Autumn Leaves
Nothing breaks me…
sorrows shatter on my fingers like pottery…
ancient cities and memories break…
that old scar… that quarrel…
I remember;
I was ten years old…
when my head was split and left a mark…
I am a southerner…
I always yearn to be what I was not…
I yearn to encounter two things:
the truth…
and the absent faces!
Was everything I went through a dream?
Or was it the obsession of parting,
when pine trees cast their shade over it…
and Baghdad is wrapped by mills
that have stopped turning…
The teacher would walk ahead of me,
disheveled in hair and soul,
panting with jealousy,
and behind his panting I would recite:
I do not look at my homeland through a keyhole…
but I look from my pierced heart…
and I distinguish between the victorious homeland
and the vanquished homeland…
This is a homeland, my son,
that did not bear false witness…
yet they bore false witness against it…
That was the first time
I met him face to face…
I knew him through
“The Last Confession of Mālik ibn al-Rayb,”
and “The Book of Revelation,”
and “The Lady of the Four Apples,”
and I memorized by heart
his splendid icon: “The Teacher”…
I would always compare him
with Mahmoud Darwish;
Darwish had set foot in the soul
where no one before him had tread…
and al-Ṣāyigh had carved a hole in my heart
through which I saw Baghdad,
and the communists crucified
on the Baath wall…
A world of paper…
and remnants of women…
and a train passing,
trampling the facades of cities…
A swing of torment
that, from its violent sway,
sends reeling those burdened with truth…
headless…
and tips those who feast
at the caliph’s tables
the hearts of the simple folk
from the classes
whose souls were greased…
The lowering of the eyelid
as a young girl passes… swaying…
she is the cup, the myrtle,
the brocade, and the full moon
in a single sentence…
This is ancient Baghdad,
and he sits withdrawn
in one of its cafés,
recounting to me the details of his journey
in that distant time,
expounding at length on history,
seeing with the eye of truth
what is to come…
And what was, was…
the ear of grain exposed him…
then the swallow delivered him
to the eyes of the killers…
Al-Ṣāyigh was narrating,
and Baghdad paraded before me
images of carnation…
That was in the first week
of March 2003…
I do not know how I survived,
miraculously, days later,
the American aerial targeting
of the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad;
the hotel, at the time,
was the residence of journalists
of various nationalities,
and the attack resulted
in the killing and wounding of hundreds…
That was not the first time
I had escaped certain death…
but from that day I became certain
that death and I
had become companions…
The stage of our first encounter
was Minya in 1990,
when the vanguards of
the Islamic Group lay in wait for me
with swords around my house,
seeking my head…
But some friends
alerted me at the last moments,
so I departed,
and Cairo
was refuge and haven…
Our encounters multiplied;
from Minya to Paris,
passing through Baghdad and Amsterdam…
Each time he carried a surprise for me,
and each time I carried for him
certainty in God…
When I heard of al-Ṣāyigh’s death
I was in Beirut,
and a shiver seized me,
and I began to repeat:
“My homeland, were I occupied…”
and people began to watch me
with indifference toward him…
Years passed…
and I left for Paris,
and I had an appointment
with his opposite…
An icon of passion
that, from its violent sway,
sends reeling those burdened with poetry
without meters…
The saddle of a horse that hid fire…
A bird hovering
between my steps and the winds…
in distant deserts…
He was the novel of lovers,
and of those who circle the words of desire…
A meteor that passes and vanishes
through the whisperings of night,
yet leaves in the heart
its beautiful stab…
Adonis…
I hated him when I loved Darwish and al-Ṣāyigh,
but I loved him
to the extent of my hatred for him,
when I realized
the passion for arrival,
and disavowal,
and vigilance,
and entry into the lotus-tree of desire…
He is a language that docks
without greeting
in the harbor of speech…
Mihyār is his epithet,
his scent and his form,
his silence as he passes through words…
I said to him:
I am far from my country…
but when I read you
I feel the prick of a needle
that urges me to depart
from planet to planet,
a bird flying
from tree to tree…
He laughed his beautiful laugh,
then caught up with me with the question:
Do you know that your ancient civilization
equals all that the Arabs have produced
of civilizations?
The word pierced me…
it shattered me…
it distanced me from the letters of speech…
I grasped piety
between the lines…
I said to him:
Do you believe it
has not yet been narrated to this day?!
I gathered myself
and set about leaving…
He bade me farewell,
and at the harbor of the soul
I found myself dragging my days along…
an old man walking with his companion’s corpse
at the end of the race,
honoring their days
by letting horses trample upon them.
Paris: five p.m., Cairo time
