Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jamal Assadi, associate professor, currently chairs the Department of English Language and Literature at the College of Sakhnin. He received his Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. In addition to numerous articles in professional journals, Prof. Assadi is the author of Acting, Rhetoric and Interpretation in Selected Novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Saul Bellow (2006) and co-editor of A Distant Drummer: Foreign Perspectives on F. Scott Fitzgerald (2007). Prof. Assadi, a writer of children's stories and a renowned poet, has translated a few volumes of Palestinian poetry and short fiction into English.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Torn Body, One Soul

iUniverse, Inc.

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

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...