She And Her Darkness

What am i supposed to do with the rest of my life? Write? Paint? Read novels about everything i got to touch with the tip of my fingers until it was taken away in a moment? Think about the world and the wars and the dead and the living without ever counting myself as either? Is that it?

Ingrid Bergman, Martin Scorsese and Isabella Rossellini in front of Hotel Eden in Rome (1978)

The fact that this poem was written on the walls of my mother's dorm room and it resonated with her a lot back at the time to the point that she couldn't forget about it until now is just so saddening to me. We may never know who these lines belong to, and whether they are still with us or not, but I hope they are no longer mired and wallowed in this feeling of estrangement.

كانَ عليَّ أن أُغادر باكراً قبل أن تلتهمني العتمةُ ويُحصارني السّواد كان عليَّ أن أترُكَ مكاني جاهزاً لمن سيأتي بعدي كان عليَّ أن أحتفظ بقليلٍ من النورِ لكي أسير بهِ في ممرات عقلي المُظلمة كان عليَّ أن أركّز بعلامات التوقف قبل أن أمشي في دروبٍ مسدودة النهاية لا تُفضي إلى شيء، ولا تخبرُ السّاري عن نهايتها.. كان عليّ أن أتراجع أن أحتفظ بهذه المحاولات لدروبٍ أُخرى، واضحة وممهدة إلى طرقاتٍ تستحقُّ شقاء المسير. كان عليَّ أن أتبع المنطق أن أتجاهل أهوائي وأن أقتربَ مما يقتربُ مني لا إلى ما ينفُرُ منّي كلّما إقتربت..

- الطيب صالح، موسم الهجرة إلى الشمال

Above all, don’t plant me inside your heart. I’d outgrow you. -Rainer Maria Rilke, from Sonnets to Orpheus. Trans. Stephen Mitchell.

Winter nights after midnight are what I truly live for. When you can only hear the wind blowing and nothing else. Horrifyingly beautiful.

It no longer matters, after this, if anyone loves us, or if anyone walks in our funerals. Here we go in silence, toward the final abyss. We hold each other’s hands, go forth alone in this desert of a world. At some moment, one of us, a child, will look back, will cast one last glance at the ruins, and shedding a single tear, will say: “It no longer matters that anyone love us.” https://arablit.org/2023/11/01/it-no-longer-matters/