Mirrors of Absence
I am…
Once again the streets defeat me, and the ancient squares, so I flee into the arms of memories.
I gather myself, and hang on to what remains of me,
amid the roar of autumn waves and trees stripped of their leaves.
The streets are painted white,
and the snow stands tall above the heads of passersby and carriages. Alone, I struggle to be a child
who rejoices in affection when it comes from the hearts of the pure,
who hates evil and pays no heed to the wicked, no matter how high they rise upon the earth.
Thus the sky once told me
that my fate is in God’s hands, and no one in the universe can change it. So my soul grew still, and I burst into tears.
I am southern,
inhabited by piety through old songs, on the thresholds of the devout, and by silence in the presence of the saints.
Nothing awakens me in distant evenings
except my mother’s face, when it comes draped in white.
Not because white is the color of an amulet against time,
but because it reminds me of snow and hearts,
of purity and eternity.
I lived forty years,
digging rivers for those who come from there,
planting affection as trees, and birds,
and roses.
I received more than one embrace at farewell,
yet I still yearn for the final embrace.
For a million years I dreamed;
for a million years my mother did not give birth to me except for minutes in a bowl of flour, then she departed.
Perhaps my father was at the door beating the drums,
emptying what remained of the soul into the silence of the fields.
I am a small boy,
the grandfather cast upon a deathbed,
my mother urging me to cry,
and I am lost, with no water in my eyes.
It was an autumn day in October.
I ran with my father to Sayyida Zaynab,
and slept in his lap until dawn. The voices of street vendors, old women, and beggars woke me.
I repeated the gestures like my father
and slept before the shrine for an hour.
One hour alone was enough
for me to see her coming from afar,
flying in white garments, carrying me to the sky.
Was I that child,
or was it someone else?
I no longer know now,
but I still yearn
for that hour, before the death agony.
Sulaiman Shafiq
Our innocence was hidden in a mathematics book when we met as youths, searching for goodness in the hearts of girls, and for wheat in the farmers’ fields.
We were three when the one coming from Moscow joined us, a communist carrying a candle from the Church of the Virgin to light the paths of the poor and the marginalized.
Together we walked the city’s lanes, driven by the dream of tomorrow rising from the suns of students, workers, and peasants. Together we sprawled on the pavements of the great city that stealthily swallowed our dreams, and he slept in the bosom of the saints. Life stole us for an age, until we found ourselves in neither the parties of the left nor the right. We withdrew to weep over our condition, and to write poetry from the depths of the soul for those who would come.
On the platforms of trains laden with passersby we wrote stories about sectarian strife and its arsonists, and along the paths of our old villages we rested a little in the hearts of the weak, and drank from the earthen jars of ancient rooftops, where my mother used to twist for us, from wheat dough, roses and suns. Whenever debate grew heated, her voice would come soothing from afar: Take your time; none will remain but you.
Shoulder to shoulder we planted the city back and forth, yet at sunset we found nothing to remind us of it.
He knew I would forget him amid life’s crowds, as is my habit. So he whispered in my ear a year ago: You will remember me when you remember her. On the fourteenth of September I will depart.
Was he a prophet seeking a garment to cover his nakedness? Or does the brilliance of departure come as a vision in sleep?
There is nothing between us now. We are equal in love: she departed, and you departed, and I remained. Nothing else is worth reproach.
Mustafa Bayoumi
Writing is of two kinds: a kind you write, and a kind that writes you. It imprints you on pages and paper, takes your soul and gives it to the ink, inspects your veins, draws the blood from them, and with it quenches the thirst of reading. That is another formula that betrays the meaning of love when it mingles with shared history and early awareness, amid violet blossoms and basil.
It is a love shaped to the pulse of the music of Sayed Darwish and the poems of Fouad Haddad, to the mingling of the streets of Minya ibn Khasib with the streets of downtown in al-Mu‘izz’s Cairo. A love inhabited by the tales of Umm Kulthum’s café, the pulse of the Hussein shrine and al-Azhar Mosque, and from which waft the scents of Naguib Mahfouz: Sugar Street, Palace of Desire, and Between the Two Palaces. It is completed by al-Abnudi, Amal Dunqul, and Yahya al-Taher Abdallah, and by the reed flutes coming from the south to quench the north’s thirst for honey.
In that space, a small library lit our lives and drew our story with literature and culture. There its owner, Mustafa Bayoumi, planted in our hearts a love blended with flavors that remind you of the glories of the Wafd Party and the pashas of old, though he was, and remains, a socialist. A beautiful paradox, resembling Egypt in its creative contradictions.
On the edge of the soul, the flower of our years grew and flourished—those of us whose mettle was hardened in the crucible of the war on terrorism and the groups of darkness, those bats that spread across our good land to sow hatred and fear in every inch. We were very afraid, and we trembled greatly, but Mustafa was always a meeting place for lovers—your lovers, O Egypt.
We would gather in the evenings, a handful of friends clinging to love, certain of victory. Leading us was that elegant young man, singular in his refinement, son of the middle bourgeoisie, who kept company with the sons of the poor—workers and peasants like me—and gave them precedence over himself in seating and in standing. He was noble of another clay, unlike any we knew at the time.
This cultured socialist came with passion’s edge to teach us the values of humility, voracious reading, and the ordering of ideas, binding them into a unique necklace. Thus was my friend and twin soul, Mustafa, and thus he will remain an icon of a day yet to come, a day we dreamed of long—a day that gathers our dreams into a garland of jasmine.
The hour of departure has not yet come, Darsh. There is still time for weeping and joy and dancing, as we dreamed to the strains of Zorba. Do you remember? I remember. We have not danced it yet, that dance that never left our minds. We always wondered: when will we find the courage to do it?
I will wait for you, Darsh, to do it together—just once, my friend. After that, I promise we will say farewell.
And I waited…
and Zorba was gone,
and Mustafa was gone.
