Tag Archives: Health

Tea with Mouayed al-Rawi in a Turkish café in Berlin

Posted on by
3
by Sargon Boulus (translated from Arabic by the author)
Domino tiles

Image via Wikipedia

Our cigarette packs
close to hand (that secret fuel) . . .
The babble of immigrants
slapping dominoes on marbletops:
a noise familiar once,
out of which
a word may flare up amid the smoke –
born there, refusing
to die here.
If we don’t say it, who will?
And who are we
if we don’t?

Not about what came
to pass; how it came, and passed!
But about this spoon buried
in sugar, and this finjan.
Not that Wall whose remains
are sold as souvenirs
at check-point Charlie where
only yesterday
they exchanged spies
and traded secrets of the East
and West, but this
wall painting facing us now,
with a harem from the days
of the Sublime Porte
who recline dreamily
in pleasure boats, on a river
guzzled down, in one
gulp, by history.
Let’s say we have seen
a lot of walls, how they rise
and fall, how the dust
particles dance under the hooves
of the Mongol’s horse,
how “victory” laughs
its idiot’s laugh in the mirror
of loss, before it breaks
and its shards fill the world
where we walk, and meet,
every time.



Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta

Bolano on pain

Posted on by
Reply

Anyway, these ideas or feelings or ramblings had their satisfactions. They turned the pain of others into memories of one’s own. They turned pain, which is natural, enduring, and eternally triumphant, into personal memory, which is human, brief, and eternally elusive. They turned a brutal story of injustice and abuse, an incoherent howl with no beginning or end, into a neatly structured story in which suicide was always held up as a possibility. They turned flight into freedom, even if freedom meant no more than the perpetuation of flight. They turned chaos into order, even if it was at the cost of what is commonly known as sanity.

from 2666

64-22-Arts-Q-Antichrist

Enhanced by Zemanta

Four poems by Ahmad Yamani

Posted on by
2

The Two Houses
I wake in the same room to find my hand splashing the lake that lurks under the bed, to find the thick wall of my old house with its dusty window where a main wall of this apartment should be. I opened the window and the evening was still there. And my father was in the kitchen, his hand on the light switch and his leg which is missing five centimetres looking longer than the other, I called to him and he did not reply, he only smiled and invited me with gestures of his hand to go on sleeping. ‘The universe is a handkerchief’, they say here. Over there we say ‘Small world’. At night I go to my parents’ house, through the opening I made behind my new house. I stay there an hour or two to check on the family’s medicine, on my parents’ sleep and their breakfast. At dawn I set up my vehicle and go back again.

The Big Escape
They had sentenced me to execution with two of my friends and it was by what they called euthanasia which had already killed a fourth friend of ours. We did not understand very well what they meant by these statements and so they left us free without guards or cells and sentenced us instead to a kind of death they called a mercy killing which is carried out by a middle aged lady who has a benign face and which is painless but is death anyway. I consulted with my mother and my friends a little while before the execution and I decided to escape. They all agreed I should go while my two friends remained to wait for the lady. As soon as I went out after they gave me all the money they had I met with the merciful lady face to face next to my home. Neither of us looked at the other. She avoided me and went off and I went past her and started to run looking over my shoulder in other countries.

Tobacco Seller
Her hand is on the box, my foot outside the house. Suddenly it grows dark, while she continues rubbing the tobacco on her shiny thigh.
She stops a little to move half the tobacco to her other thigh, while I enter the tunnel and start smoking.”

The Book
How can she not
read what I write
How come she waits by the door
until someone passing
gives her a few words
those strange obscure words
Yet she listens and smiles
as if she was there with me
at five in the morning
as if her hand
relocated some of the words
moved them from the wrong places
moved them and went to sleep
But how can she not
read what her own hands inscribed only yesterday
How come she cannot open the balcony
in the morning
to receive the sun
with a copy of the book in her left hand
that she reads slowly
winking at the neighbours
pointing to her son the wordsmith
waving the book in their faces
five times
while she mutters
strange and obscure words.

Enhanced by Zemanta

نصوص جديدة: ملحق النهار

Posted on by
Reply

عـــــــــــــــــــــــزاء

كيف يمكن لكل منهم أن يتعرف الى وجه الآخر، هؤلاء الثابتين على قواعدهم باختلاف درجات الململة؟ الأسوأ أن عليهم أن يتذكروا الأسماء. بين وصلات النحيب ستفتّش الثكالى عن زوجات لأبنائهن. سيسترق الصغار نظرات إلى بدلاتهم المنعكسة في الزجاج. سيتردد المدخنون لحظة إشعال السيجارة. ربما ينسى واحد ويسأل عن الفقيد: ما الذي أخّره عن أداء الواجب معنا هنا؟ وقبل أن ينفضّ الجمع تقرقع القبلات على الخدود، ولا أثر للموت على وجوه العائلة.

•••

القوة

كمن يعبّئ الهواء في قناني، حكت لي عن غياب المرجعيات. كيف كانت تتحرك من دماغها. لا شيء يقاس ولا أحد يستحق. فتاة طموحة في القاهرة. وعوضاً من القرية، نُقود تجيء بطلوع الروح وأسرة بديلة من الأصدقاء. ليس فيهم من يعيلها، لكن الألفة تنز بالوصاية. وبالتدريج تصير القاهرة هي الأخرى قرية، الفرق أنها بلا مرجعيات… كنت دائماً أسألها لماذا تتمسك بالحياة في الغربة. وذات ليلة كمن يعبئ الهواء، حكت لي كيف ألقت دعائمها في سلة القمامة. حيث الأماكن فخاخ والكتب أغلى من الأغاني، ستنجز مشروعها منفردة. وقبل أن تغمز لها الهجرة باحتمال أن تتغير، لن يخطر ببالها أن امتزاج الدماء قد يكون مؤشّراً للتوازن… كانت تحدّق مذهولة كل بضع عبارات. وبدا لي أنني أراوح الذكريات في درجة اقترابي من مكانها على الكنبة، وقد صارت مصر كلها زيارة مربكة. نقطة البداية مفتوحة الآفاق. لكن أحداً من الجناة لن يختفي، ربما لأنهم ليسوا الجناة. أو أن رعباً أصبح يجاور رعب أن يصير الناس جسوراً، من أن يصيروا عراقيل. لهذا تبدّل رفاق الدرب من دون أن يتضح اتجاه الرحلة. وعبر المحطات ظل الطريق أضيق من أن يتسع لإثنين.

•••

غانا

لم يخبرني الرفاق أنهم مسافرون إلى غانا حتى تناولوا التطعيمات اللازمة في مركز المصل واللقاح، الأمر الذي أكّد لي أنني بالفعل لا يمكن أن أذهب معهم. وعلى رغم توقي إلى منظر الأشجار على ساحل الذهب، لم يحزنّي أنني لن أسافر بقدر ما أحزنني قرارهم – بغض النظر عن نفيهم لأنه قرار – بالذات وأن رفقتهم هي الشيء الذي يعرّفني من أنا. هؤلاء الذين يشبهونني ولا يشبهونني، يوجع غيابهم لأنهم هم محتاجون اليَّ. حين لمحت دماءهم عالقة بجلدي كنت أفكر بأنهم أولاد قحاب يجب ألاّ يكونوا رفاقي، وتذكرت أنني أسكنهم وأنهم شبابيك. شبابيك ولا جدار، ولا بيت. لا بيت داخل البيت. الآن عليَّ أن أعاقبهم أو أخونهم. لا فائدة من الغفران لأنني لن أكون الله. وقد أكون شخصاً آخر عندما يعودون. تلقيت الخبر كأنه خبر فحسب، وجلست أتخيل الأشجار وأفكر: أنا الآخر سأسافر إلى غانا ذات يوم، ولا ضير في الذهاب منفرداً إلى مركز المصل واللقاح.

•••

زواج

ولكنك لم تتكبد كل هذا إلا لتسمع التكة المفزعة لباب يُغلَق فتعرف كم تتوق لاختفاء الشيء الذي أمامك، الشيء الكريه الذي لا تريد أن تراه. هنا يصبح ما يجعل للعالم معنى مجرد جزء من العالم. تنتحر الروعة. والقصة نفسها تنتهي أو تبدأ.

•••

الاكتئاب

حيث يبطئ المرور فجأة على أعتاب المدينة، يقف عجوز ممتلئ بعمامة على رأسه. يونيفورم أزرق ببادج نحاسي: دليل أن رخصة منادي سيارات كانت بحوزته ذات يوم، يبدو أنها تمزقت من سنين. لا ينتظر أن يعطيه أحد نقوداً. لا يأبه بإشارات السائقين أن لا تلمّع الزجاج. ولا ينطق مهما ناداه الآخرون. هو ثابت طالما السيارات واقفة. يهرول وراءها لحظة انطلاقها، فقط لحظة الانطلاق، ليمسح ما تطوله فوطته القديمة.

•••

نصف الليل في دار النشر

كأنك كنت هنا في الأمس… سوى أن الناشر –
رفيق سلاحك في معارك الود المجاني –
خيال منتَهَك لذكرى آخِر لقاء.
ترحابه هواء ملوّث وأنت تستنشق بحذر،
تسترجع الجبهات… ولماذا، وقت القتال،
كنتَ أول الهاربين؟ الكلام كما عهدته
لن يأتي على ذكر الأدب، ما يجب أن يدهشك
في دار نشر. لكنك لا تنتبه لغير علامات الدائرة
التي أصبحتَ داخل حدودها تلقائياً،
كأنك جُبلتَ على التحول إلى شخص ليس أنت.
يوماً ما كان لا بد أن تكون واحداً من هؤلاء
لكي تجلس الآن على كنبة ضيقة،
وفي وجهك على الحائط صورة حضرتَ التقاطها

وأنت عاشق يركض ببراءة بين العدسات –
لكاتب ستكفّ عن حبّه قبل أن يموت.
يا منافق! عشتَ لتقول لك امرأة موهوبة
عن نظرتها المتبادلة مع هؤلاء:
“كياني!” وربما لا لشيء إلا لترجع إلى هنا،
بقيتَ على الأرض عدداً كافياً من السنين.

يوسف رخا

(ولمن يضايقه – مثلي – “الديسك” اللبناني)

عزاء

كيف سيمكن لكل منهم أن يتعرف على وجه الآخر، هؤلاء الثابتين على قواعدهم باختلاف درجات الململة؟ الأدهى أنّ عليهم أن يتذكروا الأسماء. بين وصلات النحيب ستفتّش الثكالى عن زوجات لأبنائهن. سيسترق الصغار نظرات إلى بدلاتهم المنعكسة في الزجاج. سيتردد المدخنون لحظة إشعال السيجارة. ربما ينسى واحد ويسأل عن الفقيد: ما الذي أخّره عن أداء الواجب معنا هنا؟ وقبل أن ينفضّ الجمع تقرقع القبلات على الخدود، ولا أثر للموت على وجوه العائلة.

القوة

كمن يعبّئ الهواء في قناني، حكت لي عن غياب المرجعيات. كيف كانت تتحرك من دماغها. لا شيء يقاس ولا أحد يستحق. فتاة طموحة في القاهرة. وعوضاً عن القرية، نُقود تجيء بطلوع الروح وأسرة بديلة من الأصدقاء. ليس فيهم من يعولها، لكن الألفة تنز بالوصاية. وبالتدريج تصير القاهرة هي الأخرى قرية، الفرق أنها بلا مرجعيات. كنت دائماً أسألها لماذا تتمسك بالحياة في الغربة. وذات ليلة كمن يعبئ الهواء، حكت لي كيف ألقت دعائمها في سلة القمامة. حيث الأماكن فخاخ والكتب أغلى من الأغاني، ستنجز مشروعها منفردة. وقبل أن تغمز لها الهجرة باحتمال أن تتغير، لن يخطر ببالها أن امتزاج الدماء قد يكون مؤشّراً للتوازن. كانت تحدّق مذهولة كل بضع عبارات. وبدا لي أنني أراوح الذكريات في درجة اقترابي من مكانها على الكنبة، وقد صارت مصر كلها زيارة مربكة. نقطة البداية مفتوحة الآفاق. لكن أحداً من الجناة لن يختفي، ربما لأنهم ليسوا الجناة. أو أن رعباً أصبح يجاور رعب أن يصير الناس جسوراً، من أن يصيروا عراقيل. لهذا تبدّل رفاق الدرب دون أن يتضح اتجاه الرحلة. وعبر المحطات ظل الطريق أضيق من أن يتسع لاثنين.

غانا

لم يخبرني الرفاق أنهم مسافرون إلى غانا حتى تناولوا التطعيمات اللازمة في مركز المصل واللقاح، الأمر الذي أكّد لي أنني بالفعل لا يمكن أن أذهب معهم. ورغم توقي إلى منظر الأشجار على ساحل الذهب، لم يحزني أنني لن أسافر بقدر ما أحزنني قرارهم – مع أنهم ينفون أنه قرار – بالذات لكون رفقتهم هي الشيء الذي يعرّفني مَن أنا. هؤلاء الذين يشبهونني ولا يشبهونني، يوجع غيابهم لأنهم هم محتاجون لي. حين لمحت دماءهم عالقة بجلدي كنت أفكر بأنهم أولاد قحاب لا يجب أن يكونوا رفاقي، وتذكرت أنني أسكنهم وأنهم شبابيك. شبابيك ولا جدار، ولا بيت. لا بيت داخل البيت. الآن علي أن أعاقبهم أو أخونهم. لا فائدة من الغفران لأنني لن أكون الله. وقد أكون شخصاً آخر عندما يعودون. تلقّيت الخبر على أنه خبر فحسب، وجلست أتخيل الأشجار وأفكر: أنا الآخر سأسافر إلى غانا ذات يوم، ولا ضير في الذهاب منفرداً إلى مركز المصل واللقاح.


زواج

ولكنك لم تتكبد كل هذا إلا لتسمع التكة المفزعة لباب يُغلَق فتعرف كم تتوق لاختفاء الشيء الذي أمامك، الشيء الكريه الذي لا تريد أن تراه. هنا يصبح ما يجعل للعالم معنى مجرد جزء من العالم. تنتحر الروعة. والقصة نفسها تنتهي أو تبدأ

الاكتئاب

حيث يبطئ المرور فجأة على أعتاب المدينة، يقف عجوز ممتلئ بعمامة على رأسه. يونيفورم أزرق ببادج نحاسي: دليل أن رخصة منادي سيارات كانت بحوزته ذات يوم، يبدو أنها تمزقت من سنين. لا ينتظر أن يعطيه أحد نقوداً. لا يأبه بإشارات السائقين أن لا تلمّع الزجاج. ولا ينطق مهما ناداه الآخرون. هو ثابت طالما السيارات واقفة. يهرول وراءها لحظة انطلاقها، فقط لحظة الانطلاق، ليمسح ما تطوله فوطته القديمة.


نصف الليل في دار النشر

كأنك كنت هنا بالأمس… سوى أن الناشر –

رفيق سلاحك في معارك الود المجاني –

خيال منتَهَك لذكرى آخِر لقاء.

ترحابه هواء ملوّث وأنت تستنشق بحذر،

تسترجع الجبهات… ولماذا، وقت القتال،

كنتَ أول الهاربين؟ الكلام كما عهدته

لن يأتي على ذكر الأدب، ما يجب أن يدهشك

في دار نشر. لكنك لا تنتبه لغير علامات الدائرة

التي أصبحتَ داخل حدودها تلقائياً،

كأنك جُبلتَ على التحول إلى شخص ليس أنت.

يوماً ما كان لابد أن تكون واحداً من هؤلاء

لكي تجلس الآن على كنبة ضيقة،

وأمام وجهك على الحائط صورة حضرتَ التقاطها –

وأنت عاشق يركض ببراءة بين العدسات –

لكاتب ستكف عن حبه قبل أن يموت…

يا منافق! عشتَ لتقول لك امرأة موهوبة

عن نظرة تتبادلها مع هؤلاء: «كياني!»

وربما لا لشيء إلا لترجع إلى هنا،

بقيتَ على الأرض عدداً كافياً من السنين.

<!–[if !mso]>

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

عـــــــــــــــــــــــزاء

كيف يمكن لكل منهم أن يتعرف الى وجه الآخر، هؤلاء الثابتين على قواعدهم باختلاف درجات الململة؟ الأسوأ أن عليهم أن يتذكروا الأسماء. بين وصلات النحيب ستفتّش الثكالى عن زوجات لأبنائهن. سيسترق الصغار نظرات إلى بدلاتهم المنعكسة في الزجاج. سيتردد المدخنون لحظة إشعال السيجارة. ربما ينسى واحد ويسأل عن الفقيد: ما الذي أخّره عن أداء الواجب معنا هنا؟ وقبل أن ينفضّ الجمع تقرقع القبلات على الخدود، ولا أثر للموت على وجوه العائلة.

•••

القوة

كمن يعبّئ الهواء في قناني، حكت لي عن غياب المرجعيات. كيف كانت تتحرك من دماغها. لا شيء يقاس ولا أحد يستحق. فتاة طموحة في القاهرة. وعوضاً من القرية، نُقود تجيء بطلوع الروح وأسرة بديلة من الأصدقاء. ليس فيهم من يعيلها، لكن الألفة تنز بالوصاية. وبالتدريج تصير القاهرة هي الأخرى قرية، الفرق أنها بلا مرجعيات… كنت دائماً أسألها لماذا تتمسك بالحياة في الغربة. وذات ليلة كمن يعبئ الهواء، حكت لي كيف ألقت دعائمها في سلة القمامة. حيث الأماكن فخاخ والكتب أغلى من الأغاني، ستنجز مشروعها منفردة. وقبل أن تغمز لها الهجرة باحتمال أن تتغير، لن يخطر ببالها أن امتزاج الدماء قد يكون مؤشّراً للتوازن… كانت تحدّق مذهولة كل بضع عبارات. وبدا لي أنني أراوح الذكريات في درجة اقترابي من مكانها على الكنبة، وقد صارت مصر كلها زيارة مربكة. نقطة البداية مفتوحة الآفاق. لكن أحداً من الجناة لن يختفي، ربما لأنهم ليسوا الجناة. أو أن رعباً أصبح يجاور رعب أن يصير الناس جسوراً، من أن يصيروا عراقيل. لهذا تبدّل رفاق الدرب من دون أن يتضح اتجاه الرحلة. وعبر المحطات ظل الطريق أضيق من أن يتسع لإثنين.

•••

غانا

لم يخبرني الرفاق أنهم مسافرون إلى غانا حتى تناولوا التطعيمات اللازمة في مركز المصل واللقاح، الأمر الذي أكّد لي أنني بالفعل لا يمكن أن أذهب معهم. وعلى رغم توقي إلى منظر الأشجار على ساحل الذهب، لم يحزنّي أنني لن أسافر بقدر ما أحزنني قرارهم – بغض النظر عن نفيهم لأنه قرار – بالذات وأن رفقتهم هي الشيء الذي يعرّفني من أنا. هؤلاء الذين يشبهونني ولا يشبهونني، يوجع غيابهم لأنهم هم محتاجون اليَّ. حين لمحت دماءهم عالقة بجلدي كنت أفكر بأنهم أولاد قحاب يجب ألاّ يكونوا رفاقي، وتذكرت أنني أسكنهم وأنهم شبابيك. شبابيك ولا جدار، ولا بيت. لا بيت داخل البيت. الآن عليَّ أن أعاقبهم أو أخونهم. لا فائدة من الغفران لأنني لن أكون الله. وقد أكون شخصاً آخر عندما يعودون. تلقيت الخبر كأنه خبر فحسب، وجلست أتخيل الأشجار وأفكر: أنا الآخر سأسافر إلى غانا ذات يوم، ولا ضير في الذهاب منفرداً إلى مركز المصل واللقاح.

•••

زواج

ولكنك لم تتكبد كل هذا إلا لتسمع التكة المفزعة لباب يُغلَق فتعرف كم تتوق لاختفاء الشيء الذي أمامك، الشيء الكريه الذي لا تريد أن تراه. هنا يصبح ما يجعل للعالم معنى مجرد جزء من العالم. تنتحر الروعة. والقصة نفسها تنتهي أو تبدأ.

•••

الاكتئاب

حيث يبطئ المرور فجأة على أعتاب المدينة، يقف عجوز ممتلئ بعمامة على رأسه. يونيفورم أزرق ببادج نحاسي: دليل أن رخصة منادي سيارات كانت بحوزته ذات يوم، يبدو أنها تمزقت من سنين. لا ينتظر أن يعطيه أحد نقوداً. لا يأبه بإشارات السائقين أن لا تلمّع الزجاج. ولا ينطق مهما ناداه الآخرون. هو ثابت طالما السيارات واقفة. يهرول وراءها لحظة انطلاقها، فقط لحظة الانطلاق، ليمسح ما تطوله فوطته القديمة.

•••

نصف الليل في دار النشر

كأنك كنت هنا في الأمس… سوى أن الناشر –
رفيق سلاحك في معارك الود المجاني –
خيال منتَهَك لذكرى آخِر لقاء.
ترحابه هواء ملوّث وأنت تستنشق بحذر،
تسترجع الجبهات… ولماذا، وقت القتال،
كنتَ أول الهاربين؟ الكلام كما عهدته
لن يأتي على ذكر الأدب، ما يجب أن يدهشك
في دار نشر. لكنك لا تنتبه لغير علامات الدائرة
التي أصبحتَ داخل حدودها تلقائياً،
كأنك جُبلتَ على التحول إلى شخص ليس أنت.
يوماً ما كان لا بد أن تكون واحداً من هؤلاء
لكي تجلس الآن على كنبة ضيقة،
وفي وجهك على الحائط صورة حضرتَ التقاطها –

وأنت عاشق يركض ببراءة بين العدسات –
لكاتب ستكفّ عن حبّه قبل أن يموت.
يا منافق! عشتَ لتقول لك امرأة موهوبة
عن نظرتها المتبادلة مع هؤلاء:
“كياني!” وربما لا لشيء إلا لترجع إلى هنا،
بقيتَ على الأرض عدداً كافياً من السنين.

يوسف رخا

Enhanced by Zemanta

The Lion for Real

Posted on by
Reply 


I came home and found a lion in my living room
Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!
Two stenographers pulled their brunnette hair and banged the window shut
I hurried home to Patterson and stayed two days

Called up old Reichian analyst
who'd kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana
'It's happened' I panted 'There's a Lion in my living room'
'I'm afraid any discussion would have no value' he hung up

I went to my old boyfriend we got drunk with his girlfriend
I kissed him and announced I had a lion with a mad gleam in my eye
We wound up fighting on the floor I bit his eyebrow he kicked me out
I ended up masturbating in his jeep parked in the street moaning 'Lion.'

Found Joey my novelist friend and roared at him 'Lion!'
He looked at me interested and read me his spontaneous ignu high poetries
I listened for lions all I heard was Elephant Tiglon Hippogriff Unicorn
        Ants
But figured he really understood me when we made it in Ignaz Wisdom's
        bathroom.

But next day he sent me a leaf from his Smoky Mountain retreat
'I love you little Bo-Bo with your delicate golden lions
But there being no Self and No Bars therefore the Zoo of your dear Father
        hath no lion
You said your mother was mad don't expect me to produce the Monster for
        your Bridegroom.'

Confused dazed and exalted bethought me of real lion starved in his stink
        in Harlem
Opened the door the room was filled with the bomb blast of his anger
He roaring hungrily at the plaster walls but nobody could hear outside
        thru the window
My eye caught the edge of the red neighbor apartment building standing in
        deafening stillness
We gazed at each other his implacable yellow eye in the red halo of fur
Waxed rhuemy on my own but he stopped roaring and bared a fang
        greeting.
I turned my back and cooked broccoli for supper on an iron gas stove
boilt water and took a hot bath in the old tup under the sink board.

He didn't eat me, tho I regretted him starving in my presence.
Next week he wasted away a sick rug full of bones wheaten hair falling out
enraged and reddening eye as he lay aching huge hairy head on his paws
by the egg-crate bookcase filled up with thin volumes of Plato, & Buddha.

Sat by his side every night averting my eyes from his hungry motheaten
        face
stopped eating myself he got weaker and roared at night while I had
        nightmares
Eaten by lion in bookstore on Cosmic Campus, a lion myself starved by
        Professor Kandisky, dying in a lion's flophouse circus,
I woke up mornings the lion still added dying on the floor--'Terrible
        Presence!'I cried'Eat me or die!'

It got up that afternoon--walked to the door with its paw on the south wall to
        steady its trembling body
Let out a soul-rending creak from the bottomless roof of his mouth
thundering from my floor to heaven heavier than a volcano at night in
        Mexico
Pushed the door open and said in a gravelly voice "Not this time Baby--
        but I will be back again."

Lion that eats my mind now for a decade knowing only your hunger
Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the universe how am I chosen
In this life I have heard your promise I am ready to die I have served
Your starved and ancient Presence O Lord I wait in my room at your
        Mercy.

Allen Ginsberg

Paris, March 1958

Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta

In memorium: Youssef Chahine

Posted on by
Reply

Love, life and Uncle Joe

Interviewed byYoussef Rakha

On the threshold of the millennium Youssef Chahine, Egypt‘s most out-spoken film-maker, could hardly have remained silent. But the voice in which he communicates his message is even louder this time.

In his unashamedly topical thriller, Al-Aakhar (The Other), the new world order takes on disastrously ominous dimensions as a group of rapacious Egyptian and American businessmen, in inexplicable liaison with religious extremists throughout the world, go about collecting funds to build a religious complex in the Sinai where Christians, Muslims and Jews can coexist in peace — perhaps an oblique reference to Sadat’s unfinished project of the 1980s. Meanwhile a love story has developed between Adam (Hani Salama) — the son of an Egyptian businessman and his American wife, Margret (Nabila Ebeid) — and Hanan (Hanan Tourk), a struggling young journalist intent on exposing the corruption and injustice which besets the system. The businessmen’s undertaking, of course, turns out to be a sham, and the evils of unmoderated privatisation are eventually revealed for what they are, but not until the film reveals its own possible shortcomings.

Unlike Chahine’s last two features, Al-Mohagir (The Emigrant, his biggest box-office success to date) and Al-Masir (Destiny), Al-Aakhar tackles current issues head-on, rather than dressing them in biblical or historical garb. Yet here too the plot is bafflingly elaborate, favouring dramatic intensity over credibility; the characters are nearer abstract types than human individuals; the good and evil camps are too clearly demarcated; and scenes depicting the two young protagonists’ ill-fated love are by turns melodramatic and sentimental. Chahine seems to have been employing the perfect formula for plebeian, if not altogether pedestrian, entertainment. The results are gripping, often amusing morality tales, but they offer neither the aesthetic wholeness nor the intellectual excitement to be expected from modern Arab cinema’s most celebrated agent provocateur.

Despite continuing success worldwide — after receiving Cannes’ prix du cinquantieme in 1997, Chahine chose not to participate in the official competition this year, so as not to compete with younger directors — one wonders whether his seemingly obsessive concern with current political and economic questions, the urge “to live in my time”, is ultimately justified from an artistic perspective.

His disarming charisma aside, the 73-year-old director finds the questions posed by “modernity” not only justified, however, but inevitable: “You tell me is this your business or not. Of course it’s my business. I’m talking about human beings. If you are talking about people who are living with you at the time you are creating some kind of work, then the whole context must be included… All that happens politically and economically influences me socially… psychologically, influences how I make love in bed.

ChahineIbn El-Nil

El-Wadi

Cannes97
Despite the positive tone in which he talks about Arab cinema in Cannes, Youssef Chahine’s 1997 contribution to the official competition, Al-Masir, failed to glean the much coveted Palme d’Or

“Basically I’m doing drama, but the drama cannot be detached from reality. And the dosage is very, very difficult. Sometimes there are things that I want to get rid of quickly because I’m scared they might overpower the drama. When I learn more, I will be better at proportions, but I’m still learning and that’s the truth of it. It’s very hard, when you want to make drama, and you have a position that you want to expound. Sometimes maybe I rush into things, the way we’re all rushing into globalisation right now without really understanding what it means. But it’s the drama that makes you sit and watch. You want to know what will happen next, the boy and the girl, the love story…

“Maybe I could have been a little bit more subtle but there is always the fear of not being understood. You mustn’t forget that you have 80 per cent illiteracy. I mean, I love you very much, but still I want to try and talk to more people. You’ll remember when people were saying that Joe is being cryptic and nobody understands him — this was a battle against me. And I don’t want to reach the stage where I don’t find the funds necessary to do my work.

“Cinema is a popular art, and the American school in which I grew up stresses the entertainment value of the work. But to what extent you should be subtle — it depends. I am trying my best. The point is to balance your proportions, so that people will understand where the catastrophe is coming from, and there is no catastrophe that doesn’t have political and economic colour.

“For globalisation to work here certain economic and social conditions must obtain. That we have traditions and conventions going back seven thousand years — and I don’t say this in a jingoistic way — doesn’t mean that we are chauvinistic. Culturally we are different, even physically we are different. And our specificity is what’s delicious about us. So America can’t come and tell me you have to be like me. Rather, it should say that we want to cooperate in a way that lets me retain what’s particularly attractive about me. I mean, I’m all for the businessmen, I’m all for globalisation, but I also want to know how to limit it, how to protect myself.”

Indeed the downside of an increasingly market-oriented society — which Chahine’s own production company, Misr International, has had to confront — gives his (often comic) depiction of brusque businessmen, committed journalists and sincere employees being made redundant an unforeseen autobiographical dimension. Two telling encounters had prompted Chahine to embark on his project. First, he saw a businessman furiously banging the table and roaring, “I pay, therefore I tell you what to do.” Second, one of the many economists he consulted assured him that the country was in mint condition, everything was flourishing and there was nothing to complain about.

“I’ve had a company for thirty years, I give chances to new kids to try out their talents. For 30 years I didn’t need anybody to push me, I kept on going to festivals even though sometimes it was military people, and sometimes what they call officials who were in control, and in either case they didn’t know much about cinema. My company was created for about LE14,000 and it did all this over the years — really a lot of pictures on which people worked. I have a hundred families which this company is supporting, and usually they are picked because they really love cinema, and they would suffer for cinema, give something more.

“Now people talk to me about concessions for people who have LE200 million. I don’t even know how many zeros there are in LE200 million. I said maybe they’re talking about two million. It was insane. And I thought, don’t tell me the country is flourishing. Say that a very small part of the country is being favoured…”

But where is “the other” in all this? Chahine’s methods of tackling difference include a guest appearance by Edward Said which, though dramatically unnecessary, summarises the point of the film in straightforward Arabic, with Said arguing against the them-and-us approach to human civilisation and affirming the value of open cultural exchange. “I think that really Professor Said is extremely important for any Arab. When he appears, this might tempt you to read his works. It’s enough that he agreed to it. He is always in a huge confrontation, and the lines that he says are taken from his texts. And besides he was unbelievably sweet. To give us so much of his time and grace the film with his presence…”

Margret, on the other hand, symbolises the American obsession with absolute (political and economic) control, and it is her blindly selfish possessiveness that perpetuates Adam and Hanan’s death at the end. “When you want your hegemony to be absolute, dramatically that’s as if you want to kill your children. Too much control, too much possessiveness — and you feel like saying, what’s wrong with you people, why be the policemen of the world? I don’t hate Margret. But she’s pathetic. She can’t understand that nobody can control everything in a real democracy, which is what we’re striving for…”

Margret’s involvement with a Christian extremist sect, moreover, shifts the emphasis from Islamic extremism (Al-Masir’s principal topic) to Western religious fanaticism. Even the Fayoum mummy portraits, with which she decorates her house, acquire a sinister aspect. “The sects use even Jesus Christ to propagate their lies, they use the Fayoum portraits. And maybe it’s about time that you talk about non-Islamic extremism. But the most I can do is criticise, I am not a judge.”

But where Margret’s computer becomes an agent of international political conspiracy, encoding people’s private lives in microchips and boding such tragedies as the killing of the protagonist’s Algerian friend by extremists almost as soon as he returns to his country, Adam and Hanan’s love remains “the most important thing in the world”.

“What do I want to know about the other? It’s the ways in which he is different. But rather than being fascist, racist, and hating the difference — I find it intriguing. It’s not just a blind mad love. You are different to me, I’m different to you. But maybe that’s what attracts us to each other. And we should teach people that the difference is something attractive.

“I am very sensual. I hate porn but I like eroticism, and it’s very important for me that you get excited while you watch. Love is the best thing in life, so I want to show love, but without offending people’s sensitivities. And it’s not just the physical gestures but people who care. How can you go on talking about love? How can you liberate yourself from all those dreadful repressions that beset you from the very beginning? That’s what the question is for me…

“I’m always surrounded by young people,” Chahine explains. “The kid who writes the screenplays with me, Khaled Youssef, is not yet 30. But I tell him — you’re getting too old for me now and you must be replaced by someone younger. Because that’s the way to know what’s going on, the real problems. So I’m really trying to live in modernity, in my time.”

And living in his time he certainly has been. Now that he has appropriated current issues so fully, though, the question to be asked is what next?

Al-Ahram Weekly, May 1999

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Nawwah

Posted on by
Reply
Two cellphone SIM cards (bottom and top)
Image via Wikipedia

And verily We had empowered them with that wherewith We have not empowered you, and had assigned them ears and eyes and hearts—Koran, xlvi, 26

 

My instructions are to deliver the corpse to Nastassja Kinsky. We are to meet at nine tomorrow morning in the lobby of the Cecil Hotel, just off the seashore in downtown Alexandria. The corpse is a lightweight microelectronic bolt that looks like a miniature coffin; Nastassja Kinsky is an agent of the Plant. If I revealed what the Plant is, I would die.

Five weeks ago, a bearded boy came into my office and took his clothes off. Later that night I told my wife we had to be separated by the end of the year. She mouthed the word divorce interrogatively and cried. I stayed in the office until I found an apartment, seeing the boy every day. He tasted of sand and vine leaves, groaned like a reed flute, and made me so happy it didn’t even register that I was sleeping with a man.

Since then I’ve learned many things. One: that sexuality is a silly mental construct, but so is almost everything else in this world; who would have thought a thing like the Plant was possible? And two: that the Plant is so powerful and fair, no one would have to kill me if I was to die; I would just contract an illness, have a car accident, something. The Plant can make things happen so only you are responsible; it can alter the constitution of the air.

The boy proved lithe and tender, a divine sensualist, but it turned out he was on a mission to recruit me. His name was Allen Ginsberg, he said; mine was to be Joseph Koudelka. My post would involve making weekend trips to deliver microelectronic parts around the region. He explained to me what the Plant is doing to change the world, why I was chosen for the vacancy, and how those deliveries matter.

The term of the contract was unspecified, but he assured me about the Plant’s employment philosophy: No one will serve for longer than a very small portion of their lifetime. In that brief period people have what he called adventurous skill accumulation. Payment is made only once at the end; it never involves money but, Believe me, he said, it is worth it.

You’re not serious, I scoffed.

It’s like the trip of a lifetime, he ignored me, except you learn a lot too. And you get a very valuable present at the end, something to treasure forever.

Learn about what, you howling faggot?

He was crouched on the floor tying up his shoelace; I couldn’t help ogling his perfect buttocks, barely believing they were in my hands just a few minutes ago.

I already said—no questions!

Okay, I drawled. Whatever. So, what do you say, he looked up. Will it be yes or no?

Something made me nod, vigorously, though I knew it meant I would never see him again.

Later on the thought of psychosis repeatedly crossed my mind. Had things failed to correspond with people’s testimonies or gone wrong, I would’ve given in to it, too. As it is, everything is consistent: my work as an attorney, down to the bearded teenage client whom I met with so intensively for a few days last month; my monthly visit to my mother in Damietta; weekly drinking binge with two school friends; the divorce proceedings; moving house; everything.

The third thing I learned is that it happens to everyone, at least once or twice in the first week of work: you think you’ve gone mad, that all you’ve been experiencing is a string of hallucinations. The thought still dogs me, a temporary comfort, because what’s actually frightening is it’s real. The way things happen, they happen by order of the Plant.

And so I’ve made four journeys on the job, all safe, straightforward transactions, with the opportunity for a little sightseeing on the side.

Tonight, switching off my cell phone the way I’m supposed to for the duration of every assignment, I board the train to my favorite weekend destination for the first time.

It is more complicated because I haven’t been in Alexandria for months; and it always stirs up difficult emotions when I go. Not once did I board this train with any goal but to relax, usually after a big case or another extramarital affair: with a woman. Before Allen Ginsberg—believe it if you will—I had never touched a man in my life.

So far it seems no different from any other time, though: the stiff-backed seat, neon lights, chug-chug of iron-clad progress as we pass a sequence of empty sandlots, slowing at the dimly lit crossroads of some outlying shanty town before we pick up speed.

Only, after the bedlam of Ramses Station, the coach feels eerily quiet. I’m thinking of Allen Ginsberg: the way his spine would curve to pre-empt a particular caress; his biceps stiffening while one hand cradled his balls, the other pushing his face down. Suddenly it strikes me that we’ve passed both Cairo stations and I’m still alone on the coach.

I get up and scale the entire iron horse, hand on corpse in my asbestos-padded pant pocket while I cross from one coach to the next. Maybe it’s the Nawwah, a kind of mini hurricane that ruffles the coast once or twice a winter, but there are fewer passengers on the Cairo-Alexandria line tonight than I’ve ever seen. I must dismiss the idea that this is the work of the Plant.

Frequently, on performing a task — that’s what the guidelines said to the word, as far as I can recall them: instructions are transmitted through a packet-switching information grid like the internet but without hard drives or cache; all files are self-deleting, they appear for three minutes at a time, and you’re expected to commit their contents to memory — you will notice that particular events develop in an unusual or salient manner, generally in such a manner as to facilitate or conceal elements of your undertaking. You will not stop to think about such developments… At certain, higher branches of the Plant, it is possible to control the range of eventualities in a very limited portion of the space-time continuum; in your experience, however, it may or may not be the case that such control has been exercised. It is pointless and marginally less efficient to attempt to find out if it has…

The corpse writhing and beaming imperceptibly on my groin, I take the book out of my rucksack and start reading. It’s an eleventh-century Sufi text, an interest I’ve kept up since doing my MA in Islamic Law; it talks about the unity of existence.

Every number is reducible to the one, it says; and in like manner, all things are reducible to their oneness, however much they multiply, or differ. No thing can exist without a sense of its value, but no value can be sensed without a unit: all, in the ultimate exhalation of the holy breath, is one…

But a passenger just came into the coach and the sight of him is distracting me. He is young and brawny, the passenger, the shape and color of Allen Ginsberg, but broader shouldered and clean shaven. If you multiply one by one you will obtain one, the book says, but if you multiply it by any other value you will obtain no other but that value. From my seat I can only see the back of his head, but I know he is inwardly staring at me.

There was eye contact when he passed: I made a note of the tiny fish-shaped scar above his eyebrow, how abruptly the fuzz behind his ears gives way to curls, his nebulous grin.

I haven’t had eye contact since. Somehow I just know he is staring at this bald, fast aging lecher, following the fingers with chewed cuticles as they turn the pages, reveling in the sheer libidinal need contorting the chapped lips. I do know, because the moment I get up, he turns his head and signals with his eyes, that same grin promising my deliverance.

Excuse me, he breathes; his voice is higher than I want it, but his jawline is chiseled, spare stubble glittering in the fluorescence like some black-green savannah in miniature.

Yes?

I was wondering if you might know what this is. He holds up a piece of card, black, whittled into an immaculate octagon: an item I’m familiar with. I just found it in my pocket, he laughs diffidently, shrugging. No idea where it’s come from.

Oh? Now I remember that, when he came in, the train had not stopped since my tour of the coaches, nor had I seen anything like him while my eyes scoured the seats, freaked out by the inexplicable scarcity of passengers.

Maybe you can help me? Oh to trace the fish with the tip of my tongue, to lie back and feel the savannah punishing my plains. I know it sounds whacky, but there has to be an explanation.

Is it just me, he adds suddenly, or is this train empty like mad? It is, I mumble, trying to steady myself. Empty… yes. I was… just thinking that.

Then I’m striding ahead, balancing with difficulty, his breath on my shoulder and nothing else in the world, until we are face to face in the toilet cubicle and the door is locked.

Let’s see, I hiss, clutching at the soma that torments me.

Before I realize it, I’m not sure where he’s gone. The cubicle door is ajar and I’m crouched in the corner gathering together my clothes. I do it fast, wiping the semen off my thighs and picking wet hairs from my face, even though it’s clear there’s no one around to watch me. In half an hour or so the only thing he said is his name, panting and grinding: Jim Morrison.

Straightening, at last, I slip my hand in my pocket to make sure the corpse is there, but what stands out against the cold, packed grain of the asbestos is warmer and more angular, wider on one side; it is perfectly stationary, too: it doesn’t give off waves or beams.

I take it out: the black octagon. Must be a message from the Plant, I decide, hoping it will explain. Can’t wait to get to the hotel, though: in the room, I can bring its edge into contact with a naked wire and absorb what it says before it bursts into flames.

No point worrying, I know, but how can I be sure Jim Morrison really works for the Plant? If he doesn’t—no joke—I will probably be maimed.

The fourth thing I learned: plans change spontaneously as often as not; sometimes the least expected thing is the thing that’s supposed to happen. And the fifth: only end result, not intention, is judged; say I managed to hold onto the corpse, and it turns out this guy is supposed to have it, then I’d still suffer the consequences alone.

Masr Station is as busy as Ramses. I file along toward the exit, steadily gathering speed as I picture the message in a haze of light. Dodging clusters of baggage and refreshment stalls, I can’t help wondering where all these people came from. Intimacy is such a fickle thing, it only takes a quiet train ride for the perfectly familiar prospect of a busy station to look strange.

Already I’m having to block out thoughts of my wife now I’m in Alexandria: I’ve always come after the end of something; a whiff of sea air is all it takes for reflections to start trickling through my head. The only reason they’re relatively at bay is I need to know what the Plant has to say to me. Then there is this sudden, unexplained hunger and I just know the best way to ignite the octagon has to do with food. Should I stop and eat on the way to the hotel?

At the exit the grubby-green polystyrene prayer mats have been rolled into columns and stored upright to one side. I recall how much it used to bother me when the faithful would block the way out, microphones blaring above their heads. Until five weeks ago I never understood why anyone believed it was necessary to pray.

Lesson number six: there are only two things in life—your body, and the possibility of something else. Without that possibility, your body might as well just wither away and die, which it will in either case, sooner than later. The possibility rather turns it into an instrument or a tool, something to work with in a slightly more meaningful setup. That’s why it’s necessary to pray, unless your something else doesn’t require prayers, or you have a post with the Plant.

Only one mat is still spread out on the floor. On the edge of it sits an old peasant woman smiling charmingly into the void. Legs crossed, back bent forward, she mutters in the same level tone, unperturbed by lack of attention; for some reason neither police nor station staff are making any effort to remove her, even though she is clearly a beggar woman and, by order of a widely publicized campaign, they have to excise street characters from public space.

You will eat in a minute, she happens to be saying as I pass. Give me something to eat with.

I bend over and hand her a note, much bigger than I intended. Something about her face is drawing me to her; I realize it is this, not benevolence, that made me stop. Crouching down there, beyond layers of tattered black muslin, beyond the haggard female form, I can make out the contours of my father’s face. It’s a fleeting impression, but haunting.

May He give you without calculation, her tone doesn’t change as she slips the money into her bosom, with frightening alacrity, nor her smile.

It’s hard to tear my eyes off that dark, sculptured visage, familiar and far away at the same time, but my legs are starting to hurt and I’m confirmed in the decision to drop by Andrew’s on the way. Out of habit, not for a logical reason, I ignore the middle-aged men yelling Taxi as I charge ahead. A taxi would save time. Except that I want to walk toward the sea, not seeing it, just knowing it’s there: in fifteen minutes I’ll be inside my Greek client’s fish restaurant sipping beer.

The thought of beer preoccupies me while I slip into Prophet Daniel Lane, where Alexander the Macedonian is thought to be buried, past the used book stands and the used camera store, all closed; and it starts, softly, then ferociously, to rain.

Three minutes from the station, emptiness has already gripped the streets, but it’s less freaky now because the Nawwah is raging. The rain keeps people indoors; actually it’s so absorbing I’ve almost forgotten my troubles: Allen Ginsberg, my wife, the corpse, whether I’m on the right side of the Plant. By the time I push the glass door and head for the table I always take, I’m drenched. A pretty young woman comes up with the menu.

Andrew isn’t here? No, he is away in Matrouh, she says confidently. You are his friend? I nod: And you? I’m seeking out her eyes, the way I used to do it with my wife, before we got married. When you’re a man addressing a woman you don’t know, this is the cruelest, sweetest way of saying: I like you; or so my wife used to say.

His little sister. She looks down. I used to study in Athens…

I wonder if I still have an appetite for women, though. Deliberately, I’m picturing my client’s sister naked in the toilet on a train.

Suddenly the thought of beer brings on this searing need to urinate. I can barely stay still while I blurt out my order: Grilled mullet and a plate of squid. Salad and bread, no rice. You can decide on the sauces, but can you get me a beer while I’m indisposed?

The chances are she’s still nodding uncomprehendingly while I lock the bathroom door. It’s like a ground-floor apartment, this restaurant; its bathroom is spacious and homey, unisex, without cubicles or peepholes. It’s not until I’ve relieved myself that I notice a slight break in the electric circuit of the sink light. Then I realize what brought me here.

I look closer: a tiny length of wire is exposed. I ply it out with my Biro. Holding the octagon in both hands, I take a deep breath before I let the current run through it.

JIM MORRISON CLEAR, it says, the letters shimmering in a subdued glow, like the last few embers of a charcoal fire about to die. NK: RECEIPT. REWARD FOR FIFTH SUCCESS TONIGHT. And in smaller type: enjoy grilled mullet, squid.

Before I have time to gape, I’ve managed to burn my finger. No matter how amazing what an octagon has to say, it’s always more amazing the way it disappears: a clear blue flame and nothing, absolutely nothing else. Once it’s gone out, your hand is slightly wet; that’s all. You never have the luxury to mull over the message. I sometimes think it’s this that makes it stick.

After the second beer I practically run to the Cecil Hotel. I want to look at the sea but I’m dying for legitimate privacy; and I promise myself I’ll be back in good time.

The fish seeping gently into my bloodstream, egged on by alcohol, I’m warm and tired and I need to sit still. The rain has gotten harder and the wind whistles through my pores, as if in counterpoint to the fish settling in there, quietly, calmly, a musical expression of arrival at the sea.

It takes a little while before, rushing alongside the seashore, inhaling the sea air in long gulps, I realize this is nothing but relief: knowing that I didn’t get it wrong on the train, that in five weeks I’ve been good enough to be rewarded; but I’m not at all impatient to find out about my prize. I’ve played guessing games with the Plant before now.

Checking in feels that tiny bit smoother than I’m used to. Finally I’m on my back, revising the contents of the message one last time. I am to receive something from Nastassja Kinsky, instead of delivering the corpse to her. I am to expect more madness tonight, happy madness.

I close my eyes and repeat what I have to do, a habit I’ve acquired since the third week. The rain rap-rapping against the panes, delayed and overpowered by the cawing of the wind, I rest my arm on the pillow and just go on repeating the words in the dark.

I am to receive something from Nastassja Kinsky, instead of delivering the corpse to her; I am to receive something from Nastassja Kinsky, instead of delivering the corpse to her; I am to receive something from Nastassja Kinsky… I am to receive something… I am… Kinsky…

When I wake up there is cold coffee by my bedside: a room service order. It’s been years since I fell involuntarily asleep. Overjoyed, I sit up and light a cigarette, remembering the promise I made to myself. For a while I savor the intermittent sound of the rain. Gradually trouble is returning, though: the sad story with my wife; so long as I can turn it to melancholy I’ll be fine. I exert myself to turn it to melancholy while I shower, shave, change my clothes. It’s not working.

I prop myself up in bed and take out the book, a grim attempt to get distracted; I don’t know why it never occurs to me to switch on the TV. From the unity of existence, though, we’ve moved abruptly onto the afterlife; and something about the business of death is taking my mind off it all.

When religious people tell you that life on earth is temporary, a brief sojourn and never the dwelling place, it’s normally to scare you into practicing their rituals or repeating what they say; as far as I can make it out, this guy is not about that at all, even though he’s using the same language. He’s simply drawing your attention to lesson number six.

When you die it’s just like being alive, he’s saying: the difference is mere detail. All that stuff about heaven and hell, eternity and judgement, it’s all already here. Life and the afterlife, in other words—they’re practically the same thing. I put the book down and close my eyes.

Lesson number seven—a memory of words shimmering in a subdued glow, or was it one of those fleeting text files on my computer screen?—The Plant is both factory and flora. It manufactures, it grows. It holds the copyright to being as well as life, for being is intervention while life is merely flow. It is the sight that startles, the sound that soothes, the odor that induces nostalgia. As of your release from service you will think of the Plant repeatedly on having such hitherto ordinary encounters; and dying, you will be grateful for having been of service to the Plant… The funny thing is, it works. However momentarily, I’ve forgotten my wife. But I’ve ordered two more coffees before I step out onto the wet asphalt, and the words are already fading on my memory plane.

Dawn is descending on Unknown Soldier Circle when I run into my father. He is huddled at the bus stop with his back to the shore, squinting at tomorrow’s paper in the streetlight. It is still windy, an indeterminate respite from the rain. The sea spray reaches all the way to the curb, where I’m bracing my calves when I catch sight of him.

In Alexandria on a weekend, I’ve always waited to watch the sun rise out of the water. That’s why I’ve been tramping downtown, but I couldn’t go back to sleep if I tried. Aside from the usual anxiety of being on the job, I am still brooding over leaving my wife. No amount of Sufi literature is going to put an end to that. I see the backs of her sneakers bouncing effortlessly away under the great bulk of her parka, farther and farther away on the asphalt, such tiny things so effortlessly daring gravity, and it is the saddest image in the world.

When I become aware of an indistinct figure at the bus stop, it’s been a long while since I’ve taken anything in. All I know is I’m crossing the road to the esplanade, where that bus stop happens to be in front of me. The azan for the dawn prayers just sounded. Any minute now, the sun will slice its way through that black-and-white quilt with a monster tossing under it; and when it does, it will hand things back their shape and color, as gradually as my wife’s ankles stepping away. Whatever I do, I don’t want to miss that. Everything else is a blank.

At this point it occurs to me that I haven’t seen a soul since I stepped out of the hotel; and if not for the little man sitting there, the bus stop would’ve been a blank too. I stand back and jiggle my head before I cross over.

I don’t recognize him right away—for some unknown reason, still, nothing could be further from my mind than my father—but before I know it I’m dithering, edging closer. I want to know what kind of street character could brave both Nawaah and esplanade; at night the shore is policed even in the best of weathers, to root out beggars and madmen. What kind of desperado, I want to know, managed to intercept my brooding?

When I first catch sight of his face, I think of the beggar woman I ran into at the station—how come he looks so like her; she too looked like someone, didn’t she… but, for the same unknown reason, probably, I can’t for the life of me remember who.

Involuntarily, almost, I’m sitting next to him on the bench. It is supposed to have three wood planks but the middle one is dislodged and my buttocks sink uncomfortably into the gap; I want to readjust my position but I’m mesmerized by his clothes.

In the house Baba always wore what used to be known in Egypt as a robe de chambre: the same brownish garment, shrunken by years of washing, threadbare at the seams. In summer it covered his underwear, in winter two layers of pajamas. As he grew older he took to going out late at night for tomorrow’s paper in his house wear, something that genuinely saddened Mama.

Now as he looks up, coughing, I recognize the spluttering, elongated, slightly exaggerated squeal that punctuated so many of our evenings.

Then I make out everything at once: the Kastor fabric of his winter pajamas, filthy cuffs giving way to hands barely thicker than the blue veins they contain; ancient sandals exposing a similarly emaciated pair of feet, their incredibly meaty, sharp-edged toenails taking on a whole spectrum of hues as they jut out, looking healthier than everything, and the base of his legs a mesh of diabetic scars and damaged tissue; then the tight, hard rump like roots to the permanently curving spine, dandruff overtaking the wrinkles on the back of his neck; smooth bald spot flanked by willowy silver hair; and the face, my father’s face, toothless, coffee-stained lips and heavy, pinhead stubble, all white, like the loose, leathery skin on some long dead monster; and his reddened nose looking enormous. Somehow his eyeglasses make it even more enormous than it is: the glasses?

Only now, gazing into the blotched enamel of his glasses, do I remember that my father is dead. Some two weeks after I got married, five years ago almost to the day, Mama had phoned from Damietta with the news. She sounded unusually calm, I remember. I didn’t want to spoil your honeymoon, she said, but I didn’t have a choice. When I asked her if she was alright she said, May He make this the last of the sorrows; not, she added, the first.

All through my time with my wife I was battling against that enigmatic premonition, pondering over the fact that he hadn’t liked her, and my ever growing doubts about the possibility of happiness in marriage. Somehow grief over my father became linked with the conviction, however secret, that I would one day leave my wife. It was harrowing in other ways, of course. I had never suspected his death could shake me so hard. But it was this that I thought about the most…

Baba? He looks up; instantly, it becomes hard not to burst into tears. Ahh-lan, ahh-lan, he intones his usual welcome: a very commonplace expression that,

through sheer warmth, he managed to make entirely his own. Looking delighted, the way he did every time I called him, he grabs my hand and touches his lips to it: a reversal of the patriarchal convention that he alone championed; I can’t think of any other father who did that.

What on earth are you doing here?

Just reading the newspaper. I glance down to make sure it really is tomorrow’s paper—and it is—but I have to raise my hands to my eyes. Can you believe they’re redrafting the constitution again, those sons of a horny woman? Hysterical laughter muffles my tears. He won’t stop ranting about the government even now. It’s like the country is the ranch of their grandfather, the filthy pimps. Then he takes off his glasses. His eyes are clouded. They are round and very small; and it’s as if I peered into them only yesterday. How much more do they want to pilfer?

But, Baba, no one is paying any attention.

Naturally not.

How will the corruption stop if all we do is sit and complain?

You’re beginning to sound like them, Fouad. Listen, what’s all this business about classes?

Classes? My name sounds strange now that I’ve learned to think of myself as Joseph Koudelka.

I’m told you’re taking classes. Deep beneath the murk, I can make out a subdued twinkle: the one I saw when he first caught me masturbating, and again when he smelled my reefers. That twinkle was the extent of his disapproval; it always gave an impression of complicity, as if he was telling me that he knew and didn’t mind, but that we could both get into trouble for it. It made him incredibly lovable. Schoolboys, and such. You know what I mean.

Busted, your Honor.

At least you’re free of the stick insect—that’s how the old man referred to my wife, because he found her very tall and very thin but mainly, he said, because she had perfect camouflage: She always appears where you didn’t know she was there, you understand, he would say—and that’s always a good thing. Naturally there will be happiness in your life from now on.

You don’t disapprove? Dis-what, he bawls, easing into his favorite insult: Curse your father, son of a shoe! Destroying the family, and all that. We were trying for a baby, you know. None of this

bothers you at all? To tell you the truth, Baba, I’ve been feeling a bit guilty. Fuck off, he says. Naturally, the twinkle comes across in his tone now, there’s reason to feel

guilty if all there is to it is the classes. That, maybe, you should think about. Not that it makes you any less of a donkey to feel guilty at all. What’s there to feel guilty about in this world?

Botching my secret work?

If you did that, you would be instantly dispatched to where you can’t feel a thing. At least, he adds equivocally, not in the way you’d expect to feel it.

up?

You mean—right, I stutter… but… how do you know what would happen to me if I fucked

Same way I know about the stick insect and the classes.

I almost say: Is it true you can’t feel anything once you’re dead?

There are certain questions I’m not allowed to answer, he stops me just in time. And one thing you mustn’t mention while you’re with me whatever you do, you understand?

Okay, I nod. I think I know what that thing is.

Naturally!

Shall we have a little walk then?

As far as I know that’s allowed—hands on knees, he is heaving himself up with a mighty sigh, the way he did every time he had to get up in his lifetime, as if there was nothing more difficult in the world—so long as we both act normal. It’s very exaggerated, but that’s what makes it touching. At some point I will just go, you understand, and you act as if nothing happened.

There is no rain still; even the wind has let up. Only, as we move along the shoreline at his excruciating pace—it always used to annoy me how deliberately slow the old man walked—sea spray keeps splashing our faces. He has the same old tendency to lag a step or two behind, head bent slightly to one side, hands clasped together over the small of his back. As I slow down and stop to keep pace with him, it surprises me how little death changes in a man.

You remember Tante Faiza, Baba?

Whatever became of the midget? She must be ninety this year.

Ninety-two, in fact. But she’s alive and kicking. Mama says she’s got a suitor.

Didn’t I tell you she would see everyone to the grave, the witch?

Eventually I put my arm round his shoulders and leave it up to him. Humming and laughing, we plod along the seashore, my father and I, and it’s as if we haven’t stopped doing it since I was three. In Alexandria, all through my childhood, we would often have this same walk in the evening while I drank my carton of milk: the prerequisite for getting a new matchbox car. His hand on my head, Baba’s pace was too slow even for my tiny steps.

Barely perceptibly, the black water is taking on color. In the distance, a faint orange tint infusing the blue gray turning gray white, the outline of the citadel begins to appear. Ahh-lan, ahh-lan, my father greets the red disk coming up behind the minaret, beaming at me. Naturally, he adds, daybreak makes no difference at all. I can barely stop myself from laughing.

Fouad, he sounds devastated. You must kiss your mother for me. You’re not serious?

Believe it or not, I miss the old bitch.

How I wish Mama was with us, I suddenly think, out loud.

You can never tell your mother of this—

Naturally?— Any more than of your secret work. Curse your father, he begins— Son of a shoe! The oddest part of this is there’s nothing uncanny about it. It’s as if I never married, as if he never died, as if I really was in Alexandria on a weekend. Birds, white and streamlined, are circling the stone hedge and fluttering out to sea. Their calls seem to echo the Nawwah; a car or two whizz past and, before I appreciate the fact, it’s light. We walk on a little. The streets have filled up when I suggest we have a breakfast of coffee and croissant at the Trianon Café. The rain has returned and my father is slowing down even more, oohing and ahing all along the esplanade. He stops to light a cigarette, but every time the wind blows out his match; when he finally manages to bring the tip of the cigarette in contact with the flame, a fat drop of rain lands right on top of it.

I glance at him impatiently, but he keeps trying. You’re a good boy, Fouad, he suddenly turns to me, mumbling. I am your reward. What? But it’s as if he didn’t say anything; he just struggles on with the matches. So are we going for croissant or what? Always impatient, he says, like that fat mother of yours! Then we’re sitting opposite each other by the rain-splattered window, there is bright sunlight outside, and the aroma of coffee fills my nostrils. The croissants are hot and crisp, but my father is smoking. I am about to tell him that I love him when he winks, nodding toward the waitress. So I look up: she is beautiful; for the first time since Allen Ginsberg, though I don’t realize it yet, something stirs in my groin while I look at a woman.

Yours if you want her, he says, naturally. Baba, I scowl. Please! Anyway I am going to go to the toilet, he mutters to himself, getting up. Curse the father of your mother, my good man. It is barely audible. The son of a bitch is going to discipline me… Baba! He looks back.

Are you sure it’s okay to up and leave the stick insect? Yes, Fouad, he smiles suddenly, my little donkey. I’m sure.

The waitress smiles back very sweetly, anyway. Later, when I slip her a scrap of paper with my number, she will even blow me a kiss. Now my watch says eight thirty and Baba is not back from the toilet. I get up and follow inside to look for him. All the cubicle doors are open. There is no one there. Back in the Cecil Hotel lobby, I’ve barely wiped the tears off my face when my coffee arrives. I sip it slowly, grazing the place with my eyes. For once the anxiety of being on the job is overpowered by a different emotion—grief. I feel exactly the way I felt in the second two weeks of my marriage, but somehow I know it is temporary. There’s a tremendous sense of gratitude, too, which helps, but where on earth is Nastassja Kinsky?

When I open the door to my room at nine thirty, exasperated, there is an elderly woman on the edge of my bed. She is dressed very elegantly in an auburn three-piece, her long, snow-white hair tied back in a bun. In the way she sits and especially after she starts talking, I appreciate her regal bearing. She has the well-heeled composure of a princess, haughty and upright.

Strange, I’m thinking, that she looks so incredibly familiar: I am sure I know this face; and her voice, I know I’ve heard it before. These recognition games are getting tiring—I mean: maybe I’m just projecting—but I can’t help noticing a resemblance between her and my father.

Nastassja Kinsky?

I dare say you mispronounce my name, Monsieur Koudelka. She grins. I have brought you a small gift, rather valuable I may add. I do hope I haven’t kept you waiting for long. You were generous with your money last night, I didn’t think you would begrudge me your time today.

While she stares squarely into my eyes—is it my imagination or is she snickering?—I realize she is the beggar woman from Masr Station.

Oh my God, I begin.

You will excuse me, Monsieur Koudelka, but I must catch a train in half an hour. Here, she hands me what looks like a giant termite. It is the isoptera, she enunciates. It will instruct you as to what you should do with it on your return to Cairo.

Only now she gets up, striding straight to the door. Monsieur Koudelka, she stops and turns, her hand on the doorknob. Yes? This will be your last assignment. My… for the— Safe journey, Monsieur Koudelka.

While she shuts the door behind her I let myself flop onto the bed. I don’t know how to feel about the fact that it’s over, that there will no longer be a Plant in my life. Neither wife nor Plant, I mumble, getting comfortable and peeling off my clothes. Before I fall asleep it also registers that the prospect of another boy is vague and mildly repulsive. Memories of Allen Ginsberg, Jim Morrison and all those in between seem to come from a different world, alien and isolated. Without wanting to, I am picturing the eyes of Andrew’s sister: the way they glistened in the tungsten light, and when she averted them, looking down…

I wake to the sound of the rain, the isoptera describing a perfect circle next to my head on the pillow. For a while I simply watch it, wondering, with relative calm, what it might be saying to me. Then, just to see if I can make anything of the faint buzz that accompanies its motion, I place it on the bedside table and bring my ear in contact with the wood, pressing hard. At first I can only hear static, but gradually something else is coming through.

What are you doing, you donkey? I can make out my father’s voice, weak, barely audible, but undeniably his. You are to keep this peculiar mouthpiece for when you have a real situation, classes and such. Then you can consult me. If you try and listen to it all the time you’ll wear it out. And no, he adds, as if he could hear me thinking, we can’t have a conversation through it. Now switch off the tiny button at the back and keep it safe. At that the voice fades; there is nothing but static.

I am naturally spellbound for a few minutes, then find the button he mentioned, hidden where the last segment of a termite’s abdomen would be, I get ready for departure. On the way out, my assignment over, I switch my cell phone back on. I don’t notice it at first but gradually, insidiously, an unbearable joy is taking hold of me. I don’t think downtown Alexandria has ever looked so beautiful in the early evening.

Once again I will walk to Masr Station: I want to take in the streets.

I am reading about the straight path—the one that, mimicking divine oneness, connects life with the afterlife and back again—when my cellphone startles me. There’s a young man eying me but I haven’t been paying much attention. I guess that, in five weeks, I’ve developed a particular look; not all my male lovers have been agents of the Plant, and Egypt is full of young men seeking out middle-aged lechers like me: they get a useful connection if not money; they get a desperate, consuming passion. There’s some desire—I won’t deny that—but I can’t be bothered to act on it at all. I’m far more interested in the characteristics of the path.

Hello? Hi. The voice is soft and coquettish; I put the book down. I just thought I’d get your name. Who is this? Forgotten already? We met this morning at the Trianon Caf?— Alright, I exclaim, grinning from ear to ear in spite of myself. Well, I didn’t get your name either, did I? I’m so happy you called. My name is Mohgah, the waitress says. You may not be aware of it yet, she giggles—as I am picturing her—irresistibly. But I am your destiny.

 

Youssef Rakha

Published in Miranda Literary Magazine

http://mirandamagazine.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=250&Itemid=27

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]