Ghost questions
Yemen
Yamanat
Zaher Al-Asaad – Palestine
I’m starting from the dark
Where there are no promises or expectations
Questions multiply like rust in the wall
As if the wall itself breathes doubt
As if the silence was another noise
Where time stops breathing
Questions pile up like wet stones
On the threshold of dawn
As if the light had no homeland
As if the beginning had forgotten how to be born
It’s as if birth were a deferred death
I see people like cracked vessels
They carry as much life as their hands can hold
They leave the rest on high shelves
They cover him with silence
It’s as if they are afraid to touch what is beyond what they need.
It’s like they’re hiding from the essence, the purpose of the secret
As if the truth remained hidden
They sleep on the surface of the water
They don’t drown
Because they don’t ask for depth
It’s as if the depths are a mirror that collapses into fragments of silence
Reveal their fragility
And it reminds them of a fear that hasn’t yet been named
I walked on the fringes of the conversation
I collected vocabulary like dust sparks
I threw it into the mouth of dawn
To find out if he would swallow it
Or will he make it like embers that light the way?
It’s as if language tests my fragility and my silence
A childhood ghost visited me
He walks on the edge of memory
It smells like damp wood
And the voice of a mother whose hand trembles from the old heat
It’s like the wood refuses to catch fire
As if childhood were a delayed fire
We sat together
We count the things we no longer need
We threw him in a basket out of laughter
Then we forgot where we hid it
It’s as if childhood handed over the keys to oblivion
Oblivion is a narrow window
Ventilate the room
But it doesn’t open to the outside
But in another void
It’s like the void is an extension of life when you’re tired
I laughed
Because laughter sometimes
The shortest path to the truth
And the most bitter
It’s like laughter is a protest
It’s like a smiling wound
Twilight has spread
He stretched out his hand on the city’s shoulder
The windows shone like little eyes
Watch your dreams
It’s like the city is dreaming of me
I sat on a balcony aimlessly
I watched the light slip between the buildings
How the streets reorganized themselves every evening
As if it corrected the mistakes of the day
You write a story that no one reads
I write about fear as a former guest
I honored him with a cup of bitter tea
I learned patience from him
And I learned to hold my hand
When the wind gets strong
The hand is a last homeland
The body is a green wall of essence, truth and secret
Fear is a mirror
Show me how fragile I am
How miraculous I am at the same time
As if I were both a broken and luminous being
Like I was a question walking on two legs
From a broken fear comes a fragile promise of a new color.
And another morning
I found a flower without a name
It is born from a crack in the secret, in the truth and in the essence.
Its color cannot be measured by names
As if it were a language that had not yet been discovered
Like it was a promise that wasn’t written
I approached her
I held it gently like it was a forbidden secret
I put it on my chest
And it felt like the world was back where it belonged
No, because the answers have come
But because a question
He became less alone
And no longer able to survive
Yemen