We Never Swim in the Same River Twice by Hassouna Mosbahi

Author:Hassouna Mosbahi
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780815657187
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 2024-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

I wonder . . . if the stars are lit up so that each of us can find his own, someday.23

All grown-ups were children first. (But few of them remember it.)24

It’s the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important,25 the most beautiful and glorious.

I have learned that the world mirrors my soul. . . . When my soul is glad, the world will be happy. When the soul is worried, the world will be sad.

The world isn’t sad or happy.

It simply is here.26

The book enchanted me, and I united myself with my soul, desiring to have no other companion. For this reason, I did my best to avoid running into Murad. I prowled the beach alone. I defied the cold and storms in the woods. The only thing in my mind was the little prince’s spirit, which was chock-full of affection and love. What attracted my attention was that the little prince always sought to capture the affection and friendship of others. From a mountaintop he shouts: “Let’s be friends . . . I’m lonely!”27 He doesn’t just love human beings; he loves animals too. For this reason, he approaches a snake and asks him to play, because he is “sad and alone.” He celebrates the flower’s beauty and everything that appears before him, because he does not want to live alone, sad, and deprived of love. According to him, someone who doesn’t love isn’t a person and can’t be a person. Anyone who sniffs a flower and does not look with amazement at a star twinkling in the sky, who does not love another person and has never done anything to make others happy, cannot be a person. He is just an inanimate object.

On the sixth day of the school holiday, I walked to Madame Marie-Rose’s house. She read my summary. Without saying a single word, she kissed me on my mouth, once, offered me a beer, and invited me to eat lunch with her. Before I left that afternoon, she gave me a collection of tales, saying they were by a famous Scandinavian author named Andersen.

Late that evening I ran into Murad near the harbor. He shouted angrily at me, “Where have you been, Scoundrel?”

“I’ve been with the little prince.”

“What little prince?”

“Come.”

“Where?”

“To the shore.”

“When it’s this cold?”

“I’ll tell you a story that will make you forget the cold.”

“What’s happened to you? Have you gone mad since I last saw you?”

“Come. You won’t regret it.”

We walked along the beach, silently at first. Then I began recounting the story of the little prince, complete with all its details, reciting by heart the exceptional passages I had recorded in my notebook. Once I finished, Murad placed his hands on my shoulders and stopped me. He asked me as he stared at me in astonishment, “Where did you find that amazing story?”

“I read it in a book.”

“What book?”

“A book Madame Marie-Rose gave me!”

“May I read it?”

“Your French may not be strong enough.”

“I’ll borrow a dictionary!”

I drew the book out of my small sack and presented it to him.

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