collected works, Man Ra’aytuh Kana
Ana [I Was the Person I Saw], al-Mu’assasa al-‘Arabiya lil-Dirasat wal-Nashr, Beirut, 2002

Sargon Boulus talks about his life in poetry

Sargon Boulus has the rare experience of being an Arab poet who has been part of the American
poetry scene since the late 1960s. Today he is passing this on to the new generation of young
Arab poets through his poetry. For Sargon there is no prose poem, only free verse without metre,
but throughout the Arab world there is no disagreement about his stature as a leading and
important poet. He started publishing poetry and short stories in the 1961, contributing to Shi’r
magazine in Beirut, of Yousif Al-Khal and Adonis the fundamental. When he went to the US, he
was ‘lost’ to the Arab world until he re-emerged in the mid-80s with his Arrival in Where-City
collection of poems.

His poems and translations have appeared in numerous Arab magazines and newspapers,
including the poetry magazines and Mahmoud Darwish. Now in his early fifties, Sargon seems
still to have all the energy and vibrant imagination of his youthful days in Iraq and Beirut.

Besides writing poems and short stories, Sargon is well known as an accomplished translator
into Arabic of English and American poets such as Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden (he is soon to
publish a complete anthology of his translations of Auden together with extensive notes and an
introduction on Auden’s life), W. S. Merwin, Shakespeare, Shelley, William Carlos Williams,
Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, Robert Duncan, John Ashbury, Robert Bly, Anne Sexton, John
Logan, and many other poets including Rilke, Neruda, Vasko Popa and Ho Chi Min.

Since the mid-80s, he has been on the move between San Francisco, Paris, London and Cologne
and for the last year has lived in Schoppingen artists’ village in Germany, where I visited him in
September. We spent a day under the Schoppingen sky eating, drinking and talking about his
life, his childhood, discussing his views on poetic form and his endless experiments with the
Arabic language. I leave him to tell his story.

I keep going back and forth into the past. The discovery which comes usually late is that
most of the material that has made you and still works on you, even today, lies
somewhere there, mostly in childhood, so that, in a way, I think that whatever
happened to you in childhood, your circumstances, the place you lived in, the time, the
happenings, these shape you up, especially if you are a poet, if you are a writer, and
later on you would come back to this material and discover that that is your real capital.
So I keep going, as I said, in these late poems back into that time, to shape them up
anew, see them in a new way, kind of bracket in the perspective, tighten it and bring
out the deepest possible meaning in those scenes and happenings and family
background.

English lakes and lawns

Well, I was born in this small town of al-Habbaniya. It was all water – an artificial lake,
built by the English I think – and I was born very close to the water. I think water is an
important symbol to me even today and so I use it a lot. One of my first memories: I
was sitting with my mother close to the water, where we had this kind of shack, small
house, on the lake and we were just watching for hours and listening to the water and a
sunset which still lingers in my mind, even the light, the shape of it, the form and the
hues.

It is these small subtle details that can drive you along the path of your life, the rest of
your life. Habbaniya was a small town and most of the Assyrians happened to live
there because they were brought by the English. This is really important history for me
because somehow I am involved with it, my bringing up and all that. In the twenties, I
think, after the Assyrians were massacred in the north and the English took them over
and put them under their protection, they moved from Henadi, which was a British air
base, and brought to Habbaniya which became a military camp, a famous camp.

My father used to work for the English and one of my first and very cherished
memories is when as a kid my father used to take me to the place of his work, which
was a camp where only the English lived with the Iraqi workers (mostly Assyrian). We
used to see these English ladies in summertime among their flowers and lawns, a totally
different women from the women that I knew like my mother, my sisters and the other
women in my family. Here was another type of image of humanity, let's say, and I was
like sneaking a view through the trees, from far away into these gardens. For me, I think
now, that's a vision of paradise, paradise meaning something very flowery, full of
colour. I've even written about this somewhere, some lines in a poem. Of course I
wasn’t aware at the time that they were occupying the country, I was too young.

So the making for me is very important, going back through memory, back into those
details which never exist anywhere in anybody's head except mine. And that's what I
count my small treasure, beautiful details of the world. I guess they shape up your taste
in life – these things we are talking about, they make you who you are and as a poet, of
course, they are very precious because what are you going to write in poetry except
about the deepest things, except about delving into the far recesses of memory and
through that making a vision of the world itself in every way. Yeah, childhood is very
important to me.

After childhood, we moved from al-Habbaniya to Kirkuk, a city in the north totally
different with almost no water. There is a river, Al-Qa’em, which has no water nine
months of the year and suddenly floods the rest of the year. My latest book, being
published in German and Arabic, is called Witnesses on the Shore (Shehood ala Al-
Dhifaf) and is based on a poem about the flood of a river which is dead most of the time
and suddenly it flares up and drowns the whole town. So from Habbaniya, from the
lake to Kirkuk, a city that was dry and rocky with totally different people: mostly
Turkomans, Turkish Mongolian people who have been there for thousands of years,
and lived mostly in a very high stone castle. It has left such an impression on me, it's
like history is right there facing you every day.

I wrote so furiously

I started writing when I was 12: I published my first poem when I was 13 or 14 and
since then I haven’t stopped. It just grabbed me this magic of words, of music. In the
beginning I wrote so furiously; I have some notebooks from that time and I have
noticed from the dates that on one day, for instance, I would write 5 or 6 poems, of
course, short, violent ones, but 5 or 6 and that is a lot. So it was some kind of thing to do
with destiny. Yes, I believe in that –in a poet’s case it is always true; that that magic,
once it strikes you, you can never live without it. You always go back to that source to
find out – how did this happen? Why did this thing happen to me? Why was I chosen,
in fact, to see the world in this way, through words? My parents never went to school;
all they knew was that I was scribbling all night, alone in my room on this paper, and
my mother used to pity me and tell me as a young kid: “Why don’t you go and play?
Why don’t you go to the movies? Why don’t you enjoy your youth? . . . Your eyes will
be ruined!” Of course, I could never explain to her and she would never have
understood. And even today, imagine – at this age, whenever I write a poem I go back
to that feeling. I try to capture it.

Spirit and words

It’s like a magical drug of spirit and words. Arabic language really has that magic and
once it reveals itself to you you are trapped. That’s why in Arabic they say “Adracat’hu
hirfatu al-adab”, meaning “the profession of words has struck, he’s cursed”. At the
same time I consider it a blessing as well as a curse, because today, if you ask me, I
would say I want to do exactly as I have done. I want it all over again. I think that in
poetry I have found something besides just pain and just nibbling at the bones of
history.

Arab history, Assyrian history, Armenian history, all the peoples, all their languages
poured into the Arabic language. The Arabic language is probably 70 per cent Syriac,
Aramaic, even Sanskrit, and other languages, so there is no pure language in this sense.
It happened to be the strongest so it pulled around itself, like a magnet, all the dying
languages that had seen their day centuries ago. It was a powerful language that
absorbed other languages. Even today I can tell you many words in which you will hear
echoes of Assyrian, Hebrew, and much Syriac and Chaldean. You know, the Chaldeans
had a tremendous civilisation after taking over Babylon from the Assyrians, their
language was all over the Middle East.

So, when I write my poetry in Arabic, I tell you this – and it’s a secret between me and
myself – sometimes I feel that I am really writing in all these languages, because I
believe, finally, that any language contains all the dead memories of the races who
contributed to it. When I am doing that I am delving in this great river. Like the great
dictionary, Lisan Al-Arab (The Arab Tongue), it’s so huge, it’s more than 20 volumes,
but most of it is dead because it is not used. However, the portion of the Arabic
language that’s used today is incredibly alive; it is craving new developments, new
versions of the reality which is changing all around it. So in a way we are using like five
per cent of the dictionary because all those beautiful words, which are beautiful, lost
their use, they were invented for another age.

Linguistic fundamentals

This brings us to something very important, even political and that is – writing is
politics and in Arabic especially and specifically with the Arabic language. This battle
over the Arabic language itself, it is a very sensitive thing, like no other language I
know of because the Koran happens to be the source of the ultimate eloquence. Of
course it’s not the source, because before it there was the language – fantastic and great
– in the Jahili times, but it’s political in this sense, let’s say, not only the religious
fundamentalists but the linguistic fundamentalists, too, are afraid of change. And that is
what happens now. For instance, it happens only in the Arab world – the fight, the real
war, about the forms of poetry.

The prose poem

In fact, till now, the prose poem is not accepted. They call it a prose poem. Why?
Because the Koran suras are supposed to be written in the form of prose poems, so in a
subconscious way these linguistic fundamentalists are feeling threatened by it and so
we are looking at half a century whereby the prose poem is still considered like a kind
of weird foreign body that’s forced itself into the Arabic language, although this form
has proved itself finally. That’s one of the battles that a poet who writes in Arabic has to
be involved in.

I’ll tell you, this is really crucial for anyone to understand when we talk about Arab
poetry. There are three forms, three movements, starting with the great classic poetry
which extends from before Islam, from the Jihalis, from Imr al Quais and the great
ancient poets and then it extends even to the present – in fact the last great poet who
wrote in that form died recently, Al-Jowahiri, and with him this thing is now totally
buried and gone – there is no such thing we could compare it with in literature. A
classic Arab poem is one which goes on for 50 to 1,000 lines and it has to maintain one
strict rhyme, and there is no other thing like it in any other literature.

In the late 40s, a man called Al-Sayab in Iraq, came and suddenly, influenced by English
poetry and mostly the romantics – by John Keats specifically, Shelley and of course
Byron and Wordsworth, and finally Edith Sitwell, his main influence, tried something
similar; and this means not free verse, not blank verse, but rhymed verse – but rhymed
in variations, not just in one strict rhyme, three or four lines in the same tone, while
maintaining the old metrics of the classic poetry. What happened was a revolution, an
absolute revolution. Two thousand years of Arabic poetry was turned upside down.
Many still kept writing, like Jawahiri, but it was finished, it was gone. At the same time,
in America, the immigrant Arab poets like Gibran Kahlil Gibran, Rehani and the rest,
who were influenced by Walt Whitman and the American free verse movement, wrote
what we would call the prose poem, meaning no metrics, just a prose piece, blank verse,
and so that one was attacked too – it was considered just prose.

Then a magazine called Shi’r (Poetry) came out in the late 50s established by Yousif Al-
Khal and Adonis in Beirut which carried this whole thing forward – a real giant step.
Now these were people who had read the western canon, Adonis in French and Yousif
Al-Khal in English. Compared to their contemporaries they were far advanced in their
look toward poetry, towards Modernism, towards revolutionising poetry. Today, when
you study Arabic poetry, Shi’r magazine stands at the heart of the matter. When I was
in Kirkuk in 1961 I sent poems to Yousef Al-Khal, 16 poems, which were published,
opening the magazine, and I was hailed in Al Nahar newspaper as a new discovery, a
young poet – which was true, I was very young. And so Yousif Al-Khal and me started
a correspondence and that is the start of my relationship with the magazine.

Sound and images

In fact, that decided my fate – the strong relationship with Beirut where I could publish
things I could never dream of publishing in Iraq, which was strict and still did not
accept the new poetry. You know, in Iraq there is a complete establishment of defenders
of classic poetry, and I was a real revolutionary at that time. I wrote in metrics but in
such a strange way – beyond Al-Sayab, beyond what was written then, no rhyme, just
strict, almost Surrealistic sound and images but truly furious – the poems are still there.
Well, I have never stopped, I published a lot in Shi’r magazine because as I say, Yousif
Al-Khal and Adonis encouraged me so much, to a point where I’m dedicating the book
I am working on right now (which is poems collected from the 70s to 80s) to them both.
In a way, these people decided my fate. When I had this connection with the magazine I
kept dreaming and, of course Beirut was there, behind the whole scene, behind the
words. Beirut was for us a dream, a golden capital, especially in the 60s – it’s history
now, after the war, after the ruins. Now I used to know Jabra Ibrahim Jabra in Baghdad,
who worked for IPC, the Iraqi Petroleum Company, and who edited a company
magazine, a nice literary magazine. I published poems in it because they paid and
because Jabra was such a nice man. He had of course studied at Oxford and Cambridge
and I loved to go there just to talk to him.

By then, I was reading like a madman – I had discovered the whole English language:
my brother used to speak English and had a nice small library at home and my father of
course spoke a little English because he worked for the English in the same way most
Assyrians, I think, had some connections to it. Reading like that is what decided Me and
a friend of mine, Jan Dammo, a beautiful poet found some English anthologies of
poetry, sold on very cheaply on the streets of Baghdad. So we both started discovering
the poets and what I didn’t completely understand, I imagined, and so my imagination
was being sharpened. When you are very young your imagination is so alive, anything
like that could fire it like in a crucible. I think those are the most important things in a
poet’s life.

‘Your place is in Beirut’

One day Yousif Al-Khal came to Baghdad and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra called me to said:
“Yousif Al-Khal is coming tomorrow and he wants to see you.” Well, I go to his house
and meet the man who for me was truly not only an idol but an example of the true
poet who went to the West and came back and established a magazine. He was a truly
big name, a magical name with a great aura. He told me: “Your place is in Beirut. Come
to Beirut. You are one of us.” And after two months I was in Beirut.
How I got to Beirut is a very long and interesting story. In ‘67 I was 22 or 23, the best
age, perfect age for adventure, for cutting north, because you are afraid of nothing. No
money! Nothing! You have to go! At the time, Jabra thought (poor guy, mercy on his
soul), like anybody else, going by aeroplane, with a ticket and passport. He had no idea
I had no ticket. In fact I had no money. I sold a few books and made about 44 dinars.
And no passport of course! No-one would give me a passport!

Crossing the desert

Jabra gave me the manuscript of King Lear (his translation of it) to give to Yousif Al-
Khal to be published – which I took for two months across desert. I crossed the desert to
Hassaca and then to Homs and then to Damascus – and then to Beirut and that’s a
tremendous adventure in my life. I’m still writing about it. It’s a very symbolic thing in
the life of all the prophets and poets – what they call the dark night of the soul. Well, the
desert you cross is like another world! Truly it was like that and I was living a vision.
When I walked into Dar Al-Nahar publishing house in Beirut with the manuscript of
King Lear in my hands, and saw Yousef Al-Khal sitting at his desk, it was like
yesterday. He said: “I told you!” He looked like he was expecting me, it was incredible.
I had crossed the desert on foot, with no suitcase, nothing, only a small bag with the
manuscript of King Lear and some of my poems in a notebook I still have with me here
today. This notebook is still the source of magic to me. It contains the poems I wrote
when I was young, most of them not published. It has “Baghdad 1961” written on the
cover, which is leather and indestructible, and I carry it everywhere with me, it’s like
my magic icon. When I need a poem, when I’m dry, I just open that book and look at
the paper and the lines, and it gives me the vision of that source.

My days in Beirut were divided between Yousif Al-Khal, the newspaper where Adonis
worked, and the Horseshoe, that fantastic cafe in Beirut (which still exists!) where on an
evening you’d have everybody, even international figures there like Samuel Beckett. I
worked with Al-Nahar newspaper, and with Yousif Al-Khal on Shi’r magazine until I
left in 1969 for America. Yousif Al Khal, especially, was thus involved in shaping my
destiny.

Beirut at that time was at the peak of its golden time, that was the golden age of the
Arabs, and there was really nothing like it now, no way. It was an open city and its
beauty, its beaches like Long Beach enthralled us. We used to go there, Adonis, Yousif
Al-Khal and I, with many other people. It was a gorgeous place, where bikinis were
worn like on the Riviera. I lived there with my aunt, my father’s sister. But most of the
time we were so wild, there were so many writers and poets, we’d never get home

Leaving Beirut . . .
But Beirut became too small for me. I had incredible dreams. After all I had come to
Beirut with the idea of going to America – America was always in my mind, and the
West. In the beginning, I started reading a book by Sherwood Anderson called
Weinsberg, Ohio, it’s a classic of American fiction. And then of course, Faulkner,
Hemingway and Fitzgerald, with their fantastic, fabulous worlds that I could imagine.
Whatever I read I imagine – it becomes absolutely visual. It becomes real! I even live it!
It is this dimension of my imagination has pulled me all my life. In fact, I’m here at this
moment talking to you in Germany because of that. I do believe so! You see, I read Rilke
and Hölderlin, and these great German poets and I always wanted to know Germany,
to live there. And here we are, although I had to go to America first and it took me a
while to fix things. However, before I could leave Beirut, they got me in jail in because I
had no papers. One day I went to Shi’r magazine and Yousif Al-Khal said: “What’s this?
There are secret police looking for you. What have you done?” But I never told him the
story. I never told him that I had crossed the borders without papers. In fact, I started
sleeping on the Rocha, the place where lovers jump from, like the Golden Gate Bridge
in San Francisco, and in friends’ apartments. One day, when I was really sick of it all, I
went to the police station. They put the handcuffs on me and told me: “We were
looking for you!” I stayed in jail for a few days – it was full of Palestinians at the time as
the Palestinian resistance movement was just starting and they were being caught at the
borders. We became friends, we were about 300 in one room and they were all telling
me their stories.

Out of jail to New York!

Ghada Al-Samman, who was a very powerful writer at the time, knew the Lebanese
president, and through him she brought the captain of the jail in his pyjamas one
midnight to release me, but there was one condition – I had to leave Lebanon, and
either go back to Iraq or somewhere else. “Somewhere else!” I said.

Yousif Al-Khal helped me a lot. We went to the American Embassy and he told them
about this young man who had translated two anthologies of American poetry in Shi’r
magazine and introduced the beat generation of poets to Arab readers. He told the
American Ambassador: “All you have to do is talk to this young man, just talk to him!”

So the Ambassador asked me about American literature. I started with Walt Whitman,
and then came to the new names which the Ambassador had never heard of and
probably will never hear of, and he said: “Enough! You got it.” So they gave me a
paper, although I still had no passport.
That is how I got to New York. I borrowed $50 or $60 and went to New York without
knowing anybody, no money, nothing, alone. Imagine that! I cannot believe even now,
how I survived, nor how I got to San Francisco, which was my final destination because
I had read and written about San Francisco before even seeing it. When I wrote about
the Beat Generation in Shi’r, the introduction had to be about North Beach, San
Francisco. When I finally got there, I discovered that all I had said was true, the way I
had imagined it! And the hippies and the beats – well, I immediately joined, long hair,
beads, the whole thing! When Yousif Al-Khal heard about me he said: “Sargon now is
finished, lost completely, he’ll never come back.” His idea was that I would go to
America and get educated, get a few PhDs or something and come back.

Etel Adnan helped me get from New York to San Francisco. I had met her one day at
Shi’r magzine –this small sweet lady. She used to send her works to Yousif Al-Khal and
I translated them. All her works published in Majellat Shi’r are translated by me
although most of the time I didn’t put my name. She said: “Sargon, if you come to
America, please come and see this beautiful town, San Raphael, where I live.” She sent
me a ticket, and welcomed me at night with another lady and it was beautiful because
Etel was a hippy. She thought she was Indian, in fact she is half Syrian, but she acted
and thought like she was an Indian.

Alcatraz and the Indians

The first few days when I was there we sat in a famous cafe which is still there, called
Buena Vista, it’s right on the bay and from it you can see Alcatraz jail, the famous
prison. We were with some American Indians who were having a revolution there and
trying to take over Alcatraz. Anyway, I joined the Indians with Etel Adnan. They were a
dream for me. We had only seen them in movies when John Wayne used to kill a few
thousands – I think in one go! On the screen the white cowboys shot them like flies, so
we always felt pity for them. For me they were fabulous people, and here they were for
real, in San Francisco, with feathers and blankets and beads. I was fascinated and made
friends with many of them. The Indians were in real poor shape, they still are, they had
some kind of vulnerability to alcohol of which the whites took full advantage, and
many, men and women, were alcoholics. But I don’t blame them, do you, when you
have your whole land taken away, the white man is taking over your land and he
doesn’t want to give it back – they don’t want to give them that tiny rock. They beat the
hell out of them and chased them out. Sure, at that time I was an Indian and felt like
one.

Life in San Francisco

San Francisco is the centre of creativity in America, the centre of America. There is East
Coast, New York, the publishing world, the business of literature and there is the West
Coast, which is San Francisco and that is where all the new movements emerge from,
always, even today, so there was the so-called San Francisco Renaissance, a tremendous
movement with Kenneth Rexroth, whom I met, as master of ceremonies. Through him
all the great poets of the beat generation came out, like Gary Snyder, and then Ginsberg,
Kerouac, then Gregory Corso, Bob Kaufman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I knew his
daughter Mary, who became an exotic belly-dancer and was the girlfriend of a friend of
mine, Gary Gach, a poet who still lives in San Francisco. We used to go and see Kenneth
Rexroth, but on one condition – that you don’t say a word, he’s the one who talks. He
was such a genius, such a man of knowledge. He’s an encyclopaedia. In fact he’s
famous for reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica from cover to cover every two years –
he’s an incredible man.

So San Francisco is the place of awareness because writers there are the most open.
They are not like the New Yorker writer and poet, the sophisticated Europeanised type,
the New Yorker. No, they are cosmopolitan. San Francisco is the city that is actually
made up of all the cities in the world: You have Paris, you have London, you have
Rome, and you have Berlin, in this city you have China. It is international and culture is
absolutely open. I think for an artist, especially a poet, that is the city. I mean, I spent a
quarter of a century, more, in San Francisco, never getting bored one minute – the
readings, the fantastic trips, especially in the seventies and the eighties. It was the time
for me, that is the thing that I treasure, the adventures, the open spirit, and then
Berkeley which in the late sixties was THE place for revolution, for stopping the war in
Vietnam. The first night I arrived in Berkeley, I saw a procession of students with
candles singing against the war, to stop the war in Vietnam and what they were reading
but the poems of Ho Chi Min, which I had just translated into Arabic and published in
Dar Al-Nahar in Beirut. Prison Diary (Youmiat fi Sijin), it was my first book.

It was a great thing for me and in that procession I immediately made wild friendships
with these students and for the first time with beautiful hippy girls, you know the ones
with beads and flowing hair, with little kids. They took me with them and we lived on
an abandoned ship in the bay, near San Sausalito, which is a city of the stars, the movie
stars. The hippies lived in the harbour side by side with the yachts of these stars. This
ship of ours was from the time of Mark Twain, you know the one with the crazy
propellers and pedals, the paddle steamer. We had a juke box in it and a grill for
making hamburgers. So, hippy girls, with their kids naked following them, making
hamburgers and dancing to the music of Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin – it was a dream,
an incredible dream

This tremendous energy

The book I am working on right now is called If You Were Asleep in Noah’s Ark which
is taken from two lines of poetry by Rumi, the great Persian mystic poet. He says: “If
you were sleeping in Noah’s Ark, drunk,/ what do you care if the flood has come.” The
book contains the poems I wrote in America exactly at this time we have been talking
about. I had found out that all I knew about writing – before I came to America it was
nothing – was unequal to the occasion, just techniques and ways of writing that
couldn’t contain the tremendous energy I was living, so I started asking myself, how
I’m gonna express this! In these violent poems in America I felt I was controlled by
language, instead of me controlling the language. So I had to create this flowing
rhythm, this mad flowing rhythm of language and then everything is being dragged by
this fantastic current. Well, I’m reading the poems now and I feel that I’m analysing
myself through them.

For me, from the start till now, writing poetry was and is a very crucial, very intimate
thing and deeply connected with my inner making, my inner life. Otherwise, why
would I write poetry, why not fiction, why not essays? I tried to invent new ways to
force the Arab language to contain the tremendous flow of new information, of new
realities, and I wrote these fabulous poems, which I am collecting right now, some of
them are 25, 30 pages long. I’d never dare write a poem that long these days. I don’t
know how I did it. I couldn’t be bothered to publish any of these poems then. I thought
no-one would publish them and so I lived immersed in this life and writing all this
time, without publishing.

A Letter from Adonis

Well, one day an Assyrian lady from Beirut, Violet Yacoub, came to San Francisco, and
she said: “I have a letter for you from somebody called Adonis.” “Adonis!” I said – it
was like a bell ringing. This is in ‘72 or ‘73 and I was completely cut off from the Arab
world. I read the letter, it is a beautiful letter and in it Adonis told me: “You are present
among us, you are never absent, although you are not here and I want you to give me
for Muwaqif [his magazine] all that you have, anything that you have.” I gave Adonis
whatever I had and he published it all, in newspapers, in magazines, in Morocco,
everywhere. Well, these poems came out and a lot of people have told me that probably
they’re my best, in the sense that you can’t write things like that consciously, they just
have to come out somehow.

My first collection, Al-Wasool ila Medinat ‘Ain [Arrival in Where City] is revolutionary
in its style. Most of the poems were written in America and they were part of what I
was trying to write about the absolutely modern situation, trying to capture it. After its
publication in 1985, I started a different period and although these poems were
published in ‘85, some had been written in the late 60s, 70s, 80s. I published a second
book of poems in Morocco, which I wrote mainly in Greece. I tried to capture in it the
Mediterranean feeling, which was why I called it Living by the Acropolis, and it is true I
was living very near the Acropolis. Every day I would walk through the Acropolis, and
climb there and walk through the Plaka, so the seas and scents, feelings and details are
mostly Mediterranean.

Coming from Assyria . . .

Is there any influence in my work from my Assyrian background? Well, as a child I was
writing in Arabic, although I have written certain things in Assyrian. But I soon realised
that Assyrian is a very limited language in the sense of an audience. First of all,
throughout the whole Middle East where Assyrians exist their language is suppressed –
they don’t have schools, they don’t have magazines, they don’t have books, but almost
secret societies. The first school I went to was in a church in al-Habbaniya where the
priest used to teach us and I read Assyrian. It’s a beautiful language, it’s a great
language and sometimes I feel like writing a fantastic elegy for the Assyrian language,
how it’s dying and I’m seeing its death. But then I realised, when I was struck by the
Arabic language, when the gift came to me, that all languages are really one. I mean,
Arabic is almost like Assyrian to me, that’s strange, but it’s really true. For me the
sound of Arabic is like some kind of cover for what’s beneath it – meaning all these
ancient languages never really die. They are there. This might sound like an illusion but
they are there, they are steamed up into Arabic and they are right there.

Of course, throughout the years I went and studied these things, I studied Turath,
which is the classics of Arabic language. I found out that some of the greatest Arab
poets were in fact Assyrians. They changed their names, they’re all in history. Emr Al-
Quais was Assyrian and Nabi Al-Dhubiani, who was the poet of the kings, of the
palace, was actually Assyrian. He was Monovesian, a kind of Christian at that time.
Now who could be Christian in Iraq and not be Assyrian – either Assyrian, or Syriac or
Chaldean, Assyrians considered all these people one. Then, Abu Tammam was
Christian – he changed his name. Ibn Al-Abri, a great historian, is Ben Khafri in
Assyrian, so he’s Assyrian. I can tell you hundreds of names like that. Ibn Ar-Ruhmi, he
was in fact Greek and Christian. These things are facts in Arabic literature. So, the way I
see it is that there is no such thing as pure Arabic literature. It all is from here and there,
especially from Iraq and Syria where the tremendous movements of classic poetry took
place, the revolutions of Abu Tammam in Syria and Al-Mutanabi in Iraq, these
movements just dragged with them all the past of mixed origins, mixed languages,
mixed knowledge, mixed terminology – and this past is all there in the poetry and the
prose. I think that’s what most of the poets, throughout history, have done. They have
done exactly that. Because what finally counts is not the language, it’s what the
languages say.
In my books, particularly the last three, I have been doing exactly that. I’ve been putting
in Assyrian phrases or sentences, such as “Shimmet baba bruna rukhet kutsha” (In the
name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost), sometimes without translating them.
They’re obviously Assyrian, but not in the sense of being just Assyrian, that would be
just chauvinistic. I want to make the language, which for me is the Arabic language,
carry everything. I’m putting things from Robert Lowell, from Pavese, from Caesar
Vellejo. For the first time I’m indicating that this Arabic language can take anything
from the world. That is the point really, the rest is just details.

The language is not dead, it can take anything. As far as I know, no-one has done it
before. They can’t, they don’t dare, and plus they can’t – as simple as that. It’s a matter
of how to do it, and to do it right (not just to do it for the sake of doing it, no, that’s
meaningless), but do it creatively. That way it’s necessary, it is contributing to the idea
of poetry and the enrichment of the language.

Arabic is unexplored

For my own work, from my own experience of the language, I have been doing these
experiments with the Arabic language for a very long time, in fact from the start, and I
still feel that the Arabic language is material unexplored as yet. Let’s put it this way –
it’s unmined. You know, it’s like raw material for me. I feel that this language could be
extended endlessly into some new idiomatic formulations – which I’m doing all the
time. Look, I have a series of poems which I have been publishing in London in Al-
Hayat (The Life Arabic daily newspaper), which are translations but I don’t call them
translations, I call them ”poems after the poet”.

The art of translation

I believe that the art of translation is to get into rewriting the text. For instance, I’ve
published sonnets by Shakespeare, poems by Shelley rewritten into the modern idiom
of Arabic, plus Haikus, Chinese poets like Po Chui-i, others plus Greek poets, classics –
Sappho, all these came out through the years and they are still coming out. I am still
doing experiments, in a sense. What I do is take the text and imagine how would it
sound if it was written originally in Arabic. That’s the whole idea. That’s what I do. My
imagination goes into the sound of it. How would an Arab poet write such a sense,
write such emotion?

A sonnet by Shakespeare? What I discovered is that the power of the sonnets is in their
flow – uninterrupted. In Arabic that is almost impossible. Why? Because of the line
ends. They stand as obstacles to the flow.

The flow of breath

So what do I do? I establish a new kind of line, which is continuous and at the same
time I do this in my own poetry. I’m working with sounds and I’m working with the
line that extends into the other line non-stop to get the flow of breath. This has never
been done in Arabic. Why? Because of the metrics.

So what am I doing? I am compressing the language in such a way that it takes the
place of the old metrics. It would be another metrics, as did western poets such as Ted
Hughes. Ted Hughes wrote what you can call syllabic poetry and before him Auden of
course. Syllabic – it depends on the syllable.

Now I’ve talked about this many times in interviews in Arabic, but they can’t
understand it. They don’t know what I’m really doing, so every critic who writes about
me never mentions these things because they aren’t even aware of them. They don’t
know the mechanics, the techniques, they just don’t know. When they do write – and
they have written extensively about these books and poems of mine, they talk, of
course, about the material and what I’m saying, but what I’m saying is not so important
to me as HOW I am saying it. That’s the whole point.

The other major side of my activities is translation. Through translation I can penetrate
and in fact I have heard, many, many echoes and reactions from people who have told
me face to face, or by phone, or by letter that I’m striking something there.

A beautiful shock

At the Oman Festival in the summer I truly, personally, physically saw the reactions
with my own eyes, heard them with my own ears. In such desert places like these small
places in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and Sharjah, even towns in the desert, I found people
who knew my poems and are actually aware of what I am doing, people from a
godforsaken village, in a desert. It was a shock to me, a beautiful shock.

Let me tell you something. Every poet, throughout their life, actually looks forward to
something like that. It’s a fantastic moment. All these years that I have put in, thinking
at the same time that no-one would be even aware of what I was doing (and it’s a fact
that the damn critics are not), and suddenly you find a simple student somewhere who
has been probing through your doings and your techniques and actually has grasped
something of that thing that you have been trying to develop. For me it’s such a bliss,
such a reward, in fact it’s the only reward. That’s enough for me. That’s the only reward
a poet ever looks forward to.

When they tell me this modern poetry is too complex for this simple man, that’s all
bullshit, it’s not true. Because who is this simple man? There is no such thing as a
simple man, all human beings have their complications and inner depths. I believe this,
and so when something touches them they know it, maybe by instinct, maybe by
knowledge. Sometimes knowledge is intuitive. That’s what we’re talking about.

Arabic is always shy

When we say that about poetry in Arabic, we are talking about something very
remarkable, very vitalising, because Arabic is a language that resists, a language of
resistance. It’s like it’s being raped. It’s very true. Arabic is always shy, it’s a shy
language. In fact, it’s a language which is almost virgin, even in its terminology. At the
end of the 20th century – we’re gonna have the year 2000 very soon –Arabic language
still doesn’t accept simple erotic words. They can’t name for instance the penis or the
cunt, which in other literatures is just a very regular, natural thing to say.
We can’t say that in Arabic, so I try to build into the language the sense of being
absolutely free and powerful in the way I handle the syllable, the meaning, the structure
of the poem, of the sentence. Through that, I think you can say anything. In fact I tried
to do that, you know, in the Oman Festival last summer and I put all that meaning into
a few lines.
By insinuation you can do that, by sound – everybody knew what I was talking about.
So I’m talking about all these things without mentioning the names. That’s how you can
develop poetry – by insinuation, by sound. When I say certain sounds, the connotations
are there. They know what I am talking about on another level, and that’s the mystery
of poetry.

That’s why poetry is a unique language, completely separate from the language of
fiction, essay, the regular prose. In poetry you can do that because every sound counts.
And I’m doing that precise and very economic thing with language, with a language
like Arabic which is always too full of decoration, unnecessary words and fat –
linguistic fat. I’m cutting it like a butcher and I’m trying to show the bones behind the
flesh and I think that’s something worth doing.

Yes, this is really mind-blowing. It is really hard. I spent nights and days thinking how,
how to do it. How? What do you do as a poet, as a truly working poet, is do incredible
endless experiments. And you do. Some of them fail. I’m not saying you succeed just
like that, there is no such thing as that. Hundreds of them fail but one succeeds, and if,
from 200 pages, you can get five pages that are good, then I consider it some kind of
success. That’s the way.

A little bit of frustration

It’s long work, always thankless. After a while, after writing for 30 years, you feel a little
bit of frustration because here is a whole world where idiots are taking over things and
some rich sheikh or someone, with billions of dollars and oil can live such a fabulous
life, and own all the papers and magazines and here is a poet sweating and labouring to
advance the language. You know what that means, I think that is one of the most
honourable missions in life, and they’re totally neglected, so sometimes a poet, if he
gives up, he is really justified. But then you try to fight against despair.

We try all the different ways we can to push the wheel of poetry into the future, the real
future in that sense. For me, that’s the true revolution – from inside. Not from outside.
Not shouting, but working silently and seriously with such a prolonged effort from
inside – and that’s how things are to me, that’s my belief, it’s what keeps me going in
this fantastic solitude in Schöppingen.

Sometimes I find oases like this sweet small German village, or anywhere else in fact,
just to pursue these fascinating, complex ideas of mine.
August 1997, Schöppingen,
near Münster, Germany

The Sleeping Woman

Her head bowed, Su’ad wept before her father and mother and three young brothers,
imploring them to slaughter her quickly in order to wipe away the shame which had
tarnished her. The father spoke sternly and asked her to explain in detail what had
happened to her. Su’ad said, her voice breaking” “What happened to me is
unbelievable, but even though it is unbelievable, it did still happen.”

The father ordered her in an even sterner voice to tell them what had happened
without any evasion, so Su’ad told them everything.

The night before, she had been asleep in her room, having locked her door with the
key and bolt, as was her habit. As she slept, she saw herself walking in a park in which
there was no other living creature. Suddenly a young man attacked her; she didn’t
know who he was or where he had been hiding; he threw her down on the ground,
crouched on top of her and tore her clothes off, taking all that he wanted from her, and
paying no attention to her pleading or her cries for help or her tears that soaked both
their faces.

Then she had a second dream. She was walking along a crowded street when suddenly
the same young man sprang upon her and raped her in front of all those people, not one
of whom stopped to watch what was happening. Then she had a third dream. She was
visiting her grandfather’s grave; as she was reading Surat Al-Fatiha and blessing his
soul, she was surprised by the same young man attacking her and raping her three
times, laughing as he said that the cause of his vitality was the beauty of the
surroundings.

The father said to Su’ad: “And who is this young man?” She said: “I don’t know him;
I have never seen him before in my life. How am I supposed to know him when I have
only seen him in a dream? But if I was to see him again, I would know him
immediately, for I can never forget his face.”
The father said to Su’ad: “And what happened to you when you woke up?”
Su’ad said: “I found myself lying on my bed, my clothes torn, my body smeared with
blood and covered with bruises and marks left by fingernails and teeth.”

The mother said: “This girl is my own daughter and I know her very well. She sleeps
so deeply that not even cannon blasts could wake her up. This whole matter has
nothing at all to do with sleep and dreams. It can only be that one of t he wild young
men from this alley sneaked into her room and violated her as she slept.?
The father said: “And who is this mad man you would dare enter at night a house in
which there are four men?”

Su’ad’s brothers started shouting angrily, threatening that if they knew who the
young man was they would kill him and cut him into pieces, the largest of which would
be smaller than a raisin.
Su’ad said to her mother: “If you are right, I would know who the young man was,
for I know each and every one of the young men of the alley.”
Then the father asked Su’ad: “And did you resist as an honourable woman would?”

Su’ad said: “I resisted and screamed as loud as I could, but he laughed and told me
that we were in a dream, and that the world of those who are asleep cannot be known
by those who are awake.”
The father thought for a long time, then spoke in a trembling voice, warning his
daughter not to tell a soul what had happened to her. But what happened to Su’ad will
also happen to many other women in the alley; the men will be baffled and, incapable
of taking revenge against those who violated their honour, they will try to prevent their
women from sleeping. But their attempts will fail, and the women will be obliged to
sleep, and will be subjected to rape, and will wake up with their clothes torn.

Translated from the Arabic by Maya Abu-Deeb

Windows of Sand

POEM 1

And I return to the old house from travel.

Things regain their old taste
and sad silence.
At night I will walk by my loved one’s windows
the way autumn passes by
because the wind still brings back the bitterness
of old days
and takes from the sand
all that we said
the day you first saw me.

POEM 2

Like the sun under water

your face,
like time
a crucifix in my night.
In the memory of days,
lakes from a star
bring the wind back to my house
and give me
our childhood that died
the way butterflies died
in a summer without shores.

POEM 3

When I was young

I walked to the gates of the South
listening to the gushing of springs at night.
When I was young and innocent
like the shells of dreams,
the butterflies on the roof were my stars
and the shadows of horse carts
were my angels.

BOXES

They stole my childhood from me

and my madness.
They stole my winds
from the wooden crates
where I kept my clothes.
And from the gates of the South
they stole the croaking of my frogs
and my mother’s mirrors.

SNOWFLAKES

Like the flint glass of old lanterns

without colour or glow,
like the sorrows or autumn
I become when you arrive
shaking the gates of my heart,
placing snowflakes on my eyelids.
In the silence of the dark
I hear the wind howling
at the porthole
and my pulse, trembling
with sorrow, weeps.

And I am made naked by your eyes.

POEM 4

Across the bridges

an angel passes sobbing

MAIL

In the city there is

an empty street
and a lit window.
You are there
every evening waiting
foor mail that will not arrive.

And you weep.

In the city there is . . .

POEM 5

I hold a candle and flowers

in the silence of my hand.
I hold a mirror, a sock, a cloud
in the silence of my hand,
and your singing is lost
in a distant summer
among parafin lamps.

I hold a notebook and doors

and the sea,

and butterflies
and the sadness of eternity.

MAIL 2

In the city there is

an empty street
and a window where you can be seen
sowing
the cold fringes of sadness and death.
Every evening you are framed in it
waiting
for mail that will not arrive.

In the city there is . . .

STONE CASTLES

In the windows of sand

in death
in a chalk-drawn circle
in castle walls

your liquid name, beloved,

was an old journey,

a song
that comes with the wind to my house in winter.

It was the lantern of the orchards

long dimmed by the tide.
It returned
as a moon above the banks of death
and in its waning reflected
the lights of islands.
They remain at the bottom of the river
to celebrate a feast for my sorrow by the walls
of Mary Magdalene’s home.

It was my face
and my stone castle.
Intestinal Worms

The child calls me from the toilet . . . she says that she has “intestinal worms” . . . I
examine her stools . . . there were some intestinal worms.
I am coming back to finish writing my job application which I left off only a few
minutes ago.
For your information, my nationality . . .”
Sex . . . nationality . . . sexuality . . .

It is important to specify these meanings so you do not mix them up. Sex, for example,
has a very short pronunciation – it means that sexual act which all creatures perform,
including the human kind, to perpetuate the species, so it is said. No doubt this is
correct but there is another result of this act and that is the enormous number of
unemployed who are scattered like locusts in the streets and cafÈs of the town . . . these
alien creatures who sometimes appear to be thinking there is no point to existence . . .
and sometimes of more desperate matters.

I hear the child calling me again. This time to clean her up! What a job! I notice that her
little bottom looks like a fresh golden apple. I continue to go over this idea in my head. I
pay attention to her. She was talking about her intestinal worms.

My mother says that we – me and my sister Salma – suffered in our childhood from
these tiny worms and that explained why we looked like two stray cats, as my father
used to enjoy calling us. On one of those cold February nights, my father came home
with the smell of wine arriving a metre in front of him, completely and blissfully drunk.
In the back bag of his motorbike he was hiding - an enema! (This will wake Salma up
and she will explode into laughter.) He filled it with salt and water and threw us, my
sister and I, on our tummies. After taking off our pants, he emptied it into us through
our anuses.

After he had finished, my father kept repeating: “Salt . . . only salt” could kill them.
My mother said we stayed in bed for a full week I believe my father’s special remedy
was successful, the proof of which is that neither of us since then has suffered from
intestinal worms.
I am thinking of writing to her . . . to tell her that I no longer suffer from stomach ache
and to say that I intend to spend El-Eid with her.
“You need an enema and some salt to get rid of the intestinal worms.”
The child didn’t hear me, she was watching a cockroach running across the carpet. I
rushed to pick up a shoe and hit the insect. The little girl was looking at some of the
squashed insect which stuck to the shoe, laughing happily . .. !

I am thinking of all my previous job applications and it catches me in my throat. How

much it hurts, this catch in my throat . . . it has a never-ending character . . . and it hurts
me even more when I discover to what extent I cannot imagine any other life than the
one I live.
Ahh . . . how much of this life has no meaning. (It seems I am joining the queue of
victims and this is the delusion of life.) I touch the cold sore which a fever has sent to
the bottom of my lower lip. . . . I must be hallucinating . . . with everything looking
completely anarchic . . . and violent . . . very violent.

I fold the job application and put it in an envelope and take another piece of paper. . . .
Salma: I intend to send a job application to the textile company in the countryside as
you suggested to me last time . . . and, about the competition. I have not received an
answer yet. In general, I don’t want to follow illusions; I need to be free of them. I
intend to spend the El-Eid holiday with you. I say ‘holiday’ because I got into this way
of speaking from active people who differentiate working days from lounging-around
days. . . . Yes, as you said, I will try to go along with my present circumstances . . . I will
try as far as I can.
I think I need time to decide about some of my private matters. Do you know . . . in the
last few days I have been having a terrifying dream. Do you still believe in ghosts?

Ghosts! Why do I remember that she used to believe in ghosts! All children believe in
ghosts. I used to come back in the evening, in the first few years of school, and stay at
the entrance of the building and shout to my mother to collect me and take me up to
our flat on the fourth floor . . .
Always the ghosts . . . does this gentle little girl, like a cat, believe in them? She asks
questions and spoils them with a scream. I soothe her on my shoulder. I try to calm her
fear. . . . I make up a story, then whisper to her that we should stay calm until Mama
comes back when all of us will go to the zoo. She asks about lions, giraffes, tigers, and
coloured birds . . . why are birds always chirping? Is it true they talk to each other? . . .
Tell me, is it true?
I can work as a nanny and child-minder too (Do I have to add this to my application?).
Also I write and read letters for my illiterate neighbours and teach children at all levels
– of course as a home tutor – unpaid because they are relatives and neighbours.

I remember on one of the old application forms I wrote, to get work in a firm of
taxidermists, . . . I wrote that my first and last principle was to have wages appropriate
to the level of my work, or, simply, to sell my labour for a good wage . . . (Where have I
read such words?). The child wants to know more about the zoo. I look at her small
black eyes. I think they look like the eyes of a lost puppy. It seems she has forgotten the
story of the worms. If my father was present now he would empty a bag of salt into her
anus, into the centre of the fresh golden apple, and then he would go back to the corner
of the room, putting his dark green bottle between his legs as usual . . . It is an old
habit, perhaps going back to getting drunk in the office car. It has become a habit
without reason . . . Why do these matters look strange, displaced from their cause? Can
anyone explain to me this surreal fantasy which has controlled me for the past two
years when writing applications and applying to those competitions which I feel
hopeless about.

Despite this, I remember once asking him in the middle of his jollity, transferred to us
contagiously, our school books lying on our laps . . . I used to ask him about that habit
of his and laugh . . . He ignored my questions, as I do with the child. . . He used to say,
and I remember it as if it happened today (the rain was dripping on the glass window
above our heads). . .

“My child, when I die, every time you visit my grave pour a bottle of red wine over it . .
. this is my wish . . . Don’t forget it.”
(But there is the same dream that comes to me every night . . . I dream my father is
happy as he never as . . . he runs after us, laughing with us, cuddling us and hanging on
to our hair. . . and we are children, you with your long fine plaits and me with short
hair like a boy. All of us laughing . . . we are playing hide-and-seek . . . he hides behind
the trees . . . we run in all directions searching for him . . . there was an abandoned room
like the one on our trip to the orchard in the village – with Nejeya (al-Jabalya). Do you
remember that room? I remember it, I cannot forget it. Nejeya used to say: “Boys come
here with girls and take their virginity”. . . . We used to get exhausted from running . . .
and suddenly we stop . . . realising that he is not there . . . he is not anywhere . . . we
come closer to the room – it seems he advised us not to enter it – I suggest searching for
him inside . . . you object, by pulling the hem of my dress . . . I break free and push you
away . . . and enter . . . white little ghost . . . bats . . . and I wake up terrified!)
Why do I remember him again?

He knew that he was getting close to his end . . . it didn’t seem to sadden him.
He was drinking all those years but it didn’t quench his thirst. He was always thirsty till
he died drunk! . . . He continued drinking till the last minute of his life - when the
bouncer in the bar saw him lying down and shook him violently to throw him out . . .
and in one moment . . . a moment which he never forgot (I presume this at least) – he
was shaking this disgustingly smelly corpse . . . it is really a dead body . . . a real dead
body . . . He died . . . could you believe it? The barmaid told us later that he didn’t finish
his last drink.

Was it a tragic ending? For sure, he was not hoping for a more beautiful ending.
(Salma, does it happen to you that you think about him sometimes? Do you dream of
him?)
Salma will say this sentence which comes from a German artist. “Would El-Eid be more
beautiful if it was longer?”
Eid! Only the dark green bottle – which he used to hide in his inside coat pocket when
he came home at night . . . his way of playing around with his non-existent future. How
clear this memory becomes today . . . he used to pick up his little harmonica and start
singing . . . old French and American songs from the past, full of nostalgia . . . we
memorised them all with time – me and my sister – and started singing with him . . .
For those moments there was a smell.

Salma, do you remember his bright eyes from drink? His voice . . . do you remember the
voice of our father? How much I adored that man. I used to love his anarchic ways. He
used to hide all this anarchy behind an organised chaos. It was wonderful to experience
the life of a man like him with all his fantasies. He was always colluding with us against
our poor mother . . . colluding with us against the neighbour’s children. Do you still
remember the day when Shadya, the daughter of Mother Habiba threw a stone at you.
You came to the house crying. He was making two chairs out of wood for us . . . Do you
remember he took a long piece of wood and passed it to you, saying, “Go and beat her
with it!”.
Are you laughing? Why does he come back to me in this way? My father used to prefer
me to my sister but that didn’t annoy her at all because my mother used to prefer her to
me. He used to insist that I cut my hair like a boy, the boy he wanted to have. . .
I was the preferred son of my father, but one evening he discovered that my breasts
were swelling and I was wearing a very tight skirt, proud of my new breasts . . . He
laughed and pulled my hair, gave me a kiss on my neck and I understood he was happy
about his boy who became a girl. My father used to kiss me like that even when I was
grown up, when my head was higher than his shoulder. He was so jolly when we used
to go to the market, holding me at the back of my neck.

When I became taller he couldn’t hold me in his favourite way. He stopped taking me
to market. At that moment I stopped colluding with him against my mother as I had
done as a child. Our angry conversations used to end with swearing at each other and
slamming the door . . . One of these fights reached the level of smashing plates. He
threatened that he would throw me out of his house.

All this started when I discovered one day that my mother never left the kitchen. She
was a very special kind of proletarian and that was very ‘natural’ . . . We lived, and she
created the means for it every day without that machine breaking down.
After this discovery, my awareness became sharper . . . I talked to him in the beginning
in a surprisingly quiet way but he would doubt ‘the virginity of Mary’. For him it was
rubbish that women were equal to men.

What a woman . . . Because of her, I was threatened with being thrown out of the house.
She used to come and stand with her quiet appearance when she felt that the
conversations would progress to a fight . . . With all her coolness and not caring, she put
me against the wall and said, as the French say, “This is not your business, do you want
to change the world?” Because she didn’t want to change the world she used to put her
tired little foot in his palm . . . because he was her husband . . . because he was
wonderful even when he was a bastard. He laughs . . . and grabs me just as in the
beautiful past, by my neck, towards him, shaking me, laughing. “You devil goat, you
will be something or nothing at all.”
Salma . . . I am frightened and lonely – do you think my father’s prediction will come
true?

Translated by Sharazad Doss

’Didan Ma’awiya’ is from a collection of short stories, ’Ma Allathi Nafa’alahu? [What do
we do?], published by Manshurat Itihad Kuttab al-Maghreb, Rabat, 1992.

There are many Easts in the East and many Wests in the West

It was with a mixture of intense delight and excitement that we interviewed Adonis, a very
unusual and wonderful person. He seems almost to be in tune with air itself, wafting through
skies that know neither physical borders nor limits of time, as he explained that he felt the place
where he was born was not merely geographical, and that the land of culture and creativity was
quite separate from the physical world we inhabit.

Adonis is unique in that he is at the same time poet, philosopher and theoretician of Arab poetics.
His influence on Arabic poetry since the Sixties is immense. His decision to reread and study the
texts of Arab poetry by themselves and disregard what had been written about them, was far-
reaching. Till now, the reverberations of this study are being heard, as Adonis was able through
this virgin reading, to re-analyse and re-interpret the Arab poetic experience as pluralistic and
akin to those of other, non-Arab societies. Adonis has lectured and spoken on this in many
countries.

From widening the horizons of understanding in poetry, Adonis began to study the issues of
conformity and originality in Arab culture, publishing to date three volumes. Adonis is
concerned, like the late Octavio Paz, that words, the means of literary communication, have lost
their “plural nature, their multiple literary forms, from reportage to poetry”; they have been
usurped by the religious and technical worlds. He is counting on poetry, facing the twenty-first
century, to assert its essential relationship with words and things material, and on poets to have
the vision to find this renewed expression in new forms.

In his on-going epic work Al-Kuttab, Adonis is changing poetic form to incorporate elements of
other arts. He recently saw the film ‘Titanic’, and commented how cinema includes all the arts,
acting, photography, poetry, music and plastic arts. “Cinema is the most complete art of the
future,” he said, feeling sorry that in today’s films there was so much cheap sex and violence. “I
have seen a lot of beautiful movies in my life, Japanese, Italian, Russian, American. Cinema is a
work of genius. I adore it and I can tell you that in the way I write my last work, Al-Kuttab:
Ams al-Makan al-Aan (The Place’s Yesterday Now) I use the technique of the cinema.” This epic
work (two volumes published, the third and final one out soon) is set somewhat like a script, with
pages divided into three columns, the first for the Narrator, who sets the historical scene, the
middle and widest column for the Poet’s words, and the third is for exact historical references
and facts. Here Adonis gives us glimpses of his life and ideas.

I was born in a poor and simple village called Kassabeen, in the area of Ladhkia, in the
year 1930. A village that belonged to the beginnings of creation; huts made of stone and
mud that we called our houses. The mud cracked every season, and we had to fix the
roof with new mud and thatch to make it withstand rain and wind and time.
Nevertheless, the rain kept seeping through invisible cracks and its drops fell on our
heads – father and mother and kids – as we sat to rest, or eat, or sleep. The house was so
narrow that my father built a big wooden bed and raised it on high stilts where we all
slept: it was like a smaller house inside the house, and we used the space beneath it for
many purposes. In winter, when it was cold, our only cow, and her companion ox, slept
under it.

The “Kuttab” days

Every day I went barefoot to the ‘Kuttab’, which means the village teacher’s abode,
where the old man taught me how to read and write. I sat near him and he hooked his
cane’s pointed tip between my toes, to keep me there, in case I thought of running away
to roam in the fields, as I usually did whenever I had the chance.
I’d never known, till I was 12, what you could call a regular school. There was no such
thing in the area where we lived. The nearest school to the village was so far away that
a kid my age couldn’t possibly make it there, and back, twice a day – on foot. And till
that age, I’d never seen a car, or heard a radio, or knew what electricity was. And of
course, never saw a city.

At this age also, I began to discover my own body, when I had my first lesson in how a
male and female get together. It happened at night, in a small valley outside the village,
where she took me. After that, I used to press my body to the earth, and roll in the grass
as if I was fondling a woman’s body.

After I finished learning how to read and write at the “Kuttab”, my father decided to
send me to that far-away school. My mother was worried sick, so he assured her
somewhat that I’d be all right because another boy, older than me, whose name was
Abbas and who was the village mayor’s son, would accompany me. On a stormy, rainy
winter day, we were walking back to the village and arrived at the river which
separated the school from the village – it was called Al-Shidda (Dire Straits) and it was
flooding.

– “No, don’t cross! It is deep. Please, Abbas! We will drown. Let’s wait.”
– “It’s still light. If night falls, we won’t be able to cross. The flood might get worse. We
either cross now, or go back to the school.”
It seemed to me that Abbas was eager to prove his courage, not to me, but to the people
in our village; I had no choice but to submit, and I put myself in Abbas’s hands.
I couldn’t believe it when we landed safely on the other bank, and Abbas became
suddenly gravely silent. He had realised what a risk he had taken. We could have
drowned. Fortunately, only our books and satchels did. When we arrived home, the
village celebrated, it was a feast.

Certain images of my childhood are still alive in my memory. I still remember the
wooden crib in which a child was rocked as though in a second womb. The peasants
tuned it into a paradox they tried to solve: “Something is nothing, has two feet and
walks. What is it?” The rocking crib!
The mud oven too: I can’t forget the flames, the bread that emerged from it with its
fresh heavenly smell.
But where is this village now? When I went back, after fifty years, I felt as if I was
returning to something dead. As though I was climbing a mountain of wind. Perhaps I
went back to visit my father who’d died, to whose funeral I was unable to go. Or maybe
to examine, like many others, reality’s share in life, and memory’s, and imagination’s.
Maybe to measure, in my mind, time as it flows and separates me from my birthplace –
but then why do I feel that the place where I was born is not merely geographical? Why
do I feel that I can create my birthplace as I do my poem? And a poem is never
complete. Nor the place where one is born. Yes, one is born more than once, in more
places than one.

I hope I’m not exaggerating when I claim that I was obsessed even as a child with a
vague feeling that my birthplace was that somewhere from which I will venture out,
and not stay. A feeling told me I’d find myself only somewhere else. In other places
than this. But how? and where?
I don’t know how it occurred to me – in a waking dream, I suppose – to find a way that
would allow me to attend a real school. The first president of Syria, after its
independence from the French Mandate, was supposed to visit the Ladhkia region
soon. I thought I’d write a poem of welcome which I’d recite in front of him. Maybe he
would like it, and want to see me. He might ask me what I want. And I’ll answer him:
“I want to learn.” He might grant me my wish. And this is literally what happened.

A poem of welcome

It was a rainy day and I was shivering like a sparrow which had lost its nest. The chief
of our tribe was against my father and he was also responsible for the welcoming of the
president. I told my father I was going to read a poem to the president but he didn’t
reply; he just refused to come. When I arrived there, thousands of people were
crowding round the president, and when the chieftain found out what I wanted to do,
his men came and took me away. I started to cry, telling myself: ‘I am not going back to
the village without reading my poem.” I quickly walked to Jibla, the next stop on the
President’s visit and there, when I explained to the Mayor, Yasin Ali Adeeb, he
promised to help me, saying to the President: “Mr President! There is a child who has
walked a long way to read a poem to you!” and so I was allowed to read my poem. It
was my first dream come true. I was thirteen years old. And since then, I love number
13.

After about two weeks, the gendarme came to tell me: “You must go to Tartus where
you will attend school.” On the way to Tartus I don’t know why but certain images
from my life in the village crowded into my memory: I kept seeing in front of me the
day everything was shrouded in death when my youngest sister Sekina had died. I
couldn’t even remember her, just my mother’s sadness and helplessness and silence.
Why did death take this child – who was said to be very beautiful – at such an early
age? She went to the village well and when she came back, she began to wither slowly.
She was not sick, my mother said, but had caught the evil eye.

I also don’t know why I kept remembering my mother as she bathed me in a large tub
in freezing winter. How I hollered and wept when soap bubbles burned my eyes, and
how she said quietly: “I told you to close your eyes when I wash your hair.”
On my way to the big city, I had a glimpse in my mind of the village “Kuttab”, where I
learned the Koran, and how to recite it, plus penmanship; those were considered the
first rungs on the ladder of knowledge.

My new name

When I adopted the name Adonis as a sobriquet, I was resuming my studies at the high
school of Ladhkia, and was 17. I wrote texts in poetry and prose which I signed with my
ordinary name: Ali Ahmad Said. I used to send them out to newspapers and magazines,
but none of them were published. This went on for a while, and made me angry and
depressed. In one of those moments of anger and depression, I picked up a magazine
(probably Lebanese), and read an essay about the legend of Adonis: how he was so
beautiful the goddess Ishtar fell in love with him, and how he was killed by a wild boar,
and resurrected in spring of each year. I was fascinated by the legend, and told myself:
“From now on, I will borrow the name of Adonis and sign it with my name. These
newspapers and magazines that don’t publish me will be just like that wild pig who
killed Adonis.”

So I wrote a poem, signed it with my new name and sent it off to a paper that wouldn’t
publish me. They published it this time. I was surprised and sent them another poem
which appeared on the front page, with a note from the editor inviting me to visit their
offices. I was overjoyed when I saw my text published, and the note from the editor
intrigued me, so I went there (in Ladhkia).
When I entered the editor’s office and told him I was Adonis, he was shocked; it seemed
as if he was expecting to see a grown-up man, not a simple villager, very young and
poor.
“Are you really Adonis?” he asked me. And I answered: “Yes, I’m him.”

From that day I adopted the name Adonis. I’d like to mention here that a lot of people
saw in this adoption a hostile stance against Arabism and Islam. They used it as a proof
to accuse me of all that stuff. What is strange is that someone in Damascus at that time
named his film theatre, which was situated near the famous Havanna Café, “Adonis”,
and the authorities ordered him to change it to something else. He renamed it “Balqis”,
as if Balqis was an Arabic name! Some, it seems, fight even against words, against
names. In Damascus they censor the name Adonis in the name of Arabism and Islam, in
Tunisia they forbid its use because it’s “not familiar”.

Symbol of a break

In truth, I had no idea, when I chose this name, that it symbolised a break from all that’s
religio-nationalistic, and an embrace of all that’s human and universal, and didn’t
expect all that hostility, which came mostly from fundamentalist and nationalistic
quarters. Well, if that is the case, then let those same quarters erase thousands of words
from the Arab dictionary, the daily language and even the Koran, because those words
are not Arabic in origin. But then, on the other hand, there are many Arabs today who
name their children Adonis, from Beirut to Aden.

I didn’t see much of the city; never knew it in detail - its streets, architecture, and
ancient sights. I didn’t visit the museum nor saw the Umayyad mosque, nor the castle.
As far as I was concerned, Damascus was confined to a tiny room of a poor student
who’d come from his village to get educated; there were the books, the lecture halls at
the university, the offices of “The New Generation” newspaper, and later on “Al-
Binaa”, where I worked as a literary editor, plus the houses of a few friends.

Damascus was my second village. It didn’t overwhelm me, as I was supposed to be,
having come from distant poverty-stricken village. It was the big capital, but it didn’t
strike me as such. I spent there about six years, from 1950 to 1956, and now, after more
than forty years, I knew it only as a memory. I keep reminiscing about it, and find that
Damascus, for me, was history - it as a time, not a place.
First I attended the Law College. After spending about a year there, I realised I couldn’t
continue, so I changed to the College of Literature, Philosophy branch. I felt that
studying Arabic language wouldn’t be of much use to me; I knew beforehand what I’d
be taught, and it wouldn’t have added much to what I already knew in the fields of
language and poetry. That’s why I chose philosophy, thinking it might open some new,
strange vistas unknown to me. But I didn’t attend these classes in a regular fashion. My
daily work presented that. That’s why I didn’t share much of the students’ life at the
campus. I made very few friendships with the students, although I became acquainted
with some of the teachers with whom I still have lasting relationships until today. In
fact, strictly speaking, I wasn’t a mere student.

The love story I lived then, was with a girl who studied at the “Women’s College” in
Damascus, not at the university, whom I later married and who became my companion
for life: Khalida Said.
I didn’t read much of the Arabic poetry written then except some poems by Badawi al-
Jabal, Oman Abi Risha and Said Aql. In addition to what newspapers and magazines
were publishing then by other poets, especially Nizar Qabbani. I read in solitude, in my
leisure time, other poets, in French: Baudelaire, Rilke (translated), Henri Michaud and
Rene Char, although my French was weak for I had never studied it at school, but
rather learned on my own using the dictionary. I bought these books from bookshops in
Damascus and also in Aleppo where I spent close to a year, “Serving the Flag”, as it’s
called, at the reserve officers’ college there; except that I wasn’t very successful: all my
other fellows graduated as officers, except me: I was a corporal!

Metrical form

I had no influence on the poetry movement in those days. Although I was recognised as
a poet, and had published some poems in the Kaithara (The Lyre) magazine - one of the
first to specialise in poetry, which came out of Ladhkia - I was still considered a merely
talented poet. Then my reputation grew somewhat when I published my long poem
“Emptiness”, at the beginning of 1954, which had a decisive impact on the poetry world
on the level of metrical form, as well as vision. This poem was the link between me and
Yousif al-Khal, who read it in New York, where he lived at the time, and admired it
very much. Some saw in this poem the Arab “Waste Land” of Eliot. Of course, I had
never read Eliot, not heard his name until that moment.

A deep friendship developed between me and Orkhan Muyasser; he was the first
person who told me about Surrealism and its importance. We met often at his home,
talking, exchanging ideas and reading each other’s stuff. After his death, I was
requested to write an introduction to his collected poetry which was published by the
Syrian Ministry of Culture, because I was closer to him and ore knowledgeable about is
work than anyone else. I wrote the introduction and the book came out under the title
Surreal.
But beginning with 1955 - the year I graduated - I dedicated myself to the study of
Syrian poetry especially. This is the same year in which I began “serving the flag”
which lasted for two years and was crucial in the way it affected my poetic sensibility
and my outlook on people and life.

Nizar Qabbani was all over Damascus, rocking the boat, so to speak, in its stagnant
waters. He distilled his poetry from its history but before everything else, its daily life in
its most intimate details. He was showing this life how to turn into a poem itself.
Its own language

Badawi al-Jabal encompassed the whole Arabic poetry into one body, reshaping it
within its own language, elegant, luxurious and brilliant. In his poetry I discovered how
memory can become memorialised, and how the ancient poets’ voices can intersperse
and echo together, distant and at the same time near. I knew how in his poetry the past
can become the present, without the second turning into a dress for the first, and
without the first turning its back on the second.

I knew how poetry can align heart and mind, anger and love, bitterness and calm.
Badawi al-Jabal (which means Bedouin of the mountain) was truly a mountain but at
the same time, a wave.
Omar Abu Risha was enticing reality, roughly sometimes and often lovingly to become
idealised in his voice: a herald of freedom and liberation. He sang as if his was the voice
responsible for Arab life. He gave the impression of someone furious who felt his
country was too narrow for him.

There was another poet, Nadeem Mohammed, almost unknown even today, who
delved deep into himself and wrote a collection called “Pain”, I consider to be one of the
most important in the first half of this century.
Among those voices coming to us from outside Damascus, was Said Aql whose
presence was the strongest in my estimation. A marvellous craftsman, as if he had
descended straight from Abu Tammam. His craft intimated a culture whose like I
hadn’t seen in his contemporaries. He gave the poem a new structure, and laid the
foundations for making a new poetic sentence, as new usage of words.
His poetry is cerebral composition so abstract and lovely and fascinating it almost
becomes play.
I hadn’t read Shawqi yet. I didn’t know Jawahiri’s poetry and still hadn’t discovered
Gibran.

The abyss opened

I no longer had any desire to go back and reread what I had already read. My studies at
the university were the abyss that opened between me and the past. The university was
there to kill poetry and poetic taste at the same time. Tradition seemed to be a negation
not just of life, but of humanity and progress too, the way it was presented in class.

And then at the university, also, the split began with the reality that was around me: I
began to see the present as an extension of the past as it was presented at the university.
I began to feel that I was living at the edge, swaying and ready to fall. In this respect, I
began to be aware that it’s enough for speech, especially in poetry, to shake the body
awake and renewed: the body too, had to do the same. Like man, language had its own
tragedies, the biggest of which was the still-born book - Just a heap of words. I had
imagined myself screaming in the university halls: “So many books - all ruins.”

The three teachers there whose friendship I cherish deeply were: Abdul Kareem al-Yafi,
Badee’ Alexim, and Anton Maqdisi.
What to read then? I didn’t know any foreign language. I had attended for a year and a
half, the French scientology school in Tartus, in the mid-forties. Then the school was
closed at the end of the French Mandate. I was still able to read some French, if the texts
weren’t too difficult.
Then, I’ll read in French: and so I began with Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal. I wish I’d kept
my original copy whose meanings I wrung out of the dictionary, each page a web of
French and Arabic words, of lines and arrows and circles. And still I didn’t understand
most of the poetry except for some images here of ideas there.
I was not thwarted though. And kept on reading. I chose to read Rilke after Baudelaire
(translated into French). These reading enhanced my awareness of the gap that existed
between the dominant culture and my own aspirations.

A year in prison

I left Syria, firstly, for political reasons. I didn’t like the regime’s ideas nor its practices
then. Intellectually, I stood against the theories of “Arab Nationalism” and “Pan
Arabism” as this regime’s writers and intellectuals presented them. I spent close to a
year in the Mazza prison in Damascus, and the military one in Qunaitra without trial.
And came out, after all this time, innocent. Secondly, I left it in order to meet Yousif al-
Khal. He had written to me from New York that he was returning to Beirut and
intended to publish a magazine dedicated to poetry, to poetic modernism especially,
and that he’d be glad to have me as a collaborator in launching it. And, thirdly, I left it
because I longed to see Beirut, where I could lead a life without oppression.

It is an instance I can’t cherish enough, a bridge to the other shore, a historical instance
in my life. It was the beginning of many pacts and alliances with the future; I didn’t feel
sorry, nor had any regrets.
I explored Beirut street by street, in all directions, particularly the sea, before meeting
Yousif al-Khal. Then I met him within the first week of my arrival in Beirut, late October
1956.
And from our first meeting, a strong friendship developed between us, on a human
level as well as poetic; we were constantly together, usually at his house. He was aware
and firm in his belief that with this magazine, Shi’r (Poetry), he was going to open new
vistas for Arabic poetry, and he had talked about it already with other friends and
poets.

This first meeting was a work session, we were like two people who had signed a pact
between them without having met or known each other before. They had met to put
this pact into practice. And so we were as if bound by an ancient friendship as old as
poetry itself. We both were motivated by the same impulse to serve one goal;
establishing a new Arabic poetics.

Launching Shi’r magazine

We discussed many things at this meeting but mainly the central topic: launching a
magazine dedicated to poetry, to be named Shi’r (Poetry). He had decided on this name
after consulting with many of his friends, among them Fouad Rifqa, Nadeem Nilma
and Khalil Hawi. I liked the name. I admired the way he expressed his ideas, the
harmony between the thought and its unfolding in his speech. It was the speech of
someone possessed to the point of infatuation with the urgency to do something for the
sake of Arabic poetry and Arabic language; he aspired to put this poetry once more on
the world map, as he emphasised then, and as he was fond of repeating later. He was
calling, then, for the foundation of a movement, for spreading an idea by way of the
magazine, and through poetry for the sake of its advancement. This call was behind all
his thought; it’s what led him to investigate linguistic problems and to create new ways
of expression. I say a call, but without any apostolic pretensions, or ideological narrow-
mindedness.

It was not easy - on the contrary, it was thorny with problems on all levels. All these
matters crossed my mind as we talked. And while listening to him I silently asked
myself: What can Yousif Al-Khal (who had already been accused, before the fact, before
committing his “crime”, of being a “subversive” and “an agent”, and I was, along with
other friends asking myself - What can he do in such an atmosphere, and how will he
confront it?
Anyway, we drank a toast to celebrate our meeting, and he ask
ed me quietly: “What do you think?” “I’m with you,” I said.

In the beginning of 1957, the first issue of Shi’r came out. It was met with an all-out
attack, from a strange mixture of individuals: Poetasters, poets, party-line followers,
dealers in nationalist and in ideology, hangers-on whose ultimate ambition was to be
mentioned as muck-hurlers: their language was mixed in dirt. We didn’t feel sad for
ourselves as much as we were saddened by the culture itself and those who dominated
it, the rationale behind it all. We were saddened by the low level of thinking, and the
morals: we were damned and branded with all kinds of accusations. We certainly were
expecting an opposition to our project that criticised our opinions and pointed to our
faults or suggested something better and deeper. An opposition that showed us a better
way to pursue our work in the service of Arabic poetry. We didn’t expect the reaction to
be so ferocious and stupid. The accusations were a kind of symbolic murder
(reactionaries, potters of intrigues, imperialist agents, traitors, etc.,) that provoked
actual murder. Most of the attackers didn’t even discuss matters related to poetry. And
form what they said and wrote, it was evident that they hadn’t read us, or, if they did,
they didn’t know how to read or think. Or, finally, how to write. To them, the poet had
either one of two roles: to praise or to harangue, to be a doorman or a jailer.

A pretext, a coat-hanger

In reality, these attacks were not launched in defence of poetry or its advancement, for
one cannot serve a cause he is ignorant of. They were rather a triumph of certain
ideologies and politics. To them, poetry wasn’t the flower of language, the deepest
possible expression of the Arab’s humanity, it was nothing but a pretext, a coat-hanger.

We expected the criticism to be positive, or at least objective; we thought we were given

the world to compete in building it, not destroying each other. We thought that poets
and artists and intellectuals were all aiming to ward one goal, that they walked together
through the nights of the world no matter what they opinions and inclinations, we
thought so, and thus had to shoulder the burden of our thought.

The first issue, as I mentioned, was like a divide or cutting edge; some of the Arabists
and leftists who gathered around the Al-Adab (Literature) magazine (which had
doubtless played an important role I the broader political movement declared a holy
war against Sh’ir magazine, branding it with every defamation in the book, from
destroying the tradition and being hostile toward Arab nationalism and the Arab
movement of liberation. We were accused of being narrow-minded, isolationist and
regional. And, finally, of being American agents.

Some others among the Lebanese - Said Akl at their head - kept silent and ignored it as
if belittling beforehand and what it could achieve.
And yet some few others admired the magazine and wanted to be part of it like Unsi al-
Hajj, Shawqi Abi Shaqra and George Ghanem who joined the magazine later after a
short period of its publication.
But the first issue was banned inall Arab countries, and the onslaught against it was
especially violent in Syria.
Yousif al-Khal was confident of his mission, and I shared his confidence. He wasn’t
much surprised by the hostile reaction, and saw in it a political dimension. The
magazine presented itself from its inception, as an open laboratory where many
distinctive poetic voices whatever their ideological or poetical inclinations, would meet
together. For instance, the first issue contained a modern (though metrically composed)
poem by a communist poet, Sa’di Youssef, and, at the same time, a classic, one of rare
craftsmanship, by Badawi al-Jabal. This way it showed that it wasn’t severing all ties
with tradition, or destroying it” it, but rather exploring other horizons in Arabic poetics,
parallel to other horizons among which should be mentioned the foundational, pre-
Islamic period.

Expanding the limits

All that it did was to concentrate on expanding the limits of poetry, as established by
our ancestors and suggesting another conception for poetry wide enough for writing
without depending on metrics - or to write poetry in prose on the condition that it
raised prose to the level of poetry. Thus the concentration was not in metrics but rather
the nature of poetic language and its aesthetics.

The magazine was also a place where Arabic poetry could conjoin with the other, non-
Arabic poetry, which could be considered as a combination of what Arab philosophers
have done in their relationship to Greek Philosophy. They had made it into a composite
of their own philosophical theses. And thus it was an artistic and intellectual openness
that was a reminder of the supreme moments in Arabic history when they were open to
other cultures.

The magazine introduced many talents, and launched various poets among whom were
Unsi al-Hajj, Sargon Boulus, Fouad Rifqa and Shawqi Abi Shaqra just to name a few,
who evolved and flourished within its pages. It also published some of the most
important poetry collections which will dominate Arabic Poetics, more or less, I one
way or another, starting with “The Rain Chant” (by Badr Shakir al-Sayab), “The Songs
of Mihyar The Damascene”, The Rain and Ashes” (by Khalil Hawi), “The Abandoned
Weil (by Yousif al-Khal) and ending with “Never” (by Unsi al-Hajj), just to name a few.
In all this, the magazine was a beacon and lighthouse, the royal road toward Arab
modernism and innovation.

Maybe I’ll contradict many if I say that the poetry scene to me is rich although not
greatly varied. It’s a question of quality not quantity. I think there are some high poetic
achievements, albeit few. I’m speaking especially about the poets who succeeded that
movement that Shi’r had generated and who fill the poetic arena today.
And I think all talk about poetry today that doesn’t admit the germinal influence of the
magazine on this poetry, will not be truthful, or honest historically.

Creating a persona

I don’t know of any ancient Arab poet who created a persona through which he
expressed his thought and preoccupations and visions, although we can find an
equivalent in our traditional prose: “Kelila and Dimna” by Ibn el-Muqaffa’, for
example.
So, doubtless, in my creating the persona of Mihyar the Damascene I was influenced by
Western models: Nietsche’s Zarathustra, Goethe’s Faust and Lauterimon’s Maldoror.
There are some Arab critics who confused Mihyar the Damascene with the poet Mihyar
al-Dailani, but they share only the name Mihyar; otherwise they bear no relationship to
each other, none whatever.

Through this persona I wanted to get out of the direct subjective discourse and speak an
unpersonal language, symbolic and objective-historical, through a persona symbolical
and mythic at the same time, so it is more than a mask. It is a vortex where Arab culture
would meet with all its dimensions into the central and pivotal cause: crossing from the
old Arab world into the new one.
My residence in Paris played its role in the making of this book. For this residence
allowed me to put a distance between me and the place I came from, and belong to. It
allowed me in other words, to understand it and listen to it. And this in turn made me
cling more to it, and deepen by belonging. The distance from that place brought me
closer to it, so to speak. Living in Paris presented me with a spectacle different in all
aspects, and afforded me the chance of a live encounter with its poets, traditions,
atmospheres and creations. All this was like a mirror created by the other, in which I
saw my own history and culture, and my own self. There were so many various
influences.

This change that you mention occurred in “The Book of Charges and Migration in
Regions of Day and Night”, the three poems that followed it and were collected under
the title “Time between Ashes and Rose” represented the culmination of this particular
change.

Beyond the archetype

In these poems we can see in addition to the plastic, netting-like, theatrical structure, a
leap beyond the archetype, achieved by a combination of poetry and prose, something
unprecedented in poetics hitherto. They comprise a crucial change and we can easily
see their influence on much of Arabic writing that came later.
My latest work The Book: The Place’s Yesterday Now, takes this change a step further,
where the short lyric has become too limited, only a panoramic expanse as vast as
history will suffice - thus Arab history is staged in this book as though it were an all-
encompassing film in every sense of which - on every page how multi-dimensional time
and ages criss-cross each other, and how the subjective clashes with the objective, and
the old struggles with the new.

Paris was my first shock as far as cities go. A villager who didn’t even dream of seeing
Damascus or Beirut, and here he is in Paris! Reality looked like a dream and I stayed in
Paris for a period of time and I still consider to be an episode very much like a dream
Once I was so ecstatic I walked in the rain from the Eiffel Tower to Cafe Deux Magots
and was truly happy although I was soaked with rain to the bone. I drowned myself in
the city exploring it section by section, and boulevard after boulevard. I also delved into
its cultural activities and met many of its poets and writers. In less than a year I had
known some of the most important: Henri Michaud, Pier Jean Jeuve, Eve Bonnefoi,
Michel Leiris, Andre du Bouchet, Jacques Prevert, Jean Follain, Pier Emanuel, Alan
Bosquet, Alain Joffroy and others. In the coming years I’d meet Gillevec, and will not
forget my meeting Paul Celan in 1961, or the American poets Allen Ginsberg and
Gregory Corso. And, of course, Octavio Paz.

In all my visits to other cities I always felt that Paris dominates me to the point where
no other city could win over as it did.
In Tokyo, I was fascinated by the local markets. With matchboxes in its hotels and cafes.
Each a masterpiece. I collected a number of them that I still cherish. I also admired their
dolls. My daughter Arwad has a colourful collection I gave her as a present.
I remember that I didn’t see a single private car in Beijing when I visited it. The few
official cars that you see on the streets looked black and miserable like coffins. All you
saw were the bicycles, and that was marvellous and very touching. Everything is for the
people truly, although they say that things have changed today!
I saw the Great Wall and stopped at a point where I couldn’t go farther. The translator
who accompanied me said laughing: “This is the point where Nixon stopped, too, and
didn’t want to go farther.”
Moscow? A village, so I didn’t care for the place as much as I did for the people. I met
there the poets Yevtushenko, Vosnesevsky and Bella Akhamadulina who as a
fascinating woman; once at a party, she got drunk and danced on top of the piano.

Inferno of thought

New York is the other city that overwhelmed me after Paris. The inferno of thoughtand
paradise of senses in one body. If I could visit it every month, I wouldn’t hesitate. I
expressed all this in a poem I wrote about it, “A Tomb for New York”.

East and West, in my judgement, are just geographical definitions. There are many
Easts in the East and many Wests in the West. In terms of civilisation, the world is one
and the differences are in degree and not in kind. But the Western policy, specifically
the American, doesn’t care much for this kind of simple poetic discourse, even it’s true.
It wants, on the contrary, to “globalise” the world into one huge market under its
domination. It wants to melt the East into the West, its own definition of it. It doesn’t
want equals, or partners; what it wants is obedient followers. And it’s almost
succeeding in its aim. I say almost . . .

Arab intellectuals

I dislike Arab intellectuals who criticise the West as if it were a single mass that they
reject. What’s strange is that they aren’t aware that their criticism is formed from the
language the West’s own thinkers and philosophy has developed.
I personally find myself closer to Nietsche and Heidegger, to Rimbaud and Baudelaire,
to Goethe and Rilke, than to many Arab writers, poets and intellectuals. The land of
creativity and culture, for me, is not the same as the geographical land. I stand with the
first one. All my struggle could be said to be centred around this goal: for the
geographic homeland to become a living part of the creative and universal one. No East,
No West: only the one man in the one world.

Training

The rain that had been falling since nightfall had now stopped, leaving small puddles
by the pavements of the empty square. ‘Am Girgis [1] had taken the most recent
telegram out of the pocket of his government jacket, which was tightly done up. He
gave it to me, and accompanied me to the old building, which had been drenched by
the rain. He stood in front of the wooden lift, indicating with a nod of his head a distant
door, then walked off, leaving me there.
I was ‘Am Girgis who had undertaken to teach me the names of all the streets of the
city, as it lay shrouded in the darkness of night-time, so that I could take his place when
he in turn took over as head of the night shift, replacing ‘Am Bayyumi, who would be
retiring in the New Year.

It was the first time that he had let me deliver a telegram on my own. I rang the faded
yellow doorbell, and stood waiting until a light cam on inside. The shutter of the door,
behind the iron grille, opened and out peered the face of an old woman, with a faint
moustache and large eyes. She stood there just staring at my face for a few moments,
then reached for the telegram and pen through the iron bars and retreated inside. When
she came back with the receipt of delivery, I turned around and saw the door of the
wood lift was closed, its thin panes of glass gleaming, so I hurried down the few stairs
that there were, and out onto the small square. ‘Am Girgis was standing in he light of a
solitary lamp, which hung high above, his hands in his coat pockets.
– “So?” he said.
– “Nothing.”
– “Did you deliver it?”
– “Yes.”
I walked towards him, holding out the receipt, and noticed her faint signature at the
bottom of the paper. He stepped off the pavement, and we started walking along the
street towards the building of the Authority; part of the iron railings that surrounded
the large building was visible to us. HE raised his head, looking up at the sky.
– “It is going to rain.”
– “Mmmmm.”
– “She is an old woman,” he said.
– “Very,” I said.
– “The oldest woman in the whole area we deliver to.”
– “Really?”
– “Of course.”
We were approaching the large gate, which was standing open.
– “Does she live alone?” I asked.
– “Completely alone.”
He started cleaning the fronts of his shoes on the edge of the pavement.
– “She could’ve died.”
I smiled, and we walked through the gate; the security guard was asleep.
–It’s true; she could’ve died,” he said.
– “Anyone could die.”
– “Of course.”
He stopped.
– “But this is different.”
– “How?”
– “I mean, she could have a son that is ill, or is abroad, or a daughter who is having an
operation or having a baby, anything. You say ‘telegram’, she drops down dead.”
– “To that extent?”
– “Of course.”
He put his hand into his coat pocket, took out a packet of cigarettes, and opened it.
– “It’s happened to me twice,” he said, giving me a cigarette.
“I say ‘telegram’, and the woman dies.”
– “Without even reading it?”
– “Without anything.”
– “How strange.”
– “Not at all.”

We walked under the dense trees, heavy with soaked leaves, in between the two large
buildings, stopping at the top of the street which sloped down towards the open car
park.
– “It is not a bad percentage in thirty years of delivering post.”
He took out a box of matches.
– “ ‘Am Bayyumi has had seven die on him. And then there was the postman Qadri,
‘the Englishman’, who had nine die on him.” His hand trembled as he held the match.
– “The thing is, people in the past used to have really weak hearts.”
He lit another match.

– “Two is a reasonable number.”

We started walking down the sloping road; I pictured the old woman peering out at me
with her big eyes through the iron bars. We crossed the open court yard and stopped in
front of the half-closed side entrance.
– :I don’t mean to frighten you.”
Then, from a distance I heard him say:
– “I just had to tell you.”
I stood there on my own for a while, then I looked up at the clouds, which were turning
red around the edges in the night of the city. A drop of warm rain fell on my left cheek;
as I wiped it dry, I glimpsed ‘Am Girgis, with his large nose and beautiful eyes,
watching me silently.
[1]‘Am is a word of endearment and respect used of an older person; literally, it means
‘uncle’.

Translated by Maya Abu-Deeb

* This novel extract is section 2 of Ibrahim Aslan’s Wardiyyat Layl [Night Shift], which
is written as a novel but divided into small sections each almost readable independently
from the others, but forming part of a total work one and the same time. The first
volume of this work was published in 1991 by Dar Sharqiyyat, Cairo.

Three Poems

THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT IT

Now it’s all too plain.

Now I know how
That blackbird got into the poem.
So many years have passed,
and I find it hard to believe
that so many years have passed
before I knew how
that blackbird got into the poem.

When it flew off our window-sill,

that’s when we knew
the blackbird was there,
on our window-sill.

The lost earring

tenderly drew
the fingertips
to the earlobe.

3
And we saw a desperate flock of birds,
rehearsing a penitence drill,
last fall.

Time and again – this infamous standing

in memory’s identification line.

Forgetting is nothing but sleep;

migrating birds on a nightly stop.

A bird is sleeping;
love is gone.

In the middle of the field,

near the High Commissioner’s Palace,
a nun squatted.

From where we stood,

it was none too clear,
whether she was really a nun.

Meditating, she wouldn’t budge.

To sleep, perhaps, she would yield.
But then again, beauty
is skin-deep.

The alleged Palace was to our right.

Did the Prince’s dog bark

on seeing Sleeping Beauty?

The ants that crept, then,

up your spine,
are chasing me now in my dreams –
gnawing at wood and stone,
gobbling up my home,
with that same chiming shiver.
7

“There’s a detour from here.”

But rain ignores
things like that.

Procedures are not the core;

what matters is the heart of the matter:
solitude,
the only detour.

Memory waits on the sly,

for the slightest mistake to happen
at any time:
memory’s return to the scene
of the crime.

The home of my childhood

gropes around inside me;
I grope around the empty house,
and keep telling myself:
You’re no longer a child.

“I’ll leave you the key in the mail-box.”

The door is locked, then.

10

Back in high school we learned

a story in which there was
a grey cat
on a grey fence
in a grey backyard.
The teacher argued that the picture
stood for the loneliness of the character
who was looking at the grey cat.
We laughed.
Then the teacher wickedly said:
“He laughs best who laughs last.”

11

We knew the flower seeds

were sprouting in the garden.
But the smell which caught us
came from the basement.

The time which passes

between seed and sprout
is the time which putrefies
a dead cat.

12

The time which bulges me

with days
is the time which urges the bird
to give back
its earth mould.

13

The blackbird doesn’t imagine things,

does he;
the blackbird knows.
And since he knows,
that’s why he wouldn’t tell.

How could I know, if you don’t mind –

one language ahead,
another behind.
And here I am,
imagining things in my no man’s land.

1978

CEDAR RAPIDS AIRPORT, IOWA

Between two parallel lines of blue lights,

morning is about to land;
I wish I could –
I wish someone could announce me mildly
hitting the ground, on time.
Through the windowpane, the airport
is being moulded in.
A ticketed passenger’s waiting, on the wane.
His parallel line is hardly a matter of light.

He’d even settle for a tip-off about the east –

home is where you know where,
in the dark skies,
the son is about to pop in.

1981

AT DON'S PARTY

I’m sitting on the upper stair, second floor.

The dog rubs his warm shoulder
against mine
(which is not warm at all).
Wagging his tail, looking toward the door –
“Please, let me in!”

I wish I could say that.

And for his own sake, I hope

the door leads somewhere,
and that there’s a room beyond it,
a solid floor.

1981

Translated from the Hebrew by the poet

 Ahmad al-Fagih

Excerpts from "Valley of Ashes"

Chapter 10

Was it magic? There could be no other explanation for such a strange phenomenon
except a supernatural power transforming sand into gold, poverty into riches and
ugliness into beauty. It was not strange that a girl like Gamila, moulded from human
clay and devil’s fire should turn out to be a witch with supernatural powers. What
other explanation could there be for a poor family living in a hut and surviving on
charity becoming one of the richest and most respected families in the village? How else
could stammering dervish like Yateem, who could not even utter his own name
properly, be transformed into such an intelligent eloquent person? Everything about
him had changed. Even his features had undergone a transformation and his face that
had looked like the stump of a palm tree had become the face of a man accustomed to
royal surroundings.

The rumours that claimed Gamila was a witch who ruled over the kings of the jinn were
a convincing explanation for all the changes that had occurred in Yateem’s family and
that had puzzled and bewildered them so much. This matter became the chief subject
for gossip amongst the women who went from house to house spreading the rumour as
they drank tea. They also found great pleasure in adding to the rumour and they would
find any excuse to go to Yateem’s house to make sure for themselves whether Gamila
was really a witch or not. If any woman ever found the girl playing with a cat or
feeding a hen, she would say to her neighbour: “Today I saw her talking to her cat and
she knows the language of chickens as well.”

When other women refused to believe her, the woman would insist that she had told
them the truth, saying: “I saw her myself giving the hen orders and the hen obeyed
her.”

Other events confirmed their suspicions, especially when Gomma the dervish kept
shouting her name hysterically as he wandered in the streets: “Gamila! How you
torment me, Gamila!” The man used to go to the mosque and stand with the people
praying behind the Imam who led the prayers and as soon as the Imam was about to
kneel and say “Allahu Akbar”, the dervish would scream: “Gamila! How you torment
us, Gamila!”
Some people laughed at him while others drove him away for having ruined the
prayers. Later on, they would find him sitting beside Sidi Abo Kandill’s tomb talking to
Gamila all night long. Whenever the villagers asked him why he was talking to himself,
he would reply that Gamila had been with him and that disguised, she came to visit
him every day. Although the men considered what he said to be proof of his insanity,
some of the village woman believe it to be proof of Gamila’s powers of magic, being
able to disguise herself and become invisible to everybody. They even believed that she
had been present at some of their meetings and had heard what they had said about her
and that after having cast a spell on the men, she would punish the women. The women
would then raise their arms up to the Heavens and says, as awe and terror consumed
their whole beings: “O God deliver us from what we fear.”

Chapter 11

The following day, at the same time, Eid walked to Yateem‘s house again. During the
morning he had deliberately avoided meeting the man although he knew that Yateem
was looking for him. In the evening, he had yearned to see Gamila and having made
sure that her father was out, he used the fact as an excuse to go to her house.

Gamila was surprised when she opened the door. Sweetly, she said: “Hello.”

Eid, spellbound, gazed at her long eyelashes and replied: “I heard that your father was
looking for me.”

“But he’s at the mosque for Afternoon prayers.”

Eid replied: “I’ll go to the mosque to see him.”

Gamila remained by the door, which she had not closed, so Eid tried to prolong the
moment in order to retain the memory in his mind and he found himself saying:
“How’s school?”

He knew it was a silly question and that he should have talked about the flocks of
clouds that graze in the fields of the sky or the deer that run in the desert searching for
the source of the sun or the flowers in blossom or mild breezes on the green grass or
anything else in the world that was as glorious and as brilliant as her fascinating eyes.
But Gamila smiled and answered: “As always, a lot of endless homework.”

The sun setting between the palm trees had an irresistible and magical effect on him.
Why should such a beautiful girl have to bother with homework – or housework for
that matter? He wanted her to embrace the vast expanse with him and to watch the sun
which, exhausted from her journey pulling chariots over distant mountains, was
stretching forth her weak hands, spreading a delicate gown of sweet melancholy and
blessing trees and human beings.

“You’ll soon be a teacher.”

Gamila laughed: “God help the students that I’m going to teach!”

They saw the shadow of a man crossing the road, so Gamila shook his hand quickly.
Eid tried to prolong it, but she drew her hand back and closed the door, laughing.

Eid sat on a hill overlooking the palm grove and began singing a song about the sun’s
daughter who used to lower her golden locks every night for her lover to climb up to
heaven. He imagined that Gamila was sitting next to him. The world seemed more
beautiful and life more wonderful: only the inevitability of death could disturb such an
image.

Eid asked her: “Why can’t a man live for a thousand years?”

“Don’t be greedy – a hundred years is enough.”

“But they won’t be enough for me to tell you all I want to say.”

“We have wasted a lot of time, so why don’t you start now?”

He remembered that her father was looking for him, to quarrel with him and forbid him
to see his daughter. He asked her how he could obtain her father’s approval but she did
not answer. He looked around, only to find himself alone.

The vision had vanished and reality had reappeared. He saw a Bedouin in the distance
taking his luggage off a camel’s back in order to spend the night in the palm grove. Eid
remembered how life in the desert was less complicated than in the village and how
contact between men and women was so much more simple. Eid was surprised that life
in the village was different from life in the city and in the desert. It lacked the freedom
of the city and the spontaneity of desert life. He could not understand why life in the
village should acquire such a distorted form. He walked towards the Bedouin, feeling
the need to talk to a man who lived in a purer environment than his own.

The Bedouin invited him to join him in his meal and offered him a pot of milk and some
dates. Eid thanked the man and asked him, somewhat irrationally: “Do you know Amer
Yateem?”

“Which tribe does he belong to?”

“He doesn’t belong to any tribe and has no clan.”

The Bedouin expressed his aversion to any such man who did not belong to a tribe: “I
don’t know any such man and I don’t wish to.”

“But I wanted you to put an end to a misunderstanding between him and me.”

“How can I do that when I don’t know the man?”

“It’s nothing. You only have to visit him, pretend you are a famous sheikh and he won’t
refuse your intercession.”

“But I’m not a sheikh.”

“You could be, for just once in your life.”

“Why is he angry with you?”

“He thinks I’m having a relationship with his daughter.”

“You shouldn’t flirt with girls, but, tell me, have you proposed to her?”

“No.”

“If you are serious, then you should propose to her.”

Everything was clear in this Bedouin’s mind. Yes, indeed, why hadn’t Eid thought of
marrying her? Why had he not proposed to her? If her father refused, he would send
people to intercede on his behalf until Yateem accepted. He understood that Gamila
also wanted him and that if his proposal was accepted he could see her and visit her
whenever he wanted. So he left the Bedouin feeding his camel and ran back towards the
village, knowing exactly what he wanted to say to Yateem.

“Valley of Ashes” is published by Paul Kegan International, 1999

Eight Poems

How foolish:
Whenever my heart
hears a knocking
it opens its doors

Desire enflames me
and my eyes glimmer
I stuff morals
in the nearest drawer
I turn into a devil
and blindfold my angels
just
for a kiss

I wait,
but what do I wait for?
A man who brings me flowers
and sweet words
A man
who looks at me and sees me
He talks to me
and listens to me.
A man who weeps
for me
and I pity him
and I love him

14

Women like me
do not know how to speak
A word remains in their throats
like a thorn
they choose to swallow
Women like me
know nothing except weeping
impossible weeping
suddenly
pouring
like a severed artery
Women like me
receive blows
and do not dare return them
They shake with anger
they subdue it
Like lions in cages
women like me
dream...
of freedom...

20

I killed my father
that night
or the other day—
I don’t remember
I escape with a suitcase
filled with dreams
and amnesia
and a picture of me
with him
when I was a child
and when he carried me
on his forearm

I buried my father
in a beautiful shell
in a deep ocean
but he found me
hiding under the bed
shaking with fear
and loneliness

30

Help me
my kind husband
to close this porthole
that has opened
on the highest wall
of my chest

Stop me
my wise husband
from climbing
the high-heels
of my femininity
for there
at the crossroads
a young man
awaits me

39

From time to time

he opened the windows
and every now and then
he closed them
His silhouette
betrayed him
behind his curtains
as he came and went
his travels
far and near
He turned up the radio
to fill his solitude
with music
deceiving the neighbors
that all was well
We used to see him
hurrying past
his head downcast
carrying his bread
and returning
to where
no one waited for him

40

He wanted
no more than that:
a house
children
and a wife
who loves him
But he woke up one day
and found that his spirit
had grown old

She wanted
not more than that:
a house
children
and a husband who loves her
She woke up
one day
and found
that her spirit
had opened a window
and fled

Translated by Khaled Mattawa

From ‘Karza Hamra’a ’ala Bilat Abyyadh’
Published by Tabr al-Zaman, Tunis, 1998

“I do not like to talk in the present tense”

Egyptian novelist Albert Cossery lived in Paris for over 60 years. He has published
seven novels in French and was winner of the Francophone Prize for Literature. His
work has been translated into many other languages but, unfortunately, very little into
English. His first collection of short stories, Men God Forgot, (Cairo 1940) was highly
praised, so much so that Henry Miller wrote the introduction to the American edition
(published in Banipal 1, Spring 1998, and now available to read on this website).

I had read some of Albert Cossery’s novels before I knew him personally. When I
became a friend, after meeting him many times over the last ten years, I started to
interview him. And here follows a short interview, which could not be completed for
many reasons: firstly, Albert Cossery really doesn’t care much for the media or
interviews, and then there is his illness which prevents him from speaking. We still
meet in the café and sit watching people go by.
Cossery was born in Cairo on 3 November 1913 and was educated in Cairo’s French
schools where he received his Baccalaureat. In 1930, he moved to Paris to continue his
studies. During World War Two he was a captain of an Egyptian merchant ship going
to New York. He stayed in New York for a time and then travelled to Britain, returning
to Egypt at the end of the war, although he quickly took up permanent residence in
Paris in September 1945. He set up home on the fifth floor of Hotel Louisiane in Saint-
German, where he still lives today.

Some might wonder how Albert Cossery managed never to forget Cairo, even for one
moment, either in his every day life or in his writing, or how he could stay closeted in
one hotel, in one room, for such a length of time. He strolls the streets of Saint-Germain
without a cheque book or cash card; there is only one purchase on his mind – Le Monde
newspaper.

He has an abhorrence of what is referred to as ‘material possessions’ and since 1945 his
sole ‘possession’ has been his hotel room, which did not include, of course, the
furniture. So I asked him:

– What do you carry in your pockets?

His answer: My treasure trove – my French residency documents are all I have in my
pockets.

– Do you have a French passport?

No. I never applied for one.

– Why did you choose to write in French?

Coincidences themselves chose the French language for me. I had no choice since I
studied French throughout my childhood. I have forgotten both the Arabic and the
English that I once knew well. My mother tongue is Arabic; and certainly my mother
knew no other language. Women in her time did not go to school. If my mother was
alive today she would be more than 120 years old!

– When do you write?

I write when I have nothing better to do, or in other words when I am bored.

– Do you recall what you read when you were a child?

We never used to read children's book in our home. We read books by authors such as
Nietsche, Dostoyovsky and Baudelaire. Of course, my mother, like all Egyptian mothers
at the time, did not know how to read or write."

– Are the characters in your novels real or fictitious?

First and foremost, I have a special regard and fondness for my characters, they are
moving and rare. They possess their own special ideas and are somewhat marginal in
society. I do not write about characters who are there for everyone to see, but about a
section of the population that really has something to offer. Most people have nothing
to offer except worries, they waste your time and vex your senses. My characters hold
certain views on life and the world. Unfortunately, most readers imagine my characters
to be fictitious because they are unable to see anything other than the conventional in
people. However, I could not invent all I write about. I travel to Cairo to meet the
people and when I stroll amongst a crowd, whether in public squares, popular markets,
or cafés, I listen to their conversations.
How did the idea of coming to France come about?
It was just coincidence, again, that brought me here. Ever since I was eighteen years old
I have lived in France – in the Monteparnasse district. But Paris has now lost its sparkle,
it’s no longer the crucible it once was. It no longer has authors, now it only has
‘composers of novels’.

– How can you assess an author?

One excerpt is enough to evaluate this or that writer. A great author’s presence is felt
when we read one paragraph of his work.

– You have lived in Hotel Louisiane a long time. Do you find hotel life comfortable?

I do believe I have salvaged my life and saved my time by living in a hotel. People
spend a lifetime caring for a house. I execute all my affairs by phone. Today, I am the
only one living in the hotel. People nowadays cannot live in hotels because of the
expense. But, you know, I feel very much at home in the hotel. At two o'clock in the
morning I can come down from my room and go out to buy food and cigarettes –
everything is available in Saint-Germain.

– You knew many now famous writers here in Paris. Tell me about that time with
Albert Camus, Trisian Tzara, Alberto Giacometti and Lawrence Durrell?

When I first encountered Lawrence Durrell, he had not written anything. I remember,
when he arrived from Greece – it was at the time that the Germans were invading and
all the British people living there were reluctant to go to Cairo – he sent the English
translations of my novels to America to be published. As for Albert Camus, he was a
friend of mine. We used to spend many evenings together, dancing the night away in
the underground clubs and cellars such as ‘Le Tabou’ or ‘Le Mephisto’. Money was not
an object between us, and whoever had it would pay for the other. During that time, I
would go to a night club at two o’clock in the morning and was certain to meet a friend.
Nowadays, there’s nothing.

– Tell me about Gabis Admon.

With Gabis Admon, I used to spend my time flirting with women. We did not discuss
literature.

– And your youthful days in Café de Flore?

There is a huge difference between the present clients of Café de Flore and those in the
past. Café de Flore used to be a meeting place for writers and artists. Nowadays, it is a
tourist place and, especially when the fashion shows are on, I am often unable to find
just a single chair to sit on. Perhaps tourists deliberately choose this café knowing that it
was a café for writers and artists. Look around you! I do not recognise one person. In
the past, I would find my friends here. Now Saint-Germain has become a façade for
memories. The writers have either moved on to the countryside or passed away.

– What are your hopes for the future?

My only aspiration is for my books to be available.

– Can you tell me about the impulse behind your writing?

I write because I have certain things to say about this world, its corruption, and about
the simpletons; and also I have to narrate a love story – though I would not spend a
lifetime doing just that. Only simpletons believe that writing is a comfort. I have a
loathing for serious people.

– Some writers prefer writing in the countryside.

I hate living in the country. How can one criticise the trees?

– Why did you choose to live in Saint-Germain?

I cannot bear living in a quiet district, where nothing takes place at night. I have to be
able to leave my hotel room and examine the beautiful things that are taking place, and
then return at any hour I please, to read. But what to read?. You are aware that I have
no other occupation. But it would be pathetic of me to list you the authors’ names and
the titles of the books I have read; that is for people wh just want to show off.

– How much has café life altered over the years, do you think?
In the past, we used to meet inside the cafés and on the pavements. Nowadays, though
we spend pleasant times, the people are very different, they seem ugly.

– Are you writing a new novel?

I am not working very much for a new book . The urge is not there. I have said what I
want to say. For us to say one or two ideas about the world, we do not need to write
thirty volumes. An eighth book would be excessive, particularly as I feel I’d be
rewriting the same book. But, for me, the advantage of being able to stop writing a
novel whenever I like is that I know somehow that the characters will turn up in other
books, under different names.

– Can you live from the sale of your books?

When a publisher re-prints one of my books, they do not make a fortune out of it, and
nor do I. No one can understand that! Yet I can live from the royalties on my books.

– Do you feel responsible for anything at all in this world?

The only things I feel responsible for are observation and investigation.

– It is well known that all your novels speak of Egypt. There is no trace of Paris in your
work, however?

All my novels are about the Egyptian districts, the old neighbourhoods and their
inhabitants. When I began writing I wanted to express the concept of place in Egyptian
districts, and of the man living and nourishing his existence. I also wanted to express
the reality I cohabited with, and the unreal characters who were my contemporaries
during the time I lived in Egypt.

– If you love Egypt to this extent, why not live there?

I own nothing there . Here, I can at least live from the royalties on my books. I can tell
you that when I left Egypt the population was 18 million. Now it is 55 million. In Cairo
it was approximately two million and now 13 or 14 million people live there.

– Some of the critics and writers who know you, think your work is like Henry Miller’s.
How do you feel about that?

I do not write like Miller. Miller transformed his life into special material for writing.
His only concern was to live the moment, away from the past and the future. Of course,
he wrote about Paris more than any other writer who has lived here. Perhaps a foreign
author is able to see things which others cannot. His best work on Paris is perhaps The
Tropic of Cancer, which was the first novel in which he talks about Paris as I knew it in
my days of youth, particularly the Monteparnasse district.

– You are often referred to as a ‘marginal’ author. What do you say to this?

I know. I am not like other authors. But it has to be said that in the last ten years, I have
yet to find an important writer. The main concern for an author nowadays is to amass
the largest sum of money. They write either to achieve fame or to win literary prizes.
An outsider to this game is referred to as a ‘marginal writer’. So in this sense, yes, I am a
‘marginal writer’ .

– As an author, you combine being both an eastern novelist and a contemporary

western writer. How do you balance the two?

The story itself does not concern me. I invent a story to manifest the characters that
reflect my ideas. That is all there is to it. There is some distance between a novelist and
an author. The novelist writes any story that comes to hand, while an author always
write the same book. To me, for example, all my books are just one book. I have a
concept of the world. The novelist usually attempts not to burden the reader or alter a
particular idea he holds. A novelist does not change your life when you read his work,
but an author does.

– Your world is a similtaneous mixture of reality and myth, in that you expand the
events into unfamiliar territory. Is that due to the variety already existing in your world,
or is it an attempt on your part to give it your own special creative flavour?

There is no myth in this world where man oppresses his fellow man. If, in my novels, I
have stepped away from tradition, and by that I do not mean what is noble and great
but the tattered values that are imposed upon us, then that to me is sufficient. My work
is not exclusive to an reader from the elite. It is available to any man or woman. In
Europe there is a common belief that complicated writings imply great talent. When we
do not comprehend what you say, you are a gifted author, but when you are
understood, then it is said that you are not an important author, and so forth.

– Do you bring into your work any of the political events that have happened in the
Arab world?

I do not write about them directly. Take, for example, my last novel Desert Aspiration;
it talks about events that have happened or might take place in the future. We have to
search for the essence of political events and not the actual course of events themselves.
In Desert Aspiration you tackled the issue of petrol in a manner unique for Arab
writers.
First of all, the novel doesn’t define any specific place; it concerns an Arab principality
to which people went in search of petrol which they never found. The hero of my novel
went there because he wished to live in security, as apposed to those who were visiting
it looking for petrol. He wanted to live with peace of mind, was quite taken aback when
he found an ID was needed to cross the desert.

– Have you encountered any problems with censorship in Egypt or elsewhere?

It is unfortunate that in our Arab countries novels are treated by the censors as
documentaries, while the author is dealing, of course, with imagination. In the cinema,
certain scenes of a film based on my novel Proud Beggars were censored. In a novel you
must not censor – not even one line!
How do you convey to the French reader the Egyptian spirit which you have discussed?
I confess there are problems with my work because it is read in French. Sometimes I do
not achieve the required effect on the French readers, because I employ certain
expressions used in Parisian novels. I find myself reluctant to search for a special
meaning in order to create the atmosphere of a novel. When a French reader reads me,
he believes he is in Egypt. One way or another, I am forced to tame the language to
serve the Egyptian climate with all its different intimate and private worlds.
What do you make of Cairo now when you go there to visit?
Lately, I discovered human masses crowding everywhere. I felt tired and exhausted
because someone of my age is unable to tolerate such overcrowdedness. I must point
out that Egyptians enjoy a good sense of humour. I believe that an author who writes
about Egyptian society without picking up this spirit is an unsuccessful writer. At any
moment you will encounter a joke, an anecdote or a funny tale. There are thousands of
funny stories – we shall never know who invented them – and, particularly, sarcastic
commentaries relating to heated political events, which makes a mockery of everything.

– Having lived for more than fifty years in Paris, have you considered writing your
biography?

I do not like to speak in the present tense, nor do I have any wish to talk about myself.

This interview of Albert Cossery by Shaker Nouri was published in Banipal 4, Spring
1999RETURN TO JAYKUR

I roamed the hills

on the grey horse of a dream
fled the outstretched vistas,
fled the marketplace teeming with vendors,
fled the weary morning,
the barking night, the quiet passers-by,
the gloomy light,
fled the wine-drenched landlord,
fled the shame decked in flowers
and death in its leisurely stroll
along the river’s drowsy currents.
If only its waters would wake up,
if only the Virgin would come to drink,
if only the blood-drenched setting sun
would immerse herself within these banks,
or else just rise.
And if only the branches of night
would burst into leaf,
if the brothel would close its door to its customers.

Under the sun of the green east –

on the grey horse of a dream,
through Jaykur’s bounteous summer
I rushed along distant roads,
between flowers, dew and water,
searching the horizon for a star,
a birthplace of the soul beneath the skies
for a spring to slake the flames of thirst,
searching for the exhausted traveller.

Jaykur, Jaykur – where is the bread?

Where is the water?
Has night taken over? Are the guards asleep?
Travellers, sleepless with thirst and hunger –
the wind moans on,
fills the horizon with its echoes.
A desert, vast, nowhere a road to be found.
Night’s skies are blind.
Jaykur, stretch the door open for us to enter
or entertain us with the luminous dance of stars.
4

Who will hear my poems

when death’s silence dwells inside my home,
when night settles in my fire?
Who will lift the burden of my cross
in this long night of dread?
Who would cry out, who would answer to the hungry,
care for the destitute?
Who would lower Jesus from His cross,
who would drive the vultures from His wounds,
remove the lid of darkness from His dawn?
Who would replace His thorns with a crown of laurels?
Jaykur, if you would only hear –
if you would only just be there –
if you would only give birth to a soul,
even an aborted, stunted soul,
as travellers could behold a star
to illuminate the night.
For those without a path

Death struggle
no death.
Speech
no sound.
Labour
no birth.
In Baghdad who crucified the poet?
Who auctions off his poems?
Who invests in his eyes?
Who garlands him with thorns?
Jaykur, Jaykur, the threads of light
have tethered the swing of dawn.
Let the birds,
let the ants feast
on my wound.

6
This is my cave of Hira.
The spider has worked its web
all the way to its mouth,
leading the people to me.
I die.
While light, enmeshed in its own jungle,
sows the dinars of avaricious Time
from a balcony in the thick of palm branches.
Jaykur, Jaykur – water and vinegar
flow from my heart,
from my festering wound,
from deep inside,
oh my people, oh my people –
Jaykur, Jaykur, are you listening?
Let your doors fling open to the conquerors.
This very evening
round up your children
playing in the village square.
Here is the harvest of the years.
Water is wine.
The jars are full of nourishment.
This is the green season of sickness.

Jaykur, your past has come back.

This is the crowing of the roosters.
The film of sleeplessness has dissolved.
I have come back from my great night journey:
the sun
mother of green wheat stalks.
Behind the buildings
is a loaf of bread
still forgotten on the sidewalk,
but dearer than jewels.
And love:
“Do you hear this thunderous applause?
And what of it?
Abd al-Latif knows that we . . .
What are you so apprehensive about?”
And my soul was abducted
and the train screamed.
Tears ebbed in my eyes,
a cloud holding me up.
The train began to move.
O sun of my days,
is there a return?

Jaykur, sleep in the darkness of my years.

from ‘Unshudat al-Matar’ (1960)

DAY HAS GONE

Day has gone.

See. Its wick has died
on a horizon glowing, fireless,
and here you sit, waiting
for Sindbad to return.
Behind you the sea cries out
in tempests, in thunder.
He will not return.
Haven’t you heard? The sea gods
have imprisoned him in a black castle,
in islands of blood, of oyster shells.
He will not return.
Day has gone
so go now, go.
He will not be back.

The horizon – forests of swollen clouds, of thunder.

Their fruits breed death, breed a handful of day’s ashes.
Death rains down from them, breeds a handful of day’s ashes.
Their threatening colours spell fear and breed a handful of day’s ashes.
Day has gone.
Day has gone.

As though your left wrist,

as though your left arm were waving
behond his hour of death,
as if it were a lighthouse
on some shore, reserved for death,
a shore which dreams of ships
always in wait.
Day has gone.
If only time would stop, but no.
Time’s little steps are heard
even in the grave,
even by the stones.

Day has gone.

Day has gone.

The horizon – forests of swollen clouds, of thunder.

Their fruits breed death, breed a handful of day’s ashes.
Death rains down from them, breeds a handful of day’s ashes.
Their threatening colours spell fear and breed a handful of day’s ashes.
Day has gone.
Day has gone.

Sinbad could not ward off ruin

from your golden hair.
Your locks reached down and drank the brine.
The ocean salt turned gold to white,
and all your love letters are washed away,
the glitter of vows dissolved.
And here you sit waiting,
dazed, with whirling thoughts:
“He will come back. No, his ship has gone down headlong.
He will come back. No, the wailing winds have detained him.
O Sindbad, will you ever come back?
The time of my youth has almost run out.
Lilies have wilted in my cheeks.
So when will you come back?

Stretch out your hands –

The heart will use them to fashion its new world.
It will destroy the world of talons,
of frenzy and blood.
It will, if only for a while,
build its own universe.

Oh, when will you come back?

Will you know, I wonder, when daylight fades,
how much the fingers’ silence knows
about the flashes of the unseen
in life’s darkness?
Oh, let me have your fists.
They fall as snow falls,
no matter where I look,
as snow descends upon my palms
and falls headlong into my heart.
How often have I dreamed about those fists,
as two flowers growing by a stream
unfolding where my loneliness wanders, lost.”
Day has gone.
And the ocean, empty, vast,
no singing save the roar of waves.
There appears only one sail
inebriated by the lashing winds.
Nothing flutters on the water’s face
except your waiting heart.
Day has gone
So go now, go.
Day has gone.

Beirut, 27 June 1962

from ‘Mansil al-Aqnan’ (1963)

Both poems translated by

Adnan Haydar and Michael Beard

Why does the poet take his wife out to McDonalds?

Conceited you sit with your legs crossed

While the waves are asleep under your feet
You look like a herd of wild camels
As you eat American hamburgers
For the first time in your life
Patting meanwhile
Your wife’s fat neck
As you tell her about Al-Nifarri’s washing machine
And about Othman’s shirt with the hole in it
And about the blond American fly you have recently
Swallowed – unwittingly.
And she talks to you about your hideous car
That resembles a scabby greyhound
Telling you that you ought to barter it for a respectable donkey
Before she herself barters you, together with all your critical
Theories, for anything that would do to decorate the bedroom.
Your wife giggles aloud
As she boisterously cries,
Opening the feathers of her legs to the tongue of the air.
You wish you could place her between your teeth
And crack her as you would crack a rotten walnut,
Or lay her inside the empty matchbox on the table.
But you are a faithful person
You believe that your own marriage was the culmination of a love story,
That you got married to a pig having the countenance of
Al-Manfaluti and the trotters of Nazik Al-Mala’ika,
And that you (therefore) commit suicide daily
By swallowing 100 classical poems.
Surely you do not joke with swine
And the swine (this is what is important) have no time to waste joking with you.
For as soon as you press your mouth against the mouth
of the whale sitting before you,
You realise that the earth cannot sink in a glass half-filled with chilled water,
And that you are a poet at the peak of happiness.

The skinny girl with the tiny head

That resembles a tennis ball
Reads Femme actuelle
And stupidly stares at
The couples in the McDonald’s cell
As happiness rushes out of their big mouths
Like spit,
While they, with such paternal affectation, put their hand on the
Bums of their blond kids who keep crying as they point to the
Street with their little plastic fingers:
PAPA . . . PAPA . . . Regarde . . . regarde . . .
Cet homme pisse sur notre voiture

The McDonald’s laughs and scratches his tail

And the true poem is a net with huge holes
Intended to trap as many hyenas as possible.
I do not trust the poet’s wife – who has the countenance of Al-Manfaluti
Nor do I trust the eyes of the net.
The same is true of the skinny girl
Who reads Femme actuelle
And from time to rime glances at her watch
Without drinking her glass of Coke.

Translated by Hassan Hilmy

from ‘Bitaqat Uzubiyya’,
Gilgamesh Editions, Paris, 1997

Rose of Dust

Shattered places
and the breeze
of dawn wakes up on me

My shoulder still in slumber

A cloud bowing
to the flicker of infinity

Is it that trees invent their echo

or
has the blind
just dipped his hand
in water

The poet closes

his eyes
on a rose
of
dust

Scratching my window-pane
the pine tree
lightly shudders
under a snow of ashes

Smooth water
From which paleness
did the wind return
and throw another topaz in the river

Solitude
could
end with winding paths
intoxication
trips
But whenever I inquire about death
a lady stands against me
impetuous and mute

8
The night barks here
Thumps somewhere
And I am drinking
Hˆlderlin’s wine

A shimmer
Then another
Enough for the magician
to make sure
that time is tame
that poetry is a call

10

No one saw me
quietly opening a drawer
to see
where did my self
sneak in
11

My bones have their own biting frost

Is there a name that will go out
before me tonight

12

Clouds upon clouds

flutter
A leap
I almost thought my hand
was made of clouds

13

Play with my poetry’s lock

I say
I’m a lantern
a rug
a snow
a wall

14

Two starts kidnapped my hand

For a second
I watched it
tremble
weep
Am I
or am I

Translated by Anton Shammas

from ‘The Pagan Place’

published by
Toubqal, Casablanca, 1996

Three Short Stories

SILENT ONES

Zuhair Sabri met a woman like a red flower on a green branch and she told him in a
trembling voice that she loved and could love no one else but him. He said to her that
he cared about nothing except his future, but was startled by a painful slap on his neck.
He looked around, but did not see who had slapped him.
He was slapped again when he told a rich man he was the greatest man the country had
brought forth, and again did not see who had slapped him.
He was slapped a third time when he reverently kissed the hand of a man with a long,
flowing beard and asked to be blessed, but he still did not see who had slapped him.
Zuhair Sabri was slapped a lot on a daily basis without ever seeing the unknown
slapper. He never spoke to anyone about all those secret slaps so that no one would
mock and accuse him of being insane. And he was certain that everyone else was being
slapped just as he was being slapped but were also keeping quiet.

ANOTHER HOME

Kahlid al-Hallab managed to forget his humiliating wait all morning in front of the
harsh judge who had ordered him to clear out of the rented house in which he had lived
from childhood. He was filled with humility and joy when after the noon prayer he
heard someone quote the saying that paradise was the ground under the feet of all
mothers. When he returned to the house he brought a pick and a spade and started
digging under the feet of his mother, who was sitting in a wooden chair in the hall, her
painful moaning not ceasing for a moment. He dug for many hours, but when he found
nothing except moist earth he threw the pick and the spade away in anger. He gave his
mother a cup of tea mixed with sugar and a large quantity of sleeping powder. His
mother went to sleep in a few minutes, and he put a rug and two pillows down in the
hole. He lifted his mother, lay her down on the rug, then sat down in her chair panting
with fatigue and drank the rest of her tea. He lay down in the hole next to his mother,
clutched her hand, and closed his eyes praying for the darkness of the grave to come
quickly.

SMASH-UP

The hammer sitting on the anvil began to complain, but the anvil said: “Keep quiet.
Relax, and make it easy on all of us.”
The hammer said: “I won’t shut up because I’m so fed up with this life and this shop
that I want to see it destroyed.”
The anvil said: “You have a right to what you feel and what you feel like doing, and
nothing has prevented you from exercising your rights except your laziness.”
When Abdulmajid, the smith, opened his shop early in the morning, to his utter
surprise he found everything smashed, except his hammer and anvil. Almost in tears,
he sat contemplatively on a wooden chair with short legs, feeling sad and stunned, his
eyes wandering about the room.
The hammer then said to the anvil: “The stupidity of this smith bores me; he never tires
of working even though the more he works, the more miserable he is.”
The anvil said in return: “Your boredom with this tireless smith is one of your
legitimate rights.”
The blood of Abdulmajid the smith then splattered over the hammer and anvil. The
anvil condemned the incident, stating to the police that his role was merely that of a
spectator, but they paid him no heed and did not catch the killer.

Translated by Ibrahim Muhawi

Translator’s note

These stories have been selected from Zakariyya Tamir’s latest volume, Al-Husrum
(Sour Grapes). To me, a lover of folktales, the economy of Zakariyya’s narrative art
resembles that of the folktale. You will not find any tedious descriptive passages here.
Exactly as folktales do, Tamir, a master of Arabic style and narrative rhythm, always
goes to the heart of the matter. To those not familiar with his art, this fiction might
appear strange at first, but all truth is stranger than fiction and Arab truth even more so.
As much as the English language will allow, I have in my translation tried to maintain
his narrative rhythm, and to reflect the lucidity of his style and the complexity of his
satirical tone without sacrificing meaning.
On the surface Tamir’s books of fiction appear to be collections of “short stories”, but
each book has its own distinctive title and (if we look hard enough) its own thematic
unity. The present volume, his eighth, centres on a neighbourhood or square, to which
Tamir has given the strange name

Ghalib Halasa

A Birthday
The sun’s rays were shining with sharp obliqueness through the east window. He was
lying on the sofa in the room, feeling the sun falling on his closed eyelids. He was half
asleep but the memory of something joyous that had happened to him the day before
aroused exhilaration in him. He knew if he remembered that thing, it would no longer
be exhilarating but he could not prevent his torpid mind from occupying itself with it.
Was it the money he had received? He listened to his inner reaction: The inevitable fate
of the money would make it incapable of exciting any happiness in him. He decided not
to think of anything.

She said: “We got married because of love, of course.”

I did not know she was his wife.
He opened his eyes, expecting the sunlight would dazzle him. But the rectangle of
sunshine from the window had passed him and was cast on the floor near the sofa.
He heard the key turn in his apartment door and, for a moment, he hoped something
would happen, something unexpected. But that hope faded quickly when the maid
entered.
She asked: “Are you awake?”
He said: “No.”
The maid always pretended she did not understand that joke.
She asserted: “Oh yes, you are.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
Only at this point did the maid pretend that she understood the joke, and she laughed.
She said: “You’re awake, really.”
As she did every day, she headed for the calendar hanging on the wall and tore off it
the date page of the previous day and held it out saying, “Read me the fortune”.
“Read me my fortune”.
He asked her: “Did Brecht come by to see me yesterday?”
She looked at him, perplexed, and the paper fell from her hand. She picked it up and
said: “There was someone looking like a Yemeni who passed by.”
“And what do Yemenis look like?”
“I mean, his speech . . .”
“You mean, his speech,” he said. “Did Churchill pass by?”
“No.”
“Tshombe?”
“No.”
“De Gaulle?”
“No.”
“Greta Garbo?”
“No. No one asked about you but this Yemeni. Read me my fortune.”
“Ishaq al-Mawsili?”
“No one else passed by . . . Read me my fortune.”
He read: “After night comes dawn.”
She pleaded: “Read correctly. . .”
“After night comes dawn. That’s what’s written.”
The date on the calendar hanging on the wall reminded him of something close, as if he
were remembering the facial features of someone whose identity he had forgotten. Then
he remembered last night’s party, the coterie of friends that did not change, the usual
self-pity, the decisions taken earlier dozens of times, the planning of a programme of
writing and publishing, then the mockery that justified every weakness and made
everything look equal and, at the end of the night, mocking mockery and the bitter
feeling that the night had been wasted . . .

They first met at the Excelsior and discovered that that place was intolerable. They
moved to the Americaine but agreed after a short while that the chairs there were
uncomfortable and that the noise made conversation impossible. And so, they
continued to move from one cafÈ to another and their limited money continued to be
depleted . . . Then they admitted that the cafÈs were not the reason, it was that they
could no longer bear one another or endure their own lies. The tragic thing was that
they had to meet every night.

He looked at the calendar, and the oppressive feeling that the date on it was related to
something he had forgotten returned to him.
The maid went out to buy some sugar and he remained alone. The voices coming from
the other apartments reached him clearly and he could distinguish the people speaking
as if he were seeing them. He remembered that when he was writing, he liked to listen
to the voices coming from the apartments and he listened intently to the snippets of
dialogue reaching him. But scandals were what attracted his attention now.

The jalousie of the bedroom was the complementary part of his morning pleasure. He
had re-ceived some advice on the principles of observation from behind the jalousie: he
had to turn off the light so that his shadow would not appear on it, and he had to
abstain from smoking because smoke would otherwise flow off out of the interstices
and disclose his position.

He began watching his neighbour as she was hanging out the washing. Her face was
solemn as she pinned the clothes-pegs. When she bent forward, her blouse uncovered
the upper part of her bosom. She bent again and again to pick up the wet clothes from a
basin on the balcony floor, and she shook them nervously before hanging them on the
clothes-line. Locks of her hair fell on her forehead and she shook them back in place
with a movement of her head. He liked that movement as well as the long, dexterous
fingers hanging the clothes on the line and nimbly fixing them with clothes-pegs.
Suddenly, the woman stood upright, covered her chest with her palms, and looked at
him directly. Her eyes were black, frightened. He felt dizzy and a cold sweat covered
his body.
He returned to the room and lay on the sofa. The rectangle of the sun’s rays had
disappeared and, in one corner near the ceiling, there was a consummate cobweb. With
his eyes, he searched for the spider but did not find it. He then remembered that he had
also searched for it in the morning of the previous day and had not found it. Then he
thought of the woman hanging out the washing. He said to himself: “It is certain she
did not see me. She only had that feeling which comes over people when they are alone
and sense they are being watched.”

The maid returned with a lot of noise and news.

“The people on the seventh floor, the burly fat man, married to the white lady, returned
from work unexpectedly and he’s asking about her.”
“The lady with the blond hair?”
“She dyes it . . .”
This meant that a quarrel or a scandal was about to explode very soon.
She added: “The porter wants all servants to use the servants’ staircase. He says it’s an
order from the landlord. The lady above wants me to do her washing. I said to her: I’m
busy.”
“Busy? What are you busy with?”
“I’m busy.”
Then she went to the kitchen.
The song “You are my life” could be heard from a tape-recorder on one of the upper
floors. The radio was broadcasting a comedy and a woman was calling out the porter’s
name. Then there was the noise of people coming down the stairs, making him
continuously feel that some visitor was about to ring the doorbell.
He was standing behind the jalousie when the maid said, “Tea.”

••••

The joy of the bright sun, the blinding white sky, the hundreds of people walking
closely and with familiarity, the children dispersed in the green parks in their colourful
clothes as though they were a rainbow, the dark roaring water of the river: all these
filled him with exhilaration. And until his feet got tired so that he would carry them
instead of them carrying him, and until the dark worries and fears of the coming days
would nestle in his heart, and until he would be besieged by boredom, happiness
would continue to grow in his heart and contain all that scene.

For one fleeting moment, he imagined he remembered that thing. But it slipped his
mind again.
At the book kiosk on Sulaiman Pasha Square, Ahmad showed him some books and
promised to sell them to him at a special discount. He held out a book to him saying:
“Have you seen Sartre’s new book, sir?”
He examined the book, looked at the price on the back cover, and said: “It’s very
expensive, Ahmad.”
“Don’t worry about the price, sir. You may pay me at the end of the month. Have you
seen the poetry collection of Salah [‘Abd al-Sabur]?”
“Do you think I’m a millionaire, Ahmad?”
Ahmad said: “Aren’t you going to publish a collection of short stories, sir?”
“God forgive you, Ahmad. You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?”
Ahmad guffawed and said: “I know the market, sir. The fact is, collections of short
stories don’t sell. Novels and books of literary criticism are what sells well. As for
collections, the fact is . . .”
He interrupted him: “How old are you, Ahmad?”
“Under thirty. Do I look older? By God, I’m under thirty, sir.”

He had thought Ahmad was much more than thirty years old. A little door opened,
from which sorrows flowed into him and spread out like a drop of ink in a glass of
water. Suddenly, he was overcome by exhaustion, and the calendar hanging on the wall
rose before his eyes then disappeared.

On Sulaiman Pasha Street and Qasr al-Nil Street, the traffic lights changed to green. He
crossed the street quickly in front of the waiting revving cars. At the top of Qasr al-Nil
Street, he met a girl wearing the clothes of a student. She had a sharp nose and a small
stern face. He smiled to her but she did not respond. However, she winked and stopped
at the shop window of Sidnawi [Department Store]. She looked at him sideways as she
contemplated the window displays. He stood beside her and looked at a mannequin
wearing a black evening gown and showing an indecent leg.
He said as though speaking to himself, “A beautiful gown . . .”

She gave him a frank, direct look with no fear or embarrassment. She said in a
confident, defying voice: “Where are you going?”
He did not answer. They walked together away from the Square. His head teemed with
many expressions that could dispel that embarrassing silence. How do you do? What’s
your name? What school do you go to? And others. But he thought they were all no
good for beginning a conversation.
She turned to him, saying: “You’re not from Egypt . . .”

He felt angry. They always repeated that to him, as though it was written on his face.
He knew that if he asked her how she knew he was not from Egypt, she would say, “It
shows in your speech”, even though he had said no more than a couple of words.
“No,” he said. “I’m not from Egypt but I’ve been living here for a long time.”
“You’re from Kuwait?”
When he did not answer, she hesitated a little then added: “Lebanon?”
“No.”
“Do you work here?”

Should he tell her about the reason he came to this country? That had remained his
preferred topic for a long time: how he was imprisoned, how he escaped, how the
bullets whizzed at him from every direction, how he burst into a home where a half-
naked wo-man with wet hair screamed and a man stood aghast; he was certain they
would catch him but he did get away from them; he stole away from the country across
the mountains and the desert. But he realised that after having told that story so many
times, no one was interested. Even to him, the topic began to appear unreal.
He said: “I live here.”
He was surprised to see she considered this to be a sufficient answer.

••••

The casino on the river. The Nile with its muddy, roaring, black water. The eyes of the
people there besieged both of them on all sides, lazy eyes slowly running down your
body as if they were touching it, examining it with aggressive impudence, voracious
eyes scorning all your movements. And the waiter’s collusive, bored smile and his
suspicious, disconcerting politeness.
He said to himself, “What are these men saying to the ladies? You are beautiful, your
gown is wonderful? Or are they telling them about the film in which two lovers get
married or die?”
But he said nothing.
She said: “You smoke a lot.”
“No, not very much.”
His hand holding the cigarette was trembling a little.
He added: “Fifty . . . sixty . . .”
“Wow! That is very much. You should stop. Smoking is bad for one’s health. Many
people have stopped.”
He was on the verge of exploding but he controlled himself.
She added: “My dad used to smoke more than you and he stopped. You should stop . .
.”
She was taken over by a fit of enthusiasm, and she attempted to snatch the cigarette
from his hand. But he moved it away from her hand and said: “Fine, I’ll stop.”
She fell silent and began looking at the river.
“Do you like rowing?”
“No. “
Despite his irritation at her questions, she continued her interrogation undeterred by
anything.
“Married?”
He answered in the negative.

She affirmed he was right to take his time. It was difficult for a person here, she said, to
find a suitable young woman he could trust and be comfortable with. Of course, she
belonged here in this country, and knew that fact very well. As for him, a stranger, he
could be easily deceived.
He thought she did not have any sense of humour at all. Intending to indicate how
strange it was that such wisdom was emanating from a child of her age and in that
particular situation, he asked: “How old are you?”
“Seventeen going on sixteen.”
Then she laughed and said she had a friend named Su’ad who, whenever asked about
her age, answered “seventeen going on sixteen”.
He laughed complacently.
Ending her laughter, she suddenly asked: “And you?”
“What about me?”
“How old are you?”
“Quite old,” he replied. “Doesn’t that show on me?”
“Absolutely not,” she answered. “On the contrary, you look young. I mean, because of a
few white hairs on your head . . . Well, my dad’s hair was white when he was twenty
years old.”
He discovered that her words were creating satisfaction in him.
He said, laughing: “No . . . I’m really old.”
“What do you mean old? You know, my dad married my mum when she was fifteen
years old and he was over thirty. Now when people see us, my mum and me, they
think we’re sisters, not a mother and her daughter.”
She laughed, with her mouth only, and her eyes remained serious and stern. She then
added, still laughing: “A friend of dad’s once asked him, ‘Your daughters, are they not
married yet?’. He meant mum and me.”
He laughed with reserve and began to look around.
She continued talking about the idea of marriage, that it was the destiny of everyone,
that the woman was a complement to the man, that marriage was of course a matter of
preordained fate and luck. There was this friend of hers, married to a Syrian, and she
was very happy with him.

He felt he was sinking into a pit he could not get out of. He felt that this child could pull
him by his hand and get married to him without his being able to wiggle out or prevent
her. The image of the young mother, the old father, and the gossip that would
inevitably flare up about this family rose before his eyes. An irrational desire to escape
and save his skin came over him.

He looked at his watch and frowned, saying: “I must leave now. The fact is . . .”
She interrupted with the tone of someone confident of being obeyed: “Sit down a little
longer . . . We’ve hardly spent a quarter of an hour together.”

He contemplated her face. She was beautiful. He thought that if she took good care of
herself she would be stunning. He felt she was so close to him, so possible. It was
sufficient for him to touch her cheek with his fingers and run them down to her chin.
The touch of her skin was within the reach of his hand. And suddenly something
happened: She and the casino and the people and the river appeared to him as part of a
film he was watching. What he was seeing took its existence as a realisation of former
formulations. He himself became part of the scene and was outside it at the same time.
Wishful desire and actual reality began to alternate in surprising sequence as if he were
an onlooker in absolute sympathy with the film’s hero. Little by little, the situation lost
its reality to become an experience without past and without future.

The image of the young mother, of the daughter who picked up husbands in the street,
and of the old father . . . returned to him, embodying a daydream he had stored up
since adolescence, a dream of sexual bliss and broken taboo. This was followed by an
old, deep-rooted terror in reaction to breaking the sanctity of forbidden things, and
rising in him as a moralising conscience.
He justified that to himself, saying he was searching for experiences for his writing.
She said: “What are you thinking of?”
“Nothing, absolutely nothing.”
He asked himself, “What do they usually do in such a situation? What should the next
step be?”
He held her hand and squeezed it in his. She was taken aback and withdrew her hand
nervously.
She said in a low, charged voice: “What the heck is this? Do you want to cause a
scandal?”
Her eyes were like two pieces of shining porcelain, the iris in the middle of each being
hard and motionless like an artificial eye. He wondered how she could see with such
eyes.
He frowned and turned to look at the river. One of the leaning branches touched the
water and was soiled by its black mud.
She said, as only her lips were smiling: “You men are all like that.”
Then she added with a laugh that pulled at the sides of her nose: “Are you angry or
what?”
He said: “Absolutely not . . .” And he stopped.
The voice emanating from him was that of a child about to cry.
She said: “Okay . . . It’s my fault, sorry . . . Don’t be angry.”
She held his hand between hers and started caressing it. Her hands were dry, elegant.
She said as though stating a lovable truth: “Your hands are sweaty.”
She began to reason with him in her confident, little voice, trying to please him with
smiles: “The fact is that people are looking. I mean, when they see us doing something
improper, there will be a scandal. Do you want to make us a laughing stock, degraded
in the public eye? Or, perhaps there is someone who knows you or me out there . . . Am
I saying anything wrong?”
He did not respond.
“Okay . . . It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

Suddenly, his own image as the young woman saw it dawned on him: A man with
broad shoulders, a big head, grey hair, coarse features, with wrinkles beginning to
invade his face, his hand trembling with the cigarette it held, a cigarette lit since the
moment they met. He imagined how she felt, what she thought of this hairy, ugly, big
hand covered with sweat as it contained her dry, little hand. He said to himself: “I
should have realised that.”
He was exhausted and felt wholly disgusted with his body and ashamed of it. He
remembered the little boy climbing the green mountains, with his eyes miserably
looking for the summit. When he looked at his hands, he felt alienated from them.
He said to himself: “I’m in need of a bath.”
He stood up nervously and paid the bill. The surrendering surprise in her eyes was his
only victory.
They walked away together, he trying not to brush against her.

••••

He leaned his elbows on the bridge wall and stared at the river underneath. The sight of
the water rushing noisily between the bridge’s abutments made for a comforting
feeling. He felt the tension flowing out of him, leaving tranquillity and an obscure
yearning behind. Then he noticed the looks of the passers-by on the bridge. He said to
himself” “They think I intend to commit suicide.” The idea frightened him and made
him cross the bridge hurriedly.

He noticed that the women walking by had lost their incitement as far as he was
concerned.
When he climbed up the stairs in the building where he lived, he thought: “I’m
completely defeated.” He felt he was at the climax of a dramatic situation. He said to
himself: “This resembles the conclusion of films with a sad ending. Feet climbing and
going farther and farther from the focus of vision: the head disappears first, then the
back, and the feet continue to climb with slow steps.” He felt proud of this formulation
and he thought: “This appears to be easy when put into words. Is this why words were
invented?” He thought he was trying to escape from facing the situation squarely.
On entering his apartment, the first thing his glance fell on was the calendar hanging on
the wall. The date was 3 January, written in cursive Arabic calligraphy. He suddenly
remembered. He flung himself on the sofa, overtaken by a dumb terror. All his force
flowed out of him. He remained still, his eyes transfixed by that terror, and he was
incapable of moving them away. He was not thinking of anything, but he was unable to
move. He discovered that a disfigured copy of La Gioconda was hanging on the wall,
above the table. Then he saw the cobweb, searched for the spider, and remembered that
he had done that twice in vain.

He said in an audible voice, “That’s incredible!” Now, at this moment, he was entering
his fortieth year – and that made no sense to him. He felt he was born only yesterday.
He tried to cling to a flimsy hope . . . that he was from a family of long-living persons
and that forty years constituted only the first third of his life.
Suddenly, he got up and rushed out, closing the door behind him with a loud bang: “I
must do something now, I must do everything . . .” And he realised with acute, painful
awareness that it was impossible for him now to postpone anything: he had to decide
about his political stance, about marriage, about the novels he had resolved to write but
which he was content with general outlines for. He had to put an end to all that now, at
this very moment.
Descending the stairs, he suspected he was sick. He listened to his body to feel the
beginning of a fever or colic. But he dismissed that feeling nervously, as if he were
removing some physical, material thing obstructing his way.
Outdoors, the sun had set but its light was still filling the Square. Darkness had not yet
fallen, but the day was gone. Darkness sprang from the ground, from the entrances of
buildings and narrow lanes. The people in the Square were silent, moving carefully,
their eyes lost, suspended on something distant. The peddlers were immersed in a ritual
of silence. The female beggar whose voice had been ringing out in all corners of the
Square as she chanted verses of the Qur’an in slow cadence was now leaning her back
on the wall and was quiet.
The sky had no definite colour, being slightly red with touches of violet mixed with the
smoke of the city. Everything was holding its breath, everything was hushed up.
His eyes turned in the direction of the setting sun as he hurried in the midst of the death
that was touching everything.
The street lights came on, all at once. And it was night.

Translated by Issa J. Boullata

from Ghalib Halasa’s collection of short stories, “Wadi’ wa-l-Qiddisa Milada wa
Akharun”, [“Wadi’, St Milada, and Others”], Cairo, 1969

THE WISE MEN IN OUR HOUSE

Misguiding the thieves

creeping about at night,
we hide the Holy Spirit,
with its gouged eyes,
in the refrigerator.

On the wall we hang seismographic charts

and chatter about Einstein and his black holes.
We sit in the kitchen and smoke;
heavy water mixed with peppermint
boils in the kettle
while the blind goose that lays
golden eggs
is roasting in the oven.

The Wise Men have come at last.

Salima says, “I’ll make
an angel’s breakfast
for our guests.”
We change our places and go
to the living room,
and wait for our coffee.

The life has become really expensive;

all these hypotheses only to measure
the light curve,
all these victims to win a single war,
all these pharaohs only to ask
for a mummy’s hand.
Nobody talks about all that now.
Nobody cares for others
because there is no proof of anything.
What is positive is also negative
like every hope, like every doubt.

Oh, so many mysterious tribes wandering

among these empty galaxies.

In a garden, in a distant garden,

we lie back under alien stars
and remind ourselves of our happy days
in paradise.

FEAST IN CANDLELIGHT

Here is the twentieth century

in its long dim hall
with murderers and conjurers
sitting at its table
in the flickering candlelight
of their victory
and waiting for their meal.
The waiters come out
one by one
from their hidden corners
balancing dishes of darkness
on their heads
to serve their guests.

They will all drink from the same bottle

watching the evening fall among the trees.
Parades of drunken soldiers
wave their bloody flags
and march down the street.

Through the window

the moon will soon shine.

When they finish their feast

we will sit at that same table
and drink the same wine
too.

BEDOUINS

Three Bedouins in a desert,

carrying sacks strapped to their shoulders,
walking one after the other
stooped for eternity
like defeated soldiers.

Three Bedouins in the desert

walk on silently.
as the wind blows now and then
and wipes out their traces.

EVERYTHING TURNED OUT WELL IN THE END

What are we waiting for?

Everything turned out well in the end

The moon went out suddenly

and the lovers headed home.
The wars ended too
and we carried the corpses to the cemetery.
The hands that were stained with blood
we washed in the river.
Clouds darkened the sky,
the winds blew them away.

As we stood at the freezing bus stop

our last bus passed and sped by in the dark
There was nothing but to walk back on foot
along the Milky Way.

Never trust the night at night!

What are you waiting here for?

GO, FADHIL, TO HEAVEN, AND THOU, AL-AZZAWI, STRAIGHT TO HELL

On the way to heaven

on the way to hell
I saw a dozen prophets
with long hennaed beards
gathering gems and pearls for me.
I saw angels
spilling like evil souls
through the cracks of shattered dawns.
I saw Bedouins running
along greedy shores
feeding their dying embers
with my eternal fire.

Launching my scream
into the hollow ears of the world
I held these sluggish caravans
starved and lost
and guided them
to their promised land.

On the sea,
as my boat twisted its prow
through huge waves
rushing from the horizon,
the desert’s black bloated clouds
showed me the old warrior’s path
sloping down to the plain of shadows
and I went on.

Along the way

barbed wire stretched before me
and life sang
her joyous melodies
to vanished pyramids.

Oh, who knows if the sand

will ever remember me
in this everlasting exile.

Within the broken heart of earth

under twisted, riven rocks
the darkness grew and grew.
The bloodstained spears of my forefathers
pierced God’s purple skin
deep into the scales of the creeping serpent
and stabbing once, twice . . .

Wandering in the heavy rain

of prehistory
I lived and hoped
to reach another shore, new and green.
But the cunning storm thrust
its sinnewy arms
thundering,
and dragged my broken boat
into the bleeding abyss of history
giving me in its second whirl
dizzy once more
the blessings of amnesia.

O treacherous ages, I forgive you!

Long and desolate is my road,

to all those distant planets
between the Little Bear
and the Big Dipper.

Come, Fadhil, come.

Let’s begin our journey again
to the city of Heaven, of course.
As for thou, Al-Azzawi,
go straight to Hell.

Translated by the author

and Khaled Mattawa

This selection is taken from new and unpublished poems, those published in Arab
newpspapers, and from the poet’s collections in Arabic and in German

SCRAPS

When he went away

I had nothing left of him
but myself

BELONGINGS

I had a house
a bed of dreaming wood
some pain on the shelf
a memory faucet
embers to sear my heart
whenever the cold assailed it
and many chimneys
but I had no door
and no window.

CONFESSION

Sometimes, at nightfall, I break down and cry

Then I resent my tears, which have illuminated the world
and extinguished me.

PARTITION

Between us is night with its flickering features

a star, stripped of her gown of memories
pasted bare in distant space.
HURT

To my brother Najeeb

Whenever I return to the playground of the past

peering into its deceptive spaces
I see your shirt, but not you
your smile, but not you
your eyes, but not myself
I meet, in what I find of you, the longed-for twilight
of when we were together
on the field of our dreams
and the warm blanket of my mother’s stories, embroidered with songs.
Whenever I till the soil of memory
I find you, a stalk of grain aflame with tears
night’s fingers snatch at you
alone, you face the wind
throwing into it all you have left.
Whenever I leaf through the pages of our footsteps
I find you hiding between the lines of the story
shivering in the chill of dreams
I drape you in the cloak of my love
shelter you from the bitter cold of distance
kindle your sorrow to warm us till morning.
Don’t falter now
for the sake of your two new faces
they have already split away from you
and returned to the playground of the past
running
flinging open the gate of hope.

Translated by Seema Atalla

from ‘Muhawala li-Tathakkur Ma Hadath’

[‘An attempt toremember what happened’],
Andiyat al-Fatayat, Sharjah, al-Dar al-Misriya, al-Lubnaniya, Cairo, 1998

“Translated poetry develops the capacity of every language”

I rarely read prefaces by poets, and if I do, it is mainly to celebrate the beautiful
disparity between what the poet says about his poem and what the poem says.

But then how do I respond today to the insistent request put to me, namely to present
this anthology? Especially since to my mind every anthology amounts to a ruse, to the
extent that the person compiling it can do as he thinks fit with his poet: he can preserve
the work’s luminous source, leaving aside its shadow, isolate one poem to the detriment
of its place within the body of work, keep of a poem only its prosodic path toward
poetry, stress images, metaphors, or an atmosphere that favours a particular approach,
and, at the end of this subjective process, make an average poet into an exceptional one,
or the other way around . . .
An anthology can only reinforce doubts. Is it possible to really know a poet’s universe
by his choice of poems? Is it possible to apprehend his world through an anthology,
especially one that’s been translated?
Each language has its own system of signs, its own style and structure. The translator is
not a ferryman for the meaning of the words but the author of their web of new
relations. And he is not the painter of the light part of the meaning, but the watcher of
the shadow, and what it suggests.
So the translator of poetry finds himself in the position of parallel poet, freed from the
source language and making the host language suffer an identical fate to the one the
poem’s author has put his own language through.
It is within this space of liberation from the original work that the translator commits
that beautiful and inevitable betrayal which protects the poet’s language from the
weight of its own nationality, but also from its dissolution in the language of the
translation. And the translated poetry finds itself obliged to preserve as much the
universal attributes of the work as the features that point to its specific origins, already
expressed in another language structure and a system of its own references.
It is this duality that creates the particular charm of poetry in translation. Whether from
a taste for the dialogue between what is common to all languages and what
distinguishes each, or a thirst to discover the immense richness and variety of the poetic
experience, translated poetry develops the capacity of every language to renew its styles
and constructions when listening to the experience of another language.
So we see how an original and creative translator possesses the power to build or to
demolish. The translated poem is no longer its author’s sole property but also belongs
to the translator, who equally becomes its poet. And from that point on it hardly
matters whether the translated piece is superior or inferior to the original.
How then can we trust translated poetry? By stopping at that which it does not unveil,
which proceeds behind a mask. By retaining only the shadow which looms behind the
words, and perhaps, that distance which betrays its own presence for an instant and
then becomes blurred.
How can we trust an anthology in translation? Above all, how can we trust an
anthology, like this one, compiled by the poet himself?
In other words: Reader, how can you trust me?
This collection, which is presented as a personal anthology, is in fact not quite that. And
had it been entirely up to me, had my freedom been total, I would probably have kept
in only the yield of the last two decades. The reason for this is simple. Each of my
collections tends to a certain break in the continuity, a demolition of the preceding
collection, to the extent that, with each of my new undertakings, I invariably feel the
need to develop what until then seemed secondary and marginal, and bring it closer to
the centre.
Perhaps this need derives from the fact that I do not live in the river but on its banks,
that time teaches me wisdom while history teaches me irony. Unless it is because, as I
grow older, I come closer to metaphysical questioning more appropriate to the
perplexity of existence and to the desire to protect my language from the rush of
present time.

Nevertheless, my public image remains stronger than my anxiety. I am the one

designated “the Poet of Palestine”, and I am required to fix my place within the
language, to protect my reality from the myth and be the master of each, so as to be
both part of history and witness to what it has put me through. This is why my right to
a tomorrow demands a revolt against the present as well as a defence of the legitimacy
of my existence in the past. So my poem finds itself changed into evidence of existence
or nothingness.
When I began to write, I was consumed with an obsession to tell of my loss, my senses,
the limits of my existence – in short, my self, located in its particular environment and
geography. I paid scant attention to the fact that my being comprised a collective being.
I wished to express myself, dreaming of changing only myself.
But what could I do confronted with the fact that my individual story, the great
uprooting of my place, was merged with that of a people? So my readers quite naturally
found in my personal voice their personal and collective voices. But when, in prison, I
sang of my nostalgia for my mother’s coffee and bread, I was not striving to reach
beyond the frontiers of my family environment. And when I sang of exile, the miseries
of existence and my thirst for freedom, my intention was not to write “resistance
poetry”, as the Arab critic stated at the time, and I did not imagine readers finding in
my work an outsize poetic palliative to go on hoping, after the defeat of what was called
“the Six Day War”.
When I think of those years again, I see again poetry’s formidable capacity to spread,
though it seeks neither solitude nor high fashion, and neither are valid criteria for
judging its beauty. But when I think of those people who denigrate “political poetry”, I
also know that there are worse things than the latter: the excessive scorn for the
political, the deafness to the questions posed by reality and history, and the refusal to
participate implicitly in the enterprise of hope.

So this anthology, not intending to deceive either reader or author, will not leave aside
my beginnings in favour of my present poetic experience. Equally, I am quite incapable
of locating the moment when that wholly relative break occurred in the continuity. I
followed an evolution made up of intermingling phases, each carrying the seed of the
change to come.
In my poetry I aspire to qualitative breaks. But is it possible to disregard the effects of
the accumulation? I do not know. But I see, for example, my period of “exile poems” as
the extension of the one that preceded it. As if my personal-collective voice were
extending into another territory, one that is larger and more culturally varied. As if my
voice, become richer, were bringing its conception of poetry back into question and
attempting to draw still closer to the universal poetic experience.
The patience of distance, the view from a certain margin, provide poetry with the
chance to lighten the load placed on language by heroic poetry, allowing it to look at
itself more innocently and serenely and entrusting it with the heavy responsibility of
reviving memory and the elements of a place rid of dust and routine.
I am very sensitive to the changing of the times, to the cadences of the universal poetic
language. And I strive restlessly to reach the poem within in its personal life and history
and, conjointly, released from them. And I strive restlessly to draw the poem nearer its
mythological genealogy, but attempt too to build it a contemporary mythology from its
intrinsic components.
But how to realise the journey from the poet’s interiority to his exteriority, then from his
exteriority to his interiority? How not to drown in one’s “ego” nor lose it by changing
into a spokesman and representative of one’s people?

The origins of poetry are doubtless one: man’s identity, from the exile of his past to his
exiled present. Poetry is born of the first astonishments at life, when nascent humanity
wondered at the first mysteries of existence. In this way, the universal is, from the very
beginning, local.
In this journey which everyone undertakes, between being and universe, in this journey
composed of a multitude of tongues, places and levels of evolution, mankind’s poetic
experience is unified and achieves a universality freed from the domination of a
“metropolis” and the submission of the “provinces”.
But it seems the compass points cannot do without labels.
What does it mean then if I say, for example, that my poetry comes from the South, that
it is born of an historical reality in which individual freedom and collective freedom
have not been achieved?
What does it mean if I say that my poetry comes from a country where the relation
between time and place has been ruptured, from a fatherland whose children have been
turned into ghosts?
No more than a way of stating the difficulties of Arab modernity on the move, of the
tribe whose tents have vanished toward a city not yet born.
Poetry’s target is not its obscure part, but it is born of the tension between the poem’s
movement and the thought that sets it in motion, the tension between its prose state and
its rhythmic state. And this obscure part, like the summoning of the shades, is one of the
forms of the struggle between the poetic language and the reality that poetry, seeking
its essence, is no longer content to describe. Perhaps this obscure part is precisely the
space open to the reader who, released from a definitive message, endowed with the
ability to read and interpret, can then give the poem a second life.
However, it is neither the clarity nor the obscure part which has saved my poetry from
breaking with a reader who renews me and whom I renew.
One of the paradoxes of my poetic experience is that each time I have advanced my
style and modes of expression, I have prepared my reader for yet more renewal, and
noticed that our respective poetic tastes have drawn still closer.
The explanation perhaps lies in the fact that my poetic proposals always spring from
the long history of Arab poetry, its cadences and aesthetic canons.

Every poet has his habits. I am among those who compose their poems twice. The first
time, I let myself go with my unconscious inspiration; the second, I give priority to my
perception of the imperatives of construction. And it seldom happens that the second
draft in no way reflects the first.
One of the tests to which I submit my poems consists in writing them and then
forgetting them for a long period. And when I come back to visit them, my criterion for
poetic judgment is how closely they resemble me. If I recognise the poem, if I see it is
imitating me or that I am, I abandon it. But if I have the feeling that the piece is the
work of another poet, who has overtaken the poet I was, I then declare it a new poem.
But in the end, whom does this secret concern?

Few are the poets born poetically only once. I myself was born gradually and by
contractions, and I continue to learn the hard march on the long path of the poem I have
not yet written.

Translated from French

by Lulu Norman

Mahmoud Darwish wrote this Preface to the new French anthology of his work ‘Poesie:
La Terre nous est Ètroite’ (Gallimard, March 2000).
It is published in translation here with his agreement.

Tahar Ben Jelloun is a man the most concerned about time that I know. That is to say,
time which passes, time which urges us on and engages us, and this time which is ours,
sometimes so difficult and unjust, the heir to scandals and the carrier of barely
perceptible change. When I think of Tahar Ben Jelloun, it is the memory of our stay in
Haiti that comes to me, perhaps rightly so, as there, on this island far from France, and
at that exceptional time for a Haiti newly returned to democracy, after the drama of
Duvalier and the evil era of Jean-Claudism, we were in ideal circumstances to speak
together and get to know each other better.
It was hot. At the end of every afternoon, after walking along the burning and violent
roads of Port au Prince, we would find ourselves on the hotel patio, in the freshness of
an internal garden, drinking tea and talking.

What we said had less importance than the place, this sort of theatre where our
friendship was sealed. Like a ritual, Tahar Ben Jelloun stripped off his city clothes and
donned his long white jellaba with soft leather Turkish slippers. Emanating from him
was an aura of languid dignity that his words and ironical look belied. With his
measured gestures, his regular features, and the glistening reflection of the tiles of the
old hotel, he looked more like the figure of a Greek philosopher, as I imagine them to be
at the time of Anaxagoras or Socrates, when they combined poetry, deed and thought –
doesn’t one say of Fez, his home town, that it has been with pride and refinement, the
Athens of Morocco? Our presence on this patio, as much as that of the other
participants of this meeting, was the proof that something had truly changed in Haiti,
and that hope could be born there again.

I had read Tahar Ben Jelloun before finding him again. I loved the fervour of his poetry
in Les Amandiers sont morts de leurs blessures [The Almond trees have died of their
wounds], the truth of his novels, the portraits of women both weak and powerful like
mythological figures, and the world that they depicted, with the sounds, tastes and
smells of Morocco, like a festival of the senses, a glorification of life in its mÈlange of
suffering and pleasure.
But it is from this meeting, I believe, that our friendship dates, the feeling of belonging
to the same family, of sharing the same quest. Thanks to such moments, just like a
peaceful break in the violence of history, I was discovering another Tahar, the bearer of
a very ancient wisdom, inherited from Moroccan civilisation, born of the vital force of
Africa and of Andalusian complexity. His look, his natural elegance, his taste for
sharing, the seriousness with which he addressed himself to everyone, gave a particular
meaning to these moments, as if we had been invested with a mission of witness. In
Haiti, in Port au Prince, capital of the oldest democracy in the world, this mission had
meaning.

Tahar Ben Jelloun is a poet. He belongs, I would like to say, of course, to that long line
which unites Andalusian poetry with the contemporary Arab world, from Ibn
Gouzman to Mahmoud Darwish, and one of whose junctures is found in Latin-
American literature from Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz right up to Xavier Villaurrutia and
Octavio Paz. One often asks oneself why, in the Arab world, and to a lesser degree in
the Latin-American world, poetry has kept such an importance, such an influence.
Without doubt it has to be asked why the West was turned away from this mode of
thought.
Tahar Ben Jelloun is one of the rare writers in the French language – with Jean Grosjean
– who expresses himself with as much strength and truth in both genres. When I read
Moha le fou, Moha le sage, La PriËre de l’Absent, L’Enfant de sable (The Sand Child) or
La Nuit sacrÈe (The Sacred Night), what stirs me is the power of the sensations, and this
superior logic which commands no other evidence but passion. With these I follow the
same structure and texture as in Les Amandiers sont morts de leurs blessures or L’Insu
du souvenir or La remontÈe des cendres (The Raising of the Ashes). It is that either
voice of Tahar Ben Jelloun is subordinated to the project which was defined years ago
by the Mexican poet Jorge Cuesta when he wrote: “Poetry is a method of analysis, an
instrument of investigation, similar to dance. Here, the hidden can reveal itself, ideas
and bodies can undress.” (Critica, October 1927.)

A poet: a man, who more than a language, has a way of being. If Tahar Ben Jelloun, like
Grosjean, is showing us that poetry and the novel cannot be separated, it is because he
needs both voices. In his novels, he has time at his disposal. The universe he constructs
is precise, oneiric, he invents or refashions myths, invites us to look back into the past.
The big question that he poses is of origin, sadness, and joy, all mixed together as in
childbirth.
Harrouda, the tales of Premier amour est toujours le dernier, the meditation in Jour de
silence ‡ Tanger (Silent Day in Tangier) are nourished by the same substance as the
poems of Discours du chameau (The Camel’s Speech), the places of Fez, or even Moha’s
final confession. Truth, lucidity to the point of bitterness, and also an explosion of
sensations, like the boundaries of an internal continent:

Il est un pays
dit par lueur du temps
‡ l’insu du souvenir
(There is a country
recounted by the gleam of time
without the knowledge of memory)

A poet, a man whose anger sometimes overflows, indignation in the face of injustice
and corruption, in the face of modern colonialism, which Florence Nightingale said,
more than 100 years ago, was a crime dressed in the clothes of respectability. The
indignation which animates most of the novels, from Yeux baisseÈs to L’Homme rompu
(English edition: Corruption) or L’Ange aveugle (English edition: State of Absence),
takes a prophetic tone in the poems, an avenging accent. In the speech of a Rafah man
to his son, protesting about the small piece of ground and the three almond trees
destroyed for no reason by the Israeli army. In the poem of September 1970, in the
memoire rompue, the corrupted memory, when the calamity of the Palestinian people
becomes for the poet a fertile soil, nourished with the blood of young men sacrificed
and the tears of mourning girls, and when the anguish of a war without hope opens up
onto what Jalal Eddine R°mi called “the dawn of death”.

Poet, novelist, story-teller, philosopher – and my impression gathered in that old

Haitian hotel did not betray me – there is all that in the character of Tahar Ben Jelloun.
This multiple voice mixes lyricism with mockery, the real with the dream. The
indignation never strikes so strongly as in the poem he wrote at the time of the Gulf
War, that zone of silence. The French language has the honour of having served the
poem of La RemontÈe des cendres, he was the only one to have spoken when everyone
in France was silent and bowed their heads.

Ce corps qui fut un rire

br°le ‡ prÈsent
cendres emportÈes par le vent jusqu’au fleuve
et l’eau les reÁoit comme les restes de larmes heureuses
Cendres d’une mÈmoire o_ perle une petite vie bien simple, une vie
sans histoire, avec un jardin, une fontaine et quelques livres.
Cendres d’un corps ÈchappÈ ‡ la fosse commune offertes ‡ la tempÍte des sables.
(This body that was all laughter
is now burning.
Ashes carried away by wind to the river
and the water receives them like the ghosts of happy tears.
Ashes of memory adorned by a very simple little life, a life
with no history, with a garden, a fountain and a few books.
Ashes of a corpse reprieved from an unmarked grave that are offered to the tempests of
sand.)

The multiple voice of Tahar Ben Jelloun resonates into the heart of his audience. It
speaks also of a love of life, the regret of a scorned childhood, the necessary
permanence of memory. What it says, with its words, its roots, its colour, and its light,
has become part of ourselves, and we cannot do without it. Never have we had more
need for the poet, to give us the hope of brotherhood.

La grenade rouge et juteuse

lourde de grains et de souvenirs
tombe avec la lune
dans les mains des enfants nus.
(The red and juicy pomegranate grenade
heavy with seeds and memories
falls with the moon
into the hands of naked children.)

Translated from French by Margaret Obank

The Milk of Insomnia

I open my eyes and the milk of insomnia trickles down. The darkness of the soul gnaws
at me so that I am more fragile than the shadow, which collapses before the first light. I
am clouded like a copper sky and I almost suffocate when I look, but I only see a spot of
fog. The cloud of memory erased all that was before my eyes and now I spend the night
gazing at stars that erupt from the sky’s edge. I listen to the hushed fire as it devours the
trees. If I shut my eyes for a moment, the bird of pain rises from the heart’s well. I sleep
with my eyes wide open so that I never miss a dream and so that I can dream under the
sky of insomnia.

The Beginning of the World

Give me some gold, O Sun: My heart is brackish like the wall’s water.
Give me some blueness, O morning: My eyes are pale from so much sleeplessness.
Give me some clouds, O sky: The blood of eternity is trickling down my face!
Give me some warmth, O night: My soul is depressed and barren, like the beginning of
the world

Coincidence

How were you able to see at once: a glass and an apple, a statue and a rifle, a woman
and a cage? When you started to collect all you saw, you found yourself unable to
sketch even a passing image. What was missing was a thread and perhaps more glass
so that these would all coalesce in an enchanting image. You then knew that the glass
was not a glass, nor the apple and apple, or the statue. . . You had to search for their
secrets. Sleeping in the well of your eyes, in the light of the absent mirror, in the ray
glistening on the side of your face.

Translated by Sinan Antoon

from the poet’s collection
Saraj al-Fitna [The Lamp of Enchcantment],
Dar An-Nahar, Beirut, 2000

NB: These three poems were read by the translator at the Banipal celebration of
Lebanese poets at Poets House in New York on 23 May 2007

Abdo Wazen will be reading at the Ledbury Poetry Festival on Saturday 7 July at
2.30pm. For more information click here

I don’t mind,
when I look,
absent-mindedly,
from the edge of fifty –
the commotion of pedestrians on a wide street,
down there,
where the shops are,
the taxicabs,
a bunch of students and workers and the unemployed,
policemen,
fathers who are looking for a safe place
in which to keep the pleasures of seeking,
the hardships of seeking,
day by day,
until the seeking day is over,
and the shortest among them,
the most short-lived,
finds refuge in a night of doubts and suspicion.

I don’t mind,
at sunset,
men who drag the disappointments of hardships into lit houses
with the fever of hope
alone
if there is any hope left

And I don’t mind –

when I look,
absent-mindedly –
days I should have lived,
or the shadow I used to be should have lived,
or the person who was for years in my company

And years elapse

like a silent dialogue
like a speeding bus
ahead of me
filled with those who live without me, here
or there

As if these were the memories of the person

I’ve always wanted to be
As if these were memories I’ve read in a book
which I then lost
a book borrowed by a friend then lost
or
maybe I sold it to a book peddler
a basket weaver
who will carry it to the end of the world
and barter it for a loaf of bread
a drink
a warm cup of soup

And I don’t mind

when I look
absent-mindedly
at me
the one who doesn’t mind

For I don’t care what happens metres away

miles away
cities
and seas
and tales
away from the gate of my absent-mindedness

Translated by Anton Shammas

From the poet’s collection of the same title
Tafseer Al-Rukham, [The Interpretation of Marble], Beirut, 2006.

Bassam Hajjar will be reading at the Ledbury Poetry Festival on Saturday 7 July at
2.30pm. For more information click here

Closing his Eyes

A quarter of an hour or less is the time he spends on his bicycle each morning to reach
the health centre. When he once tried the distance on foot it did not take him much
longer. Yet he went back to riding the bicycle. He would ride close to the pavement
waiting for the cars to clear out of the way so he could close his eyes and let the world
recede. He would let it slip by on both sides without attempting to notice it. This did
not always happen because traffic was at its heaviest during that hour. But that
momentary state, once it descended upon him, would fill him with a rare sense of
happiness that would last him the whole day.

He liked to stand his bicycle against the wall of the medical storage facility, relishing the
beauty of that moment, the moment when he had closed his eyes and continued to
pedal, pushing through the tender grey darkness pierced by a distant blur of light. He
could not tell whether his happiness was caused by the darkness whose recesses he
navigated, or by the light whose source he could not distinguish. The quiet of the health
centre augmented his chance to sense this morning happiness and he still had an hour
before it became very busy, when he would not be able to turn in on himself. The
patients, lined up in front of the cashier’s window, would not leave any time for that.
He would ask each of them their name and age and write them down on an
appointment slip. Then he would rewrite them in each of their folders. After that he
would inquire as to the symptoms, not to make a diagnosis but to refer the patients to
the right doctors, noting his comments in the corner of the appointment slip: general,
dermatology, pediatrics, etc. Then he would collect the fee as he moved on to the next
slip.

Reaching the last slip on the appointment book would remind him of the rapid passage
of time. He would pull out another appointment book and thumb through it, making
sure all the cards had been stamped. His workday apparatus is one and a half
appointment books. Sometimes a little more or a little less, but always fluctuating
within this range, as if sickness can afflict only a certain number of people every day.
After that the number of drop-in patients decreases until they almost or completely
disappear toward midday. Often he would remain seated on his chair until the end of
his shift. He has no desire to socialise with the employees of the centre as they gather,
without prior plan, in the pharmacy, nursing room or laboratory to eat the food they
have brought from home and sip tea as they chat, moving casually from one subject to
another. On the few occasions he decided to join them he could not stop himself from
closing his eyes as if to allow the things happening around him to recede with the same
ease with which he let the world around him recede every morning. The last time he
did that, the silence of his colleagues surprised him. He thought about the moments of
detachment without opening his eyes, and then, as their silence continued, he opened
them and saw that they were staring at him. Their hands were holding their food
containers and teacups and their eyes gawped at him. He found himself fumbling to
conceal embarrassment and heard his voice quietly tell them that he had not slept well
the night before. He could hear their voices rise once he had shut the door behind him.

He started filling his time by organising the patients’ files. He would draw slots with
horizontal and vertical lines, and stamp the next day’s appointment slips. After eating
his lunch he would fill his white teacup with the little strawberry on a thin stem painted
on it. The cup would sit on the table until the end of the workday because he preferred
drinking his tea in distant sips, relishing the bitterness that intensified as the tea became
colder. He would contemplate the teacup on the table and think that the tiny strawberry
was inappropriate for a cup of that size. He would wonder again: couldn’t it have been
just a tad larger?

After returning he would take a look from the top pane of the window of his cashier’s
room at the hollow dirt field beyond the health centre’s fence. He would envision the
commotion the boys would make as they played soccer. He had not seen boys play
there before but he was certain they would not leave a plot of land that spacious
without fixing their two goalposts on it.

This time he saw a white car approach slowly and park in the middle of the field (few
cars pass this field, most of them mini cabs). He estimated that the car had broken
down, and waited for the driver to get out to open the bonnet. He got out indeed, but
did not walk toward the bonnet. He leant against the door and pulled out a pack of
cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He took out a cigarette, lit it, and began smoking. Two
men got out of the car after him. One of them put his hand on the shoulder of the other,
who was blindfolded, while pushing him toward the driver, who took hold of the man
and forced him violently to his knees. At that moment the health centre cashier sensed
the warmth of the teacup. He placed it back on the table and withdrew his hand,
surprised by its trembling. He resumed his watching. One of the two men pulled out a
gun and shot the blindfolded man three times in the head.

On his way home the cashier closed his eyes. He continued pedalling as the crowd
thinned out in the streets around him. Unusually, he did not feel himself move in his
grey darkness, and did not wonder about his distant blur of light. And closing his eyes
this time, there was the hand jerking back at each shot and the head convulsing.

Basra, 12 May 2006

Translated by Yasmeen Hanoosh from the story’s online publication on

www.kikah.com, August 2006. This story was winner of the Kikah best short story
award, Summer 2006

A Cup of Tea with Mrs Robinson

I had the scenario all drawn up in my mind, and was going over it several times: How
you’d open the door, and I’d just fling myself in your arms, sobbing, too agitated to
control my nervousness. Then I’d tell you about the incident. But first, I have to stay
calm and collected so that I can recount every step of it, then I’ll give full rein to the
tears I have been holding back for more than an hour.
But I should have been imagining the details of our forthcoming meeting, because it
was those details that had stopped me from collapsing in the street. And I held back my
tears so as not to arouse people’s pity or draw the attention of the bus passengers after
the shock I had sustained.
I imagined how I’d walk into the room after ringing the bell. “I won’t use the key,” I
said to myself, “and I won’t ring the bell for too long so as not to scare you. When you
open the door, you’ll notice that I’m covering my right cheek with my hand, and I’ll
begin to tell the story that injured my pride today. After I calm down, I’ll tell you I just
could not leave my bruised face exposed, like naked genitalia. True, I was a victim of
violence; but, you know me very well, and you also know how much I hate adopting
the behaviour and mindset of the victim. You remember when we came to this country,
running away from two repressions: the terrorism of the state and the terrorism of the
fundamentalists. You also remember the day we applied for political asylum here. That
day I spoke harshly to the British Immigration Officer, saying to him, “My husband, my
daughter and I won’t stay here once the dangers that threaten our lives have been
removed. We do not dream of your country as an alternative paradise; for us, it is just a
refuge that gives us temporary security.”
You didn’t feel too comfortable with my reaction, and you criticized me when we left
the office. I spoke to the British Immigration Officer as if our presence in his country
were a favour, not a request for safety.
“You shouldn’t have spoken to him in that tone,” you said, without looking at me, as
we walked towards the train station from the Home Office in Croydon.
The biting wind made me feel uneasy, as did your unfairness towards me. Then in a
tone that you did not quite appreciate, I said: “But the Immigration Officer interrogated
us as if we were criminals trying to sneak over across the borders of his country.”
You kept quiet, as you always do when you don’t like what I say. You just let me talk
and work myself up while you relapse into silence, full of pride. Your silence angers me
at a time when what I really need is to talk to someone, which in your eyes turns me
into a talkative woman.
Anyway, today’s scenario, with all its numerous probabilities, was a total failure. When
I rang the doorbell, my heart was pounding, fearful of the next moment that would
shock you and make you relive with me what had happened. . How come the
unexpected had happened: the very thing we had been running away from in a
country that in recent years had been too hard with us? This incident would make us
reconsider the idea of exile and safety, should we go through the same experience
again. But when you appeared at the door, both your hands were full – one holding a
glass of wine and the other a cigarette, which was why you could not do anything else
with them, such as hug me or stroke my hair. It wasn’t you who opened the door for
me, it was me who burst in because you did not hear the bell; you and your friends
were too busy discussing national issues on the balcony overlooking that beautiful
hillside in Hampstead. You must have seen me leaving the room in a hurry, it was
presumably why you followed me. You did not bother to ask “What’s the matter?”
about my right cheek, which I was hiding with my hand. Instead you said: “I couldn’t
pick up our daughter; I was busy with the guests. Can you collect her?”
In this way, you rubbed salt in the wound to make it hurt more. At that moment, I was
sitting silently on the edge of the bed, recovering from the blows of the many chilly
questions that now dealt me slaps on both cheeks this time.
“Is it your tooth?” you wondered.
“No, I was attacked in the street!”
Your hands still held the glass of wine and the cigarette, whose ash was getting longer.
Then you walked towards the window to flick the ash outside as if you did not quite
understand what was going on; or maybe you understood it, and you, the philosophy
professor, were analyzing it with logic, allowing your mind to drift a little.
You asked me to describe the woman who assaulted me and whether I knew her. You
turned into an investigating officer at a time when what I really needed was tender
loving care. Your frowning face and your hair, which is prematurely assailed with grey,
turned you into a towering statue and made me look small sitting on the edge of the
bed – a dwarf awaiting a kind gesture. You looked down on me from above and from a
distance you examined the bruises on my cheek, which I had got from being banged
into the wall. Had it not been for the fact that I shielded my face with my hand, the
injury would have been worse.
The story had lost its fire, and the scenario which was supposed to be a relief from the
shock and humiliation had been lost. An hour ago, as I was walking in a crowded street,
a large woman approached me. A few metres before she got to where I was, I noticed
that she was coming very fast towards me. It did not occur to me that she could have
malicious intentions – my intelligence failed me as the woman rammed me deliberately
with her fat shoulder, throwing my frail body off balance. “Go to hell!” she screamed. If
I had not protected my face with my hand, my head would have sustained very severe
injuries.
I did not tell you the story as I would have liked it to be told. You turned the details of it
into simple answers to questions such as ‘how’, ‘when’, ‘what for’, and ‘what makes
you think it was racist? You were not involved in an intellectual debate, Mr Political
Refugee; you were in the bedroom with your wife who had not yet recovered from the
shock.
If the assailant did not mean to do what she did, she would have stopped after she
heard my moans of pain and after passers-by had gathered around me. Instead she
walked on in a triumphant way. “Why me?” Isn’t that what you wanted to say? Very
well! Her aggression may have been a spontaneous reaction to the acts of violence that
had taken place in Manchester a few weeks before between Asians and the English. It
may be that the woman did not like my dark complexion; you know that here they
classify people on the basis of the colour of their skin: White European; White Non-
European – specify; White from other ethnic origins – specify; African Black; Caribbean
Black – specify; Black from other ethnic origins – specify. The administration forms
mention all skin colours. Which skin category do I belong to in the street? To the dark
skin colour of North Africa? To the skin colour of the Arabs? Or should I be more
specific? Was it gratuitous violence, the kind that takes place every day: an old man
attacked by teenagers in his own home; an old woman robbed of her pension money
(which she had just collected from the post office) and thrown to the ground? It may be
that the woman who assaulted me was paranoid and I was just one of her victims.
Perhaps there are other motives. But the moment did not lend itself to that many
possibilities.
What was needed afterwards was love and affection. Anger froze inside me but it did
not subside. Your hands were still holding the glass of wine and the cigarette, and your
two friends were waiting for you on the balcony on a beautiful summer night the kind
of which is seldom seen in London. Is it my mistake it was the wrong time to be
assaulted? Would you have been more caring if you had been alone in the house or if
the weather had not been so good?

***

It began to drizzle, casting reflections on the bus windows. The bright scenes inside and
outside the bus interweaved with scenes from my own life: love, marriage, political
activity for both of us, the following of political activists, the decision to leave the
country after receiving death threats, our arrival in here, my pursuing of my studies in
electrical engineering, my daughter Nadiya, whom I leave with a baby-sitter when her
father is not in the house, my working in cafÈs in my spare time distributing colourful
leaflets for pizza restaurants and supermarkets for a very meagre income that meets
only some of our needs. Nadiya was just four years old when she began to walk with
me in the streets, racing me to people’s letter boxes to deliver the leaflets. The two of us
turned exhaustion into play and laughter, and that relieved the feeling of guilt which
had taken hold of me for making my daughter work so that we could eat.
Scenes flowed fast as I looked to my right through the window that was now misty
from the rainy weather that had put an end to the beautiful London summer day; or
was the veil across my eye the result of a tear I had tried hard to hold back? I don’t want
to be pitied by people around me or by those who feel exhausted after a long day’s
work or on whom the stressful details of their lives have taken a heavy toll.
But why don’t I remember the happy moments: my success at the British university,
which earned me two job offers with excellent packages? Why weren’t you happy, like I
was, when I read you the letter I received from the telephone company: they were
interested in my MA thesis on Communications Technology and offered me a job with a
hard-to-resist package ?
“Congratulations!” you said unenthusiastically, as though you did not believe I could
make it in a foreign country, as if you were angry at your “comrade in arms” who was
not much of a comfort to you in your loneliness, and who did not abandon herself
wholly to exile. Was this the reason why you were so quiet just now? You felt good to
see that slap; it restored equilibrium in your mind to my image – the wife of an exiled
politician, a stranger in a foreign land, a woman who shouldn’t be viewed as a refugee
and who deserves praise and acknowledgement for the success she has been able to
achieve alone, a comrade whose success in her studies should not necessarily earn her
an A-Plus. And why shouldn’t the progress she’s made be a MINUS so that her
personality reflects the reality of her existence in the land of exile?
When I opened the door and went down the stairs, you followed me, shouting from the
top of the staircase: “Where are you going? You said you would collect our daughter.”
I did not answer. I left the house thinking about Mrs Robinson the English woman who
baby-sits our little one, Nadiya, when both of us are out of the house. A few hours later,
you joined your friends, ignoring the fact that Mrs Robinson is very punctual and that
she does not like it when children stay with her until after six – a typical English woman
who is very fussy about time! I will now face her scolding as she opens the door to me,
pursing her thin lips, and revealing the lines round them.
When she saw me, Mrs Robinson screamed out: “Oh, my God! Who did that to you?” I
burst into tears. The child was asleep inside and she forgot to scold me. Mrs Robinson
held my hand between hers for a long time, stroking it lovingly, having made me sit on
a sofa that was once comfortable but whose colour had faded with time. She was
consoling me while I was examining her face trying to explore it anew: is she the
woman we used to liken to Mrs Thatcher because of her hairdo and her determination?
She brought a compress soaked in cold water and placed it on my swollen cheek,
saying: “We should report this to the police tomorrow. We just cannot let that wicked
woman get away with it. But now, just relax, dear, while I make you a nice cup of tea.
Tea will warm up your cold hands.”

London, 2002
Translated by Ali Azeriah
From the title story in author’s collection [Finjan Shy ma’a Mrs Robinson], Dar Merit,
Cairo, 2004

Nihad Sirees

A State of Passion

That was on the 27 of September 1936 . . . , the old man started to recount, and the train
was approaching the ‘Damascus’ station in Aleppo, blowing its whistle.
That was on the 27 of September 1936 . . . , the old man started to recount, and the train
was approaching the ‘Damascus’ station in Aleppo, blowing its whistle.
Widad remained seated and didn’t move to look out of the window as most passengers
did. She tried not to look at the man sitting across from her by the compartment door.
During the whole trip, he had kept looking at her with greedy eyes. She hoped he
would leave his place and go out to the narrow corridor of the Orient Express and look
out of the window as the other passengers were doing. Her eyelids fluttered as she
checked discreetly to see if he was still looking at her. She really hoped he would take
his eyes off her and look at the sky, the trees and the buildings that started to appear
through the window, or at the Eiffel Tower picture that hung just above her head on the
wooden wall of the compartment. But he didn’t take his eyes off her. She saw
something frightening in his eyes. Her mother had always warned her about men. A
slight smile danced on his lips, but she shrank back and sat very close to the window.
She looked down at her hands which were resting in her lap.
She closed her eyes for a while and instead concentrated on listening to the outer world.
The train pulled into the station and was still blowing its whistle. She heard cheering
outside. She overheard some people say that there were some VIPs on board and that a
big reception was awaiting them. She wanted to get up and see for herself. But that man
was still peering at her. If she got up, she thought to herself, he would have the chance
to observe her body.She decided to remain seated until the train came to a complete
halt. Then she would try to escape. But what if all the other passengers got off the train
and she was left alone with him? She shivered at the thought and felt her face grew hot
and red. These were really frightening moments to her. She had the same feeling when
her mother warned her of what men could do to a little girl in the dark of the night
while lightning and thunder tore the sky apart. Her underlying fear of men was based
on the admonitions of her ailing mother. Now there was an actual cause for her
trepidation – a man sitting across from her. He was staring at her all the time, while all
the passengers were busy looking through the windows, shouting zealous slogans
against France and cheering the delegation. But what was that delegation? And what
did the word delegation mean? And why were all these people gathering there to
receive the delegation? And where was it coming from?
She had waited for more than three hours on the platform at the Midan Ikbis station for
the train coming from Istanbul bound for Aleppo. They had sent the fool Abdo Sinkeh
to see her off at the station. A deranged and retarded youth, once when he crossed the
Turkish border (Midan Ikbis is on the Syrian border with Turkey), a Turkish soldier had
stabbed him with a bayonet, leaving him lame. That’s why everybody called him
Sinkeh [bayonet]. The big gap between his top front teeth, which made him look even
funnier, produced a whistling sound when he spoke. Widad had enjoyed his company
before her mother died. He was keen on visiting their home to help them and to amuse
a gracious Widad. She laughed heartily when he moved, ran, or spoke. He would be so
happy when he saw her laughing that he would lie on his back, laugh and lift his hands
and legs in the air. Sometimes, when he touched her casually, a strange shudder
coursed through his body. After that he would feel relieved and happy for the rest of
the day, not knowing why his energy had flagged. Then he would run and sit under a
tree. She didn’t know why he behaved that way after his hand touched her, but Shaykh
Abdel Sabour, the imam of the local mosque, saw him doing this once, chided him and
ran after him holding a pomegranate switch in his hand. Widad wondered why the
Imam had become so furious. She hated the Imam that evening, when she saw him
sitting by her sick mother’s bed, whispering to her and looking at Widad. Because she
hated him, she thought he was complaining to her mother. That evening, her mother
repeated her warnings against men, but Widad didn’t consider Abdo a man, and she
wasn’t afraid of him.
During the three hours they spent waiting for the Orient Express at the station, Abdo
Sinkeh didn’t stop crying. He was crying because he knew he wouldn’t see Widad
again. Though he was dim-witted, he knew quite well that her mother wanted Widad to
go away to Aleppo after her death. He saw Sheikh Abdul Sabour handing her a letter
and some money. He caught a glimpse of the address scribbled on the envelope. The
Imam asked Abdo to accompany her to the station and wait with her till the train,
which was frequently late, arrived, since waiting would be hard for an eighteen-year-
old girl. Widad was afraid because she was travelling by train for the first time in her
life. She assured him that she would come back soon. Abdo was sad at her departure
and wept, but when the train – preceded by its prolonged whistle – drew into the
station, Abdo’s mood changed suddenly. He laughed and jumped joyfully at the sight
of the train, its carriages decked with flags and decorations. Seeing this made him lose
what remained of his mind. Now she burst into tears, while he was laughing, oblivious
to her. With difficulty she held him still and calmed him down. Then she squeezed his
hand forcefully and drew him into an undecorated carriage. There she held him with
both hands to encourage herself to quit the village that she had not left since she was
born.
She went to find a seat in one of the compartments, lifted her bag onto the rack and
settled into the seat. Abdo was standing at the platform, still feeling his hand which she
had held moments before, watching Widad through the window. Tears were streaming
down her cheeks. Before the train started to move again, Abdo had the feeling that he
was the happiest person on earth. He jumped and laughed to make his girl laugh, but
instead, she burst into tears. When Abdo and the stations buildings vanished, she
wiped her tears. When she turned her face, her eyes came into direct contact with the
man sitting across from her, who was looking at her stealthily so that the other
passengers in the compartment wouldn’t notice him.
Voices mingled with the faint whistle of the train, and cheers mixed with the rattling
sound of the wheels. The sound of approaching music grew louder. Widad suddenly
felt that the station into which the train was pulling was familiar to her. Without
looking at the man she quickly turned her face to the window. There was a huge crowd
of people gathered there to receive the delegation. People were cheering
enthusiastically and waving their flags in the direction of the first carriage. A band of
the gendarmes was playing military marches. She felt relieved.
“These crowds are here to receive the delegation . . .” She turned around, excited. The
man was speaking to her, getting closer to the window. At that point, passengers re-
entered the compartment to collect their baggage. She wanted to get up, but she knew if
she did, the man could touch her. She clung to her seat. For the first time, she looked at
him closely. His bloodshot eyes were still staring at her, penetrating her. He looked at
her strangely. At that instant she wanted to escape. It was risky. She moved restlessly in
her seat, and looked at him imploringly, willing him to leave her in peace. Alone now in
the compartment with her he reached out his hand and touched her face. She stepped
back trembling. The music grew louder. She thought to herself that if she shouted
nobody would hear her. “Please!” she implored. But his hand was touching her cheeks,
chin and nose. She pushed him away. He fell on the other seat. She picked up her bag
and ran. When she looked back, he was still settled in his seat and smiling at her
rapaciously. She was afraid he would follow her. She ran into the corridors looking for
an exit. It was impossible, the crowds blocked all the doors on both sides. She had to
run on to another carriage.
The band was still playing military marches. Some people mounted the train and ran
along the roof to the delegation’s carriage so they could have a close look at its members
as they get off the train. When Hashem Attasi, the head of the delegation got off first,
there was a loud burst of cheering. The crowd was pushing to break through the cordon
made by the French gendarmes. The gendarmes pushed the people back from the train
so the High Commissioner, Monsieur de Martel, could come closer and shake hands
with the Nationalists who were arriving home.
The High Commissioner, in his white uniform decorated with many medals,
approached. He embraced Hashem Attasi, wanting to scent the fragrance of Paris in
autumn on him. Then he shook hands with the rest of the members of the delegation
who had begun to get off the train. They stood for a while on the steps of the carriage
waiting to shake hands with the Commissioner. Every time a new member of the
delegation stepped out, he was received with a storm of applause and cheers.
Though their journey had taken six long days, they didn’t look tired. They looked smart
and handsome. Before reaching Aleppo they had shaved, washed, and changed their
clothes. Some people cried when the delegation members stepped out of the train. The
High Commissioner stood in the middle to have a picture taken with the delegation.
The photographer took special care to get in the picture the train which had transported
the delegation from metropolitan Paris to Aleppo, a French colony. As the camera
flashed Widad emerged holding her bag in her hand. Hence she appeared in the
commemorative picture that was published by all the newspapers in Aleppo and in the
Capital (Widad, with her innocent look, hovering over the head of M. de Martel).
Someone affirmed that he saw her on the front page of a well-known Parisian
newspaper. The picture was enlarged and hung on the wall of the High Commissioner’s
office, and the National Bloc’s offices as well as in the houses of some of the delegation
members.
When the people saw her standing awed and innocent on the steps of the carriage,
voices died down. Almost complete silence. The only sounds were the music. Sergeant
Samuel, the band leader, was raising his hands to conduct the band, his face turned
towards Widad. The other members of the band were playing their instruments and
also looking at the villager who had suddenly popped out from the delegation’s
carriage, holding her old bag, with a scarf to hide her hair from men’s greedy eyes.
Even the ministers and the city notables who came to receive the delegation were
amazed by the sudden appearance of this beautiful villager. The only person who tried
to avert his eyes from her was the mufti, but he couldn’t. He thought she might be a
genie or a guardian angel descending from the heavens to protect the delegation. This
sudden silence baffled the High Commissioner. He turned around. It took him some
moments to realise what was really going on. He wondered why that girl was there.
Widad was confused by his stare and the looks of the members of the delegation.
Explaining the reason for her presence there she muttered: “I couldn’t find another
place to get off the train.”
At first, the High Commissioner didn’t understand what the girl said. He looked at her
in confusion. But when everyone burst into laughter at the situation (Aleppians have a
good sense of humour, despite what is said about them). Monsieur de Martel was
convinced it was a mere coincidence; so he ignored the village girl whose beauty had
attracted so much attention and asked the delegation to proceed. Cheers burst out again
and the music resumed. The French gendarmes pushed the people away to allow the
delegation to leave the station. Everyone wanted to see the head of the National Bloc
Hashem Attasi, who led the delegation, or to catch a glimpse of Sa’ad Eddin Jabri, the
handsome politician from Aleppo. Most people didn’t know who to look at since it was
very rare to see all those Nationalists and Syrian politicians and the French Generals
who were occupying the country together in one place and at one time.
The delegation left the station preceded by the High Commissioner, whose white
uniform was too big for him. They were followed by the people with the band still
playing popular melodies. Shortly after that, Widad found herself standing alone on the
platform with her bag. She was relieved but didn’t understand what was happening.
She had never dreamt that such a large crowd in a big city like Aleppo would greet her.
Had her deceased mother, who was resting in peace now in her grave in Midan Ikbis
village, known how warmly she was received at the station by the city men, of whom
she always warned her daughter, she would have changed her mind. As if in response
to her own concern, Widad shrugged her shoulders in silence. She then took out the
envelope with the address of the house she was going to. She picked up her bag and left
the station. As Sheikh Abdel Sabbur had instructed her, she waited for a coach. The
square was deserted now, and she could see the huge crowd walking behind the
coaches and the cars transporting the delegation and the other VIPs who had come to
receive them. Cheers and shouts mingling with the military marches could still be
heard.

* * *

The servant entered holding a kettle of hot tea in his hand. The old man paused and
waited while he poured the tea for us. I didn’t know whether the old man paused
because of his servant or because he needed a little rest. The servant poured the tea in
complete silence, and offered us the tea. If the old man had continued his story, I
wouldn’t have noticed the presence of the servant in the room. This dead silence that
ensued made me observe every movement the servant made. I felt uneasy about him,
just as I felt when I saw him at the doorway the first time. I thanked the servant politely,
and started to sip the hot tea to warm my cold bones. The moment he left the room and
closed the door the old man resumed his story in his soft voice.

. . . Widad left the station and waited outside for a full hour. A coach with a black
canopy drawn by a single horse stopped right in front of her. She handed the coachman
the envelope with the address, and sat comfortably in the back seat. The coach began to
move and Widad started to look with astonishment at the buildings on both sides of the
street. She wondered if the city looked the same when her mother had been there
eighteen years before.
Once her mother told her about the day when she left the city. She took the northbound
train from the same station. It was toward the end of the World War I, and thousands of
Turks were crowding the station, each struggling to find a place in one of those trains
heading to Turkey: ex-politicians, officers who had concealed their real ranks; old Walis
or governors; senior Ottoman officials; men on whom the Sultan had conferred the title
of Pasha, as well as governors of towns and districts. The station was also crowded with
prosperous women and well-fed children, as well as high-ranking officers’ mistresses
uncertain about their future.
Nobody cared about their appearance any more. They were carrying packages and
suitcases containing their savings or loot they had plundered and stolen from the towns
they ruled. Caravans were pouring into the station. Since the station was crammed with
people and their luggage, most of them left their stuff in piles outside the station and
decided to save their skins with their souls. When the train pulled in, shouts were
heard, and people began to push to secure a place on the train. Some people tried to
identify themselves as being such and such, but who gave a damn about ranks or titles
any more? Some of those who secured a place on a carriage were screaming because
they had lost a companion, a wife or a son.
With great difficulty, Widad’s mother had found a place in the cattle carriage. She was
in her fifth month of pregnancy. In order to win sympathy she tried to push out her
belly to make her pregnancy more conspicuous. She was an eye-witness to this tragic
end of Ottoman rule in Syria.
Orders were given for the train to leave late at night. Those who were getting away
with their lives begged the stationmaster to order the train to depart much earlier.
Rumors were spreading at lightning speed that the enemy forces were approaching the
city. At first, news had it that enemy troops had reached the Khan Al-Sabil area and by
the evening, the news confirmed that the British troops had occupied the town of
Sheikh Said, near Aleppo. Confusion and chaos spread. Women cried. Widad’s mother,
however, wasn’t much concerned since she was an Arab and was only concerned to
arrive in Turkey before the borders closed, so that she could see the Turkish officer,
Uzbashi Jawdat, who had planted his seed in her womb.
Because it was overloaded, the train started to move slowly but people on board felt
relieved that they would be safe at last. The men in the carriage began to notice Widad’s
mother. Eyes of both men and women followed her every movement, the men gazing
on her with lust and desire and the women with dislike and jealousy. This distracted
her from thinking of her beloved officer. She had to push away the men who tried to
cling to her in the dark carriage, their hot breath on her face. At the crack of dawn,
however, she was saved when the train stopped at Midan Ikbes station for water and
wood. Civilians were ordered to leave the train and proceed on their journey on foot to
leave room for injured soldiers and military equipment. They protested and cried, but
they had to leave the train. While the civilians who left the train walked on to Turkey,
Widad’s mother decided to stay in Midan Ikbis.
All the withdrawing troops had to pass through this station on their way to the Turkish
territories. So she stayed there waiting for the next train to look for her lover Yuzbashi
Jawdat. Days went by, but Yuzbashi Jawdat didn’t show up. When she heard that the
British troops were chasing the withdrawing Turkish troops, she was certain that she
had lost him forever. Since she couldn’t go back to Aleppo, she decided to stay in this
village until she gave birth to her child.
To be accepted in this village, she had to invent a different story. She created another
imaginary life. She couldn’t tell them the truth, which she had buried in her heart. She
told the local people that she was the wife of a Turkish officer, Yuzbash Jawdat, and
that all members of her family had died in the war. She also said that she was on her
way to Turkey to look for her husband but that the arrival of the British troops and the
battles between the two warring armies along the borders precluded her from crossing
the borders. She was a beautiful woman. The villagers had never seen such a beautiful
woman, not even among the high-class Turkish women who passed through the village
on their way to Istanbul. She had such an innocent and lovely face. With her tears she
could convince the stones, so why wouldn’t those simple villagers believe her. She gave
birth to her lovely baby girl and named her Widad. She worked hard; she did
everything she could to feed and raise her girl. When she grew up, Widad took after her
mother in her beauty, gentleness, innocence and charm. Some young villagers asked for
her hand in marriage, but the mother rejected them all. She didn’t even permit any man
to come near her house, except Abdo the fool, because she was sure he wasn’t harmful.
For unknown reasons she always taught her beautiful daughter to stay away from men.
She grew up filled with a fear of men and avoided them.
When the mother contracted tuberculosis and felt death approaching, she started to talk
to her daughter about life in the city and about some of her friends in Aleppo. She told
Widad that she wanted her to go there after her death. She told her that she had a dear
friend there named Khoja Bahira, and that she must go and see her. She said she would
give her a letter of introduction. But she asked her to forget the name of that woman for
the time being, and not to mention this name to any of the villagers. She also told her
not to ask any more questions about her.
The coachman turned around and looked furtively at her face. He murmured ma sha
alla. Widad was looking at the streets with sadness and amazement. Every street, alley,
or building reminded her of her dead mother. She imagined her walking arm in arm
with her Turkish officer, or crossing the street alone in front of the coach, peering at
men’s faces, looking for her man who was lost in the war. But why did her mother
refuse to go back to Aleppo? Why didn’t she take her there, or even describe it to her?
Everything was shrouded with mystery. Her mother died leaving a thousand questions
baffling Widad. Who was Khoja Bahira, and why was their friendship a well-kept secret
and why had she wanted Widad to go to see her after her death? As I said earlier, all
these mysteries were roaming in the mind of this beautiful girl.

* * *

The old man continued . . . Badiy’a (the mother) was beautiful and brave. She wasn’t as
shy as her daughter Widad. Perhaps because of her hard life, she brought up her
daughter differently so as to avoid the hardships she had experienced. All mothers
want their daughters to live a different life, especially Badiy’a, who ran away from her
parents’ house when the war broke out. At that time men were rarely seen on the
streets. They were either conscripted or had gone into hiding. That was men’s destiny.
The Turkish gendarmes rounded them up and bound them with ropes. Once picked up,
they vanished. Nobody, except God, knew their whereabouts.
That was the fate of her newly wed brother Mohammad. Her father managed to escape
and he used to send them provisions and money. The house was ruled by women. Her
mother was very strict and tough, and this fact prompted Badiy’a to run away to
Aleppo. To entertain her sisters and her brother’s wife, she used to tie a shawl around
her waist and dance.
Life in her town wasn’t that bad. Women there could make ends meet. In Aleppo
however, she saw hunger. Healthy men were not often seen in the streets. Once, she
saw an old man’s body lying at the side of a street. He had starved to death. Badiy’a
was frightened. She didn’t know what this city might hide for her, the city of which she
had heard a lot and of which she had dreamt for a long time. She thought the course of
things would go differently. She had fled from her strict mother to a city where the
inhabitants were starving. She thought of returning to her town and to her mother. She
was sitting curled up in the street, when she asked a passer-by for alms. He gave her a
piastre. He asked her if she could do anything other than begging. She said she could
wash, clean, cook and dance. Yes, she was daring and said she could dance as well,
though the only thing she knew was how to move her waist and breasts. It was good
that she mentioned dancing, since nobody cared about sweeping and cleaning in those
days when food was scarce. He asked her to accompany him. She followed him as she
bit off a piece of dried bread he had bought for her.

But where did that good man, who arrived at the right time, take her? I was extremely
eager to know what happened to Badiy’a. The old man’s interesting story overtook me
to the point I forgot to drink my tea. He said that if I wanted to hear the story till the
end I should be patient. I apologised. When I sipped my tea, I realized it was cold. I
want to ask the reader to listen to the mother’s story first, before the daughter’s. What
was interesting in this old man was that he jumped from one story to another. Just
when he was about to finish his first story, he would jump to another. I didn’t know
why, but still it was interesting.
Now let’s go back to Badiy’a’s story, here I must beg the reader’s forgiveness for my
interference. But I feel I had to interfere from time to time, since my meeting with the
old man and listening to his story is a story in itself.
The old man went on to say that the man took her to the house of Khoja Bahira, a
famous singer in the city at that time. He sold the girl to her for nine gold liras. Badiy’a
never saw that man again.
“Did he sell her, that rascal?” I asked him angrily.
“Yes he did,” the old man retorted, “But he didn’t do that in the real sense of the word.
When she told him she could dance, he was certain Khoja Bahira would reward him.
That was normal. Bahira was a well-known singer in the town, and liked to take
beautiful girls into her group. Furthermore, she needed a dancer in her troupe, and
that’s why she rewarded him.”
When Khoja Bahira set her eyes on Badiy’a, she was astounded by her beauty. She had
dazzling good looks. She was like a diamond that fell into the hands of Khoja Bahira,
who of course knew her real value. As you know, back then women in this profession
were not usually beautiful; some of them even ugly. They were usually plump and
dark-skinned with sagging flesh. Most of them were old, except for the Jewish girls.
They were attractive, and they were in demand for work in the town’s theatres. The
Jewish girl Jamila, for example, made men sigh deeply for her, not only because of her
beautiful voice but also because of her striking looks, the suppleness and softness of her
body and her fair complexion. Furthermore, she played the qanoun beautifully.
Khoja Bahira immediately took Badiy’a in and looked after her. She taught her how to
move properly. She also taught her all the arts and skills needed by a dancer, such as
how to keep her legs and torso straight. She taught her too how to move her waist in
harmony with her hands. Her movements were more manly, which women didn’t like,
especially Bahira. A belly dancer must be full of femininity. She taught her, and also
brought tutors to teach her those skills till she mastered the art of belly dancing. Bahira
was happy with the progress she had made.
However, Bahira’s figure was rather odd. Her face, body and movements were more
like a man’s than a woman’s. She even acted like them. She wore men’s clothes.
Sometimes she even wore a red fez. She liked others to think of her as a man. She wore
men’s trousers and shirts on stage. She also wore a watch with a chain dangling from
her small pocket. At weddings, her appearance excited the women. She didn’t give a
damn about the obscene comments and remarks some women made. She even
answered back with more obscene comments. She was more like a man, and foul-
tongued.
Bahira wasn’t her real name. Nobody knew what her real name was. Since she looked
masculine, some claimed that her name was Hussein or Abdul or any other man’s
name. Originally she came from the “Kastal al-Mushtt” quarter. She was her parents’
only child. Out of fear that she might be molested, her parents claimed since she was
born that she was a boy. They even had her hair cut like a boy. She used to play with
the boys as one of them. (This is true and her name was at that time Sobhi.) It was also
said that she was a leader of a gang of boys, and nobody suspected she was a girl. The
gang robbed homes and stole fruit from orchards. One day, the boys broke into a
prostitute’s house. She wept loudly and told them she had nothing of value and begged
them not to steal anything from her. Instead she proposed that they made love to her.
The boys liked the idea. But, Sobhi (Bahira) was afraid of being revealed and
desperately tried to dissuade them, but they insisted. They were eager to try to make
love to a woman, a thing which they had only heard of, and now the opportunity was
in their hands. There was no reason why Sobhi should prevent them from taking this
opportunity. They called him names and at last he consented. The boys went into the
prostitute’s room, one after the other. When they finished, they were happy and
relaxed. At last it was Sobhi’s turn, their leader having chosen to be last. When she went
into the room, the woman was lying on the bed with her legs wide open, exhausted.
Bahira had an urge to touch the prostitute’s body. She started to caress her. The
prostitute was surprised by this behaviour. Rather than make love to her as the other
boys did, she just caressed her, kissed her and stroked her body. It felt good. Bahira was
satisfied too. At that moment, Bahira found out she was attracted to her own sex.
Since then, she no longer cared if the boys discovered her real sex. Now she could make
love to the prostitute, just as the boys had done and be satisfied. She even suggested
that they visit the woman more frequently and that they pay the prostitute a certain
amount of money because she was so poor. Thus the boys became regular clients of the
prostitute and with every visit Bahira’s love of the woman’s body increased. She hated
men’s bodies.
One day, the prostitute told one of the boys that their leader wasn’t a real man and
didn’t make love to her as the other boys did; that she was satisfied with only caressing
her. Soon all the boys knew about it. They kept Sobhi under watch and soon found out
that he didn’t urinate standing as the other boys usually do, in fact they didn’t even see
him take a piss at all. He claimed that he didn’t feel like it when all the other boys stood
in a line and pissed. They felt it would be really shameful for the whole group if their
leader turned out to be an hermaphrodite, neither man nor woman. They hoped that
this wasn’t true. How could they believe a prostitute and suspect their leader? They
had to find out by themselves… but how? Did they dare to ask Sobhi? That was
impossible. Nobody could ask him such a question. It would be humiliating. What if
that bitch just wanted to make a rift among them to get rid of them?
Once they went for an outing to the Jiser al-Quiri area. They sat by the bank of the
Quieck river. They had stolen a chicken from a nearby field, plucked and grilled it. They
swam in the river, and dared each other to swim in the whirlpool which had drowned
many boys and men. When they were lying down on the grass relaxing, Sobhi, who
didn’t participate in their fun, was having a little nap on the grass. They made up their
minds. They wanted to know the truth. They bared their chests, and with a signal, all
the boys jumped on Sobhi. They held him firmly by his hands and legs, and one of them
pulled his trousers down and removed his shirt. When his private parts were revealed,
they were astounded. Sobhi wasn’t a boy. Why hadn’t it occurred to them that their
leader was a girl? Bahira was ashamed and went back home crying. The boys were
astonished. How could Bahira have cheated them all that time. But she looked like them
in everything. Her face, legs and hands were like those of a boy. She even had muscles,
and fought like boys. She resembled them in everything, except that she didn’t have
that thing they had between their legs. She could trick them because she never took a
piss in front of them. But what about her breasts? They were all 15 years old, and Bahira
should have had breasts like the girls of her age. Did she bind her breasts? They
expelled Bahira from their gang and selected a boy as their leader. The first decision
they took was to rape Bahira. But she was careful and escaped them. She took the
serious decision not to marry at all because men’s bodies revolted her.
Her hatred of men encouraged her to sing at weddings among women. When she was
eighteen her mother found out that she had a beautiful voice. Bahira came of age and
started to have dreams of making love to women.
Bahira had a good figure. Her body was taut. Her breasts grew bigger and it was
impossible for her to hide them by having them strapped. This no longer bothered her
since she didn’t like to mix with men. She wanted to associate with her own sex,
women, who created that atmosphere of friendliness and intimacy. In our country, only
a woman can enter the realm of women, even women who resembled men, such as
Bahira. When her mother discovered that her voice was sweet, she encouraged her to
sing when she had gatherings of women friends and neighbours. But it didn’t occur to
her mother that Bahira would one day become a singer at weddings. Bahira became a
well-known singer in the town. She was invited to sing at weddings, women’s
receptions, and baby showers, particularly if the newborn were boys. She was
accompanied by her musical band which consisted only of women. She went on s tage
wearing men’s clothes. Sometimes, she wore a red fez or drew a big moustache. She
always stuck a white flower in her jacket buttonhole. Her masculine manner and
gestures attracted women.
She was also known for her inclination towards women. News of her love and her
lovers were on every tongue in the salons, receptions and parties held in the hammam
(the public baths). She wasn’t ashamed of this news or rumours. On the contrary, she
was proud and would boast about her latest lovers. She fought fiercely to keep them
and would steal a girl from other envious and competitive ladies. Once, Khoja Bahira
won the heart of a blonde musician, who played the qanoun, stealing her from her
competitor Khoja Samah. Bahira convinced her to join her band too.
“So, do you know now why Khoja Bahira,” the old man asked, his face beaming with a
smile, “was happy when she set her eyes on Badiy’a, and why she gave the man the
nine gold liras as a reward?”
“Yes I do,” I said, “I believe she was strikingly beautiful. A charming girl fell into the
hands of an experienced woman who loved women. But, tell me . . . didn’t that arouse
the jealousy of the other musicians, especially the blonde qanoun player?”
“She was smitten with jealousy,” the old man said, “you don’t know this kind of
women very well. Sorry, I didn’t mean to underestimate your knowledge and
experience in life. But imagine a woman who is the subject of competition between two
women and who all of a sudden finds herself rejected, she sees all her lover's efforts
shift to a newcomer, whom she begins to teach the art of belly dancing while
concentrating all her attention on making her look prettier.”
“And what happened to the qanoun player?” I asked.
“She left Khoja Bahira and returned to her ex-lover, Khoja Samah.”
I smiled. The story grew more interesting. I seemed to be beginningto like to hear such
stories. To prove to him that I knew something about such women, I said: “I think these
women are known locally as ‘banat ishreh’.
“That’s right, banat ishreh,” he confirmed.
“But I don’t know the origin of this expression. Do you know, Sir?”
“I think banat ishreh is used to describe women who make love to women, like men
with women do. It has been said that some women live together in the same house, as if
they are a normal family. One of the couple assumes the role of a man in the house, and
the other takes the role of a woman.”
“Must the one who takes the role of man be older than the other woman?”
“Most often, yes, that’s why the older woman, who assumes the role of man, is called
‘abalaya’ or ‘abla’, which is a distortion of the Turkish word for an elder sister, while
the other woman is called ‘her girl’.”
“And what happened to Badiy’a?” My interest in her increased.
“Be patient,” he said, “Now I will tell you about Khoja Samah; but I believe it is too late
now. I think the servant has gone to bed. I think we should go to bed now. We’ll carry
on tomorrow.”
I was quite tired because of my experience during the day. I thought to myself, if I want
to listen to the stories and keep them fresh in my memory, I must be fully awake. I got
up and helped the old man go upstairs to his room. He was so weak. He trembled as he
climbed the stairs. He reached his room with difficulty. I opened the door for him,
switched the light on, and helped him lie down on his bed. When I was sure he was
comfortable, I drew the covers over him. He thanked me and I wished him good night.
A quick glance around the room made me stand still. The walls were crowded with
framed pictures. Some other pictures were scattered on a small table and on the
nightstands on either side of the bed. There were pictures of women and men, children
and old men, all wealthy and who were somehow related to him.
The old man was looking at me. I felt he didn’t want me to delve into his pictures and
his past (although he later told me that he liked my curiousity). I bid him good night,
switched off the light, and went out.
I made sure that the door of my room was firmly locked since I am very careful in my
nature. As soon as I put my head on the pillow, I fell fast asleep.

* * *

When I woke in the morning my head was heavy. I opened my eyes but stayed in bed. I
had that strange feeling of a person who wakes up to find oneself in an unfamiliar
bedroom.
It was about eleven o'clock. But the grey daylight outside and the thudding of rain on
the window panes gave me the feeling that it was earlier. The room looked more
intimate than it had the night before. When I saw it for the first time, it looked very
simple, but neat. The walls were bare and had no pictures, unlike the old man's room.
There was only a landscape. The carved oak furniture had been made in Aleppo. It
seemed to me that I heard something moving in the room when I was asleep. But being
exhausted and cold, I didn’t move from my bed to put on the light and see where the
sound came from. I was somewhat afraid. Finally I got up and made sure the door was
locked. I inspected the window that overlooked the backyard and found that it too was
firmly locked. Most likely I had been dreaming. This made me feel relaxed. I went into
the bathroom, took a shower and shaved using a new razor the servant had brought
me. Then I got dressed. At that point, I heard light rapping on the door, followed by the
voice of the servant inviting me to go downstairs to have breakfast.
The old man was sitting at the table waiting for me. I said good morning and sat in the
place assigned to me. The living room was simpler than I had thought it was the
previous night, despite the dozens of art masterpieces, wooden cases, paintings and
carved ivory tusks and rare china, as well as other items the old man had brought from
his many travels to various parts of the world. Those masterpieces gave the living-room
a sophisticated atmosphere. They also showed his good taste. We ate our breakfast
silently. The servant poured milk into our cups and brought a plate of boiled eggs.
In the silence that filled the room, I looked intently at the old man’s face while he ate.
He looked serene and younger than I had thought him the previous night. He even had
a friendly and familiar face. He had sparse shiny hair, and wrinkles extended over his
forehead. His eyes were honey-coloured with a faint glow in them. While he looked
very friendly, his servant looked suspect and aggressive. When I remembered last
night’s sounds, a light shudder went through my body.
We had our coffee in the sitting room by the wood stove. After serving us, the servant
left us alone. The old man resumed his story.
“The picture wouldn’t be complete without telling you about Khoja Samah,” he said in
his deep but feeble voice.
I said I would be glad to hear her story.
. . . Khoja Samah was Khoja Bahira’s strong competitor. They competed to sing in
upper-class houses. Therefore they had women friends from these important families in
Aleppo. Each conspired against the other, each doing everything she could to ostracise
the other. They also competed to sing the most recent and popular songs. They sought
to buy the newest records produced by the Egyptian “Gramophone Limited” company.
Once, Khoja Samah got the newest record of the singer “Sheikh Sayed Saffti”, even
before it reached the company’s agent in Damascus. At the party attended by the Wali
himself, she sang the most recent song of Sayed Saffti, which says “Oh my heart, who
told you to fall in love”. Her fans and admirers talked about the song the following day
with great appreciation and admiration. This aroused Khoja Bahira’s anger and
jealousy.
Samah was far prettier than Bahira, who looked like a man. Samah was a real woman.
She was plump with a fair complexion. She had a round face, unlike Bahira’s oval one.
She used to wear a red rose in her hair, which made her look prettier and more
feminine. Furthermore, she had a lovely mouth with luscious full lips. Samah was also
inclined towards women, and never married. She did her best to win the hearts of
Bahira’s girlfriends, lovers, singers and dancers and make them join her band. Bahira
did the same. The last one (as I said) was the qanoun player, whom Samah took as her
lover. She was smitten with jealousy when Badiy’a arrived and took her place in
Bahira’s heart. Hence she left her and went back to her former abla, Samah.
Khoja Bahira was very lucky to have Badiy’a. Though Samiha lost her qanoun player,
she had other skilled and charming musicians in her band and it didn’t affect her badly.
Even though the qanoun player joined Bahira’s band and she sang the most recent
Egyptian songs, specially those songs composed by Mohammed Afandi and Dawoud
Hosni, Bahira’s business wasn’t going well.
“But why was Samah’s business going better than Bahira’s?” I asked the old man.
“Why did she have all those beautiful girls in her band and Bahira didn’t?”
“Because Bahira was a domineering woman,” he said, “and treated her girls cruelly. She
was harsh and possessive. She loved to possess people, and this made girls slip away
from her hands. She watched their every move.”
“This seems rather masculine, but I believe that women can be just as possessive, so
why not . . . ?”
“As I told you, despite the differences between the two women, and though Samah was
the bint ishre, it seemed that her women companions wanted their abla to be a real
woman.”
“And did Badiy’a accept working with a lesbian singer?” I asked.
The old man resumed his story.

. . . Bahira trained Badiy’a and turned her into a very good dancer. She began to dance
at parties and weddings. She was able to transform her from a girl who had escaped
from her strict mother in a small town to a beautiful, professional belly dancer. She
chose her clothes for her and looked after her hair and skin. She also taught her how to
walk. She used to throw her feet in front of her as most villagers do. Her dance became
more balanced. She was taught how to match the gestures of her hand to the tune and
how she should constantly change her movements. Bahira told Badiy’a to show the
tenderness that distinguished her and not to be shy. She wanted her to be a real dancer
who wins the admiration of both men and women. She also wanted her to be a
charming woman who captures the heart and admiration of everyone setting eyes on
her. Bahira knew how precious Badiy’a was, and prepared her for her debut. But before
she did so, she shared her bed. She caressed her, and for the first time she made her
taste true love. That village girl had little idea of what a woman could do to her.
Badiy’a was pleased with all that was happening to her. Bahira saved her from an
unknown fate. She could have been wandering in the streets begging. The only other
alternative she would have had was to go back to her strict mother. Bahira saved her
from that gloomy fate, and brought her to live in a place more luxurious than anyone
had even imagined. She promised to shower her with love, silk and gold. She promised
to shower her with fame and lights, she promised her to do all that and more, but on
condition she remain true to her abla, and not cheat on her with any other person,
especially not Samah. She told her that she would be a famous woman one day, she
would hear tender whispers, generous promises, and expressions of admiration. She
also cautioned her that many women might fall in love with her but that she shouldn’t
believe in any such false sentiments, because only Bahira would give her true love,
Bahira who had made her, and who had blown life into her. Therefore, she must listen
to what she told her and not heed anybody else.
She told her that men were real monsters; she warned her not to communicate with
them. The only thing men did to women was break their hearts, impregnate them and
make them busy with their children. Men were Bahira’s worst enemies. She warned her
that other banat ishreh might snatch her from Bahira but that even so she could restore
her to her bed. There would, however, be no hope of return if a man married her,
deflowered her, got her pregnant, and forced her to look after his children. Bahira never
stopped talking ill of men, depicting them as ugly and repulsive with horrible organs.
She depicted them to Badiy’a as monsters carrying hoses between their legs, which they
used to rip the insides of women. The alternative, of course, would be Bahira’s caresses
when she slept with her. She would take her into her arms, kiss her, then remove her
clothes and caress her till she moaned. Badiy’a liked what Bahira did to her. As a sort of
punishment, she wouldn’t touch her for a while. Badiy’a grew used to her light touches,
and would not go to sleep if she weren’t caressed by her. Bahira would hear her moan
and toss around in bed. Then she was certain she was ready for her, and was no longer
afraid of introducing her to society.
Khoja Bahira surprised other women in Aleppo society with her new-found dancer. She
introduced her for the first time at a party held by the wife of the Turkish Wali,
attended by the wives of high-ranking men in the city: Turks, Arabs and Caucasians.
Khoja Bahira was invited to sing at the Wali’s house, and she was always accompanied
by a dancer. But none of those people expected to see such an angel in a dancing
costume. While she was singing, Khoja Bahira noticed that more than a hundred pairs
of eyes were gazing at the astonishing Badiy’a who was dancing in such a way that
captured their hearts. The ladies were soon fascinated too by this beautiful girl who was
moving to the lovely tunes. Some of them sighed loudly, and some in hushed tones. The
following day, the dancer was the talk of the town. Requests to dance in the salons of
upper-class homes flowed to Bahira. Visitors rushed to her house to glimpse the
charming Badiy’a. Many tried to win her heart, falling in love with her the moment they
saw her dance. Khoja Bahira would make Badiy’a sit very close to her. She would often
take her hand between her own so that everybody would see she was Bahira’s girl.
Bahira even told her to kiss her whenever she wanted in front of the visitors, to let
everybody know that Bahira was her abla. She even asked the maid to make the visitors
wait in the salon when Bahira and Badiy’a were still in their bedroom. After a while,
they would emerge in their nightdresses to welcome them, to suggest they had been
having sex.
Men came to Khaoja Bahira’s house, too, to see Badiy’a after they heard about her from
their women. They were Turkish officers, the Wali’s retinue and important merchants
from the town as well as urban counsellors . . . even a German Marshal, a Turkish
Pasha and an Arab Beys came to visit her. Bahira wasn’t concerned at all to let her be
seen by the ladies but she was worried about her appearing in front of men. She feared
men. Khoja Samah was simmering with anger when she heard about it. She had sent
her women spies to see Badiy’a and report what she looked like.
Samah tried to seduce Badiy’a. She sent her high-blown promises through her women,
but Bahira was on watch. They were confronted by a stern masculine face and a strong
will since she was ready to fight for Badiy’a. For more than two years, Bahira was
considered the first lady in the society of women in Aleppo, the lover of the most gentle
and beautiful belly dancer in town. Badiy’a had no real competitor.
But however careful one was, fate would strike. Bahira was always afraid that other
women would take her Badiy’a away from her. She also feared bad men. Therefore she
never stopped telling her lover how in her opinion men were the cause of all of
women’s disasters and misfortunes. One day, when some officers and gentlemen were
visiting, Badiy’a fell in love with one of them. He was Yuzbashi Jawdat, the handsome
Turkish officer who stole the heart of Badiy’a from Khoja Bahira. He was strong, with
irresistible charms. He was the bodyguard of a high-ranking Ottoman officer. He sat
silently waiting, peering discreetly at Badiy’a’s beauty. He was timid but brave and
adventurous. He fell in love with Badiy’a right away. He had delicate and deep eyes,
like those of an eagle. Badiy’a felt slight tremors course through her veins every time his
eyes met hers. She too fell in love with him but didn’t dare to tell her abla about her
love. He used to come to her neighbourhood and would stand at the corner for long
hours.
When Badiy’a discovered that, she stood at the window of the wooden kiosk to look at
him and to allow him to see her. He told her that he loved her looks and asked her to
meet him outside. She thought about him and dreamt about him. Her resistance
wavered. Then she started to make up excuses and went out to meet him. She took the
maid, who could easily be bribed, with her. He made love to her and made her taste the
true taste of love. Badiy’a found that men were not that bad, and that their bodies tasted
good.
One day she felt nauseous. Her periods stopped. She was pregnant with Widad. What
could she do? Yuzbashi Jawdat married her legally through a clergyman. She wanted to
tell abla Bahira but was afraid. She waited till the war broke out and rumours spread
that Damascus was about to fall into the hands of the Arab and British armies.
Then Yuzbashi was transferred to the southern front to repulse those armies. It was a
sad farewell. Badiy’a wept for her lover and for her uncertain future. Jawdat left her
behind, fearful that her pregnancy would become obvious and Bahira would discover
her. Fortunately, because the Ottomans were defeated the parties came to a stop. Who
on earth would care for singing and dancing at a time like that?
When she heard that Damascus had fallen and that the Turkish officers had fled by
train to Turkey, she escaped from her abla Bahira. She fled by train, as I said, and lived
in Midan Ikbis village waiting for her lover. But the war came to an end, all members of
the Turkish army left Syria, and the British army entered the country. There was no
trace of Yuzbashi Jawdat.

Translated by Khaled Al-Jbaili, with thanks to William Hutchins

From the novel Halat Shaghaf [A State of Passion], 1st edition, Dar Atiyya lil-Nashr,
Beirut, 1998

A LIFE

He never learned to read;

His soul was bothered by the differences among the letters.

He never lived in a house;

His eyes got lost among the windows

He never loved a woman.

Deep secretive emotions
passed this way and that through him in silence.

He realized that friends

are a few streets and pubs
that change constantly.

And it is said that he died

when he began to distinguish
between night and day.

THE MEANING OF TRAGEDY

1.
Jacob stole his brother’s blessings
and bought his primogeniture with a meal of lentils
after he conspired with his mother to deceit his father.

Jacob also stole his uncle’s sheep and his cousin’s gold
and slunk away like a mouse
and became a prophet named Israel.

And in this way the Lord was able

to teach mankind the meaning of tragedy.

2.
Judas said,
“I sold my master
and was called a traitor
and hanged myself.

I love him more than any of you.

What would he have done without me?
I, who gave him the final scene
in his tragedy.”

3.
She said, after her death,
“I am a blind bomb;
I ride a mute plane
and believe
that I can explode life
when I smile.”
And the dead say the bomb is blameless,
only war is blind
because we watch it stripped on live broadcasts
and did not die of embarrassment.

4.
As he lifts the lid
the chicken weeps
pleads:
“Brother, why did you slit my throat?”
He turns around her comfortingly.
Then she leaves alone
having filled the bowl with her tears.
And he chews them and prays
for the Lord to bless her spirit
5.
And he says to himself,
if I were a donkey I would have smiled and died of happiness

A HISTORY

One evening
night rushed out angrily at the people of the city
with a weapon they had never known.
He butchered their dreams and carried their women away
to a dark carriage.
When the men woke up
they were angry
and their tears wet their feet.
They waited until night
to seek their revenge.

But each time night came

they fell into a deep sleep
and woke up
screaming with tears wetting their feet
and waited for night to come again
and to seek their revenge of him.

This is how my ancestors died at night

without bells or wailing.
They were asleep

and we found
that we love our father, Night.

We pray to him
and every evening
we pour him in our last drink.

A GOOD MAN TALKS TO HIMSELF

1.
I am a camera,
a huge storehouse of memories.
I capture everything
and am aware of nothing.
I’ve remembered wars
until they became my memory,
a storehouse of explosives,
and I began to forget the image of the one I love
in my coffee cup.
And I talk to myself, talk to things
about an ancient country
that once inhabited this air
then passed on like music,
and talk about a people
who carried their animals and houses
each morning
and entrusted them to sea to protect.
They usually fell out of their own coats
and left the air empty around them.

Then it suffices me to bit the lip of a woman

every night
as we take off our underpants
and command our limbs to work silently
so the scenery is not perturbed.
And I talk to myself once again.
I am a camera,
I capture all that is delusive and empty
and usually my films become overexposed
due to laughter.

2.
This is how the good man came to keeping his smile under his pillow
and to sleeping without rebellions he was bound to lose in the morning.
And like an animal shaking his tale
talking to himself
I used to feel embarrassed
by women fumbling under my trousers
and I aged a whole epoch on a single night without my mother noticing.
And I learned fear.
and began to shy away from God at funerals
and began to hate death.
During history lessons I chewed on my fingers,
and saw my father dead above the black board.
Don’t believe me for I am a good man
who loses the planet earth
in his coffee cup every morning.

And this is not a human being.

This is extra time that the spectators split among themselves.
The sum of the moments he expends on each scene
is an extended age span and a wasted life.

3.
Do you love me?
– You know I love you.

Henceforth in a repeated scene

yesterday’s cold meal sat on the table,
but on its way to the waste basket began protesting.
And I talk to myself about a fear that sleeps in my bed
weeping or smiling
like a warrior who mixes up his defeats with his playing cards
then splits the difference in laughter.

Do you love me?

– You know I love you.

Henceforth, it is my corpse jumping at its nightshirt and they quarrel.

The photo is of a poor tavern
where language learns to stoop low
and the drunk believes that philosophy is the product of the gods and the profession of
their fathers.
Then he forgets his beloved’s face in the mirror,
and he opens the gates of night, slightly shorter and wearing colorful clothes.

Do you love?
This third time
she disappeared like a dim light
and he realized that he gives his loved ones the gift of sleep,
and that he stays up at night talking to himself
about a good man who resembles a camera.
Translated by Khaled Mattawa
from the author’s collections Wal-Aidi Utalatun Rasmiya (2004) and
Rajulun Tayib Yukalimu Nafsah (1998), published by Sharqiyat, Cairo.

Jamal Mahjoub

In the Long Shadows

Most evenings, as night is falling, I walk to where the houses trickle out and the nothing
that lies beyond begins. I think of it as a line though there is no real boundary or fence
to speak of, no customs post or barbed wire. Still, that is how it feels. A line you cannot
see or touch, but it is there all the same. And that is where they are building the tower.
As the day draws to a close and the sun tumbles into the earth’s embrace, the shadows
grow long and spiny, stretching themselves like elegant fingers towards the horizon.
Out of the lengthening shadows time seems to flow. The world comes alive in a magical
way. I remember evenings like this from when I was a child. Briefly, it fills me with
hope. The light is soft and warm and the sky grows deep and intense.
Over this the dark tower now looms.
It is an unusual structure. Ancient and modern at the same time. The design and
materials they are using are said to be among the most advanced in the world. Most
people laugh when they hear that. This is new to us. We are not used to having this
kind of standard around here. We are waiting for the joke to be explained, even though
we can see that actually it carries a ring of truth. The tower marks a change in all our
fortunes, they tell us.
There is something about it that is not of this world. Perhaps it is the contrast with the
barren surroundings. Standing out there in the middle of nothing makes it seem all the
more out of place, an incongruous fact rising out of the earth. When the sun strikes the
smooth surface it gleams like black glass. In truth no one can say what colour it really is,
or what it is made of. From a distance it appears like a gleaming plume of water
shooting high up into the air. There are no houses around. No roads. There is nothing
but sand out there - sand and small stones which I am told are the crumbled remains of
ancient mountains that rose and fell millions of years ago. To me they are just stones.
The ground is otherwise perfectly flat and bare. There must have been a plan to
construct a road out to it, but if there was it has been abandoned.
When you look at it for a long time you realise it is a curious shape. Not entirely
straight, it curves improbably inward at the bottom. At the top, which rises over one
hundred and fifty metres above the ground, it narrows to a pinnacle. In outline it
resembles a natural feature shaped by the wind and the rain rather than a manmade
structure. There is something primitive about it, obscene even, which makes you
wonder if it might be a relic from a forgotten civilisation, some part of our collective
memory that has been lost to us. But it is completely modern. In fact, it is not quite
finished. In the side there are gaps let into the concrete shell. These are rectangular, and
they are also uneven. They appear not to correspond to any regular sequence.
Sometimes L-shaped, sometimes rectangular. Some are vertical, others horizontal. If
you stare at these for a long time you can begin to sense a complex pattern. But it is as if
it is intended to inspire confusion. The dark rifts appear like scratches, etchings, or the
letters of a strange alphabet, a language no longer spoken. It reminds me of a piece of
clay I saw in a museum once; a sacred tablet with an inscription carved into it
thousands of years ago by the people who used to inhabit these lands. All that remains
of them and their language is a few dusty objects preserved in a corner of the museum.
People take their families there when they can think of nothing better to do on holidays.
They might pause for a moment and then, finding nothing of significance to themselves,
they move on. Thousands of years, thousands of lives tossed casually into the well of
oblivion.
When I am out there I find myself remembering things. Otherwise I have no time to
think of the past. There is too much to see to. Crops need tending, animals have to be
fed, goats milked. I live on the edge of the city and yet it seems so far away it could be
another country. My circumstances have changed. I no longer have the ambitions I once
had. None of us has. Once we had hope. Once we wanted to make the world a better
place.
I suppose the tower could conceivably be a monument of some kind, but then to what
or whom is it dedicated? If not the ancient pagan gods and goddesses, the kind they
have taken to destroying these days, then what? And why is it out here, of all places,
where few can see it? Most of the monuments they put up nowadays are clumsy old
contraptions, hideous contortions of marble and steel, usually with a military theme,
placed at intersections in the centre of town. Buses career around them wildly, often
losing control and toppling over, crushing their occupants. They do not have the
timeless elegance of this new contraption.
Asking questions is the best way to get yourself into trouble, as everyone knows. But I
can’t help wondering. Why was the tower abandoned? There were rumours of a fatal
mistake having been overlooked. A flaw in the plans that would turn the building into a
deathtrap if it was ever completed. The reasons may have been financial or political but
we shall probably never know. In order to allay fears of government impotence, the
minister decided to inaugurate the unfinished monstrosity anyway. He arrived in a
long motorcade of sirens and flashing lights accompanied by an entourage who clapped
and sang and waved palm fronds joyously in the air. A mournful bull was led up to the
tower. A butcher’s knife glinted in the bright sunlight and blood seeped into the sand.
When the minister attempted to hop over the dead animal he slipped, landing on his
backside in a sticky pool. He was quickly bundled into the car by his bodyguards,
leaving behind a bloody trail of footprints in the sand that stopped abruptly without
explanation, as though he had vanished into thin air.
So the tower remains uninhabited and useless. For a time it was mentioned by
politicians and government spokesmen in speeches, as a symbol of the new prosperity
that was coming to our country. A living testament to the great reserves of oil that
would soon be flowing from our proud soil making us all more wealthy than we could
ever have dreamed. Now a dry wind blows through the empty windows and doors and
no one has seen any sign of wealth, although the pipelines are said to be flowing and
certain parts of town have grown lush with luxuriant gardens and leafy trees, the
pleasant trickle of cool water flowing over marble fountains. Great palaces have sprung
up along the river, occupied by neither kings nor deities. No one knows exactly who
lives there. If you manage to tune into a foreign radio station you might hear talk of a
boom, but we have yet to see any sign of it.
Nowadays it is easier to believe the rumours than the nonsense they report on the radio.
All day and all night they enchant people by playing the same music over and over.
There is a television at the corner shop where people gather in the evenings. But it is the
same story. They show you people living in distant foreign places and explain how
unhappy they are with their lives. They cower in fear of violent crime. They suffer
crippling diseases brought on by over indulgence. But to us they look plump and well
fed. They have nice houses and everyone seems to own at least one car. Yet we are to
believe they live an empty existence. We have nothing to complain about, the woman
on the screen smiles at us. Our lives are much better. Some fool always agrees with her,
but the rest of us sit in the dark and mutter our curses. In the news they show the
president opening a new dam, a new power station, an airport. But it’s always
somewhere far away from here. You can never go out to check if the power station is
really where they tell you it is.
Walking out to the tower used to be easy, but not any more. Now you have to pick your
way through the shamble of huts and makeshift shelters that has sprung up. A tide of
human debris has flowed down the river and locked itself here as solidly as any dam. A
barrage constructed from flattened cardboard boxes and reed mats, beaten tin and the
odd palm frond now extends towards infinity. Surrounding this there is a minefield of
shit, as all the people who have come and settled like crows on that plain naturally have
to relieve themselves, so not only do you have to hold your breath, you also have to be
careful where you put your feet. Our new neighbours are not welcome. Often their
children wander into our houses and pretend to be lost. They have less than we have,
but we have too little to share.
A long time ago I played the guitar in a band. For one brief period we were very much
in demand. We played at weddings until music was banned. Then our singer was
stabbed in the throat by a deranged man who was actually a student of theology. He
disappeared for a time but was later appointed to a new university in a nearby town
and made head of the department of religious law. I have a photograph from those
days, taken by Sami, which shows me sitting on a stool holding a guitar. If you look
closely you can glimpse a strange glow in my eyes. I was a dreamer in those days. We
all were. I wanted to be like Django. I had a cassette of his and that is how I learned to
play. I knew nothing about him really, but I liked the name, Django, which reminded
me of the cowboys in the films. It is the only photograph I have and I can barely
recognise myself. I know it is me, but it looks like a stranger in a strange world. The
studio background was painted to resemble an oasis, with a big palm tree and a river
shining in the moonlight behind it. The man in the picture is no longer me, it is who I
once was. I look back on that face as though on a distant land I once heard about. The
guitar was an old one I borrowed from a garage mechanic who had accepted it in
payment for some repairs. A taxi driver had found it in his back seat once, he said,
forgotten by a customer. He charged me by the hour, but he let me practise for free in
his workshop.
At the height of our success, our band used to play at least once a week, sometimes
twice. People knew us. We played at engagement parties, student graduations, the
opening of a gallery or an exhibition, embassy receptions. We played everywhere. Our
success was due to our flexibility: we could play anything and everything, from reggae
to love ballads to popular contemporary songs. If we listened to a record a couple of
times we could instantly copy it. I cannot describe the happiness I felt when I played.
The people would dance and sing along with us. The world was at peace with itself.
Except that it wasn’t, not really.
I wonder these days if all that was somehow wrong. Was I trying for something that
was not meant for me? When I go out there and listen to the wind I realise there is no
one else to ask. The others have all gone, even Sami. Sami disappeared like the rest of
them. He was there and then he was not. He had always been fascinated by cameras,
but later he told me it was the day we took the photograph of the band was when he
realised. He said the smell of the developing chemicals was the smell of djinns cooking.
Every evening he would go and sit with the old man who ran the studio, pestering him
to show him how it all worked. Eventually he bought himself a camera, and soon that
was not enough so he got another. It was more than a hobby, it was a passion, and like
most passions it would not be satisfied until it consumed him.
For many years we lost contact. I think he was travelling a lot. I heard news of him from
mutual friends. I read his name in newspapers. It seemed he was building something of
a reputation for himself. Then one day, quite out of the blue, he turned up at the front
door of my house. I did not know what he wanted. He didn’t say. He sat there for a
time in silence. I talked of this and that. Then he looked at his watch and he left. From
then on he would turn up at odd hours. Always without warning. He would just
appear late at night with no explanation. I would wake up in the night to find him
standing in the shadows. He would jump over the rear wall and remain hidden for long
hours, watching to make sure I was alone. Sometimes I think he even went away
without saying a word. I would stand in the yard and call his name and there would be
no reply.
The last time I saw him he was almost incoherent. I barely recognised him. His was was
raw from the wind and the sun. He had lost weight. His eyes were wide and stared
fixedly at a point in the distance. I thought he was feverish from the road. It is a long
journey out to the western regions, by train and road. He showed me what he had
brought back: photographs, hundreds of them; burned villages, barren hills, blackened
grass, graveyards. He went on and on about armed militias, foreign pilots, flying
gunships. They pick out a figure in the landscape and press a button and that person is
gone. Fifteen minutes after the attack they are on the ground drinking coffee and
reading poetry in that strange language of theirs. He showed me a picture of a blonde
man holding a book. He had memorised some words: ‘Stars were racing. Thoughts
were racing. And the Sphinx was listening in the desert.’ He looked up at me; ‘Its
beautiful, isn’t it?’
This has nothing to do with us, I said. I was scared. Scared that Samir was losing his
mind. Scared of where all this would lead. If it were true, I argued, there would be
protests. The world would not stand by and let this happen. They would know. The
night was quiet and still. The soft rumble of a car rolled slowly by in the street outside. I
could think of nothing more to say. Without another word he turned and vanished into
the shadows and never emerged again.
I was a teacher back then. I travelled to school everyday in a clean shirt and stood in
front of an overcrowded classroom of fifty noisy boys and spoke of harvests and cash
crops that meant nothing to them, of mountains they would never see and places that
no longer existed. All our textbooks were out of date. Forests had since been hacked
away, lakes had been drained. I limited myself to the facts they needed to get through
their exams. They repeated the words after me. There was not enough time to make
them understand. But once in a while, when we were ahead of our schedule, I would
talk to them of other geographies.
History is full of lost legends, I said. Ancient geographers recorded, for example, the
land of the Wakwak, where human beings grow on trees. The boys laughed. Once the
world was full of such stories. The City of Brass had two gleaming towers of beaten
metal. From a distance they resembled blazing fires on the horizon. It was perched on
the rocky edge of the Great Ocean of Darkness. There was no entrance to the city. Many
people tried to get in and failed. Finally, a brave and intrepid amir managed to
penetrate the high walls. He found all the inhabitants dead, the city strewn with corpses
so handsome and lifelike it was as though they had just stopped what they were doing
a moment before. In the innermost chambers of the royal palace they found the queen.
Alongside her was a letter explaining that they had died of hunger. But how? It made
no sense for them to have perished when surrounded by so much wealth. Soon after
that I lost my job.
The sky is an arch they say and we are the archers. We aim for the distant horizon and
hope against hope. In the evenings a certain tranquillity returns to the world. This
empty shell where the wind sounds its strange lament. As the light changes the tower
seems to go through a range of transformations, like a chameleon. The world settles flat
against its base when the magic hour comes again. As the shadows grow longer,
flowing into one another, I get the strange feeling that there is something out there in
the twilight behind the tower, something that remains just beyond my reach. Sometimes
I stay too long and find myself picking my way home carefully, trying not to step on
something nasty in the dark.

top
Jamal Mahjoub

Fadhil al-Marzoog

I trained myself to sleep deeply at night, for I like to follow my preoccupations, my

movements and contacts more or less without interruption, all day until late evening.
But when night descends, I raise a solid wall between me and those daytime
preoccupations, movements and contacts, and plunge into a deep slumber. No
insomnia disturbs me, because what might disturb me is already behind that wall; all
through the daytime and evening time I have dealt with what precedes sleep.

Let me say honestly that this hard-won habit has helped me keep my nerves connected
and intact, without getting entangled and torn like a ball of wool in the claws of a cat.
But here, aboard the “Sun of the Mediterranean”, my night arms extend to have even
more daytime hours. Didn’t Adil see me dozing on a reclining chair under the gentle
sun? Couldn’t he have waited until I woke from my unbelievable daytime drowsiness?
He would have talked with me, for sure, if he had found me half-awake or half-asleep. I
would have welcomed him, for sure, but he must have found me in a really deep
asleep.

That laughing gentleman says he is indebted to me for his life. That is true, and normal
as I see it, since I am indebted to him for my life, although the reason is different. Tahir
saved my life with his care, persistence and natural healing, in a not very bad place,
meaning Seeba Police Station.
But Adil’s story with me is more complicated and took place in very bad and dangerous
circumstances.
Adil and Tahir were back to their room, after a long conversation, filled with memories
and questions, most of it between Adil and me. Tahir was reticent in a way. It is clear he
is still under the impact of the shock of Hayy Assullam, days before abandoning the
position. He was crawling over open terrain to evacuate a dead comrade who had been
killed at the Engineering College axle, where the Israelis had advanced a tank and a
number of sharpshooters. As Tahir approached our fallen comrade and started
evacuating him, a tank shell exploded not far away. He couldn’t evacuate our comrade.
He stayed there rooted to the bare earth, motionless, and so survived certain death by
shrapnel or a sharpshooter’s bullet. From behind the wall that stood between our
position in Hayy Assullam and the open terrain next to the Engineering College . . . rose
the voice of Abdennasir the Sudanese calling Tahir to keep flat and motionless until fall
of darkness. I assume the Israelis also thought Tahir dead. Under the protection of
darkness it was possible to evacuate our dead comrade and bring Tahir back, alive.
Beginning from that day, Tahir has ceased to be normal. He suffers from stupor,
absentmindedness and carelessness. As if everything that takes place around him isn’t
taking place. Even people he has known for a long time seem new acquaintances to
him. He sees events of the past, especially the distant past, as shadows, remembering
them drop by drop, and that only in a friendly environment, let us say, when he is with
me, or with Adil. Here, the personal and professional background is important. Adil is a
soldier, a tank squadron commander, whilst Tahir is civilian to the bone.
This evening, when Adil and Tahir left me, I couldn’t plunge into that river of deep
sleep, contrary to my way. The “Sun of the Mediterranean” is pursuing its quiet voyage;
I hear the rhythmical songs of the Greek sailors on the ship’s deck, soft and relaxed; and
from time to time I could hear a Mawwal song. Fedayeen and sailors on board a Greek
charter boat are setting out on a new phase of the long voyage, while I’m in a room that
rocks, with the lights turned out. I open my eyes onto this hill of darkness.
I was arrested on Friday evening, the evening of the first day of the coup d’Ètat. I had
visited Adil beforehand and told him that I was going to the meeting of the local
committee in order to put in motion the contingency plan. I had to meet Adil to let him
know what was going on. His position in the brigade, with our comrades, officers and
soldiers, was very sensitive; if the contingency plan were implemented with a high level
of co-ordination there was a possibility of things taking a different turn .

I was unarmed, even without a pistol.

Two footsteps from the door of a local committee member’s house, where we were to
meet, I was attacked by two people. One of them hammered my head with the butt of a
pistol, and pushed me inside a waiting car, which sped off immediately, then after a
while threw me, blindfolded, uncertain, into the corner of a room, dealing me kicks and
blows . . .
I shivered, soaked through by the water that kept flowing over the floor of the room. It
was very cold that winter . . .

– You have handed pamphlets to a soldier and they were circulated in the camp . . .
– What pamphlets? What camp?
– You know the pamphlets well; and likewise the camp of the Third Armoured Brigade.
– Question: What is the name of the soldier you handed the pamphlets to?
– I have nothing to do with the camp and soldiers.
– Denying it will not help. One of your mates who’s been arrested has informed us that
you are the liaison man between the Local Committee and your elements in the camp.
– False information.
– Who circulated the pamphlets in the camp?
– I have nothing to do with that.
– You are playing at denial. We know that. We are a clandestine party just like you, so
we know ; we know a detainee has to confront any interrogation first with denial. We
know that very well, so try another tack. Playing the denial hand will not help. You will
regret it.
– You are intimidating me by saying you will use other methods to deal with me; and in
the meantime saying you are a clandestine party with traditions . . .
– I’m not going to use other methods with you. Others will do that. I just wanted to tell
you that denial will not help. I will give you five minutes to tell me the name of the
soldier you handed the pamphlets to and the names of those who circulated them in the
camp. That is my demand in full. I have no wish to waste more time on you. I thought
you understood the situation well and would co-operate with us. We are a clandestine
party, like you; in the old days, we used to co-operate on many things.
– Not this kind of co-operation.

The interrogation room was square: four metres x four metres. The door was shut, but
not locked. The interrogator is a young man, twenty-five years old or so. He is facing
me on the other side of the table. Behind him the wall, on which a Port Said sub-
machinegun is hanging. To the right, a narrow window and through its iron mesh can
be seen the entrance to the building and date palms on the other bank of the Khora
river. A few cars were on the roundabout coming from the Corniche. Armed young
men strolled along the pathway between the main entrance and the door of the building
near the interrogation room. I know the place pretty well: the Economists Club, whose
administrative committee was ours.
The building, then, had been turned into a detention and interrogation centre. It is even
possible, then, that some members of the former administrative committee are among
the detainees here.
I’m sitting, drenched, body and clothes, in water, facing the young interrogator who is
expressing his impatience and frustration by intimidating me. He has called in a young
man who was on guard outside. The young man entered, armed with the usual Port
Said sub-machinegun. The interrogator smiled, then said to the guard: “Take him to see,
then bring him back. Be on your guard; if he tries to escape let him run a bit, then use
your sub-machinegun. Understood?”
The guard smiled in his turn, and ordered me to go before him. We left the room. After
three or four footsteps he ordered me to stop at a door. The door was open. He ordered
me to proceed inside. I did that. On the bare floor I saw three men, prostrate and
motionless, even not breathing the way human beings breath. Their bodies were all
swollen, and their eyes too. They were reduced to pulp. I heard one of them moaning
faintly. The guard ordered me out. I went out. He closed the door and took me back to
the interrogation room. The interrogator ordered me to sit where I sat before. He said:
“Did you see?” I didn’t reply. He smiled: “The five minutes’ time limit is over.” I stayed
silent. He said: “This isn’t the interrogation room. It’s only the reception. I was hoping
not to send you to the interrogation room.”
He got up from his chair, brandished the uncocked sub-machinegun, and left the room,
ordering the guard: “Take him . . .”

When I woke, from certain unconsciousness, in Seeba Police Station, with Tahir’s water-
soaked towel on me, I started to feel the effects of that torture inside the interrogation
room. I am unable to describe the pain that started biting every limb, every part of me,
muscle, joint and bone . . . Breathing, it seems, is impossible.
Any minor move triggers an unimaginable pain.
The seven days I passed at the Economists Club were, actually, seven days in Hell. I
think that they wouldn’t have transferred me to Seeba Police Station if they did not fear
that I might die on them; they would assume that I would die in another place, a place
not under their charge, so they would not be responsible for my death. Actually, if
Tahir hadn’t been there I would have died.
In the interrogation room, they focused on one question: Who in the camp are members
of the organisation ?
They mentioned names of officers and asked me to inform them about these officers.
But I do not know any officer or soldier there, except for Adil with whom I had a
personal connection.
In the early days they did not mention Adil’s name, but after four days they were
saying his name all the time, to the extent that Adil seemed their only question. It was
obvious that they had done a thorough check into everything in the camp related to our
secret organisation. But the question of Adil kept hanging in the air – like a mystery.
They failed to get any information about him.
Was he under arrest at that time? (Adil told me later that he was arrested on the
Monday, four days after the coup d’Ètat.)
I fainted several times, but they used to bring me out of my faint, only to repeat the
question about Adil and then to resume their torture.
But torture was no longer useful. Blows became meaningless for my body had swelled
up to the point of senselessness . . .
A month after being in Seeba Police Station, together with Tahir Adil was transferred to
Baghdad to stand trial at a military tribunal (all courts which dealt with political affairs
were military tribunals).
So, I was alone in the station. I was gradually recovering from the torture inflicted on
me. The swelling eased, also the blue bruises, and the pain in my bones and joints.
Now, I’m able to move about in the room and walk in the station courtyard when
permitted. I stayed there two months after Tahir was transferred to Baghdad to stand
trial. One day I was transferred, in my turn, to Baghdad.

In Baghdad, the two policemen who accompanied me for the whole of that terrible train
journey to Baghdad handed me over to the Serai Station, near Bab al-Muadham, not far
from Baghdad Central Prison.
I recall that my days at the Serai Station, waiting for my trial, were not bad. I had
recovered; and the conditions were tolerable there, considering the fact that the Serai
was a reception and transfer station. Rules there were simple, insults less, and relatives
bringing in food was permitted, so was sending letters by hand to relatives and friends
in return for a small bribe.
In this detention station, I met friends, some waiting for their trial, some waiting for
release after being acquitted, others had been sentenced and were waiting to be
transferred to their prisons all over the large map of the country, though they were sure
that they would be in one of eight: Basra Prison, Amara Prison, Kut Prison, Hilla Prison,
Baghdad Prison, Baquba Prison, Ramadi Prison or lastly the desert prison of Nuqrat al-
Salman.

It is worth mentioning that any one in this station would celebrate when he learned his
trial date, and would be congratulated by the others. A trial means a verdict and a
verdict means imprisonment and imprisonment means an end to the prolonged journey
of torment. In prison, the prisoner would count among his friends, the days and years
that lay ahead before his release At last he would be well installed, and back to himself
– no interrogation, no transfer, no handcuffs and no howling trains. He would be at the
end of the road; at his fixed point in the cold hell. As was customary, then, I was
congratulated and I thanked my mates in detention profusely, hoping for happier days
for them. I had been notified that I would stand trial before a military tribunal in al-
Washash camp, the day after next.

Two days after this notification I am taken in a police van, along with others who have
been collected from various detention centres, to stand trial that that same day, all
before the same military tribunal.
I haven’t been on trial before.
For the first time in my life I will have a glimpse of that system which submits a person
to an inevitable, non-negotiable punishment.
For the first time I will hear words that can ravage a destiny or a life.
For the first time I will face unknown people who have the ultimate right to shape my
life; people unknown to me, as I’m unknown to them.
The first time in which I stand as an adversary to an omnipotent system.
The first time that I feel my comrades are weak.

Immediately, on leaving the police van, we find ourselves walking be-tween two
menacing rows of Military Police. One policeman ordered us: “Hurry up!”
Then, slaps and blows started raining down on us. After that was another order: “Halt!”
We stopped in front of a closed door.
They summoned one of us. He entered, then came out two minutes later.
Another one was summoned, entered, then was also out two minutes later.
A third one. Entered, then came out two minutes later.
I was summoned . . .
I entered.
The courtroom was smaller than what I imagined. A soldier led me to a wooden dock.
I faced the men who were trying me.
They were three military officers of different ranks, close shaved, elegant and relaxed,
but the one in the middle with the closest shave, was the most elegant and relaxed of
the three.
He was smiling.
He asked me: “What is your name?” I replied: “Fadhil al-Marzoog.” He smiled.
Then he said: “You are charged with being responsible for a subversive party
organisation in the camp of the Third Armoured Brigade. Guilty or not guilty?”
I replied: “Not guilty.”
He referred to a paper in front of him.
Then he said with the same smile on his soft lips: “The evidence against you is
conclusive.” He was silent for less than a minute then, turning to the left and then to the
right, uttered the words: “Life imprisonment. The session is over.”
Immediately, the soldier pulled me by the hand and led me out of the courtroom.

We were tried, all of us, in the space of one hour, so as a group again we were taken
back by police van to Serai Police Station.
I stayed one night there; I would be transferred in the morning with another prisoner,
handcuffed together – his right hand cuffed to my left hand.
Inside the train, the third class carriage was crowded but the policeman managed to
ensure seats, and secured us to them with handcuffs.
We asked: “Where are we going to? He replied: “To Samawa Station.”
So the desert prison of Nuqrat al-Salman was to be our haven, my haven from here to
eternity.
Samawa, halfway between Baghdad and Basra, saw its greatest activity as a transfer
station, with its big police station receiving and making transfers by train and vehicle.
The station itself was in full swing as if there was a pagan feast going on. Detainees,
who were denied everything, could do nothing now but sing higher and higher . . .
I stayed one night in Samawa Police Station.
In the morning, the policemen crammed an old bus with us prisoners.
Half an hour later we were in the desert, the Samawa Desert, where al-Mutanabbi was
killed and where Glubb Pasha established the castle that was transformed decades later
into a prison.
The old bus crawled heavily through a barren wasteland. Suddenly. Nuqrat al-Salman
popped up, oasis-like. No trees but its own trees.
Afternoon, and the bus pulled up, spot on, at the prison gate. The gate was opened. We
entered.
The inmates welcomed us, standing in two rows from the gate to the centre of the
courtyard.
They welcomed us noisily, with laughs and hand gestures, while some carried on
playing volley ball at the end of the courtyard.
After the usual inquiries, the prisoners’ committee assigned us to this ward or that. My
lot was a bed on the floor in the fifth ward, to the left of the prison entrance gate.
When you enter the prison, you find yourself in a wide square, a very wide square,
really; on either side there were five wards, like soldiers’ barracks. Every ward has the
capacity to take eighty prisoners, that is, eighty blankets laid out on the concrete floor.
Each ward has two doors facing each other.
Minutes after unfolding my blanket, and setting down what poor baggage I had, even
before putting things in their proper places . . . Tahir showed up. He greeted me,
praising my health. He had been playing volleyball when we entered. A friend told him
which ward I was in. Well, he had been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for
membership of a prohibited party. It was a lenient sentence, he said but added that
getting into prison was far different from getting out of it. Prisoners were not released
after finishing their period of imprisonment. He asked me about Seeba Police Station,
about my days there after he’d left. He also told me that his mother visited him here, in
spite of the journey’s difficulties, and the horror of the desert – straying. Losing your
way in the desert means death from thirst, or being ripped apart by wolves’ fangs.
He cut short our conversation. “It’s teatime, so we can go and have a cup of tea in the
courtyard.” We left the ward for the courtyard, then joined others sipping tea in metal
mugs, filling them from a large pot with a metal ladle.
With the sun nearly setting, we felt the cold, the bitter desert cold.

In the mornings, the prisoners leave their wards and stroll through the courtyard,
enjoying the sun’s warmth. Tahir woke me and suggested taking me sightseeing, as a
veteran prisoner, across Nuqrat al-Salman, to visit the old castle where the old prison
was, the last station for named murderers, leaders of clandestine parties and for Sheikhs
of rebellious tribesmen. That old prison is no more used.
Nuqrat al-Salman means the new prison, with its ten wards and its high wall, and
ninety small towers that could be used as firing positions in case of an outside attack. In
the lowest part of the wall, there are small holes through which water hoses are passed
from the tankers that bring water across the desert. There was no water well or water
storage tank. I don’t know why but I felt a peace of mind there. I didn’t consider Nuqrat
al-Salman a prison. Was that because we moved freely here and there between the
wards and the courtyard? Was that because the jailers did not show up except for roll
call? Or was it because the prisoners managed their affairs by themselves. Perhaps the
desert with its impressive vastness makes one feels that one is free in one’s inner soul,
rising over the wall, the towers and the locked gate.
We reached the old castle, walked around and through it and lingered in its dungeons.
We saw a room built of stone, with no access except a narrow hole in its ceiling; that
hole was sealed by an iron cover that was lifted only to lower food and water, to be shut
again, leaving the prisoner down in this grave.
There was, also, another room built of stone, one suspended, with no access except a
narrow hole in its floor. The prisoner would have to climb up to it by ladder and then
the jailers would pull the ladder away, leaving the prisoner inside a suspended grave.
Tahir told me that a number of our comrades were prisoners there in the forties.

***

Winter passed, followed immediately by summer, as was usual in the desert.

The number of prisoners was increasing, but not at an accelerated pace, so the wards
remained not so crowded, and newcomers enjoyed the same privileges as veterans; the
incarcerated were moving freely, like beasts behind a fence.
Then came an extraordinary evening.
The summer sun was still flooding the desert with gentle rays when the prison gate was
opened and an endless stream of military men swept through. They were in their
uniforms, but these were mostly in tatters, sticking to their bodies and filthy from oil,
dust and iron rust. Some of them were straggling behind; others were supported by
their comrades. They were pale, with dishevelled hair and unshaven beards of three or
four days. The entire crowd entered. The gate was shut.
All the prisoners rushed to help the newcomers. Like wildfire, the words reached our
ears:
THEY WERE IN THE DEATH TRAIN.
Those officers, the elite of the country’s army, sentenced or not sentenced, had been
packed into iron freight wagons and locked firmly inside; the train moved . . . no food,
no water; the snail-speed freight train whose iron wagons became oven hot under the
scorching sun. Time passed, with the train moving slowly and the driver under strict
orders to maintain his slow speed. Many fainted. Three died. The officers started
banging on the iron sides of the wagons. Did the driver know human beings were
inside the wagons, not freight? Against orders the driver accelerated. The train stopped
at Samawa railway station. People heard the banging on the iron sides. Samawa town
was electrified by the news . . .
The whole town rushed to the station, to where the train was stopped. Men and women
approach the train; they open up the iron doors with their huge bolts. They see the
crime with their own eyes. They start pouring water on officers who have fainted,
saving them, bringing food and water to them, before a police force comes to take them
all down to Samawa Police Station, from where the transfer to Nuqrat al-Salman would
take place.

***

Among these officers was Adil . . . I met him the next day.
It is noteworthy to relate that he was – unlike his friends – in fine health, keeping his
smiles and even his elegance.
He told me that they arrested him in the camp four days after the coup d’Ètat. They
interrogated him at length. No confessions against him, no proof of anything. The
Intelligence Officer tried winning him over. But they considered him a suspect. He was
court-martialled, charged with non-Cupertino (actually not a charge), and sentenced to
two years’ imprisonment and stripped of his military rank; he was in Military Prison
No. 1, from which he was crammed with the others into the Death Train.

The prison is getting crowded. Now three prisoners have to sleep in a two-blanket
space.
Water is scarce, so is food. No room in the courtyard for jogging or playing volley ball.
The time between one shower and the next has become longer.
The guard has been intensified.
Then there was the order to transfer all prisoners with short-term prison sentences to
Baquba Prison. Adil and Tahir were among those transferred.

One day, the Nationalists also arrived.

We heard rumours that the old castle would be renovated and adapted to receive more
prisoners and detainees.
Nuqrat al-Salman Prison is gradually losing its particularity as an oasis for desert
beasts.
Now it is an ordinary, overcrowded prison with an intensified guard.
You could even say that it is worse than other prisons. A waste land where wolves
roam separates it from the nearest hamlet.

I want the “Sun of the Mediterranean” to sail forever, with me aboard, my eyes closed,
rocking lightly as if I’m in a cradle. Adil and Tahir left me to go back to their room.
Likely, they are sound sleep now.
They let me re-shape the image. But why do I have to re-shape it? Supposing I did re-
shape it . . . would the shape transcend these moments of waking-sleep?
And let me explain more precisely: will the shape transcend the “Sun of the
Mediterranean”? Are we, the three of us, able to retrieve the dream? To keep the dream
intact? Our dream of building a world, more beautiful, more noble, more just?
Every one of us had his tortuous path to it; but did any one of us reach its end?
Take Adil for example . . .
Friend of my youth, and a schoolmate.
Lieutenant in an armoured brigade.
Arrested.
Imprisoned, though not charged.
Crammed inside an iron wagon to die of suffocation. Survived.
Released after finishing his term of imprisonment and paying a bribe.
Re-admitted to the army in the volatile days of 1967.
Promoted to the rank of a tank squadron commander.
Arrested and thrown out of the army in 1970.
Re-admitted to active army service in 1972.
He started becoming optimistic – perhaps he’d get married one day.
He cherished the idea . . . that the country was on its road to a future.
Then, years afterwards, war erupted on the eastern borders.
Adil re-read his papers.
Referred to the question of morals.
Declared: “This war is not my war.”
Ventured out, reaching the mountain.
Carried on with his adventure, reaching Khalda where he found his war.

In the ferocious tank battle, Adil actually fulfilled what he couldn’t do before to defend
with arms a world as yet unborn.
Now where is Adil going to?
And Tahir?
Where are we, all of us, going?

At midnight, on the fourth night of my arrest, when I was thrown motionless on the
bare floor, like a bundle of rags, with my joints moaning due to cold and manhandling,
they work me with their kicks. A lean young guard took me to the interrogation room.
The room was lit with a dazzling light, so I shaded my eyes with my hand.
Sitting at the table was a new interrogator whom I hadn’t seen before. He was close
shaved, very elegant in his civvies. The sub-machinegun was hanging on the wall.
A pistol was on the table. He looked at me at length while I stood in the grip of the lean
guard. He took the pistol and started handling it and scrutinising it. He lifted his head
and looked at me again, his hand holding the pistol on the table.
He said: “You have exhausted us. Exhausted our young men manhandling you. You are
hopeless, you are not co-operating. So our command has sentenced you to death. The
decision was taken tonight. I am commissioned to enforce the sentence.
His hand released the pistol. He ordered the guard to tie me up and blindfold me. There
was an empty chair in the room; the guard pulled it back next to the wall. He sat me on
the chair, took a short jute rope which was lying in the corner of the room and tied my
hands behind me to the chair. My wristwatch with its loose metal bracelet dropped off.
I heard it drop onto the concrete floor. I uttered: “My watch.” The interrogator laughed,
saying: “What is your watch for now?” The guard blindfolded me with a dirty black
and dusty cloth, which he took from his large pocket.
Strange . . . how quiet I was!
Nothing in the room concerns me, it was as if the room wasn’t there, as if those two
people weren’t so near me as to be a danger to me. I was feeling – tied to the chair and
blindfolded – that I was in another place, a place familiar to me, but from what time?
Was it the time of childhood? Or before childhood? The scenes are wonderful,
changing, but not quickly, just like a cloud propelled by a gentle wind. On my lips was
a taste. What taste? And a fragrance rises up, a secret fragrance that spreads inside me
only. Fragrance and the taste of milk. Mother’s milk . . . The fragrance infiltrates my
body, spreading like the dawn mist on the riverbank.
I was awakened on the interrogator’s voice, ordering the guard to take the blindfold
from my eyes. The guard did that. I blinked more than once as if I wanted to be sure of
what place I was in. To be sure that this room was really the interrogation room.
The interrogator turned from behind his table and brandished the sub--machinegun
that had been hanging, and faced me: “Listen! Listen carefully. This is your last chance.
Will you co-operate with us? I don’t want to hear speeches. Yes or No.
I looked at him, with my hands still tied behind me to the chair. The features of his face
were not clear. As for his words, I heard them elongated, stretched like rubber, faint,
coming from the bottom of a well.
I’m in another place; what surrounds me now was only a ghost’s house. The
interrogator is facing me.
Again I hear his words, like rubber, faint: “We will execute you immediately. I’ll do it
with this sub-machinegun. Do you not see it?”
My lips do not tremble.
Out of the bottom of the well come his words: “Blindfold him!”

Again, words from the bottom of the well: “Bring me some ammunition!”
The voice is approaching. The interrogator prods me, likely with the butt of the sub-
machinegun. “I’ll carry out your death sentence now. We will get rid of your corpse in a
thousand ways. We will throw it to the dogs or under the wheels of a train. No one will
say that you have been in the guards’ compound But, you know, a detainee might have
seen you and recognised you. I have another plan: I will leave this door open, and the
Club door open. I will order the compound guards to go home and send the outer door
guard away on an errand. No one will know about your execution. No one will know
that I have executed you here, in this room. I’ll say that you tried to escape, and that
you were shot while attempting to do so. Your corpse will be thrown on the road, like a
carcass, just metres outside the Club door . . .
I didn’t utter a word. I wasn’t in the room. The fragrance of milk rises. Minutes go by . .
. no voice from the well. Now I hear footsteps approaching. Then shots.
My wristwatch with the loose metal bracelet drops again. I murmur: “My watch . . .”
Suddenly a slap resounds on my face: “To hell with you and your watch.” I flounder,
feeling the chair falling back. I fall with the chair. The kicks multiply. Sweat and nausea.
Then everything was over.

***

I’m running along a labyrinth of intricate, interwoven lanes . . . running for fear. A
monster is chasing me. A hyena-like monster with the head and the beard of a billy-
goat. The monster is calling me: “Stop, so I can eat you. You are so fat now.” I’m
running and running.
The intricate, interwoven lanes give way to a pitch-black gloom that makes me stumble.
I stumble. I fall. I hear the monster clattering behind me, as if its legs have changed to
horse’s legs with horse shoes. I am knocking on closed doors as I am running. No door
opens for me.
I’m running, running.
At last, I am in open terrain, open as far as the eye can see. A deep pleasure fills my
chest.
I turn and look back. No monster. I listen intently. No hoof beat.
I walk, leisurely, breathing normally and with normal heart beat.
Far away, there is a tree whose branches are horizontal, like a wide roof supported by a
single column. Deep pleasure infiltrates every cell of my body. I feel light. Nearly
flying.
Like air in the air. I sing as I’m walking, nodding my head.
I reach the tree and sit under its green roof.
Suddenly, a chair drops down from the roof, a throne-like chair.
Then the monster climbs down to settle himself comfortably in it . . .

Translated by the author

from his memoir Muthallath al-Daira [The Triangle]
Published Dar al-Mada, Damascus, 1994

We are a generation without teachers

In this regular feature Banipal invites a prominent Arab author to write about the books
and authors that have had an influential impact on his or her life. On this occasion, we
turn to the writings of the late renowned Jordanian novelist and critic Ghalib Halasa (18
December 1932 – 18 December 1989)
Ghalib Halasa
We are a generation without teachers

I began writing when I was very young. I do not recall the exact age; it might have been
ten. I would wake up very early, before the other pupils in the boarding school, and sit
down to write my dreams. They were beautiful dreams, and when I was in them I used
to know I was dreaming. If I saw a beautiful girl I would rush to embrace her, telling
myself, “why hesitate? It’s only a dream.”
When I wrote what happened in those dreams I would add my personal wishes, ones
that had not come true when I dreamed. “Why not? Nobody will read what I wrote,” I
thought. Writing was my private and secret taboo, my way of killing boredom and
monotony. Later when I read Kafka, dreamlands exploded inside me. This is why I
understood Camus’ statement very well – “Kafka is always in front of me”.
No one taught me writing, and no one encouraged me to pursue it. I read and formed
misconceptions that no one corrected. I had prepared myself to search for Arsene Lupin
to join him on his adventures. He was a friend, in a way, and I estimated that he was
waiting for me to arrive. I did not find out until later that he was a fictional character,
and that Maurice Leblanc had created this character seventy years before my birth. The
village cobbler who used to lend me Arsene Lupin’s novels asked me one day if Arsene
Lupin was a real person. The note of scepticism in his voice infuriated me. I swore to
him that he was real, and that my older brother who knew both English and French was
the one who told me. Of course he had not told me, but I was ready to recount all the
lies I knew in order to protect my life project: joining Arsene Lupin.
“We are a generation without teachers.” This is what the deceased Egyptian storywriter
Mohammad Hafiz Rajab said. We taught ourselves by ourselves. When I read One
Thousand and One Nights for the first time I was twelve years old. I was filled with
genuine rage about the anti-Christian racism that dotted its pages. I took up my pen
and wrote a short but eloquent polemic to Mr Al-Babi al-Halabi, the publisher of the
book whom I took to be its author. My letter said that in this period when the Arab
nation was facing colonialism and Zionism the writer ought to strive to unite the
nation’s populace, Muslims and Christians alike, not turn them against each other.
Many years later, when my long residence in Cairo began, I saw Al-Babi al-Halabi’s
publishing house and library. From the outside it looked like a small, dim shop. It was
only a few metres away from the main entrance of al-Azhar Mosque. In the depths of
the shop I saw an old man sitting at a desk and reading through a pile of papers. That
man was Mr Al-Babi al-Halabi. At the time I wished I were present when Mr Al-Halabi
received my letter so I could see his reaction.
But is not there something special in this? I mean in the absence of historical context for
people and events, and in the conflation of time periods and places and in taking
history for a daily reality revolving around us? This is what happened to me when I
read the narrative of al-Zeer Salim1.
I read it when I was nine or ten years old. I read it in the village and I do not know how,
because I was supposed to be in Amman, in the boarding school. Most likely I read it
during the summer vacation. The narrative events seemed spatio-temporally imminent.
When someone whose opinion I trusted told me that Jassas, Kulaib’s murderer, was the
forefather of all gypsies, I set about avenging Kulaib in my own way. Whenever gypsies
came to our house with their tambourines and flutes, begging or selling their dances, I
would whisper in a low voice, so my mother would not hear, the most obscene
swearwords against Jassas. It surprised me how this did not rouse their anger, or even
their attention.
The important thing was that the tragedy of Kulaib’s murder was alive inside me, alive
as an event that necessitated revenge, because the wound was still fresh. Maybe that
was the privilege of lacking historical context, where imagination careered unbound
and history could be lived with all of its tragedies and prejudices as if it were unfolding
in the “here and now”.
I still fear rereading al-Zeer Salim’s narrative. I fear that the legend might lose its power
and merge with reality and I would lose the moment of inception. The world would
amount to accidental and monotonous compellations. It would become devoid of
mystery and devoid of the magical world that lurks beneath it.
Al-Zeer Salim’s biography became a reference guide to a host of literary figures and a
key to understanding them. It was also a guidebook for Greek literature. That lust for
revenge, which lived with the young man al-Zeer Salim until his death and, with the
child growing and getting stronger in order to avenge his father Kulaib, I saw again in
the murder of Agamemnon, in the revenge of Orestes, and in Medea. Most likely these
Greek legends sprang from social conditions similar to the ones in which the Besous
wars took place.
I recall how, when I read Euripides’ Medea, I continued to live in the world of that play
for three days, during which I was completely disconnected from reality. That
happened to me also when I read Naguib Mahfouz’s two novels Khan al-Khalili and Al-
Sarab [The Mirage].
I am recalling now one of the greatest joys of life: reading Stevenson’s novels, Treasure
Island, The Black Arrow, The Master of Ballantrae, Kidnapped, Katrina, and his
collection of stories in The New Arabian Nights. Through him I recollect my
childhood’s best, a childhood stifled by monotony, boredom, adults’ harshness and the
dearth of their horizons. Stevenson was an oasis in the midst of that desert, its fragrance
enveloping me, and so I imbibe the excitement of that delicious horror.
I recall being twelve years old, living in my brother’s house in Madaba, a small town
south of Amman, in an isolated house on the outskirts of the town. The time was winter
(Stevenson is associated in my mind with dreary winter nights) and everyone was
sleeping. I carried the kerosene lamp – electricity had not reached the town yet – and
placed it next to the mat spread on the floor, and began reading The Black Arrow. This
was the second novel I read by him. The first was Treasure Island.
At that moment I was living with just the right audiovisual effects: the foyer, the long,
narrow living room that sank in semi-darkness, the pitch-black corridor leading to the
kitchen, the continuous, incessant hissing of the wind outside, and the silence
foreboding ambush.
The scene was the courtyard of a provincial church adjacent to a thick forest. Time was
twilight, the sun attenuated, neither warming nor illuminating the way. The
conversation that ran between the men standing in the church courtyard I no longer
remember, but the scene determined it. It was an inconsequential conversation. This
was an old snapshot, like a scene entrapped in memory and fixed motionlessly there.
Into this monotonous calm an arrow shoots forth from the forest and strikes one of the
men in the back. His face is paralysed by pain and he falls. The other men extract the
arrow from his body, but he dies. At the same moment birds hover in consternation at
the edges of the forest, and then are still. Some of the men rush to the forest to look for
the person who shot the arrow, but they do not find a single trace. They return
disappointed.
Then I closed the novel, put out the lantern and wrapped the blanket tightly around
myself. But I could not sleep. Horror stopped me. Explaining this horror reveals one of
the deep bonds that connect me with Stevenson’s world, and it may also reveal one of
the features of his literature, although an objective examination of Stevenson’s literature
is not my goal here.
That horror was pleasurable, that pleasure which Aristotle called cathartic, at least
according to my understanding of Aristotelian catharsis. And to illustrate that, the
reader who recalls the scene as I wrote it will find himself facing a scene that had
repeated itself tens of times, a scene that no longer possesses the power to provoke the
aesthetic sensibility I call pleasurable horror.
This is Stevenson’s special characteristic. I mean charging the place with a spirit that
fills the reader and overflows from him. He makes us recollect an old sensation, as old
as our childhood and that of mankind. Recollections in which places have a soul, and
where appearances are an evasive cover for reality. Just as in childhood tales we
discover a sorceress beneath the beautiful woman, the calm and peaceful surfaces of
Stevenson’s plots erupt with horror.
I recall a village woman who was the subject of rivalry from many lovers. Romantic
odes were written about her and stories revolved around her. I remember her as rough
and wild, teasing me obscenely. Nothing of her legend was in her person. Once I asked
my mother if this woman had been beautiful in her youth. She replied: “She was just as
she is now. She has not changed much.” After that I approached the issue differently. I
began recreating the woman based on her legend.
This is what used to happen to me when I read Stevenson. He made me capable of
writing about my village. I had to wait for a long time until I found this same technique
in William Faulkner.
We, the writers of the sixties in Egypt, were on a date with Hemingway. He was
literature incarnate, especially when it came to the novel and the short story. He posed
challenges that neither of the two literary schools prominent at the time could rebut. By
the two schools I mean Arab romanticism, that began with al-Manfaluti, and Arab
social realism. They were in fact two sides of the same coin: borrowing European
human archetypes from the stagnant European literary pool of the nineteenth century
and dressing them in Arab garments. At the heart of this literature was the polar vision
of the prostitute: the virtuous-vile woman with her noble-barbaric face, her grotesque
appearance juxtaposed with her noble heart.
What estranged us most from this literature was its lack of persuasiveness. I recall how
since I was a boy I would strive to make my friends laugh by mimicking Yusuf
Wahbi’s2 high-blown language: “I took you for an angel that descended from the sky”
or “Everyman’s woman, you heap of rubbish” or “A girl’s honour is like a matchstick”
and “O Your Mightiness”. Or I would reiterate those clichÈs that recurred endlessly in
Egyptian movies: “You are not human, no, not human, you are . . . you are an angel,” or
“I tell you, this not for me but for what is growing in my womb”.
This false pathos is what estranged us from the romantic and social-realist schools of
literature. Despite their diverging ideologies, they shared a number of fundamental
features in their approaches and visions:
Firstly, both were committed – and usually to a fundamentalist conception of narration,
that is, to moving from deceptive appearances to a pragmatic realism, a process through
which the story or novel is transformed into an art for correcting our misconceptions
about reality.
Secondly, romanticism borrowed its human archetypes from European literature, and
these were not archetypes derived from reality, even though their selection contained a
reference to that reality. Arab social realism followed in this respect with minor
alterations that did not touch upon the essence, that is, the living realistic human being.
The other thing in Hemingway’s writing that left a lasting impression on me and on the
sixties generation in Egypt was his depiction of human activities, such as hunting,
fishing, warring, and bullfighting, among others. He did this with the deftness of a
connoisseur who knew the technicalities of these actions down to their minutest details.
Both the romantic and social-realist schools overlooked activities because they deemed
them unimportant in structuring a fictional plot and because the authors themselves did
not care to understand them. What Hemingway offered more than any other writer was
a way of integrating these human activities into the structure of the literary work. He
even transformed them into dramatic acts for their own sake.
Describing them occupies a large space in Hemingway’s literature. What would remain
of The Old Man and the Sea, for example, if we removed the techniques of fishing the
giant “fish”? The same can be said about bullfighting in The Sun Also Rises, and about
hunting in Green Hills of Africa, etc.
Hemingway paved the way for me to take a visual look at reality, and to attain a new
understanding of the novel and short story that was absent from my previous readings.
Previously space for me had been a figurative element, a collection of adjectives
referring to a static state. Space lacked the idiosyncrasy of art and therefore was part of
a framework of generic references. Hemingway came along and divested space of its
referential nature and open it out before us in all of its visual dimensions.
Hemingway also taught us how to rid ourselves of the flaccid language of romanticism,
language that says nothing and is content with offering instead its contrived musicality.
Hemingway’s language, whose concentration and succinctness are akin to the language
of telegrams, was our means of parting from a heavy rhetorical language and from a
language that lacked depth. Hemingway’s simple language derives its intensity from
the absent parts to which the reader is referred, those hidden four-fifths of the floating
iceberg. Perhaps the most important thing I learned from Hemingway was that his style
is inseparable from the absent parts of the story.
The big mistake committed by Hemingway’s disciples was to separate writing style
from the backdrop of emotional reactions. Without its background, style becomes
empty chatter, or in the best of possibilities, a monotonous style of narration. When
Hemingway was asked if a complete story existed in his mind behind the scenes that
formed his story “The Murderers”, he answered: “Of course. I do not write a story
unless there is a complete narrative upon which it is based.” When these scenes,
narrated in the same style, become self-sufficient, referring us to nowhere outside the
scene, they become poor, banal, in need of a synoptic alternative.
But to what does the writer refer us? What is the fundamental position from which his
writings evolve and around which they revolve?

That was before I read Faulkner and learned from him how the writer could write about
his village without ever stopping.
What do I want to say with all of this? I want to say that with the novel having acquired
new form and architecture and consequently a definite structure, everything that
happened to us as Jordanians fell outside the realms of the novel and the short story. In
order to write we had to lie, and expressed what was a nonexistent reality. We had to
write about pale beloveds dying of tuberculosis notwithstanding the discovery of
streptomycin, about suicidal romantics, about proletarians who spontaneously voiced
Marx’s and Lenin’s thoughts, about a mayor whose character we conflated with the
‘Umda of rural Egypt, and breathtakingly beautiful prostitutes who knew a great deal
about the progress of history and were always at the beck and call of a beloved for
whom they would readily sacrifice – in sum, about everything that did not exist in
Jordan.
Nonetheless, I vaguely knew that genuine writing was writing about what was taking
place around me. But how? I learned that slowly, and mainly from Stevenson,
Hemingway and Faulkner, and later from Dos Passos.
My beginning with Dos Passos was through his colossal trilogy U.S.A.with its volumes
The 42nd Parallel, 1919 and The Big Money. I did not know anything about Don Passos
other than what Hemingway had mentioned in Green Hills of Africa. Hemingway’s
words were ambiguous and I still do not know whether he was ridiculing his friend or
glorifying him.
I remember the feeling that occupied me as I read it, and when I had finished it, was
one of absolute freedom. It was a freedom that looked toward reality and toward the
novel as a form. Before that for me the novel was all restrictions and prohibitions. I felt
that if I tried to write one, I would be walking in a world of fragile glass that would
collapse with a frightful roar (and a scandal too) should I take one hasty step. Writing a
novel was for me an invitation to be prudent and comply with strict guidelines.
Consequently, writing meant taking a risk with the potential of scandal. The paramount
feeling that dominated me was timidity.
But timidity about what?
Timidity about the novel genre and its strict masters compelling me to carry out orders
whose particular conditions for obedience I could not locate. In other words, at the very
moment of putting pen to paper I was incompetent – that very moment was when I
could not control the protagonists, the situations and the events – and unable to comply
with instructions.
There was also an apprehension that came from the written novel itself. It seemed to
me, in its solemn, supercilious stillness, that the novel fulfilled all stipulations
effortlessly and without confusion. It seemed as if it were written in perfect confidence,
and with control over every one of its minutiae. I know now that the opposite is true,
but at the time I did not know and therefore was overwhelmed with insecurity.
Later on I learned that the rules of writing a novel were not superior to the novel, but
rather stemmed from it, and that the bad critic was the one who discussed the novel
according to presupposed rules. True criticism is an act of reading the literary text
creatively.
Dos Passos was there to break my fear of the novel form and to remove the boundary
between it and my everyday experiences. He ushered into the novel the world
surrounding me and allowed it to permeate the work from every direction. Everything
became worthy of being written about: passing conversations, faces, daily relations with
colleagues, daydreams, sexual intercourse, etc. I began reading newspapers attentively
to discover all the trivia disguised beneath catchy phrases, hyperbole, sentimental
chatter, and the laughable gusto that takes the form of serious articles by writers who
place their smiling photographs on the upper left corner of the article, and then the
advertisements.
What did these writers, foreign and Arab, teach me?
I can safely say that I have not plagiarised their themes, novels, ideologies or
philosophies. Everything I wrote stemmed from myself and my experiences, and from
knowledge that was the product of witnessing events. Using techniques employed by
other writers does not come about through plagiarism. I benefited from Passos’s way of
judging reality through collective language – journalism for example – but I was using
this method before reading Passos; he served to legitimise it. As for Hemingway, he did
not provide the style through which I reacted against the flaccid language of
melodrama – even as a boy I could sense the disingenuousness of melodrama.
What did they teach me, then?
They taught me what is more valuable than all of this. I do not owe them nickels and
dimes but millions of rare coins impervious to inflation. They taught me how to see the
world around me in a new way, and how to place it into the context of a literary work.
In other words, without them I would not have become a writer.
I seek to reveal the epistemological side of literature, to reveal our transition from living
in a meaningless world to a world where every minute is gaining infinite meaning and
significance. We, offspring of the Third World, can say what is new and distinct about
Faulkner. Many have written about him: Frederick Hoffman, Wyndham Lewis, F. R.
Leavis, Sean O’Faolain and countless others, among them also Graham Greene, Jean-
Paul Sartre and Roger Garaudy.
All these thinkers came from major industrial cities: New York, Washington, San
Francisco, London, Paris, etc. Their analyses of Faulkner may have raised important
issues but they were grounded in social and cultural contexts. Garaudy, for example,
called Faulkner’s literature “cemetery literature’, meaning that it focused on
manifestations of death, physical and spiritual decay, and violence that was destructive
of others and of the self. That is, he criticised Faulkner for not seeing the bright future
and hope that lurked in reality according to a social realist vision. But Garaudy
overlooked the societal dilemmas of the American South, which had transformed from
a half-nomadic, half-rural society into an advanced industrial one. The assimilation of
the South with that spiritually dead American lifestyle was not a source of optimism. It
was the encounter, in the novel Sanctuary, between the dissipating spirit of the South
and the impotent North, the encounter of Temple Drake, the fast-living girl who had
relinquished her moral values, with Popeye, the impotent Northerner who raped her
with a corn cob.
Others saw in the family trees that Faulkner constructed for his protagonists a kind of
laughable weird genius. They did not comprehend the importance and depth of blood
relations in a society like that of the South. It is not possible to penetrate to the depth of
human relations or to the emotional constitution of Southerners without
comprehending the importance of blood ties between them and what follows in terms
of values and practices from these ties.
Most of the United States’ Southern writers who attained exaggerated fame, conceded
Faulkner’s decisive impact upon them. Even those who did not directly admit it
revealed his impact in their writings.
And Faulkner’s impact was decisive upon me. Why?
I was born and raised in a society that was moving from a nomadic lifestyle to a rural
one, and from a rural lifestyle to one that revolved around commerce. I recall a
Jordanian student who confided that his crisis was his inability to write anything about
Jordan, a place where nothing worthy of being depicted took place. This was my
opinion too until I read Fontamara by Ignazio Silone, and then the grand discovery
came when I read Faulkner. A life like ours and a society like ours, especially those
events and emotional bonds to which I had hitherto attributed no significance, were
more or less magnificently expressed there.
Al-Zeer Salim’s biography had its impact on me. It endowed reality with drama, but
what reality? It was the tense reality that seemed like a replica of a refined drama. As
for everyday reality, the given which needs no affirmation, Faulkner came along to
place it in the category of the possible. This is how it gained astonishing liveliness and
infinite variegations. Suddenly humans around me were filled with endless
possibilities. How?
Sanctuary: the beginning was with this novel. I recall setting out to read it while bearing
in mind the rumour that Faulkner was difficult to read. The novel bedazzled me. I
remember finishing it at two a.m., and then starting to reread it until daybreak.
This is the important epistemological value of Faulkner’s literature: he returns us to the
roots of our experiences, those extremely sensitive roots connected to the reservoir of
memories, sensibilities and events, those that had been repressed, neglected or
continued to exist generically without being assigned to a particular context. We do not
live Faulkner’s world like neutral witnesses, nor do we live that neutral and pleasant
side of our world through him. Rather, we live these worlds with the freshness and
intensity of our first passions and experiences.
Hemingway engages our intelligence in a dialogue, guides us to the worlds of others as
they confront danger. Dos Passos reveals to us the contexts of trite discourse disguised
in formal language, valorised and dead, while Faulkner speaks to our most profound
and conflated experiences.
Reading Faulkner’s Sanctuary was a major experience in my life, not only in relation to
writing, nor because it was a first step into Faulkner’s peculiar and unique world, but
because in addition it compelled me to reclaim my personal life, my childhood
memories, the village and the school and to rearticulate them.
I recall the boarding school. My misfortune dictated that I would be the youngest of my
classmates: younger than the youngest by two or three years, and than the eldest by five
or six years. These age differences are significant during childhood and adolescence,
and added to that was my poor physical constitution. at that age youngster cannot
overcome his youth, and cannot become an adversary to those older than him.
I remember that the closeness of the older students was impossible to penetrate. I
remember it as a form of unshakeable satisfaction and self-confidence. They insisted on
their mistakes, and their justice was subjective, imposed through their density. On the
other hand, my assiduous attempts to prove there was objective justice were futile.
These archetypes came to the fore and were illuminated for me when I encountered the
protagonist Popeye. I recalled my struggle in front of that silenced perseverance. They
had the privileges of prince-warriors, with power and force as their weapons, while
education and knowledge were the weapons of the weak. The character of Popeye put
an end to my naive belief that an absolute objective justice existed, a justice that
surpassed the logic of power and coercion. Popeye extracted me out of my daydreams
and placed me in reality.
From my personal experience of reading Sanctuary, I saw how the corruption I
witnessed did not apply to Popeye because he did not possess the traits of
contemporary industrial society. Even his upbringing did not belong to the type of
conformist upbringing directed by others and aimed at satisfying others. His bellicosity
did not materialise before those who did not deserve to be targets of his anger.
I was acquainted with murderers and criminals in the prisons I entered. They were
sympathetic and gentle with the weak and the height of their aggressiveness appeared
before those who tried to become their adversaries. I recall also the impact of visits by
my relatives from Amman to the village where I was born and lived my early childhood
years. Amman then was a small town, with a population of no more than thirty
thousand. It was an embryonic city, but its inhabitants had a lifestyle radically different
from that in the village.
I remember the nausea those visiting relatives generated in me. As city dwellers, they
had different conceptions from mine as a villager. They looked at the village as a static
place with no historical depth and conceptions, and with values opposed to those of the
city. So, the village women and girls were seen as ugly, its men pathetic, its water
impure and its cuisine lacking in cleanliness and style. A whole world of beauty,
chivalry and poetry was collapsing before me. That reverence I carried for the dream-
city incited me to adopt that positivist vision of my village. Amman, along with the
other major cities such as Cairo and Damascus, for me was a mere reproduction of my
village, a reproduction that endows the village with the capacity to fulfil my dreams.
My short story “Wadi’ and Saint Miladah and Others”, which I wrote before my
twentieth year and before reading Faulkner, carried my positivist vision of the village:
the villagers, swept by a dream of panacea, rush to a girl who has had a vision of the
Mother of Jesus, but return to their village disappointed after discovering the merchants
had mixed the holy oil with regular olive oil in order to increase their profit. At the
same time I dealt my revenge, revenge for my own disappointment with Amman. Its
people seemed narrow-minded, fixated on unachievable dreams.
A year later I wrote my novel Slaves and Bedouin and Peasants. I had read some of
Faulkner’s works by then. I had realised, ambiguously, that in order to write about the
village I had to regain my original sense of it and to abandon that positivist vision the
city had inculcated in me. The world of slaves and Bedouin and peasants could not be
seen as an accidental episode severed from its past and internal logic. That positivist
conception of an accidental episode is a moment situated in a historical context, in the
history that does not reveal all of its dimensions except to those who live inside it.
This is what I learned from Faulkner, whom I started knowing better when I read more
of his works Sanctuary, Absalom, Absalom!, Light in August, The Bear, and The Sound
and The Fury, among other novels, novellas and short stories.

***

Ibn al-Muqaffa is a writer who accompanied me since childhood. Throughout my life

and for various reasons I would return to him and a new face would be fashioned
before me, as if I were reading him for the first time. Now I can, as I return to him yet
again, discover that what is concealed within him is far more than what is visible, and
that his project – and this was the first time an Arab writer has possessed a
comprehensive project for sociopolitical change – was one of such gravity and danger
that he had to conceal it behind many masks. He did not succeed completely in the
masking game – success was not possible. He was made from the stuff of revolutionary
martyrs. The judge of Basra invited him for a visit, and ordered him to be carried and
placed in a burning furnace. Thus ended the life of one of the most original and
philanthropic Arab thinkers when he was thirty-six years old.
As for his translation of Kalila wa Dimna, I do not know if schools still teach that story
in the elementary classes as they used to do in our time, but what I still remember today
is that joy and sense of freshness which captured me when I entered that botanical
world, the world of forests, rivers, lakes and talking animals. The world of childhood is
a botanical world: flowers, fairies, forests – and beautiful girls. Children’s stories still
revolve around a botanical world even today.
Until this moment I still detect the aroma of that magic whenever I walk into a garden
or when I have access to an expanse of vegetation and water. A naÔve, idyllic life takes
me back to the daydreams that preceded my experiences as a member of society. There
is an additional factor that used to marshal my attentiveness to the world of greenery,
and still does to this moment. It is having grown up in a mountainous village, half
Bedouin half pastoral. It was a barren area, sparse of trees and water. This is why I lived
the botanical world like a dream I agonised over fulfilling.
I wrote about one of the shocks of my life in my novel Laughter when I described seeing
in the distance, on the horizon, transparent blue mountains, which seemed like
condensed colour, soft to the touch like the sea as I had always pictured it without ever
seeing it, and the forest together. Then it occurred to me one day to reach the mountains
and see what no other kid in the village had seen. I began my journey at six in the
morning, running most of the way. My shock was great when I arrived and discovered
that they were barren mountains, exactly like the ones upon which my village was
perched and like the ones that surrounded it.
In addition Ibn al-Muqaffa was proficient in numerous languages. He mastered some,
such as Arabic and Persian, the way a writer excels in his mother tongue, and excelled
in others, such as the Greek from which he translated Aristotle’s Logic. From my
personal experience, knowing more than one language gives some ideas expression in a
language other than the one in which it is being written. Thus writing becomes a
redoubled anguish: communicating the idea and reconciling two linguistic contexts.
The aspect of Ibn al-Muqaffa’s writing that left on me the most lasting impression was
his accurate but uncommon use of terminology, and the terse sentence structure that
endeavoured to control the torrent of new ideas and was simultaneously anxious to not
lose them. That used to, and still does, charge me with wakefulness and radiance when
I see language used in unconventional ways. Ibn al-Muqaffa’s writing also fascinated
me with that unexpected leap from the narrative and the idea it proposes – the allegory
he introduced. I found myself in need of a considerable measure of concentration and
brainwork in order to draw the connections between the two.
Finally, the most dangerous aspect of Ibn al-Muqaffa that had seeped into me as I read
him was his personality, that fusion of the revolutionary who had prepared himself for
martyrdom and the glowing mind; and that rare union of Spartan values and actions

Izzat Amin Iskandar

Izzat Amin Iskandar was my classmate in First Preparatory. He was somewhat short,
his body was strong and broad, his head large and his hair black and smooth, and he
wore glasses, along with a slight, meek smile, almost of supplication, and that Coptic
look (sometimes full of doubt and terror, sometimes profound, submissive and
burdened with guilt and distress). He also had an artificial leg and a crutch. The crutch
ended in a piece of rubber and prevented it from making a noise or slipping, and his
artificial leg he covered with his school pants and a sock and shoe to make it look
normal.

Each morning Izzat limped into the classroom leaning on his crutch, dragging his
artificial leg and swinging from one side to the other with every step till he reached the
end of his bench. There, in the corner next to the window, he would sit down and lay
his crutch on the ground, paying it no further attention. He would absorb himself
totally in the lesson, writing down carefully everything that the teacher said, listening
alertly and knitting his brow in concentration and then raising his hand with a question
– as though by becoming so involved in the lesson he could insinuate himself into the
throng, hide himself in our midst, and become, for a few hours, just one student among
the others, unstigmatised by either crutch or limp.

When the bell sounded for break, the moment its splendid tones rang out, the students
would all cheer with joy, throw down whatever they were holding and push and shove
their way, sometimes even knocking one another over, to the door of the classroom and
from there descend to the playground. Only Izzat Amin Iskandar would receive the
sound as though it was the fulfilment of some ancient, awaited prophecy, close his
exercise book, bend quietly down and then take the sandwich and the comic from his
bag and spend the break seated where he was, reading and eating. If any of the other
students were to look at him and show any curiosity or pity, Izzat would smile broadly
while continuing to read, to make it clear how much he was enjoying himself, as though
the pleasure of reading, and that alone, was what kept him from going down to the
playground.

***

It was the first time I’d taken my bike to school. It was a Thursday afternoon and the
playground was empty of all but a few students playing soccer on the far side. I started
riding my bike. I would cross the playground back and forth, making circles round the
trees, imagining myself in a bike race, and yelling at the top of my lungs, “Ladies and
gentlemen, and now for the World Cycling Championship!” In my mind’s eye, I could
see the public and the important people and the riders with whom I was competing and
hear the shouts and whistles of the fans. I was always in first place, reaching the
finishing line before the others and receiving the bunches of flowers and kisses of
congratulation.

I continued to play like this for some time and then suddenly I got a feeling that I was
being observed. I turned and saw Izzat Amin Iskandar sitting on the laboratory steps.
He’d been watching me from the beginning and when our eyes met he smiled and
waved, so I set off towards him and he started his standing up process, leaning on one
hand against the wall of the steps and grasping his crutch under his arm; then he raised
his body slowly till he was upright and came down the steps one by one. When he
reached me, he started examining the bicycle closely. He took hold of the handle bar,
rang the bell a number of times, and then bent and ran his fingers over the spokes of the
front wheel, muttering in a low voice:
“Nice bike.”

I was quick to say with pride:

“It’s a Raleigh 24, racing wheels, three-speed.”

He gave the bike another look over, as though to test the truth of what I’d said, then
asked:
“Do you know how to ride with your hands in the air?”

I nodded and set off on the bike. I was an expert rider and happy to show off in front of
him. I peddled hard till I got to top speed and could feel the bike shaking beneath me.
Then I raised my hands carefully from the handle bar, till my arms were straight up in
the air. I stayed that way for a bit, then turned and came back to where he’d taken a few
steps forward to the middle of the playground. Coming to a halt in front of him, I said
as I got off:
“Happy now?”

He didn’t answer me, but bent his head and started looking at the bike as though
weighing something profound and surprising in his mind. He struck the ground with
his crutch and moved forward a step till he was up against the bike. Then he grasped
the handle bar in his hand, leant towards me, and whispered: “Let me have a ride,
please.” And went on repeating insistently: “Please. Please.”

I didn’t take in what he was saying and stared at him. At that moment he looked like
someone swept by a wave of such longing that he couldn’t stop himself, or go back, and
when he found I didn’t reply he started shaking the handle bar violently and shouting,
in anger this time: “I said give me a ride!” Then he tried to jump up and get on and we
both lost our balance and almost fell over.

I don’t remember what I was thinking right then but something propelled me towards
him and I found myself helping him onto the bike. He leant his weight on my shoulder
and the crutch and after several strenuous attempts was able to raise his body up high
and then get his sound leg over to the other side of the bike and sit on the saddle. His
plan was to hold his artificial leg out in front to avoid the pedal and at the same time to
push the other pedal hard with his sound leg. This was extremely difficult but, in the
end, possible. Izzat settled himself on the bike and with my hand on his back I started to
push him forwards gently and carefully, and when the bike started to move and he
began pedalling, I let go. He lost his balance and wobbled violently but quickly
recovered his poise, straightened out, and started to control the bike. He had to make a
huge effort to pedal with one leg while keeping his balance but moments passed and
the bike proceeded slowly and Izzat passed first the big tree and then the canteen kiosk
and I found myself clapping and shouting:
“Well done, Izzat!”

He kept going in a straight line until he had almost reached the end of the playground
where he had to make a turn, which scared me. But he made the turn carefully and
skilfully and when he came back the other way he seemed confident and in complete
control of the bike, so much so that he changed gear once and then again until the
rushing air made the locks of his hair fly.

The bicycle was charging ahead at great speed now and Izzat passed down the pathway
that extended between the trees, his form appearing and disappearing amidst the criss-
crossing foliage. He’d done it, and I watched him on the bike, which was flying like an
arrow now, as he leant back, raised his head and let out a long, loud cry that echoed
around the playground a strange, drawn-out, cracked cry that sounded as though it had
been long imprisoned within his chest. He was shouting:
“See! Seeeeeeeeee!”

***

A little later, when I ran over to him, the bike was on its side on the ground, the front
wheel still spinning and whirring and the dull-colored artificial leg, with its sock, shoe,
and dark, hollow inside, lying separated from his body at a distance looking as though
it had just been cut off, or was a separate creature with its own independent inner life.
Izzat was lying face down, his hand on the place were the leg had been amputated and
which had started to bleed and make a stain that was spreading over his ripped pants. I
called to him and he slowly raised his head. There were cuts on his forehead and lips
and his face looked strange to me without the glasses. He gazed at me for a moment as
though gathering his wits, then said in a weak voice, with the ghost of a smile:
“Did you see me ride the bike?”

Translated by Humphrey Davies from the author’s short story collection Niraan Sadeeqa
[Friendly Fire], Merit, Cairo, 2004.

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