Talking through the Door: An Anthology of Contemporary Middle Eastern American Writing

K h a l e d Ma t t a w a

175 k h A l E d m A t t A w A Selections from the Ibn Hazm Epistolary From Cordoba God made souls in the shapes of spheres then cut them into halves. And when God made the body he placed only half of a sphere within it. That is why we are born without speech, weak and defenseless. And that is why a child is curious, attaching itself to all that may fill the gap in its chest. In adulthood, the person that finds the other containing the other half of his soul develops an attachment based on that old splitting occasion. Of course, people’s reactions to this encounter depend on the sensitivity of their natures. Some are puzzled, some ecstatically joyous , some horrified, but all are deeply moved by it at the expense of everything else. Thus love is a welding of the shattered beings of this creation. So tell your friends that the catalyst for love burns and becomes part of its ruins. And in closing remember that the secret of bliss is not effusion , but a series of contacts and departures. From Cordoba You look at grains of iron on a flat surface, and they are like a tribe that has found its farming grounds and pasture and settled. However , once you bring a piece of magnet near them, you can easily move them from one side of the earth to the other. The lover who’s T a l k i n g T h r o u g h T h e D o o r 176 found his beloved is all packed like those grains under the draw of the magnet, enclosed onto themselves. He is not a person, but a herd of passions guided by the impulse that momentarily triumphs over others. All is urgent, the moments of stasis and waiting are as desperate as the movements themselves. It is difficult to know whether we enjoy this state or not, and we can never answer such a question. We are elated and we are pained because we are in the grasp of the terrible forces that brought this world into existence. The struggle of love is thus a confrontation with the question whether it is better to live or not to have been born into this mortal world in the first place. Only those among us who have truly lived and loved know that there is no answer to that question , and they know that our inhaling and exhaling are the echoes of our wavering between these two answers. From Cordoba The soul too in this world of clay becomes earthbound. If it finds difficulty letting go, it may not enter love. And then if it does enter, what will it find? Love is not a fall, it is a leap. If you feel you’re falling despite yourself, you are falling in all the senses of the word. Rather you should feel as if letting go, but toward a destination. Those who love quickly are falling into blindness. They can easily gather themselves because all they held within them was hollowness. They write callused poetry. They address their amours with battered words. Then there are those who claim to love more than one lover. They are tearing themselves up in order to reach their various destinations , their concurrent loves an ongoing process of scarring, their souls assemblages of torn parts. I remember visiting the palace of my friend the Prince of Seville. In one room that the prince decorated with thousands of mirrors facing each other in every possible manner , I remember seeing my image multiplied a thousandfold. Every mirror I stared at reflected itself on other mirrors. And since the room was full of images multiplied a hundred times, I saw myself divided in my peripheral vision. I could not see a straight image of k h A l E d m A t t A w A 177 myself unless I brought my eyes so close to one of these mirrors that I was almost blinded by the strain of my effort. This is the state of the lover of many loves. From Granada All fictions lose their story lines, all ruses come to an end. All breakoffs are a construct of hate. Thinking bewilders here, the disaster reaches its ripening. What did she want, what will he approve of. No change can change...