The Beekeeper of Sinjar by Dunya Mikhail

Author:Dunya Mikhail
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2018-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

THE CHIRP

Amid news of explosions, conflicts, and viruses, a team of scientists found a “chirp” belonging to the beginning of the world – and it was brought to our current moment. A chirp, like God, both far away and close at hand, or maybe this majestic and delicate chirp is the very word of God?

It’s said that when we sleep at night, He speaks, and the stars exchange His words as secrets, and we see them as orbits without being able to hear them. But today, God finally spoke in broad daylight, from that far corner of the universe, as a chirp. We can hear it clearly, the way we hear a bird on the tree outside of our house.

I wonder why He broke His silence – maybe He can’t stand the misdeeds of humans against themselves anymore, especially those that are committed in His name.

Otherwise, what’s the meaning of this sign that He sent us after 200,000 years of silence?

When someone waves his or her hand, the world responds to that wave at the speed of light; the world expands a little, according to the theory of relativity discovered by Einstein a hundred years ago. Then maybe the world, by the same logic, becomes narrower when someone offends someone else. It would become much narrower when the offense is rape or murder, for example. Maybe the universe is now squeezed so tightly that even God can’t stretch His legs; maybe He can’t breathe and finally had to let that chirp out of His chest.

Maybe He’s about to tell us a new tale! A magnificent tale to distract us from all the violence, the way Scheherazade did for Shahriyar.

Or maybe it’s just a drop of rain tapping on the roof of an empty house?

Or an echo? (In empty houses, it’s easier to hear the echo of absence.)

Or a step? (Are there any footsteps tonight?)

I look out the window and see the trees lined up next to one another, some are almost totally dry, in need of water, their remaining leaves still waving at the passersby, especially the lonely ones whose loneliness is ripening before their very eyes. Trees don’t ask why they don’t move from place to place, nor do they ask any other meaningless questions. But their branches tremble when the birds leave them, just as the soul trembles when loved ones depart.

I don’t know if our dreams are reflections of reality, or if reality is a reflection of our dreams. In one of my dreams, I went back to Uruk and wrote on clay tablets, from right to left, then from left to right. I drew squares, triangles, and circles to indicate the homes I’d had, the stuff I’d owned, and dead people I’d known. Gilgamesh came and gave me the plant of immortality, but it disappeared in a second. I don’t know where it went. Gilgamesh seemed so sad, and I concluded he was still in mourning for his friend Enkidu. I wanted to console him but

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