A River Dies of Thirst Read online

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  Big notice on a night club door: We welcome Palestinians returning from battle. Entry free. Wine undrinkable.

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  I cannot defend my right to work as a shoeshine in the street, because my customers have the right to think I am a shoe thief – this is what a university professor told me.

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  ‘I and the stranger against my cousin. I and my cousin against my brother. I and my shaykh against me.’ This is the first lesson on the new national curriculum, in the vaults of darkness.

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  Who enters paradise first? The man killed by an enemy bullet or the man killed by a bullet from his brother’s gun? Some religious scholars say: ‘Your enemy could be your mother’s son.’

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  Religious scholars were perplexed over the identity of those lying in adjacent graves: were they martyrs for freedom, or victims fighting one another in the futile drama being enacted? They were unable to decide, but agreed on one thing: God knows best.

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  The killer is also killed.

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  He asked me: ‘Should a hungry watchman defend a house whose owner has gone on holiday to the French or Italian Riviera – never mind which?’ I said: ‘He shouldn’t.’

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  He asked me: ‘Does I + I = two?’ I said: ‘You and you are less than one.’

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  I am not embarrassed about my identity because it is still in the process of being invented, but I am embarrassed about some of what Ibn Khaldun says in his Muqaddima.

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  From now on you are somebody else.

  From now on you are you

  Mount Carmel, in its lordly position, looks down at the sea from on high, and the sea sighs, wave upon wave, like a woman in love washing her proud beloved’s feet.

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  As if I haven’t gone away. As if I have returned from a short visit to say goodbye to a friend, only to find myself sitting waiting for myself on a stone bench under an apple tree.

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  Everything that was in exile apologises, on my behalf, to everything that wasn’t in exile.

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  Now, backstage at the theatre, a virgin in her thirties goes into labour and gives birth to me in full view of the set designer and the cameramen.

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  Many waters have flowed through the valleys and rivers, and many plants grown on the walls, but oblivion has migrated with the migrating birds, northwards, northwards.

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  Time and history make alliances sometimes, and fight one another at others on the borders dividing them. The tall willow tree pays no heed, for it stands on the open road.

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  I walk lightly so as not to crush my cheerfulness. I walk heavily so as not to fly. In both cases the ground protects me from disappearing into adjectives that cannot be used to describe it.

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  Deep inside me there is a hidden music, and I am afraid of it being played solo.

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  In order to rectify the mistakes I have made I am compelled to do extra work on the draft plan for belief in the future. Those who have made no mistakes in the past do not need this belief.

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  Mountains, sea and air. I fly and swim, as if I am an air-sea bird. As if I am a poet!

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  All prose here is primitive poetry lacking a skilled craftsman, and all poetry here is prose accessible to passers-by.

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  With all the happiness granted to me, I hide my tears from the strings of the oud that lies in wait for my death rattle, and creeps up on young girls’ desires.

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  The private is public. And the public is private . . . until further notice, a long way from the present and from the meaning of the poem.

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  Haifa! Strangers are right to love you and compete with me for what you possess, and forget their own countries when they are near you, because you are just like a dove building her nest on the nose of a gazelle.

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  I am here. Anything more than that is rumour and slander.

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  Oh time! Healer of the sentimental, transforming wounds into scars, and scars into sesame seeds. I look back and see myself running in the rain. Here, and here, and here. Was I happy without realising it?

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  This is distance: an exercise for the sight in the workings of perception, and metal burnished by a distant flute.

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  The beauty of nature has a civilising influence, except on those who are not part of it. Mount Carmel is peace, and the gun is discord.

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  I walk aimlessly, not looking for anything, not even for myself in all this light.

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  Haifa at night – the senses going about their private business, far away from their owners sitting out on their balconies.

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  Oh, spontaneity! Harder than metal and stronger than proof.

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  I flatter my critics and treat the wounds of those who begrudge me my love of my country by creeping quietly along using multi-faceted metaphors.

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  I couldn’t see a general to ask him: ‘What year did you kill me?’ but I saw soldiers sipping beer on the pavements and waiting for the end of the approaching war, so that they could go to university to study Arab poetry written by the dead who have not died. And I am one of them.

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  I felt that I knew the way to the park called ‘The Mother’s Garden’ because I had walked on Mount Carmel before, and that this return visit was echoed in a sentimental song, which was unfinished because it was so eager to capture a renewed sense of loss.

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  There is no mist. It’s just a pine tree on Mount Carmel whispering to a cedar on Mount Lebanon: ‘Good evening, sister.’

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  There is a region in my heart, uninhabited, which welcomes children looking for an unoccupied area to pitch their summer camp.

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  I cross a broad street to the wall of my old prison and say: ‘Greetings, my first teacher in the laws of freedom. You were right: poetry is not innocent!’

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  Did somebody once say that the master of words is the master of place? This is neither vanity nor a game. It is the poet’s way of defending the value of words, and the stability of place in a language which is vowelised and therefore mobile.

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  The smell of trees in summer has an erotic scent. Here I was entwined with grass, down, freckles and similar things in the moonlight.

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  Haifa says to me: ‘From now on, you are you!’

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