On the Weave of the Sun

by Abdallah Altaiyeb

  The hall roared up with music, poetry, rhapsody, and dance. One of the two young men walked toward the girl in burqa. He chatted with her a little, and then sat next to her, and started whispering and sweet talking, while trying to lift her veil. Holding her by the hand, he stood up and started swaying to the music, and then he daringly pulled her flush against him with his hand around her waist, and slow danced with her. She resisted at first and tried to go back to her place, but he encouraged her and clapped his hands for her, so she danced. And when folk music played, she swayed to it with her body and soul. The whole place held silence, and all swayed with the music and the girl in black. As for the man, he was clapping and teasing, and then pulled her to a secluded corner away from the noise, and started sweet-talking her. He was holding her hands, while she was listening to him whispering soft words, and she melted like a piece of sugar. I could almost feel her heart beating violently when he kissed her hands, trying to talk her into something with his eyes. He attempted again to lift the burqa, but she coquettishly resisted and ran away from him. He followed her and pulled her by the waist and swiftly lifted the burqa! She dashed out of the room, her rebellious hair luring him for more, as he caught up with her in the yard and raised her face to him. For a moment, the light fell on her face and clearly defined its features. I knew that face. I knew that girl. Her face looked absolutely familiar, but where had I seen her before?

  The light was intense. She closed her eyes and with my hand, I blocked the light that blinded me. Suddenly, the lights went out and silence prevailed. She looked around her in panic. There were no sounds, no lights, no one, only a dark night draped with silence and mist. She ran to the hall, but no one was there either. The vacant corridors escorted her to the yard that led her nowhere. It was fenced, and with a wall that was high like that of a prison and smooth like snakeskin. There were no doors, no windows, only a wall reaching endlessly. She had paced around the house twice until she was tired and decided to mount atop one of the trees that were close to the wall. She climbed the highest tree, until she was only an arm’s reach from the top of the wall. She held firmly to the tree, getting ready to jump to the wall. She raised her legs and jumped, but she plunged down, her face banged against the ground, and a cry tore into the heavy night until it reached me and struck me with deep fear. I searched in the darkness for the trunk, and as soon as I located it, I stepped in it. I did not even try to turn back and look at her, for the cry gave away her fate.

  The house was still asleep when I returned. I tiptoed to my room and hid my body under the bed sheet and slept. I woke up in the presence of my mother’s cries, as she was shaking me violently. I opened my eyes, to see her pointing to thick blood covering the pillow. Horrified at the sight, I felt around my face and it started falling through my fingers.

  1 Known in English as the Lote tree.

  1 A face cover with eye openings, worn by Muslim women.

  1 A musical instrument played principally in Arab countries.

  2 A loose, usually black cloak worn by Muslim women.

  3 A powder based eyeliner used specifically in the Middle East.

  The Crow

  Written by:

  Awadh Shaher

  The fragile virginity of the place trembled before me. The sky had frail blue ends, and the sun was awesomely naked. A wooden pole, with a lone crow announcing its presence on top, was determined to stay, but with an undecided mission in the middle of the desert, after they had removed the electrical wire holders and fixed them on an enormous steel tower, newly erected on a road that travelled far. It had resolved to stand tall with its dark color and cylindrical body, as it had been doing for ages, diligently carrying the wires. So, why couldn’t it simply stay a bit more for a lone crow that possessed nothing but its raucous sound?

  I shifted my sight deliberately from one pole to another in the heart of the desert, while the crow echoed its caws solemnly. I took a deep breath, for I was not annoyed by its presence around me. Quite the contrary, a feeling of joy made me listen to the beat of life in its cries, echoing naturally in the place. Its petite body gave the pole a jet-black pointed head. Every time it raised its head to bestow an everlasting greeting upon the place, ancient shadows of a nomadic nation that dwelled once upon a time in the wedges of the sand, hunting fresh lightning as an offering for the commanding Door, moved on things. Ages with unbroken flashes of lightning passed by the sky, and yet other ages marched on, while the barefooted nomads waited daily for the clouds. Generations died and left their spines for the grinding teeth of stones and the remains of the ancestors, who showed up in dreams with their exposed skulls pouring ashes.

  Black and clammy winds carried the news. The Door had abandoned the lightning flashes and the desert, and instead started building houses in so many cities that only welcomed whomever it invited. It shaved its matted beard and fixed its moustache. It donned its very precious turban and married many women of different breeds and lands. It learned the languages of nations and sent its children, in a crusade for knowledge, to the lands of Christians.

  They all came back home, eyes looking down. Their heads were consumed with thoughts they could not describe, let alone get rid of. They felt defeated, and inside their ragged houses they stayed a while, nurturing their skeletons and weeping all along. They felt deceived by the sand—the very one they devoted their lives for its cause over the ages. Its overwhelmingly silky touch on hands puzzled them, and its discontent with their old habit of digging water out of its guts discomforted them. The sand had become domesticated, but only like quern stones in times of hunger. And while the Door had forged a deal with a foreign wind to carry it along with the smell of homes and the seeds of their fertile plants, the desert contracted the fever of infectious water, where hallucination was the sole gate to madness and death on long roads.

  The crow’s caw came out softly like smoke from ruins. Then, with its freshly sharpened voice, it began mercilessly slashing the innocence of whatever stood in its way, causing the faces to revert back to their origins, to the first set of eyes that feasted on them for the very first time. And when the place lost its identity and things looked quite the opposite of what they were, the soft lines on the sand’s facade quivered. The sand deserted its serenity, giving rise to dust and burned papers that flew around with a native wind that was murmuring unexpectedly in the place.

  Terrified, I was looking at the charred relics of ancient creatures, surfacing out of the folds of the volatile sand that was flying with the wind. I was wondering why it didn’t rain, instead of this branched lightning that burned everything. Only the wooden poles survived the flashes. Yet, there they were, standing in the desert helplessly and vainly, just like me—exactly like me—except for the crow that at that particular moment landed on my head and indulged in cawing!

  The Museum Girl

  Written By:

  Faysal Abu Saad

  Heading toward the Grand Museum, Salwa was crossing the street, holding on to a brilliant hope for a job as a tour guide. She had just earned a degree in foreign languages from the National University, but the words of all the languages she had learned seemed to vanish, like bubbles, as they touched the land of reality.

  There, just a few meters away from the museum, a tall handsome tourist appeared in her sight, a dream that had lost its way home. He was beaming like a sun, and she, too, was beautiful like a fairytale. It seemed that, together, they portrayed what looked like the masterpiece of a legendary painter.

  He asked her, in broken Arabic that sounded like the first words of a joyful child, to show him the way to the museum. Captivated by his spell, and swept off her feet by his charm, she told him that she was going in the same direction. She was thankful for her degree that had come in handy, as she hastened to add that he needed not to struggle with words, as she could fluently speak his native language!

  And they walked together.

  Jonathan, who made heads turn in awe in every country he toured with h
is natural elegance, streaming blonde hair like ribbons of gold, and superior culture, had stunned her, and she wrote in her diary that day,

  “I think God is still on my side.”

  She carried the same first name as two of her cousins, and shared with them the same family name, and a similar fate. She would later be known as Salwa of the Museum, just to tell her apart from her cousins, as it would not be appropriate to call her “limping Salwa.” She distanced herself from those around her when she realized that there were people living freely as they pleased in this strange world. Despite her astonishingly beautiful eyes and classic features, so many others wished for, all they could see was her slight limp.

  Jonathan was the only one who looked into her eyes, and did not seem to notice or wonder much about her short leg. He did not care if it was polio or an old accident; he showed no sympathy, and certainly no displeasure. He just walked with her like two old friends, reliving shared memories, and minding their sprouting moment.

  That day, it was only reasonable for her to write atop a fresh page in her diary,

  “Is my dream finally coming alive?”

  In college, Salwa was an accomplished student, and languages came easily to her. She answered those critical about her passion for languages, that a new language gives a person a new life. She was very talkative, but her eyes were always fixed on a point somewhere, visible to no one but her, looking beyond the seen, and dreaming.

  After years in college and meeting different people, it was not likely for her to marry her Libyan cousin, the knight on a chronically disabled white horse. Nor could she settle for her military cousin, although she liked him, for the smell of his uniform reminded her of the associated backwardness. And definitely, she could not revive old friendships with her male colleagues from school; after all, she used to look down her nose at them.

  This time, she weaved her nostalgic words onto the fragile fabric of her heart,

  “Jonathan, my love, where are you?”

  With him, she had the time of her life. They walked together, trying to discover whether their forefathers were distantly related. He, too, was good with words, simply because he was free like a dream, and no problems could keep him on a tight rein. He talked with the sweetness of running through open and wide prairies, feeling her eyes on him the entire time. He told her he liked her, as he was preparing to leave. She was aware of the subtle difference between like and love, but still, his words felt just as good as love in her dictionary of dreams. She asked him to return back for her, and he said, while kissing her, in the street, “I will.” Yet, somehow, she felt certain it was good-bye.

  She was hired as an assistant museum curator, a job she hated right from the start. She kept to herself and away from people, savoring her first kiss, going through that moment in her daydreams, and rehearsing the promising scenarios of his return to her. Her body was screaming for him, but her moves were becoming as monotonous as the dull statues that resided in the museum, with their stony eyes, staring at the tourists with chilling emptiness.

  Day by day, her colorful flowery dresses withered and gray prevailed to suit the coldness of the place. She invented a game as a pastime, although the game itself was boring. She would simply stand next to a statue and strike up a conversation with it, or just mimic its posture, attempting to enact its feelings as well. She tried that for a few minutes in the beginning, but soon she started to get real good at it, and sometimes she forgot herself in the game for longer periods. Reaching the mastery level, she was able to stand for hours just like a statue, while the tourists passed her by. One day, she was very astounded when a tourist turned around suddenly, and flashed his camera in her face. That day, Salwa became very sad and scared. Alone in her bed at night, she cried her heart out in her diary, and wrote,

  “Jonathan, my dream, please come back. I am slowly turning to stone!”

  The Walk of Men

  Written by:

  Abdallah Altaiyeb

  Fate is the making of our hands. This had been playing on my mind, while reconstructing yesterday’s events from the pains of the memory. I was on the road from Jeddah to Makkah. A few cars appeared in the horizon, queuing outside the highway in a neat disorder, for order comes from chaos.

  This was one of the times that I made fate. My work quitting time rhymed with the randomness of the parked cars and Maghreb 1 prayer. I would then be in the middle of the weariness to Makkah. My car had a mind of its own, and I let her get along with other cars, parked on the right side, while casting my greetings at a bunch of men in the usual rituals that preceded the prayer. With a recommendation from an abandoned razor that showed no signs on his face and a wet Miswak 2 on his lips, one of us proceeded to chant the call to prayer. After Come to Prayer, I turned my head toward the highway; a gray car was pulling off slowly to join the prayer with us. The driver did not seem like a regular patron of the highway, for I spotted a kid with a ball in his hands in the front seat. The car passed us by and continued further down the shoulder of the highway and that assured me that he was not a regular commuter. It impressed me how careful he was with his car and his kid, and I envied him.

  The prayer rugs and shemaghs 3 created a surrealistic painting, dreamed of by an artist who had finally laid down his weary brush before dawn. The dream came true, real, and mysterious, but only a psychologist or a lover could have interpreted it.

  We lined up for prayer, shoulder to shoulder, while our minds drifted around in moments of fate we made with hopes and pains, and just a little concentration shaken by the evacuated air, trapped between us and the cruel fast cars. We prayed to one God, while we came from different backgrounds, and worshiped different lords. We line up with strangers who deliberately stick their feet next to ours, but as soon as the prayer is over, we barely look at each other’s faces. We are too proud to talk to our maids and servants, or socialize with the poor and needy in our neighborhood, but in the lines of prayer, we find them ahead of us, and we do not mind standing and sitting next to them there.

  I was in the second line; I slackened a little in joining the prayer, so I could see the driver of the gray car. He walked toward us, while the image of his car was still reflected on his face. In the first prostration, in between the conflicting thoughts and truncated verses that we jumped over their words, and with the sound of wind trying to hold back the cars or better make them stop, came the distinctive sound of a car door closing. The man next to me fidgeted, and it showed on my thobe 1. Feelings transfer from a person to another through objects by consecution. Was that a theory in chemical engineering? But what is consecution? The brilliant repeat of Amen brought me back again to my Quran verse. I was able to hear a recurring bouncing sound, and the consecution in my thobe resumed, but I ignored it, focusing on reciting my verse. I pondered the inner secrets of those miraculous words that we repeated once, twice, a thousand times, and still amazed us just the same—words that we recited every day, hoping they would attest to our favor one day.

  God answers he who praises him. I was about to raise my head up when the wind committed its perfect crime and let our ears be the witness to it. With the skidding sound of desperate wheels against warm asphalt and over the eternally open cat’s eyes, there was a loud crash, and one piercing cry.

  I was not aware that I aborted the prayer, running with my head and eyes ahead of my feet with a bunch of people who also abandoned their Imam 1. The feeling of the wind’s victory was overwhelmingly fatal. I could smell it mixed with the sweat of the wheels, and scented with hot human blood. The flow of traffic finally ceased and the wind calmed down with its victory, contracted after a long climax.

  A young boy in a white thobe spotted with crying redness, was thrown on his stomach, as a man swayed outside his car, looking at the body, the people, and his car, and then fell down on his face. The car was moaning, its eyes reddened with the blood of the boy, and people were amassing behind their sad eyes and rising whispers.

  I looked back at my pl
ace; only the devoted believers were still there, in the last part of the prayer, and my neighbor was one of them, but I had no consecution through my thobe. Peace and Mercy of Allah be upon You, and my neighbor sprang to his car.

  “Mohammad … Mohammad … Mohammad …”

  The cries were sublime, destroying our coldness and stoniness. He came running, and fate was still the product of our hands. One of us received him, and stopped him before he reached the boy.

  “Where is my son? I want my son, Mohammad.”

  “Your son is with God now. He is a martyr.”

  “No, no. I want to see him … I want to see him … Mohammad … Oh my God.”

  “Believe me … he is fine and with God … redeem yourself man and get a hold of yourself.”

  This dialogue was spiralling between the two men, and other dialogues were growing in parallel among the gatherers. One was saying,

  “Why doesn’t he let him see his son?”

  And I said,

  “Yes, he is heartless. He has no right to prevent the man from seeing his son, even if he is dead.”

  I looked at the body. It seemed strange, with fresh blood covering the thobe up to the shoulders … but where is the head?