Saadi Yousef: A Friendship
22. February 2011 15:44
For Adonis
When I extend my hand to you you only shake my fingers. When your hand reaches out how can I hold only your fingers? We who were raised in innocence and sowed innocence, we who long for no past innocence or future innocence, we are the children of that liquid trapped between two seas, children of those who hammer at the wall until dawn and find gypsies resting against the other side. A quarter of a century since then and we arrive to find that Ibn Taymiya has turned into the head of a bludgeon and al-Muwafaq is still cleaving rebellious slaves from the womb of the earth. The police of Damascus kick us and the police of Iraq and the Arabs' American police and the English and the French and the Persian and the Ottoman police and the police of the Fatimide caliphs Our families kick us, our naive, good-hearted families, our murderous families. We are the children of this madness. Let's be whatever we wish. What we share is not trust. We share the throat of the bleeding flower. Between us the storm emerges from its elements... I say: "Let's shake hands." Beirut, 8. 4. 1979