Meditations Over The Eye of Horus - One Poem by Hedy Habra
Meditations Over The Eye of Horus
In Ancient Egypt, the sun and the moon were regarded as the eyes of the great falcon god
Horus. The god scribe Thot, a healer and magician, restored Horus’ left lunar eye after it
was torn out by his uncle Seth; it came to be known as Wadjet, the most powerful of protective
amulets made of gold, silver, lapis, wood, porcelain and carnelian.
The Wadjet was divided into six parts, representing the shattering of Horus’ eye and associated
with one of the six senses as a specific fraction.
3. Thought = 1/8
Fikr فِكْر
This part of the Wadjet represents thought, symbolized
by the eyebrow.
My mother’s perfectly traced eyebrows punctuated her mute directives
in a secret language that controlled our pulse. When she’d say kalbi kash
zay alzabiba, you have shrunk my heart into a raisin, we feared the next
step, that of erasure, with the sempiternal dawwabti kalbi, you have
melted my heart, as sugar dissolves in water! Ancient Egyptians believed
the heart to be he seat of consciousness and wisdom. At the final
judgment, it was weighed against Ma'at's ostrich feather to allow the deceased to cross the pathway to the Field of Reeds. Is this where from
we get our sense of love in connection with the heart? Does a thought espouse the rhythm of a heartbeat? When we forgive, don’t we feel our
heart lighter, freed from the ballast of bitterness and resentment?
the wind sweeps the grass
all over the Nile Valley
flowers bend their necks
Senet, or the game of passing, led players through the ten
regions of darkness before rising dawn, offering a glimpse of immortality.
I was often on my father’s lap as he faced his backgammon opponents at
the Club. I still feel the throw of dice on the wooden board, sense his excitement with each pawn placed in my hand. Nefertari is portrayed
playing senet solo in her sheer linen dress and gold bracelets. Was she conjuring fate or her inner self, bracelets clanking together with each
casting of lapis and ebony sticks? Through sepia lenses, I watch my grandmother on her wheelchair, playing solitaire for hours. Was she
weighing the odds of walking again, despite Lourdes and her daily Bible reading? Her ghost wrapped itself in an ink wash around my mother,
guiding her hands as she aligned cards, time after time. Borges was
haunted by an eternal chess game in which “God moves the player and
he, the piece / What god behind God originates the scheme. . .?” “Dios
mueve al jugador, y éste, la pieza /¿Qué Dios detrás de Dios la trama empieza. . .?”
I play solo on
the white page, languages mould
my thoughts and feelings
My father placed blessed medals in the foundations of our home, in Heliopolis. He made sure to add kharaza zarka, in its four
corners. Invisible blue eyes watched over our sleep but kept him safe
only for a few years. Were they asleep when he was on his deathbed?
Spells and amulets covered vaults and coffins to ensure Egyptians a safe crossing in their last voyage, oftentimes in couples. Beatrice guided
Dante towards his Paradiso’s higher spheres within the folds of a rose
of light. Will love keep hearts pure and light? In which sort of paradise
did my parents reunite? Is illicit love a sacrilege in the hereafter? In
Thebes, Hatchepsut designed a tunnel between her burial chamber and
her advisor’s, Senenmut. With his name carved on her mortuary temple walls, was she hoping they’d enjoy together the eternal breeze?
Liquid words swallowed
phantom limbs awaken lust
for a lost body
I’ve always
found it strange that I’d still remember our
phone number
from half a century ago, when those from successive homes
in Beirut,
Baabdat, Athens, Brussels and Tucson, vanished. . . 6-3-8-6-9
flows in my
mind like beads running from a broken necklace. This
Heliopolis
number and the one in Michigan where we’ve lived for decades
wrap the
circle: an ouroboros merging time and space within a house we
didn’t
build, but where we’ve planted so many seeds it has become our
Field of
Reeds.
Ashen flowers rise
out of memory’s embers
echoing your voice
The memory of the only day it rained during recess
at the Mère de Dieu College in Cairo
The memory of a sparkle of hope in extinguished young
eyes, shut off for no reason
The memory of the washerwoman hanging sheets, the wind
shrouding her over rooftops
The memory of Hypatia of Alexandria teaching philosophy,
astronomy and sciences
The memory of the widow’s tears clinging to her cheeks
like dew at dawn over leaves
The memory of Sister Emmanuelle’s life among the zabbaleen,
Egypt’s trash collectors
The memory of wanting to walk through fire and memory’s
fire soaring as the Phoenix
The memory of the khamsin blowing hot, sandy air for fifty
days through closed shutters
The memory of my first Arabic poem about befriending a bird
osfoorati, osfoorati, teeri ilaya wa rafrafi,
ya salwati fi khalwati,
ruffle your wings and come soothe my loneliness
The memory of manuscripts and scrolls burned in the library
of Alexandria by Romans, Copts and Muslims
First published in The Taste of the Earth (Press 53 2023)
Hedy Habra is a poet, artist, and essayist. Her latest poetry collection, Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023), won the 2024 International Poetry Book Awards and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer and USA Best Book Awards. The Taste of the Earth, won the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Tea in Heliopolis won the Best Book Award, and Under Brushstrokes was a finalist for the International Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s Honourable Mention and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. Her book of criticism is Mundos alternos y artisticos en Vargas Llosa. A twenty-four-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.
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