Engagement and Disillusionment

Yemeni mp 

 Ahmed Saif Hashed

I have been struck by disappointments one after another, some beyond endurance. Crushing failures have besieged me time and again. Betrayal has walked beside me often. I have endured more than a few defeats, and heavy blows have rained upon my head. Armies of fears have pursued me relentlessly. I have passed through moments of weakness, misjudging things more times than I care to count. Weak points have clung to my life; I have grown accustomed to them, even found them part of me, woven into my very being. I have lived my defeats in the rawness of reality and swallowed, with them, the bitterness of truth.

Yet I believe I have held on to what matters most. I do not despair. If despair creeps into my soul, threading through my veins at a moment of loss or defeat, it does not linger. And if it lingers, I turn to history and philosophy to grasp what has happened and draw my lesson. Hope renews itself; life beats again within me, and my certainty grows that despair will never last, even if it stays a while. I know with conviction that no state endures forever.

No matter how shocking or weighty the event, I know that life gives birth endlessly. It does not halt at the loss of one person or another. The laws of philosophy continue their work upon consciousness and society. What has happened is neither the end of history nor its conclusion. History will continue to flow and become, in spite of all, and we are bound to understand and take heed.

On a personal level, I refuse to die while I am still alive. I never cease to try. I strive toward my goals. I rise and keep walking after every stumble or fall. I regain my balance after each shock. I wrestle with my fears and my selfishness. I offset my weaknesses with equal strengths. In the face of defeat, I assert my existence with refusal, resilience, and resistance, for as one thinker put it, you are not defeated as long as you resist.

I rest when I am weary. I mend my spirit after every collapse, shattering, or setback. I reclaim myself at once or in stages, as the situation demands. I heal. I return with a replenished soul and a surging morale. I review with courage. I reassess and re-evaluate with boldness. I move to other alternatives and options whenever I find it fitting, necessary, or possible.

I speak to myself: I must recover from what I am in; I must not let despair overtake me. Did not someone once say, “There is no despair with life”? Hope alone keeps us alive and shields us from a crushing, annihilating death. Losing a girl or even several is not the end of the world. Girls are many, and the earth is vast. I must not cease trying. I must not let the spark of hope and the act of dreaming die within me. It is upon me to strive and persist. I will find open doors, welcoming balconies, and perhaps hearts awaiting my arrival with burning anticipation.

Life is creative, no matter how grim it seems. Hope renews itself. Turning failure into success is within reach. The experience of failure brings new knowledge; indeed, some have said it is the first step on the road to success, while others have said it grants conscious wisdom upon that road.

Perhaps luck will smile on a scorching day, and the sky will pour down its rain. Perhaps a coincidence lies in wait, or a glad tiding long awaited. There is still, in what is to come, something more beautiful. Did not one poet say, “The most beautiful days are those yet to come”? So I speak to myself and steady it in the face of its defeats and betrayals, its wounds and disillusionments.

* * *

I want to marry a poor girl who cannot afford even the price of a shoe. A girl stubborn before the hardships and twists of life, ready to cross with me the valley of hell I may one day be forced to traverse. A girl who will not leave me alone in the middle of the road should it darken or grow ominous, who will not abandon me even if the sky pours its fire upon my very head.

I seek a girl who will not fail me in hardship, in trial, or in want. A girl who will search for me when grief closes in with its decree and separation strikes with its estrangement. A girl who will follow me with her loyalty, her forgiveness, her generous soul, and not forsake me when my state grows wretched, my destiny feral, my hopes betray me, fortune deserts me, and my share of life turns to pain and regret.

Then I ask myself: Will I ever find a wife like that?

I want a girl I can help, reshape, and uplift, and with her rise together toward a sky we are both seeking, one that holds what is higher and more beautiful. I want a beautiful girl. Are not the quarters of the poor haunted by beauty? Are not the gypsies home to the most dazzling enchantresses? Has not God graced the poor with a beauty that is striking and irresistible? Did not one poet once say to his Lord, “You are beautiful and love beauty”?

* * *

I found her in the Mountain Countryside. I said to myself with a deepened voice, “I found her after exhaustion and searching.” My tongue was paralyzed with awe. “She is very beautiful.” That description is but a kind of delirium, for no words could capture her presence. She is greater, and more, than beauty itself.

“Very beautiful” is a descriptive phrase before which imagination itself falters. A phrase unworthy of what stands before me in all its breadth, its scope, its density. All words are bare, all attempts are defeated, however exquisite they may be. They all fall short of her; none rise to her station.

Ah, the poverty and emptiness of words. How description kills itself in shame upon her threshold. What language would dare knock at her door? I had not known that Arabic in its fullness and its grandeur, its subtlety and its vastness could be rendered powerless before the majesty of such beauty, a beauty that leaves no one who beholds it untouched by awe. The language of eloquence, rhetoric, and oratory has turned to desert in the presence of her lavish grace.

She is like a pearl risen from the depths of the ocean. A pearl? This, too, is an unworthy likeness. She is a gift from the sky, a cosmic jewel sent to me from a far-off world. A thousand miracles compressed into one. How unjust it seems that all this wonder, all this beauty, should be shod in a worn-out shoe.

The radiance of the cosmos sweeps over me. What I see outstrips my imagination. The sky rains down joy and gladness within me; it sparkles in my eyes, ignites my heart. The cadence of her voice carries me to a fertile delta. Her breasts are a celestial swing; my dream swings between east and west. Her charms call to me: Here is your homeland, the one you have sought in distant mazes, while she and her dwelling were but a stone’s throw away. Eyes were veiled, and hearts lost their way.

A thousand astonishments gathered within me. She flooded me with her cascades of light until I lost myself in rapture and amazement. Colors cast their beams, seizing and enthralling me with their spell. A rainbow crowns our presence with the diadems of love and joy. Her overflow has grown larger than my world, stretching into an endless expanse.

I loved her at first sight, at the very first instant. She struck me with every arrow of maidenhood; she ensnared me with every net of dazzling beauty. This madwoman cast me into a mad love unlike any other. She conquered me with a first glance, a first moment, a first breath. She possessed me from the first scene, the first sight.

Here my journey ended, after a widening emptiness, after a feeling of loss and wandering. Here I found all seasons and harvests, all feasts and gifts, voice and echo, instinct and purity, fields and songs. Here is the refuge and resting place of the one I love, after seeking and traveling far. Thus I spoke to myself, dreaming, when I found her at last after long weariness and awareness.

The excess of her beauty, its extravagance, surpassed perfection itself. Blessed be the power that created her. How could a thousand miracles be condensed into one? She captured me, possessed me, tore my heart from its roots, uprooted me entirely. She seized me without warrant or record, withdrew me from my own existence and folded me into hers without question or choice.

Her acceptance of me was a crown, a throne, a kingdom. I proposed to her in the depths of night. I kept my secret, lest envy strike it down or the evil eye touch it. This was our feast, crowned with contentment, steeped in joy and happiness. But the eyes of night were lying in wait, the walls had ears, and the secret had leaked to her family until it spread and was known.

Within days, the possible turned impossible. A blow of terrible news struck me like lightning. Extremists, guardians of the creed and wardens of her temple, shattered my joy. They pressed the humble family until they changed their minds. The sky scowled darkly at me; it blackened. Night descended heavy at the heart of day. And the excuse was uglier than any sin. They said I was a communist and an atheist.

I returned defeated, weary, weighed down by a disappointment my exhausted horses could not drag. I returned with my back broken, my shoulders crushed. I returned fighting off gloom and grief, gathering my wreckage, my scattered fragments, my torn soul, my dream blown apart by a storm. The extremists, those priests of religion, those guardians of the creed, had slain me.

* * *