In a world brimming with mistakes,
you alone are required not to err.
The age of invasions has passed… and companions
have gone… and we returned as orphans.
Peace, then, upon the boy who once was—who versified poems and wrote stories, and made the girls of the small town fall in love with him at first sight… that was his legend.
He would always repeat the saying of Uncle Salah Issa: “We are called the sons of the poor,” yet his self-respect never left him for a moment; his pride was non-negotiable, and his dignity not for sale. Sentences he memorized by heart from the mouth of Sheikh “Ali,” the father, when he uttered them in the stillness of night, and the boy listened.
Tales from times of defeat, steadfastness, and victory—the sheikh would tell them with passion, and the son would drink them in as though they were a spigot of sweet water, washing his soul so that he wandered, enamored.
Those shadows etched patterns upon his spirit when the father came home sad and broken on the fifth of June, 1967, to remain alone in his room, refusing to mingle with anyone. The boy was four years old, yet he grasped everything.
Days later, the father departed for the front, after bidding farewell to the mother and entrusting the boy to her.
Six years—the length of the father’s absence—amid fields of patience, sniping, and confronting darkness… six years during which the mother told the child the tales of Adham al-Sharqawi and Abu Zayd al-Hilali, staying awake beside him while night stood guard over her eyes: the rustle of palm fronds, the tremor of the door, the whistle of the wind—while the father’s absence bound them together.
Six years in which the father sought to prove himself worthy of the love the boy and the woman had given him—until he earned it in October 1973. That day the father embraced his wife and son with an embrace they had never known from him before; his hot tears fell upon their faces. They could not comprehend how such a lion could weep—he who had always repeated before the boy that expression the lad would remember to himself whenever calamities struck: men do not cry.
Was that the sheikh’s legend that fell into the sea of longing? Or was it the pain of those six years during which the sheikh struggled to wrest victory and present it to the boy, in fulfillment of a promise made to him in distant moments of silence—so that the father might reclaim his stature and the son his place among his peers?
And when the boy grew up, and began blending Mahmoud Darwish with Tayeb Salih, Adonis with Rachid Boudjedra, Amal Dunqul with Hanna Mina, Shawqi Bzeai with Abd al-Rahman Munif, Salah Abd al-Sabour with Naguib Mahfouz, Abd al-Rahman al-Abnudi with Yusuf Idris, Salah Jahin with Bahaa Taher, and Malek Haddad with Jabra… poetry with the novel…
It never crossed his mind that he would part from that legend that had inhabited him throughout his boyhood years: to be a poet, and to go where the sheikh wished, quenching the mother’s thirst to ascend to the utmost height.
But now he realizes that endings have drawn near, and that he is farther than ever from his first steps on the pavements of his beautiful city—where everything is fresh and moist with the taste of the Nile, and as innocent as her face.
The river’s sweetness, what remained of the faces of old companions, Chekhov’s stories, Neruda’s poems, and Fairuz’s evening songs—these were all he possessed as memories of his ancient city… the city of Nefertiti.
So life has indeed grown long for him, and nothing reminds him of those distant nights except the sun that merged with Shahanda’s face to shine; the kindness in Dalia’s eyes; Ghada, leafing out in the spring of life, his tender companion on the road; his mother’s face; Khaled when all friends depart; and Nour when daylight goes out in the streets of his old city.
The boy still follows the footsteps of his heart, knowing it has dwelt within him since he was a child. That was long ago—fifty years or more—when he began repeating the letters of her name between his lips, stirring his core so she might see him, and crawling with those coming from the hamlets, dreaming of nearness to her.
When mirrors go dark, she is the light that comes to him from a thousand deep passes; he unites with it and dances, sings, then sleeps upon its arms in the only direction where he raises his banner for lovers and sees no one but her.
She comes to him dreamy, intent, and soft among the letters of speech, and in sleep; and when evening arrives she teases him, then opens in his heart the door of the question:
On which night do you see that error lying in wait,
stretched beneath you in the dark,
chewing over its heavy waiting,
like a mythical beast
no human hand has tamed—
a sly wolf that seems asleep,
yet beneath you gnaws at stone,
awaiting your anticipated fall,
in a moment when you miscount your steps,
or lose the wisdom of initiative?
And when he reaches the convincing answer,
he sees you standing on the edge of life, intent,
clutching what remains of a soul in broad daylight.
You are the impossible soothsayer,
the hourglass,
the eternal female,
the witness of the age,
the icon of life,
the magnolia tree,
and the flood.
Then the boy who once was realizes that the danger has passed,
and places his palm in your hands,
then sleeps.
Brussels: five o’clock in the evening, Cairo time
