Excerpt from
Don’t say that my son
Is walking in heaven
By Islam Nawwar
Translated by
Phoebe Bay Carter
Part 2
I was in my bedroom when I heard the muezzin call:
“Praaaaaayer is better than sleep / praaaaayer is better than sleep”
So I hastened to the router to begin my daily worship.
Had been there
At Lorca’s execution
I would have been neither Lorca
Nor the one wielding the gun
I would have clapped, nothing more
And left,
Awaiting a slap
From determinism.
I am alive and Cinema Paradiso, demolished among tears at the end of the film, tells me I am alive, and all those kisses between the actors at the end of the film tell me I am alive, and this soundtrack resembling the time I put a black-and-white television in my bedroom window for the school children standing on the opposite balcony so they could watch, applauding, a kiss in an old Arabic film – this soundtrack tells me I am alive. This naked breast tells me their dog of a private-school teacher with his stick on the opposite balcony is dead, and I am alive. My imaginary lover’s cracked lips tell me that my dog of a father is dead, and I am alive. The hair sprouting around my penis tells me my dog of a mother is dead, and I am alive. All those kisses at the end of the film tell me that my dog of a prophet is dead, and I am alive. O hug between my lover’s arms, tell me that my dog of a president is dead and I am alive. Tell me, hug, that this rocketship flying me to Mars without a series of hysterical kisses from my lover is dead, and I am alive.
