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.