Khor Maksar

Yemeni mp

Ahmed Saif Hashed 

Khor Maksar was the place to which the New Year carried us on the wings of restless flight, so that we might celebrate among the gentle clouds and the angels descending from the crowded brilliance of light. It was a wandering education, a traveling teacher who mastered the art of delivering the alphabets of knowledge into the depths of what we did not know.

Our nerves were tense, our bodies aflame, seized by that sweet fever that swept through the flesh and illuminated our very being. Our eyes burned with a stormy longing for the fulfillment of forbidden desire and unspoken love. They rebelled against their sockets for hours on end, diving deep into the hope and the prayer that time might never end, that space might have neither boundaries nor a final destination.

Eyes were freed from their prisons to see what lay behind doors locked with iron and fire. The raining spirit fertilized the clay of lovers with joy and delight, while sighs rose unlike any we had ever heard before.

A radiant presence reclaimed its stolen existence from emptiness, void, and nothingness. The mind regained its balance after madness had led it astray, after wandering in confusion and estrangement from itself.

It was the recovery of being from the realms of loss, absence, and prohibition—the things that had long denied us breath and breeze. It was the first exploration into the unknown in search of knowledge and the ecstasy of the spirit. I peeled away the shattered skin of life, scattered and consumed, swept away by the molten lava flowing from the mountain’s crown.

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