I would like to say, I don’t know the road to paradise… that my tongue, the people, and that man sitting contemplating the railway lines in a deep meditation nobody will ever know, existed. My house existed — in a place I am still seeking. It wasn’t in this village where I witnessed other children being born on the same blood-stained mattress I was born on in the same room to which the midwife regularly came, when she went away with the bit and took away the tongue. I saw myself searching for that old mattress stained with the blood of all those who had already come into the world so there would be another child round here. I saw myself not looking for a house but making the search for a house my way. So much blood dried like rust as each cut of the scalpel breached my skin, each cut of the scalpel piercing me, as I lay deadened, anaesthetized.I would have loved the time of the anaesthesia to lead me to the day you are no more, a day you can calculate for 50 dollars on the net.
I would like to say
I write about what I lost, about my vanished blood, about my laughter
frozen into a mask, about this young girl who was chased away because
she sighed next to the wheat dunes, that stuffed the young girls’ mouths with secrets, about this girl who was and is no more, about another one I saw spinning under the ceiling of the empty living room, her dress on fire, she calls to her master to save her, and standing naked in front of all those men. I say: I want neither father nor mother, nor to have them put on my road, or slipped into my story. Without them, I remain, and in spite of them all, I am:
I don’t know the road to paradise
I didn’t save you from hell
Sharia, that void, didn’t strike me,
I will not go to the one who has gone and will inevitably return
I wrote lines, licked the drops from the face
I said: she is of those whose past bears the present
she dashed along the wide avenue trying to cross
like me, you also are a traveller
without coyness, you come bearing that light,
or is it this myth that kills us
Shoot!
Kill, ash-dark bird!
Fall to earth on your feathers
that a wind blowing from the Sahara scatters
sand dunes, purple light
that you cross from where you are not,
this Sahara, our home.
There, two poles.
The coming will not come
visiting rather
he is your guest
suddenly shy when he sets foot,
vanishes enchanted
to where your awakening is
you, the sublime Magus
Amon
tell me, where you keep your remains
where can I find what leads me to them
You, the Thing, the Non-being
when they appeared, fire had covered the light
I write on your whereabouts
to meditate on you,
to envision
imagine
your shadow,
you, sublime creature
Be, a little, that I may see you
Cairo, imaginary date; written unthinkingly 31-11-2013