My Protruding Eyes

Yemenat

Ahmed Saif Hashed

Before I understood the meaning of marriage, I expressed a desire to marry a woman perhaps four times my age. One day, I tried to hold onto her, preventing her from leaving our home because I wanted to marry her, without knowing anything about the reality of marriage, other than her presence in our home.

As I grew a little older and began to understand a bit about marriage, I would look at my face in the mirror and see my ugliness in my protruding eyes.

More than that, I noticed that some of my peers would point out my bulging eyes, and sometimes they would tease me about them, leaving scars within me that perhaps lasted for years.

One day, I asked my mother in a way that implied: Why did God make me ugly with protruding eyes and not equal to my peers? She replied that she heard from my father, “I resemble my grandfather Hashem in his eyes.” It was inherited genes that passed through my father, making me an heir to what I did not want.

On another occasion, she tried to comfort me by saying that she craved a beautiful child, whose wide eyes were even more beautiful, while I could not see myself that way.

Perhaps I thought this way one day. I had no choice even in selecting my eyes or my face or anything that pertains to my body.

The simplest aspects of my being were not within my control, and I had no say or option in them. I did not decide them, nor did those who created me consult me on how I should be. It was a matter entirely beyond my desire and will!

As I grew older, I would ask myself: Would the one I love accept me as a husband, despite the ugliness that God created in my eyes and deprived me of the handsomeness I felt I should have?

At a later stage, I perhaps imagined myself resembling the “Jahiz” (the Protruded) in his bulging eyes, which overshadowed his name. People knew him more as “Al-Jahiz” than as Amr ibn Bahr.

It was said that he disliked this nickname and even hated it, but in his old age, he grew accustomed to it and became famous for it.
It seems that this protrusion made him appear ugly, to the extent that it is narrated that a woman asked him to accompany her to the goldsmith to engrave a devil’s image on a ring resembling him, believing he looked like the devil.

I realized I was not alone in feeling afflicted by ugliness and protesting against it. Even the poet Al-Hutay’a ridiculed his appearance, saying:

“I see a face that God has made ugly,  So ugly is the face and so is its bearer.”

When I ran for a seat in the parliament, my campaign team pasted my pictures in one of the areas of my electoral district. As I passed through, I noticed that some of the photos had been defaced by poking holes in the eyes, leaving the rest of the face intact without eyes. This awakened my protest and drove me to exert extra effort, with stubborn determination to achieve success, in response to the ugliness I found being poured onto my tired and tormented eyes.

As for today, due to a chronic sensitivity in my eyes, compounded by lack of sleep and late nights, the redness has become severe and persistent. However, those who carry ugliness in their eyes and minds attribute to me the label of being “drunk,” implying that I am intoxicated day and night.

This is part of the political malice used by some of my political opponents in religious groups to tarnish my reputation in front of the public, who condemn the drinker more than they do the murderers, robbers, corrupt individuals, and fraudsters.

I was reminded here of what I read about the anecdotes of Al-Jahiz; it is said that he traveled to Yemen, entered its markets, and wandered through many of its neighborhoods, but he found people repulsed by his ugly appearance, and no one hosted him.

On his way back to Basra, he met one of his companions and asked him: How are Yemen and its people?He replied:
Since I arrived in this land “Yemen”, no beauty have I seen,
Cursed be the town where I alone am pristine.

And I recall, in this moment, a saying so divine:
“Be beautiful, and the world will appear benign.”
A judge, unknown to me, named Omar Al-Hamdani,
Sent a poem in praise of me, a tribute so uncanny.
He speaks of my eyes, in verses that enthrall:
What’s with those eyes that seem to be enraptured?

 With eyes like embers burning above the flame,
Blessed be God! What a lad, with beauty unmatched!
Surely this is the angel who guides my heart’s aim
The honest deputy, who guards his decree
In his gaze, the burdens of ages lie
His eyes ablaze with fervor, a vision to behold
To you, O seeker, who unjustly casts his judgment
Today I only praise those like our Ahmad
He calls for goodness, yet dwells among the blind
O God, how grand is the judge, steadfast and bold
On principles steadfast, from age to age entwined

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