Raoucheh,
Thirty-five
years later, Beirut’s Pigeons’ Rock
forever mute witness of
the civil war
a huge rock erect
where purple evenings
conjure Phoenician
sails,
a backdrop to tales heard
as a child, of lovers hiding,
often drowning in its
grotto's
emerald tears.
I used to imagine
how the Champollion,
a ship venturing too
close,
lay trapped for years
in blue mist,
her insides
torn apart by this Giant's
unclenched fist,
stopped in slow motion,
in an idle attempt to
rise,
petrified by salt spray,
her remains buried
in quicksand
in the midst of the Bay.
A fallen Olympian,
forever flanked
by dancing waves,
its ire, our inner
obscure well, as if
casting a black
cloud over the former
brightness of sails,
rustling canopies,
over our steps along
the Promenade des Français,
breeze flowing
through my curls, gusts
of wind sculpting
our bodies, redesigning
silhouettes,
erasing footsteps,
echoes of laughter,
muffled sighs,
all the people
long gone.
Some, as pawns
on a map, glided to
another turquoise Bay,
in Jounieh,
along the wavering coastline,
an ersatz, surviving its artifice...
There, people of the same faith
pull on the narguilehs
in the cafés,
play dice and backgammon,
women of the same clan
stretch their smooth,
lustrous bodies
under the midday sun
deserting Raoucheh's corniche
its rocky shores now
crowded
only by male bathers
and fishermen,
while the imposing stone horseshoe
clamped in indigo
is no longer a good omen
after so many years
of fallen,
dismantled bodies
blown up theatres,
casinos, snipers’ crossfire
from deserted terraces,
the air still remembers
the smell of fear
and gunpowder,
its acrid taste unmasked
by the unrelenting fumes
of daily exhausts.
In every corner,
next to a restored building,
an old house stands,
scarred,
windowless,
phantomlike,
awaiting mouth agape
the miraculous facelift.
The burning sun tires
of recycling endless debris
left over by thousands,
the waste of hatred,
and time, once a healer
broods despair.
Some far away will dream
a laced balcony,
delicate mosaics,
unfaded,
patina adding its final touch
to pink façades, sepia
walls
faceted stones,
deeply engraved in the retina
unfolding in the mirrors
of our minds.
I recall how wafts of orange
blossoms
mixed with effluvia
of salty breeze,
once whispering under pillars
and arcades, would reach
us
as we rested under a Jacaranda’s
trembling blue shade.
I often gazed through thick glass,
at the delicate displays of vials and flasks
rescued from the depths
of Tyre and Sidon
gilded by time,
marvelled at the fluidity of erosion
over blown glass
and burnished metals,
all pearl-like treasures forever
gone,
like so many of us,
the lucky ones
fading away in distant lands
dreaming new dreams,
our children unaware
of what is no longer there,
unable to hear the voices
we cannot silence
the song of the orphans
the song of the fishermen's nets
the song of the abandoned house
the song of the goat living in a
palace
the song of the refugees milking a
goat over Persian carpets
the song of the windshields
constellated with stars of death
the song of the driver forced to
leave his car at an intersection
the song of an entire school bus
emasculated because they were Maronites
the song of mothers and children
blown up because they were not Maronites
the song of a town torn apart, its
children hanging like heavy fruits from olive
and almond-trees, nipples and testicles dripping with blood on the lower
branches
the song still heard through
murmuring leaves, cacti and pine needles, as the roots remember
the song of Beirut burning us safe
watching the flames from a hill,
waiting for the madness to reach the mountains
the song of the man who never
returned home, his head rolling behind his car
the song of a fool who crossed the
green line to meet his Muslim lover,
only to be found the next day in a small bag under the infamous bridge
the song of the silent ride over
the bridge of death, the only way to the airport.
I ran to have a passport picture
taken with the two of you,
tried to comb your hair as best as I could.
Your hair so fine, it curled around
my fingers.
First published by Mizna
Literary Journal
From Tea in Heliopolis
(Press 53 2013)
Hedy Habra is a poet,
artist and essayist. She is the author of three poetry collections from Press
53, most recently, The Taste of the Earth (2019), Winner
of the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer
Book Award; Tea in Heliopolis Winner of the Best Book Award and Under Brushstrokes,
which was a Finalist for the Best Book Award and the International Book Award.
Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s
Honorable Mention and was Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. A seventeen-time
nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the net, and recipient of the Nazim
Hikmet Award, her multilingual work appears in numerous journals and anthologies.
https://www.hedyhabra.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment