Syracuse University Press
Chapter Title: Things
Book Title: Chronicles of Majnun Layla and Selected Poems
Book Author(s): Qassim Haddad
Published by: Syracuse University Press. (2014)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1j5dfrf.11
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Things
She disappeared on him; he is waiting on the roadside, his things
scattered about while people pass around him like ether. Through
windows in their bodies, he sees her running towards him. But
she does not reach him. And he, running towards her, cannot
reach her either.
Meanwhile people step over his scattered objects—a pointed
sand grouse feather/a green silk thread his mother tied around
his forearm when he was a child/a wedding ring worn thin
from frequent removal/a talisman wrapped in hyena skin/a dry
siwak-tree twig/a rough sapphire laced with coal/a saddlebag
punctured by wind/remnants of a bridle oozing wind horses/
solitude—absorbing what their feet come across.
Women sitting next to him ask for poetry. He asks them of Layla.
They say she is among them, though hiding so the tribe won’t
be scandalized. He says that the invisible Layla appears to him
clearer than were she visible. They say, “Recite!” And he raises his
voice so that she may notice him. She is there. She hears him recite
verses that crush boulders while the women sigh and he laments,
giving them his innermost, and the women ask for more. All the
while she listens.
People pass by through cracks in their bodies, taking his dis-
persed things—an old turquoise stone/a pot of ambergris dregs/a
child’s kufiyya worn out by sand/a mysterious lock of hair/battle
loot heaped on a saddle/anxiety—and they pass by.
Women flit about him, suffused with admiration, intrigue. He
recites his poetry, they laugh with joy. He wails his lament—she
listens. The women realize Qays is being taken beyond human
limitations: he is close to being ruined by the silence of his
beloved.
Things 25
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Meanwhile people pass by and his dispersed things—an empty
scabbard/traces of blood on a rag holding a broken bolt/a swatch
of the Quran’s ‘Amma yatasa’ lun on yellowish paper/a love amu-
let/a shrunken water skin/an eagle’s talon/frankincense gum/a
strip of jerked meat—have almost dwindled to nothing. And she
listens. The women say, “O Qays, your beloved is abusing you
without mercy. Leave her! It is your right. She deserves it.”
He shouts back, “By God, no! My sole concern is my unworthi-
ness. It’s her right to hear me boast of being nothing more than a
thread slipped from the fringe of her belt. If she accepts it, then
so do I.”
Suddenly a sob from among the women: one soul is seized by a fit
of weeping. The women turn to locate the source. From a corner
among them a small sun rises and slides out of their midst as if
through a tent door. So it is made apparent: Layla circling around
them, taking away the rest of his dispersed things: a burnt stone
from a three-piece desert stove/a siwak twig/a tuft of camel hair/a
date pit pierced by horse’s hair/a slipper drained of its pigmenta-
tion/sparse sleep/pale rainbow.
Qays is strung so tautly, so captivated that he can scarce control
his body. Meanwhile she drifts away from him like a chemise
eased off the body. He shudders: a chill wind touches his chest.
Stripped now, naked to the elements. Sitting on the roadside,
watering the women with poetry, he cries from thirst. They—the
women—are in raptures from the love aroused in their beings,
fires no moisture can smother.
The women rejoice as he weeps—his little sun moves away.
26 Chronicles of Majnun Layla
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