the stories that made me
She tilts the cup
and spills a single drop,
watches it rise up
towards the ceiling
and swell into a grape.
On her lip a smile
serves in revealing
her hope that rarely
had a shape.
Her hand touches his face,
just barely,
to leave some space
for her escape.
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.
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’.
——–
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.
——–
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.
