In Torn Body, One Soul, four Palestinian writers-sons and daughters of a Palestinian people torn apart-tell their own tales of their predicament, estrangement, and marginalization, their expectations and visions in a new, magnified voice, first to their people, then to their nation, and to a wider English-speaking public. The seventh book in a series of volumes on Palestinian authors, this collection of short stories, translated and edited by Jamal Assadi, contains works of writers hailing from different regions in Palestine and abroad. Through their stories, authors Gharib Asqalani, Huzama Habayeb, Akram Haniyya, and Mahmoud Shukair depict a faithful picture of the various aspects of life in both Palestine and the Diaspora. Their narratives defy taboos, battle oppression, break open locked gates, and speak their truth. Ranging from grave to light and humorous to sensual and remarkable, the stories in Torn Body, One Soul come from a diverse core of perspective, gender, and geographic location but provide insight into and a fragrance of a different civilization.

Torn Body, One Soul

A Collection of Palestinian Short Fiction

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Jamal Assadi
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-6464-6

Contents

Acknowledgments...............................................................ixIntroduction..................................................................xiPart One: Gharib Asqalani.....................................................1A Crescent Cuddling a Star....................................................3Singing for a Full Moon ... Between Mutiny and Compliance.....................11The Journey of the Male Ants..................................................15The Waves' Deer...............................................................23Waiting at the Heads of Absence...............................................37Part Two: Huzama Habayeb......................................................41A Narration that Triggers Warmth Where ... My Darling?........................43A Real Dream ... Except a Little..............................................48A Strange, Clean ... Body.....................................................54The Distant Apples............................................................65Part Three: Akram Haniyya.....................................................77Quiet Colors..................................................................79The Defeat of Shater Hasan....................................................86The Decision..................................................................91The Sparrow's Secrets.........................................................105Part Four: Mahmoud Shukair....................................................125Brigitte Bardot's Dog.........................................................126Moratinos' Eyes...............................................................132Naomi Campbell's Stride.......................................................141Ronaldo's Seat................................................................150Shakira's Photo...............................................................155

Chapter One

A Crescent Cuddling a Star

What went wrong with us so that we left the house we'd built and returned to the earth to chew life the same as people did? Why were we taken by tales and driven to trace the steps of people leaving life to cross the tunnel of decay, believing wrongly that what they breathed was life?

Why did we keep the balcony waiting?

Ascend, oh mistress of dream. It is bread there, indeed; it is gratification there.

There is no thirst there for the soul who drinks from the spirit of the beloved until full. And this fullness is a flood that never dries. So ascend before tears appear in your eyes, before the eyeball calms and vision becomes blurred.

The ether, my mistress, is a state recognized by none but the lovers who experience two pulses in one soul. Passion for them is al-hulol, and al-hulol means that one lives in the other. Have you ever tried al-hulol? There is no distinctness there, for whiteness is a feature of the ether.

Have you experienced flight while I act as your shade? I have, with you as my shade. It is like the original figure and its reflection in the mirror; have you ever stood in front of the mirror and seen me emerge in your image? Because I saw you in the mirror, and my image was lost for the authentic image, the reflection that was you.

Have you, my mistress, known the soul's secret?

And have you recognized the secret of the real and its reflection when passion dominates us and we expose it? And do people recognize how we conduct our ceremonies at home? Or do people recognize how we pop out of the balcony constructed in the ether's cheek?

Indeed they are fragments that cannot distinguish it, for life on earth is stolen by the noise of lust that guides people to lunacy. Yet, my mistress, when we come to the site of performance, we go through the paramount moments of lunacy. As I told you once, lunacy lies in running away, and for me running away signifies that I run from you to you, or to send you a bird of craving that precedes my arrival. And running away is to run away from me, to grab you and press you to my chest, where you become a lantern illuminating my darkness.

While running away, have you ever spotted a man walking with a lantern lit inside him? He who sees him does not recognize that this man carries a woman impossible to him, yet obedient on earth and available in the ether. So has my lantern realized that living on earth is frivolity?

Now I can hear the noise of panting in the arteries of your soul. I see you rising from a deceptive nap. So wake up, and leave behind your people's folly. Remove the garments of masks and be like truth, naked. Mount the back of my folly and lead me there. Sit on the balcony like a star for now I cross time towards you. The desire for al-hulol calls in me. I race time before the moon reaches heaven's face and sees me as I transform into a crescent embracing the star that is you.

Does the moon mock us? Or does he bless us both in folly and al-hulol?

You are the one that urges me to disclose my secrets.

You cut the heart in me until it beats bleeding. You suckle from my passion until intoxication, and you flood with the ecstasy of it. You transcend the culmination. Then, like a fearful deer, you run away.

I am not a hunter!!

How can I chase myself in you? But, indeed, you run away while I remain with my defeats, gasping my regrets.

If I lose you, I am lost.

And if I find you, I am misled.

Thus, I am the sufferer in both cases. I have nothing but my heart to mount. I unfold two wings and fly like a sphinx towards Allah's Face, through the face of the moon, where I see a woman napping on her cushion, dreaming. I land near the balcony of her eyes, fold my wings and set fire to my soul's lantern. I drown with the hymns of passion repeating in space. You see me being transformed into a crescent. I close my eyes for a moment and the woman becomes a star in the lap of the crescent.

Have you found out, my princess, how the ceremony of crossing was inserted in you?

How can I be ready for attendance while a hoarse sound sways playfully through my ears?

"Hello! How are you, my friend?"

"I am preparing for torture mixed with joy."

"Don't evade the answer. How do you spend the days here?"

"The day here is the ceremony of escape."

"Escape to dreams?"

During escape I hear the moon talking with the sky's stars about creatures living on earth practicing the game of passion. A virgin star dominated by passion asks coyly, "Is passion on earth similar to that of space dwellers?"

The moon looks at Allah's Face then presses the star to his chest, opening her eyes to the light of the facts. "The soul does not realize the meaning of passion if besieged by the body. Besides, creatures on earth are captives of their desires."

A star familiar with the fundamentals of passion asks, "What is the attitude of our master, the moon, about a crescent cuddling a star in the ether?"

"The ether shelters the lovers' souls."

"Then they are sky dwellers who landed there."

"Don't be mistaken, oh, star! The sky dwellers do not land. Rather, they are two souls from earth who were released from the body's captivity. They ran from the inferno of lust."

Suddenly the rope of air was cut. The clock passed away and she brought me here in astonishment. The air returned. Your wavering voice returned to ask, "We were caught up by time before we started. What are you doing, my friend?"

"I'm writing a chapter of a star's life. It lives in the crescent's lap."

"You laugh, although you desire it. You conceitedly conceal the shudder that just then crossed your voice. You play tricks because you are a riotous woman, and you cause torture."

"How funny! You hang me on the rope of air and yet you engage in love."

The strength of the rope connecting us is faltering. I drown in silence, wallowing over the matter of a mutinous woman who has run away from me.

The narrator said that the woman troubled her companion with a question: "What is the situation when the star sits on the lap of a crescent?"

The crescent decorated itself with it as if an earring. He said, "The star becomes a bird of yearning and it wishes ..."

"Teach me how time is formed, my companion!"

"Open your palms in the air and pray!"

Suddenly a flock of birds landed, all with white wheat in their beaks. They started to dance around a prince. They dispersed the wheat, which became bread. Suddenly, a great rain fell and flowed into a spring. The spring became a river on whose banks grew orchards of roses.

The narrator stopped to take comfort among the gaps between words. He sips coffee and reads surprise in the eyes of his listeners.

The woman chanted with a moan, "Where are you? Did you return to land, and leave me hung on the rope of air?"

"The narrator has fallen asleep. He sought some comfort!"

"Don't cause trouble with me. Remember I am the woman of this tale."

It is the journey, my companion, which ends before it starts. The kernel has raged its fill, so shut all the windows and live in your trampled body! Don't wake your soul. Beware! "Don't release it into the paths, frost will dominate it. Torture will scratch it and the frivolous will bleed it. The city is a market for slaves and a bed for lustful women. The trade of the frivolous secures abundant earnings from the exchange of money with women's bodies. They do not believe that the soul has a space different from the one they live in. They do not enter the areas of the self filled with panting and the yearning of waiting. They simply come to the world, and leave without victory. Beware, my companion! And resort to rest at the rage of core's collapse. Retain what you can of the shuddering passion. Like the monks of temples, content yourself with a slice of bread donated by the loving white wheat. Retain the thirst of meeting. Search in the dream and be a woman or a city."

My companion chanted, "I am a woman and a city. How can you see me when my paths and extensions are in your own eyes?"

The narrator emerged from his silence and prepared himself. He wiped the arch on the string of rababah and then started to sing: "Indeed, in the tale, the star became a woman. It became a city. The crescent became the lovers' price. His arms were time itself. He exposes his heart on the streets while the women wait on the balconies, desirous and shivering, for the prince is carrying between his eyes the tattoo of a woman different from them."

My companion chanted, "The woman living in the prince's tattoo is indeed unique."

The narrator drew the bow on the rababah; he was tortured by singing, "She is the woman of this tale. Her house is a land where the river plays. On its banks there are two lovers weaving from time a rope of ether."

He placed the rababah and the bow into his bag and left their time, looking sadly for lovers who were not among his audience.

My companion chanted, "Tell the narrator that I have lived the tale."

"Don't be scared. He will return at night."

Tonight, my mistress, I took off my flesh and bones. I stripped my limbs and deposited them in the cellar together with the remains of the antique furniture. Tonight I have sat alone, together with what was left of me: my pens, agendas, and a white sheet of paper waiting to be danced upon. How will dancing look on the last page of my notebooks? Such was the dialogue with myself, and I started to search for the pulse in my gasping. I found it trapped within a vial hidden at the end of time, before the gate of endings. Who pulled my soul there?

And there was a woman unfolding her braids and embracing the vial. She sealed it hermetically. I tempted her to divorce me. She said that separation tortured her and asked, "Why are you taking my soul to the vial in your chest?"

"My chest has never been a women's jail. It was you that entered it. Go out if you can!"

"Not before you dance on the notebooks of paper and song."

"How can I dance without the beat of my pulse?"

"That's your business. You're free!"

I took my pen and wrote, "You are a bird of yearning."

The woman released her braids for the wind. Her eyes became windows, crossed by light.

I wrote at the top of the page, "You are the bud of dew."

The woman became a child exploring the beginnings of speech.

So I wrote at the bottom of the sheet, "You are my address, however far you move away."

She neighed and pounced like a filly bathed in sweat. In the space of the page a map was drawn, and it became a homeland. I began to explore its features. I crossed the desert of separation, swum in the sea of regret, walked through the jungles, climbed the lofty shapes of mountains and then landed in the fields. The valleys were confused by me, and so they cast me to the springs, which flowed into a woman's sea.

Oh, my Lord! The page became a woman beating with life. I said, "Release me from the vial of time, oh mistress of presence on paper!" She inserted the vial into her breast. I released my breath, and we practiced gasping. I tasted the sweetness of freedom in a woman's jail, a homeland's prison, and I lived in their agendas a star cuddled by a crescent.

I woke up.

I was alone in bed with nothing but the remains of my wife, left by the bombing that had taken the vessel of memory from her. She now practices what remains of panting, a breathing that reaches me like snoring. What falls from the leaves of memory, falls alive among the dead.

They stood all ears on the balcony. Sounds mounted the back of a rainbow and a rainbow mounted beneath the clothes of ether. Suddenly a black bird fell towards the earth like an arrow. The woman said, "Have you seen it?"

"It is an omen."

Suddenly a white dove flew up, and stood at the edge of the balcony for a moment before continuing her ascent towards the heavens. The dove choked upon seeing the crow diving towards the earth, dancing around a body, and it departed. Her heart! She exhaled blood, bled the tears of her soul. My companion entered her exhausted flesh and cried from a deep well, "It's my mother!"

I flew from my soul a white flag searching for its fellow whiteness in the paper. My heart burned with the felicity of your wound while those who were like us offered no consolation. It was the concern entering its ceremony. I do not own anything but a black card. Sorry, I do not master consolation while memory brings the departing people to my table every day. Today, however, I wept. Your tears drowned me, for life is an uninterrupted sense of mourning. It is like rain that falls from the feathers of a crow as it screeches the news of departure.

Who provides consolation when your wound is mine?

Who provides consolation when your bleeding is mine?

Death/ has destined/ death has ... betrayed/ death has ... kidnapped.

It is the game of existence, played with different types of inexistence—a game where the end of earth is another beginning in the sky. So survival is in ... presence.

Your mother, my friend, has gone away from you and me.

Shed your tears to extinguish the fire of separation.

You are like the desert's cacti, drinking what they can of the rain. My condolences are presented to you, although you are the one who is patient. You are the one who illuminates the drought with pain. Return to the earth because the weather is a farewell to the body and the soul ascends to live in memory, to become a chapter of the tale.

My companion shut her balcony window and left the house of ether.

I am still waiting.

Will she come back, after any time at all?

Singing for a Full Moon.... Between Mutiny and Compliance

This morning the clouds of December were not obscured from my window, but they came sick, dragging behind them an old bird that sat on my lap. It moaned:

"Do birds get old? Does whiteness sketch itself upon their feathers?"

The bird scanned the place with his eyes then fasted. He flapped his wings around me seven rounds, kissed my cheeks and on his two wings two tiny birds landed. The old bird said, "If we kill the memory, we die." He blew out his last breath and died.

Did he fast on the secret of the tale and die?!!

The two birds chirped confidently,

In the tale the birds do not die.

* * *

A bird ascended the north wind; he covered the distance between the summer heat and the winter ice and landed next to a place. On its door a tattoo of palm was inscribed. From this tattoo arose a blue bead surrounded with a script emanating unexpectedly from a secret rope carrying a distant scent.

"Destiny can never be avoided by caution...."

The bird opened the door carefully and he was invaded by the beginnings of a shudder. He saw a girl on the lap of a moon extending two hair-locks of gold and sun. On her face two eyes laughed with the color of aged basil....

And in the tale, it is told that the bird covered from the past seven decades or more and saw in the house's yard Fatima, a kid having fun in the shadow of the palm tree while her mother was drowned in the sea of prayer. Suddenly the time stood paralyzed, after prayer and supplication, and in consequence, the mother fell down prostrate. The bird cried cursing his fate, "Did the wind carry me to witness a death?!"

The wind chanted, "Death is destiny."

I cried out in pain, "Why did you, bird, return to the root of the tale?"

* * *

Every one who can make distinction between the times and read the scent of blossoming in the seasons of yearning learns by heart the news of a woman who lived in that house like a princess. He also knows how the seasons change their colors and how the winds change their course and how the galaxies deviate from their orbits if the pearl of truth in the prince's chest shivers!!

In the tale Fatima was a loving princess whose devotee was a shadow, like a stick of oak wood that radiated in her presence. The princess becomes a creature of incense whose scent fills the house. It turns the devotee into a colt who sees in her eyes the meadows laughing and the flocks of birds as distant songs.

"She is coming out of the house of her father
But going to the house of the neighbor"

Fatima sings with the fullness of her eyes for him who occupies her heart,

"The oak wood bends but does not break no matter how circumstances were contorted!"

Why did you, oh bird, return with what was and was? The morning wind chanted,

"What was did not die!! Don't abandon Fatima, oh, Hana'a!"

* * *

The second bird stood above a silver frame, inhabited by a woman whose eyes are as wide as a sea flying amidst the drops of water.

Oh, God! Do the fish fly in the water?

And the woman sat on a seat of ebony flavored with garnishes of ivory while I, a two-month-old daughter, am asleep following a portion of milk like honey.

All those knowing me and my aunts confirm I was an authentic reflection of her and they chanted excitedly,

"Fatima nurses Fatima!!"

But I became preoccupied with my secret. Why did she change? Nothing of her was left in me except her smile and an ember of warmth ... until there was a day and I had an appointment with him. I forgot myself before the woman who appeared before me in the mirror and said, "The lovers do not bear waiting!"

"Why have you, O Fatima, become different?!"

"Because I cannot be to anyone other than him."

"Who is he?"

"The bamboo's stick!"

My father was looking stealthily and laughing victoriously as if he had been saying boastfully, "No matter how much you, Hana'a, beautify yourself, Fatima is prettier."

Fatima descended from the frame, drew me close to her chest, examined with her fingers inside my hair looking for moons and suns. She whispered, "Do not kill the heart's ember by waiting!"

My closest aunt whispered to me, "You have your father's beauty and your mother's spirit."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Torn Body, One Soul Copyright © 2012 by Jamal Assadi. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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