כל דבר מסביבי מזכיר לי אותך
In Limbo, I loved to live and carry on. In love, I fell with him. He was everything to me, a brother, a friend, a man, a shaman. All efforts and time I have exerted, by doing my best to spend the rest of my life without him, were in vain. They ended up with failure. He follows me everywhere I go like a shadow, a destiny. His picture appears to me wherever I direct my eyes. He is not dead.
The street, the room, the moon, the school, his books and notes, his old friends, his pictures while smiling, Baba and our new born youngest brother remind me of him. Every day I leave home and see his friends, who insist on reminding me of him, I forget him not. Everywhere, I see him, I feel him.
The other day as I was making some potatoes to kill my hunger, he approached and asked for some. I refused. Someone pressured me; I accepted. It was by sunset when he added sugar to the potatoes instead of salt, mistakenly. Remembering him doing so unintentionally adds insult to my great injury for losing him, intentionally. Trying to forget him reminds me of him again and again.
A riddle: who is he?
It would be no exaggeration to say that he was my past, present and future. He was the one who corrected me, preached me and sometimes got mad at me. I wish that he could live longer to get mad at me more and more. He was not an ordinary man. His life was short and swift as summer’s clouds. Life without him, to me, is as long as eternity.
He was the salt of this land, the hope of hopeless and the relief of souls, the helping hand of powerless and the smile of those who always burst into tears in wars, for losing their beloved. I still remember him coming to his friends and throwing a kettle of tea at them. They escaped, however it was empty!
Had not the murderers thought of all these merits before claiming his life by the dawn? They would not. I bet. They were asked to shoot to kill. I assure. It was not enough for them to murder him in darkness. They were not satisfied with this. Now, they are carrying out a new war against us, a war on our memories to forget their crime. We insist not to forget. We will not forget. We will remember him twice, YES, twice.
We lived for a while together in love. Today, I look around, I don’t see him. Eye and heart weep for him. Sadness winds as a storm. His love nests at my heart and will never leave. Hours in waiting for him lasts days. We, Palestinians, are used to wait. We wait our beloved to return, our injury to be hailed and our tears to be draught on our cheeks before enemies see them. We wait for the crossing to be open, the permission to be issued, the bullet to be fired at us and FREEDOM and JUSTICE to prevail. Brother, Will not you return back along with freedom? Hopefully, I am still waiting for you, period.
Crossposted at Yousef M. Aljamal’s blog He who is brave is free
