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A Conversation With The Vast Whiteness

I’m not new to snow. But I am new to living where it snows right outside your doorstep, and where one is stuck with snow for around 5 months a year. And like anyone who is new to anything, like a child, I spent time watching and being mesmerized by it.

So here are a few of the many conversations that I had with this Vast Whiteness. We met just outside my door this morning and went for a walk.

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“The snowflake is water solidifying into structure,” said the Whiteness as I tried to catch some flakes floating down from the heavens.  “The universe is making patterns at the smallest scale. Nature creating micro-art.”

The flakes landed on my jacket, and as I brought my eyes closer to observe, the Vast Whiteness said, “Just because the snowflake is small and trivial doesn’t mean it should not deserve attention from the universe!” I nodded in agreement, still scrutinizing the flakes on my sleeve and pondering my own triviality.

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the fisherman’s friend

It wasn’t a usual summer night that year. Although the cool breeze eased the humidity, there was something surreal about the midnight sea at Ain el-Mreisseh, Beirut’s seafront. August always brings jellyfish, and they appear like plastic bags dumped by some indifferent god into the Mediterranean. But on this August night in 2004, the jellyfish glowed like grayish streetlamps in the navy blue sea. It was there he stood casting his fishing line into the dangerous depths.

The seafront is dotted with rocky footholds and baby islands on which the likes of him gather in search of solitude. But by the time I saw him, the other fishermen (if you can call them that) were already snoring. Or, as we say in Arabic, in their seventh sleep. In short, it was too late to say the man was night-fishing, and it was too early to say he was an early bird. It was the magical hour of 2:45am.

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how Naramidia lost her name

A very long time ago, the entire world spoke the same language and its people lived together on one land. Their village was called Babel and was managed by powerful magicians who instructed the people to build huge towers in veneration of Osis, ‘the one who does not manifest’.

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Jejube was a woman of immense beauty, and she was married to a man by the name of Talo. After many years of marriage, the two did not have any children, so they requested the help of a magician, who appealed to Osis on their behalf.

Many days passed, which the magician spent in his tall redbrick tower, cloaked in smoke, meditating. On the ninth day, he emerged after communicating with Osis, who entrusted him with a revelation.

Osis kept Jejube and Talo from having children because their child, a girl, would be born with a curse. The curse, revealed the magician, was that the daughter would have an unmatched ability to remember, but that she would never be able to memorize her own name.

Jejube, a determined woman, asked the magician to appeal to Osis again, but this time asking him to restore her fertility. Against his own judgment, the magician did as she asked, and emerged again nine days later declaring that Osis had consented, but that the magician will not be responsible for the consequences.

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On the day of her birth, the people gathered from near and far to look at Jejube’s daughter. They did not assemble to admire her splendor, but to see how a cursed child differed from a blessed one.

She was a normal baby girl, whose great beauty was only natural for the daughter of the marvelous Jejube. What shocked the people of Babel was that they fell in love with her instantly upon glimpsing her, and they talked only of her as they journeyed home.

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