Earth Weeps, Saturn Laughs

by Abdulaziz Al Farsi

  “Don’t you want to go to sleep?”

  “Yes, I do. But I’m going to lie down to meditate on these walls and think about all the places I’ve been to.”

  “God, I wish I were like you. I would love to be on the move all the time, visiting cities and villages, and making a nice friend wherever I went.”

  “As for me, I’d love to be alone. I’d like to have a cave that’s far away from everybody. All I want is my daily bread and safety. I don’t think I need anything else.”

  The door opened and Mihyan peered in. He came forward and sat next to them. “We did some good work today, don’t you think?”

  They both nodded.

  “Tomorrow we’ll finish laying the foundation,” Mihyan said, “and after that the building will go up fast. The sun is helping us a lot, as there’s no rain these days. All right, then. I’ll leave the two of you now and go to bed.”

  He went into his room, but didn’t go to sleep. He tossed and turned, trying first one side, then the other. He tried a fetal position. He got up and paced all over his room, then sat back down on his bed. At last he left his house and went to the work site. He walked all around it, pondering the places where they had dug and examining the foundations. He played with the rocks and the mud. He looked toward the east as though he expected the sun to appear in a few minutes. After that he went back to his room and closed his eyes.

  Khalid came out into the darkness. He headed for the minaret. He looked at it thoughtfully. He walked around it twice, then stopped in front of the door and laughed. He started shuffling toward his house. I followed him without letting him know I was there. He began humming his one-line song. Suddenly, Ayda looked down from her balcony. The lights in her room were out. She took a good look at Khalid, and when he was directly under the balcony, she threw something in front of him. Khalid noticed. He bent down and picked it up. He looked up at the balcony and saw a figure scurrying inside. He started walking and humming again as though nothing had happened. He went into the house and, without waiting, went into his room.

  Let Thy Heart Be a Cloud

  O thou who hast been exiled from thy homeland, let thy heart be a cloud. The earth is thirsty, the caravans weary, and sorrow is a litter that doth trace for the wind a path that no pen might inscribe. So forget all cities and come to me. I have waited for thee, intoxicated by the distance alone. Turn away from all paths but me. Come, let me show thee how songs are bathed. An hour ere dawn thou wilt find the back doors open. The light of the red candle doth banish the spirits of intruders.

  I was relaxing on the bed as Khalid read the letter Ayda had thrown down to him, wrapped around a red candle. He reread it five times. He turned and cast me suspicious glances. With a smile on my face, I said, “I’ve told you before that there’s someone who wants you.”

  “Don’t joke with me. This letter can only be from you. It’s written in your language.”

  “My God! And do I have a monopoly on language? There are thousands of people who are good at using words.”

  “Yes, there are. But not in this village.”

  “Pardon me, but your assumption is incorrect.”

  I got up and walked around the room. I opened the balcony and looked out at the minaret and the dim lights. The night was still like an infected wound, its darkness festering. I looked again at the expression on his face. I smiled again.

  “Exactly where were you when the note fell in front of you?”

  “You know.”

  “I know. But I want you to say it.”

  “Outside Abu Ayda’s house. What are you trying to say?”

  “It’s obvious. On more than one occasion I’ve seen her watching you intently.”

  He turned and started to guffaw, then stopped. He gazed into the mirror. He began to smile. He stroked his face and contemplated his beautiful eyes. Without looking at me, he said, “You know, if you weren’t in this village, I would have spent this night in terrible confusion. I would have gone on wondering who threw that candle at me. And I would have wondered whose words those were. Then I would have concocted nice stories depicting me as a hero who sparks the interest of a marvelous female he doesn’t even know. I would have drawn all sorts of pictures of her in my imagination: of her hair, her eyes, her lips, her smile, her nose, her bosom, her figure, her walk, and, most important, her voice when she cries. The voice of a woman when she cries from the heart is something we don’t take into account when we evaluate her beauty. Living in the shadow of probabilities and the anticipation of discovering the name of the beloved who is pursuing us is quite nice. I know now that it’s Ayda, because you’ve told me, and because yesterday after sundown I saw her looking at me from her balcony and smiling, her hair hanging down over her shoulders. I didn’t pay any attention to her. I don’t deny it. If you hadn’t told me, I would have put it down as a significant possibility on account of that look, but I would have gone on wondering where she had gotten this language. I’ve known her since childhood. We couldn’t stand each other, and we argued all the time. She used to make me really angry by the way she acted. So I consider her to be more of a rival than a sweetheart. It has nothing to do with Abir, believe me. Nor does it have anything to do with the ease of the discovery you contributed. As time passes, my memories of Abir become more neutral, and little by little I’ve started remembering the wound without crying or dipping into the well of pain inside me. I don’t have any explanation for it. Is the passage of time enough to enable us to achieve total neutrality toward all the bitter and difficult experiences we’ve been through? What element does time add to our inward consciousness so that anger and bitterness fade away and, little by little, ascend like vapor? What does it do to clear our minds and make us more accepting of the past? Now I think Abir was just some sort of incongruent experience. She was a woman who turned out to be different from what I had expected. Don’t ask me your usual question, namely: What would happen if the clock were turned back and you found yourself face to face with Abir in that office for the first time? Would you be willing to go through the same experience again, knowing how much pain you would have to endure in the end? I don’t have a clear answer to this question. I’m just thinking out loud: If you could have anticipated the hurt that would come, as well as the pleasure you would experience before it and the memory you would store up in consciousness from that pleasure, wouldn’t you be willing to go through the same thing again? In spite of all the pain I’ve endured because of Abir, I still feel she’s one of the most marvelous women on earth. Marvelous! She could take you to the heights of joy. She could turn you into a free bird without a care in the world. In a word, she was the best and the most beautiful. What happened in the end was just the result of the shock I felt in that situation. Don’t look at me that way!

  “Yesterday after I got back from the cemetery I was thinking: Why don’t we bestow the dignity of death upon things, and forget people’s lapses and mistakes while they’re still alive? If I were told that Abir had died in an accident, what do you think would happen? I’ll tell you what would happen: I would be in shock at first because I hadn’t expected death to come so soon. Next, I would be angry with death for having interfered and ruined our chances to settle accounts. Then I would be sad because there hadn’t been enough time to go back to a state of separation between us that wasn’t marred by hatred or aversion. Lastly, and not because this is what I would want—in fact, it would happen no matter how hard I might try to prevent it—that final, difficult incident would disappear, or, at least, the part related to hating her and being embittered toward her. The happy times I had with Abir would come to the surface: her childlike, happy-go-lucky antics and her crazy driving. And I would shout: ‘How I loved you, Abir!’ This woman would be so utterly sacrosanct to me that I wouldn’t be capable of holding a grudge against her the way I would be if she were alive. After coming back from the cemetery yesterday, I was thinking a lot about these things. And in the end I discovered that the sanctity we
bestow on the dead is a fair trade. It’s the least we can do for someone who was willing to risk losing his or her paradise, or the tranquillity of being nothing but an inert piece of clay, in order to live on this earth in a world tainted with misery and sorrow. We may not have chosen to turn from clay into human beings. But we have to face reality. And the least we can take with us when we depart from this earth is a little bit of sanctity! So why not begin now, and reestablish our bond with everything by giving it the sanctity it will have in the end anyway? In short, Saturnine, we Earthlings are prepared to go through the same experiences once, twice, and even three times. And the more aware we are of the outcome, the more determined we are to go through it.”

  He stopped, walked over to a bottle of water, and took a sip from it.

  I said, “But everything you’ve said just now should give you all the more reason to have an experience with Ayda.”

  “Maybe with another female from another village who has nothing to do with shared childhood experiences or with our village’s illusions.”

  “My friend, the female personifies cities and changes them, not the other way around.”

  “My God, Saturnine, you’ve been changing ever since you came to our village. Aren’t you the one who said, ‘The only place you can escape from the hell of the homeland is in the embrace of a female, and the only place you can escape from the embrace of a female is in the hell of the homeland’?”

  “That’s right. We’ve escaped from Abir’s embrace into the hell of the village, and we’ve escaped from the hell of the village into Ayda’s embrace.”

  I winked, and he laughed. He reached out and shook my hand. We went out onto the balcony together. He asked me, “Are you still preoccupied with that lost poem?” I nodded. We were silent for a time, gazing at the distant minaret. My thoughts were occupied with the distant homeland and the poem.

  Then he asked, “Do you dream, Saturnine?”

  “Is there anybody who doesn’t dream?”

  “I mean, do you all have dreams when you’re sleeping on Saturn?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “No reason. Last night I had a strange dream that I still haven’t found an explanation for. But maybe I dreamed it because of this uneasiness that’s setting off an alarm bell in my heart in connection with Ayda.”

  “Describe it to me. What exactly did you dream?”

  “I was in the cemetery. I was wearing a white shroud, but my head, hands, and feet were uncovered. It was just before dawn, and everyone was asleep. I saw myself digging up my father’s grave. He came out of the grave, and just as he was starting to give me a hug, a black female dog sprang at us and bit me. Then she embraced my father and went into the grave with him. I kept bleeding until I woke up.”

  He was clearly worried. We looked back at the minaret. Finally we went back inside and sat down on the bed. “Are you going to go to Ayda’s before dawn, as she asked you to in the letter?” I asked.

  He paced around the room, thinking. He would stop in front of the mirror, look at himself, then resume his pacing. He went and got another drink of water, then sat down on the chair and reread the letter. Finally he said, “Wouldn’t that be an impulsive, crazy thing to do? It’s been years since I talked to her in broad daylight and in front of other people. How would I go visit her in private, and before dawn?”

  “It would involve some risk,” I said. “But she’s worth it.”

  “I know. But I’m apprehensive on account of the dream I had, and on account of the extremely difficult timing. I’m not at peace about it at all. When I have misgivings, I follow my heart, and my heart says: Don’t go tonight. There are bound to be other opportunities to see each other. So I’ll wait.”

  He lay down on the bed and covered himself with the blanket. He looked over at me and said, “I’m going to sleep now, Saturnine. May you wake up to a beautiful poem.”

  I said, “Before you go to sleep, I’d like you to know that I’m going back to Saturn. I really miss it. I’ll be going back soon. Take care of yourself. May you wake up to a love that cleanses your heart, you madman.”

  He may not have heard what I said. His eyes were shut tight, and his fingers were clinging to the blanket. I closed the curtain and took a good look at him. I thought back to my days on Saturn, and to the vast open space. I reflected on the way fate had led me here. I visited the people who now inhabited my memory: drenched with longing, traveling thorn-strewn paths, and throbbing with sorrow. I had lived some time with them, reflecting on the stories that had brought us together. When I came back from my reverie, I looked over at Khalid. I saw his eyelids fluttering rapidly, and a smile on his face. Then I took leave of him and of the village.

  AYDA

  Waiting

  Waiting is bitter.

  Last semester one of my professors was late for a lecture. So, to pass the time, one of the students sat down on the lecturer’s seat and suggested that he pose us a general question about life, then listen to all the students’ answers. We cheered in agreement. The question was: “If you had the freedom to choose, which would you prefer: to wait for someone you love who has gone on a long trip and you aren’t sure whether he will be back, or to hear that this person had died?” When they first heard the question, most of the students laughed, since they considered it ridiculous. I was sitting in the back, and ten other students before me answered, saying, “Waiting would definitely be preferable.” When it was my turn, I said, “I’d prefer him to die, of course.” They laughed, thinking I was kidding. I stood up and repeated the same question. Speaking to a girl who had been one of the first ten to answer, I said, “Why would you prefer to wait, Aysha?” She replied, “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no comparison between death—which means a final, irrevocable loss of your loved one in this world—and waiting for him, no matter how long you have to wait, and no matter what the outcome is. Death is the end of everything. There’s no hope of ever seeing him again, or enjoying his smile or his touch. There’s no hope of anything at all. In a word, it’s total devastation for you. Waiting, on the other hand, is a pleasant dream that might go on for a long time. We may not know what reality we’re going to wake up to, but it’s still a dream, and a hope that gives meaning to our lives and our existence. If the loved one returns, we’ll look back on the dream with a kind of joy and pride, since we can say, ‘We stuck it out, and we made it.’ And if he doesn’t, we’ll at least have proved our loyalty to that love.”

  Her words had an impact on most of the students. The student who had posed the question said, “And you, Ayda . . . why would you prefer the person’s death over waiting for him?”

  I said, “Waiting is a very slow death. When someone we love dies, we might feel temporarily devastated. But, given our human nature, it isn’t long before we manage to adjust, and our experience of love with that person turns into a state of remembrance that we take refuge in as a way of recovering our self-confidence when we feel hemmed in by life’s problems. Everything physical in relation to that person comes to an end, that’s true. But another, spiritual phase begins that’s more genuine, deeper, and closer to the real nature of love than attachment, admiration, and the desire that fades with time. Waiting is a devastation we don’t know when we’ll wake up from, since, in a word, it ties us to the past. The future is put on hold until the loved one comes back. So we live in the past and wait for the future, but we have no present. And even if the loved one does come back, what’s the use? By that time we’re completely spent, and no later experience will ever be able to erase that cruel suffering from our souls.”

  More and more students expressed their opinions, the period ended, and we went our separate ways without anybody having convinced anybody else of his or her point of view. The semester ended, and I still hated waiting.

  I certainly don’t wish you would die, Khalid. But how I loathe these minutes that roast me as I wait for you. My heart says you’ll come. The weather is lovely tonight. It’s as though I can se
e the angels furnishing the sky with new stars and frolicking about like little children. But because I am waiting for you, everything drags. The seconds wear me out with anticipation. This hour has been so slow to arrive, I wish we didn’t have to live in Time.

  My mother, who sleeps upstairs, won’t wake up until after the dawn prayer, nor will my father. Even so, I’ve prepared myself well for any emergency. The back door, which is slightly ajar, is hidden from view. It opens directly onto a narrow corridor, at the end of which there are two doors. One door leads to the basement, and the other, which is locked, to the courtyard. I’ve taken the keys, and there isn’t the slightest possibility that either of my parents will discover the matter. I stayed up two nights in a row cleaning the basement and getting it ready. After choosing my favorite spot, I spread a rug and a mat there, and placed two red candles in the center. I perfumed it, too. And now I await your signal, O madman, when you come. Because you, Khalid, are the one I love, my heart is certain that you’ll come.

  I am thirsty, O cloud of my desires, O homeland in which I have caused my spirit to dwell. I await thee with the eagerness of an exile who doth yearn to see his own land after years of anguish. O homeland of mine, tears suffice not to express my joy as I would fain express it. And even were things to turn topsy-turvy, it would not suffice to describe my delight in thee.

  Four hours have now passed, and I have been counting the seconds one by one, arranging the dreams inside me, running my fingers through my hair, drifting through the fantasies of thy long-delayed advent. Its delay is as weighty as the sorrow poured out upon a woman who hath lost all her kin to the plague. It is overdue. Thy arrival is overdue, O poet of desires, O descendant of disarray. Come quickly, for thou hast sapped me with a bitter wait that hath left my head weary and heavy. Would that I could lay my head upon thy shoulder and rest. I want thee. It is nearly dawn now. I have opened the back door and hidden in the darkness, awaiting the sign of thy advent.