Mural by Mahmoud Darwish

Author:Mahmoud Darwish
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

The Dice Player

Who am I to say to you

what I’m saying?

I wasn’t a stone washed by water

so I became a face

I wasn’t a reed pierced by the wind

so I became a flute

I’m the way the dice fall

sometimes winning sometimes losing

I’m like you

or maybe slightly less …

I was born beside the well

where three single trees stood like nuns

I was born without ceremony or a midwife

and belonged to a family

by chance

inheriting its features, idiosyncrasies

and illnesses:

First: feeble arteries and high blood pressure

Second: shyness in talking with mother, father, grandmother – or a tree

Third: the belief that flu can be cured with a hot cup of chamomile

Fourth: a disinclination to talk about gazelles or skylarks

Fifth: a tendency to boredom on winter nights

Sixth: a farcical inability to sing

I had no say in who I was

It was by chance I turned out

male

by chance that I found the upturned moon

pale as a lemon

urging on the night

and just as easily

could find a mole hidden in the deepest recess of my groin

It’s possible

I might not have been

and my father might not have been

then he wouldn’t have married my mother

by chance

I might have been like my sister

who screamed then died and never knew it

because she lived for an hour and didn’t know her mother …

Or one could say: like a pigeon’s egg which breaks before the chick can hatch from its shell

I happened by chance

me the survivor of the bus accident

because I was late going to school

forgetting the here and now

while reading a love story at night

losing myself in story-teller and victim of love

til I became a martyr of passion in the story

and the survivor of the bus accident!

I can’t see myself joking with the sea

but I am a reckless kid

one of my hobbies is to dawdle in the waves

when they’re singing: Come to me!

And I can’t see myself being rescued from the sea

I was saved by a sort of seagull

who saw the playful waves paralyzing my hand

It’s possible

I wouldn’t have been struck with the madness of the Jahili Mu’alaqaat2

if the door of the house had faced North

and not overlooked the sea

if the army patrol hadn’t seen the fire of the villagers making bread that night

if 15 martyrs had been able to rebuild the barricades

if that rural place hadn’t been obliterated

perhaps I’d have become an olive tree

or a geography teacher

or an expert in the realm of ants

or guardian of an echo!

who am I to say to you

what I’m saying

at the door of the church

I’m nothing but the fall of the dice

landing between predator and prey

winning a clarity that obscures my happiness on moonlit nights

and obliges me to witness the carnage

It was by chance

I escaped

I was smaller than a military target

and larger than a bee hovering between the flowers on the fence

I feared a lot for my brothers and father

feared for time made of glass

feared for my cat and my rabbit

feared for the magical moon above the high minaret of the mosque

feared for the grapes on the vine dangling like the teats of our dog

Fear walked in me and I walked

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