If Only the Earth Would Swallow Me
Yemeni mp
Ahmed Saif Hashed
A fierce contradiction gnaws at my consciousness, emotions surging like the waves of a sea tossed by storms, crashing against its depths and colliding with the immovable mountains of its shores. The weather is wild, unhinged and mad. My illusions swirl like a whirlpool, chasing after me, circling endlessly without fatigue. I am like a man possessed, gripped by a demon in a fever of rage. At times I feel as though I am suffocating, an inmate in a cell tighter than a clenched fist, with no space to breathe and no outlet through which to gather the scattered fragments of myself and the stray threads of thought lost in a vast wilderness.
I am torn between doing and undoing, between approaching her to ask for her hand and the greater weight of hesitation. A crowd of sorrow gathers while a sliver of relief pushes through the narrowness. A siege blocks every road, and yet hope throws itself against a wall of despair, seeking a passage of light. At times the walls close in and clamp down on my chest like iron pincers. Jagged edges sink their teeth and claws into my weary body, leaving me shocked, gasping, seized by waves of suffocation.
When I glimpse her, my heart leaps from between my ribs like a bird bursting free from an iron cage or like a prisoner stepping from a stone cell where his naked body once scraped against jagged walls and his eyes that love the light were blinded by darkness. She is freedom breaking rusted doors, emancipation from the clink of chains and the shackles that bound feet and ears.
Each morning her presence fills me with joy and I dance to the rhythm of her dreamlike steps. My confusion swells, plain upon the surface, and I strive with all my strength to conceal it from watching eyes. But it has grown larger than me. It multiplies as I struggle to choke it down and to repress it like a dictator.
Yet when she turns from me without so much as a glance, I feel scattered, my soul splintered and my hopes shattered. A sorrow strikes deep into my being as I see my heart slain like a bird, or like a porcelain teapot dashed into fragments, or an elegant glass once beloved to me now fallen from a high ledge and shattered upon stone.
I longed to confess my boundless love to her, the desire that storms through me, my wish to ask for her hand and for a marriage to last a lifetime. But I lingered, waiting for the faintest signal of acceptance that might help me gather the courage of a trembling heart. I searched for bravery across the farthest corners of the earth and whispered to myself that I must be bold at last. Yet when no sign appeared, shame overcame me and fear silenced me, for I was terrified of refusal. I knew such refusal would be nothing less than the crushing of all my remaining life, a wound no medicine could cure, a poison no elixir could undo, a darkness that even the Day of Resurrection would not lift.
Once she motioned with her right hand. I, lost in her world and fixed upon her with the ardor of overwhelming love, saw her gesture as an urgent call, a summons unmistakable: come to me. Her hand moved like lightning across a dark sky, granting me hope like the promise of rain. My heart nearly collapsed in astonishment. What a tremendous surprise. It was more than fate, more than glad tidings, like a prophecy blooming in the depths of blackest ignorance, like hope itself rising as the sun against despair. I asked myself whether crossing to the far shore could truly be so easy and how fortunate and blessed I was.
But caution restrained me. My heart soared into heavens unreachable even by dreamers, yet I told myself to remain composed so I would not seem lighter than a feather in the wind. With trembling hand and burning longing, I returned a gesture, asking if it was indeed I she called. And then it struck like a hammer blow; her signal was not meant for me but for her companion standing behind me like the trunk of a palm. In that instant I wished the earth would split open and swallow me tenfold. I wished that God Himself would sink me and the ground beneath my feet into the seventh earth.
I sank deeper into hesitation. A dreadful conviction seized me: I was plowing the sea. I imagined that rejection would be her only answer, whether from lack of affection, the chasm of class, or some other barrier. There was another obstacle too: I was older than her by the fingers of a single hand, five years, a gap that to me loomed larger than the age of the sun itself. I could not bear a refusal that would crush me and defeat me until my dying day. I dared not risk recklessness, lest she dismiss me as worthless or shatter me like glass that can never return to its former shape. I feared a fracture so deep that not even the maidens of Paradise could mend it.
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