Memory for Forgetfulness by Darwish Mahmoud

Author:Darwish, Mahmoud
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press

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In the rubble of Damur sons of martyrs and survivors from Tel Zaatar found yet another refuge in the chain of moving shelters. They brought their fatigue, disappointment, and the parts of their bodies the knives had forgotten to disjoin and came to Damur. They came in search of a place to sleep, on a square meter open to wind and patriotic songs. But what the primitive daggers forgot to do is being done by fighter planes, which haven’t stopped shelling this human continuity. Where’s all this leading? Where? From massacre to slaughter have my people been led, and still they bring forth offspring in debris-filled stopping places, flash victory signs, and prepare wedding feasts.

Does a bomb have grandchildren? Us.

Does a piece of shrapnel have grandparents? Us.

For ten years I’ve been living in Beirut in cement transiency. I try to unravel Beirut, and I become more and more ignorant of myself. Is it a city or a mask? A place of exile or a song? How quickly it ends! And how quickly it begins! The reverse is also true.

In other cities, memory can resort to a piece of paper. You may sit waiting for something, in a white void, and a passing idea may descend on you. You catch it, lest it escape, and as days roll and you come upon it again, you recognize its source and thank the city that gave you this present. But in Beirut you flow away and scatter. The only container is water itself. Memory assumes the shape of the city’s chaos and takes up a speech that makes you forget words that went before.

Rarely do you notice Beirut is beautiful.

Rarely in Beirut do you distinguish between content and form.

It’s not old, and it’s not new.

When they ask, “Do you love it?” you’re surprised by the question and ask yourself, “Why didn’t I pay attention? Do I love it?” Then you search for an emotion appropriate to it, and you ache with dizziness or stupor. Rarely do you need to be reassured you’re in Beirut: you’re in it with no need of evidence, and it’s in you with no need for proof. And you remember that in Cairo this question would have driven you to the balcony to check whether the Nile was still there. If you saw the Nile, then you were in Cairo. But here, it’s the sound of bullets that tells you you’re in Beirut. The sound of bullets and the shriek of the slogans on the walls.

Is it a city or a refugee camp of Arab streets laid out with no plan? Or is it something else altogether? A condition, a thought, a change in state, a flower born from a text, or a young woman who unsettles the imagination.

Is it for this reason no one has been able to compose a song for Beirut?

How easy she seems!

Yet how she resists the joining together of words, even those with similar meter and rhyme: Beirut,

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