Hubeyb | ሁበይብ️

I was two calves in a flock of birds flying, without a heart that could sing or a wing that could turn around. The wind took us towards the west until we no longer knew: Is this our first round of precedence or the last round? I did not know that we were confederates and that we had many names, and that we were fools who had not been afflicted by the logic of birds and the secret of “Farid al-Din” except fanaticism.

We were not looking for a path to the door of heaven, but rather we searched for paradise on earth. We heard stories about it, we saw pictures of it, so we said: It is the kingdom of the mind, and its people are rational, and it is the land of God, there is neither East nor West, and all people are its inhabitants, equal. Then we flew towards it in search of the secret, but we did not find anything except this affliction: exhausted cities, empty hearts, and debtors asking God about the story of Cain and Abel.

The wealth of the poor is a state between two allies: the rich and the powerful. Prostitution is the craft of politicians. As for the wise, they are the mind that suggests to the Caesar before the pure: that God’s creation is of different races, and they are of various orders, and all the weak are sheep in the Caesar’s forest, and the Caesar is the Lord of the strong.

We looked: and we were, as we had started, separated, and the forest had neither manna nor quail, nor any consolation.  Aristotle inspires Alexander to invade and conquer the tired cities and tempts him to kill the princes. As I looked at this fate and saw the human being in the pit, crippled, seeking shelter, and I saw the Caesar still as he was, a Titan who had the power to conclude, veto, and manage matters, I said: Then there must be another journey, and a final journey.

Another trip? To where? And all the earth is Caesar's garden, and on its edges are soldiers who set up a thousand camps for him and sing drunkenly the poetry of Virgil while Rome struts? Another trip and nothing has changed since the earth turned around us, and the monkey became a thinking human? Another journey with a dagger in your back, a spear on your chest, and an exploding mine next to you? Another trip and nothing remains of the flock except a few flying birds?

Let it be (I said), for silence is more dangerous. Let it be (I said), for today is dustier, and tomorrow the horizon may become clearer and the soul may become clearer and we will see a path to wisdom that no tyrant has known and Caesar has not taken.

I said: There must then be another journey and a final journey, and let our journey be in the human tunnel, between good and evil, and in the cave of the darkness of the soul, in the well of conscience. I said: We must have another hope other than living in this hellfire.  Then I spread my wings and flew far and deep, but I was still flying alone.

In the dwindling years of the third century, a prosperous son of Libya, adorned with Italic and Punic lineage, emerged victorious over four challengers, adorning the crown of sovereign might over the Roman Empire—Septimius Severus. Beside him, a noblewoman from Emesa (present-day Homs), Syria, graced the realms, her spirit ablaze with a passion for philosophy's profound depths. Julia Domna, consort to the Emperor, found solace in the teachings of Athenodorus Cananites, the Stoic sage. In her court, wisdom danced and thoughts intertwined, weaving intellectual tapestries of sublime discourse.

In the veils of antiquity, Julia Domna embraced enigmatic cults, paying homage to Magna Mater (Cybele), the Phrygian goddess, her secrets enshrined in Roman rites. A clandestine waltz, where the elite sought mystical communion, unfolded amidst those hallowed ceremonies. Syncretism, an alchemy of beliefs, held sway in those times—an eclectic fusion of faiths within the empire's embrace, within Julia Domna's very being.

Severus, in his reign, unfurled a new chapter, unchaining the might of the legions, for in his words echoed the revolution of gold—“See that the soldiers have plenty of money. Nothing else matters.” The sun of culture shifted, its zenith found in the Hellenized East, as it cast shadows upon the Roman soul. A kaleidoscope of beliefs birthed a cosmic paradigm, embracing unorthodox doctrines, for the universal sought its throne.

In this age, Sol Invictus, the Sun Unconquered, ascended hearts, its fiery essence not confined by doctrine, yet igniting a fervor for a singular sun god. Severus, though not a fervent proponent of a sole deity, extended an open hand to diverse devotions. Amidst his reign, Christians found moments of peace, though storms would sporadically lash their haven. Elagabalus, a scion of the dynasty, bore a vision—an incandescent deity, Elagabalus, a sun god of Syrian lands. He sought to anoint this deity in the Roman pantheon, a lofty ambition met with the thunderclap of resistance.

In the Severan era, Christians glimpsed varying hues, from the gentle brush of tolerance to the harsh strokes of a tyrant's ire. A symphony of faiths, a dance of beliefs, the Severan era—an intricate tapestry in the grand design of time. Monotheistic whispers grew louder, an echo within the vast chambers of eternity, painting the canvas of destiny.

The lover's question, speaking or silent, is a repetition of a single desire: Who am I in your eyes? The lover's listening is a repetition of a lonely yearning for the answer to come, even if vaguely. The answer is the one who holds the hand of the lover and guides him to the mirror, where his image is, and says to him: This is you, in my eyes, and what you are in my eyes is the truth. The truth is complete when it is said once, even if only temporarily, and what is said is known and there is no confusion in it.

What does a sad one who looks like me do when I count the defeats of time, it takes off the dress of its days thread by thread, like a rose of nostalgia and sits between the palms of memory, naked, with a body without details, counting how many lovers passed through  fingers, like water that did not quench the thirst of the body while he is still picking up the melody of an old song, whose words have eroded, and it wears them like a coat in the winter of forgetfulness!

I walk on the edge of the world, carving my name on the water, reciting a Bible from the blank pages, writing hypothetical events, jotting down my other names that I desire, loving all the beautiful women in the world with a thousand hearts, breathing from my mind, letting my lungs go to tear gas canisters, I walk in all political demonstrations, raising my naked body as a banner, preparing the ground for my imminent death, reading all the details of emptiness, staring long into the distances. There is a distance between me and God, and I only think of the path carved like milk that gushed from the udder of cats, I call to prayer on the top of the mountains.

Give me, O woman, your name, and take all my language, I am mute, and I only want your voice, to call upon God! Writing is like an emigration, when blood turns into ink due to pain, and it explodes all the distances of the veins. I am sure that I am a prophet, who failed to draw God's attention to all this devastation. Here, the war passed like an owl, for the forest was dark, and the fragments of flesh did not help them in the morning to breathe in a grave, so they rotted in their place and sprouted green flies with human nails.

And here; I search for the meaning of life, and nothing answers me except a deep echo of death. Here, where my body is still imprisoned at the bottom of a well whose waters are bilious, and I was not Joseph until a divine coincidence saved me.

I am still a carpenter, trees are all my wealth in the world, although modern civilization digs deep into the walls of the forest, but I still believe in the power of wood to make houses, shelters, children's toys, fishing machines, and boats. The village expands to become a city, but its stomach does not digest strangers, and keeps mass graves for them outside the borders of the village.

Just give me a kiss, so that the world may equilibrate for a moment, before it falls back into chaos! Your face, the angel of God who sent it to the world, so the earth turned into an apple that I gnawed at, so God punished me with your love for eternity! I can love you, without reasons, only reasons that fail the love relationship!

The body is the only fact that does not need proof. From the instinct of our body spring all the colors of the world. The world is in its roots completely black and opaque. Only love makes the blood of the world gush out, from a small wound in a woman’s heart. This blood, which takes the form of birds, fish, and roses, migrates perfume, does not need passports.

A departing body whose blood the prophets weep. Nothing but to place my heart, like a meteorite pierced with rust, under the fierce wheels to strike at the bones, and let the thunderbolt of the night be a pillow for the arrogant.

I am standing in delirium, discovering now that I have watched the life of weaving an abyss for my steps, sleep by sleep, claiming that I am the strong, resistant, capable of confrontations. I am the weakest creature without certainty or argument. I am like a mountain hissing in the presence of clouds. A being standing like a scandal in the priest's heart. Lust opens the end, and takes my hand with the tenderness of crime and the laziness of the snake, so that I fall like a bride who loses her chastity in front of the crowds in the square, and people have blood proof.

There is someone who goes leaf by leaf. I have enough hatred for a pack of wolves of lust, and you may unleash the astonishment of the attack in my delay, without a guilty conscience, and you are free to arms to take their share of what remains.

I am the one who emerges from people's patience, stained by sin, the messenger of speech. There is only a fitting ending left. I am the only one standing in a pale brink, I have gone to it since the wilt of a frayed thread, delusional that it is the first spinning in the veil of solitude, I put my soul on the blow. It was said that galaxies would remember my eyelashes. You have the joy of killing, and you put the blades of your knives in my heart, you flee the flesh and reach the bone, so the silver of my soul floats in your faces for the rudeness of the fatwa.

I am the wolf going into the night of refuge, the deceiver of experience, the fan of fires, the igniter of discord, the undertaker of wildfire, the unruly of blood, the sullen heart, the cheeks of devils. A hyena sucks in the blood of the dead with lustfully quivering labia, and its fangs poke over the bones of a corpse, as a prophet takes off his frayed shirt. It is worthy of all the lethality that you are capable of, and let your freedoms be the banner of revenge.

I am the target of snipers, my soul is in your hands. Excuse me, it is not suitable for you. You are the excuses of the dead, your sins are more than the innocence of a child. It is not for you to exaggerate with a trembling hand while it is in the handle of the shovel slashed with ancient rust, like wine that overflowed me, and it could not bear patience in the bleeding that slays the cells. The night is about to become a sympathetic shroud for the stuttering in front of love, rejoicing in the wailing of the dying, trembling with the fear of the blade from many sides.

It's time to travel
It's time to travel, and there's no turning back. There was no air left in space for the corpse to inhale.

May you be the bridesmaids of the night's hodgepodge. May you be of great strength, so that mourning may come from the farthest corners. And let the mourners be among you who joyfully push a corpse that goes away.

I put my feet in the hanging bracket with the lust of the suicide. Time ate from me, the flower, the branch, the trunk and the roots. Guarded by heartbreak and fear, I was afraid of every side and everything, and I missed fear of myself, of an intrigue that spoils the step and the way. Stained by sins and mistakes, I do not seek pity, and you do not care about any hope, and there is no moment to flee from the glory of lamentations, the creaking of the coffin, and the power of the night. Let the diggers among you be firm, with shovels that reach deep from the ground.

And let there be tyrants among you who are well-equipped with the precision of a jeweler and the insight of a scholar, so that the funeral appears rigorous and the end majestic, so that you have solid livers, so that the tremor of hesitation does not disturb your hearts as you put the corpse in the washing, the shroud, the coffin and the grave. It is not befitting for me to see you trembling at fate, pitying a submissive wolf saved by killing.

Your grandson threw a pebble to his student, and he sucked it, and if the tongues of the world are in his mouth, he understands it and memorizes it, so what is your excuse, exhausted one, when you heard us shouting, and we tell you to “go back”.

So what did you fear for our small hearts, which tasted a fear much greater than the terror of chasing children for us? The wailing followed us, and the footprints of your sandal were traced on the sand, and we did not want to leave us, for in the mosque is the worst of God’s creation, and whoever does not deserve to see your face will strike your bald head and turn your gray hair.

Marginal geese in the history books, but we shouted, a small nail near us, but it did not stop your dress, this wounding steel, it did not stop you, and its father did not move the shield to stand between your feet and your shoes, and we hoped that the soul would pass through your hands.

Those that make the knights in vain, to pass on our soft feathers, O you who have not eaten geese, O brother of wheat and dates! Your cracked hands, the impact of the farming, passed us by, and we were no longer geese, and our vague voice wanted to wake up the sleepers, that your speaking Qur’an is heading to its death.

We have no excuse, like the excuse of the Simargh birds, we have no wing to fly away from this land in grief, and we were not old enough to stop you, we are too small than the gate of Khaybar that did not stop you.

The day will pass, and the wailing will follow us, but a scratch will remain in our voice forever, until our descendants, after hundreds, walk alongside the lion and the predators with faith, because some of you at that time will be.

A long and successive sound will come out of our throat, O Imam whom God and His Messenger love, and the geese too.

I used to seek refuge in the village by the river whenever its face turned pale and its wrinkles became imminent, and I evaporated the threshing-floors with prayers that stifled their intoxication, so that they would yawn for a long while, while evil faces popped in the bonfire, emerging from the fire, and then turning to ashes.

I was the watchman who saw the lantern go out in the room of the girl who wrote a song with henna on her palms, wrapped them in the white cloth and slept, the watchman who saw the angels support the water pitcher left on the roof to cool slowly as she wanted to slide it over the feverish child's head, I was the watchman who believed in his shadow rising on the tree and his long rifle orphans and lonely.

And the poor rejoice in their empty stomachs, and the dust of hunger falls on their shoulders from the ceiling of stolen dreams. My gun was an olive branch, and my house was where the grass grows. That is why I guard the village, and without a guard, I live as if I were sent all this night, while the dawn is stuck in an abandoned well on the hill.

There are many reasons that make my heart hard or make me a being disfigured by the wars that I have experienced, and because I am a being who does not have the tools to defend himself in front of the horror of machines, I decided to draw up a very precise plan.

Between every two points in life, I will place a man of bullets who does not fear death and does not hesitate to commit ugliness, a man who shaves his chin with bladed weapons, washes himself in bad blood, and sleeps on body parts.

As for battlefields, front trenches, and specifically under bullet boxes. I will build a weapons factory, I will fence it with barbed wire, and as a precaution, I will make the wires encircle the gardens and forests and wrap harshly around the necks of children.

For this, and for other reasons that I may not be aware of, or I may not know how to explain them, I discovered that killing and hunger are two instincts in harmony with the world, two enormous wealth. Prosperity and a comfortable life forcefully push the creature to enjoy death and get high in graves.

Would you carve a name on the water? Or over the hard stone? Or in the book of names of the missing? Is it with fire, ink, chisel, or knife? Oh this willow, your tears flow from the top of your eyelids to your feet, and the thirsty earth drinks them, and your wailing is prolonged in the hands of the wind fortune teller, as if you were the organ of his sorrows.

Your imagination falls from the saddle of horse, you even made a sailor in yourself. You drown in it and a train, until he departs from you and a hunter until he catches you with his first shot, and I have erected great edifices for your remains: pyramids, sarcophagi, mute ziggurats, and graves that the living worms wish to inhabit, having fun with your bones for days, and the creepers of the earth.

The lower reaches lived for more days, and passed, so who eats whom? I am amazed and see you preoccupying yourself with images or statues, making your nose more beautiful, your eyes and the curve of your neck on your shoulders.

So why are you resurrected when you are only a king, a thief, or a madman? You are nothing but "Nero" and if you are a Christian, why were you not crucified? And if you were a messenger, why didn't you leave your land or be killed or conquered? And if you are one of the poets, who among them will remain? And in which languages ​​of the earth are the mortals addressed? And if you are one of the lovers, then your love is sealed with death, and your heart is dedicated to the dragon.

Look, do you see anything other than clouds that travel behind mirages that travel behind clouds behind mirages until the last days of creation? Are your lines only lines in the water, lines in the wind, lines in the sand, and lines in clay tablets? Perfect your line over the water and let the wind prove your feet in its whirl and on the sand; Set up your castles like ants and live in them.

You will see that the eraser will write your great biography in the mud. Why do you venture under a sky that does not see? Or on soil that does not hear? O this sleepy one whose eyes are open but he does not see.

Do you dream or do you jump like a grasshopper in salt water? Is nothing but a crowded void flickering around you and butterflies rising in the depths of history, to be burned by the sun of creation? Oh the beauty of the formation ashes! How beautiful nothingness accumulates at the bottom, as silvery sludge accumulates in an abandoned well!

Stare at the origin of the picture, stare at yourself, do you see something in it? A child playing or a man full of strength striving in the land who loves a woman whom he marries and has children and orchards? Do you really see children and orchards?

You are now alone and staring into the abyss of your sorrows. You draw elaborate lines and circles over the water and call them days. And you sleep, so sleep. Dreams guard you and sleep. Dreams confined you, but be careful, sleeping on the edge of a vision is like sleeping on the edge of a knife.

This torment that beats its wings as if it were both a bird and a night. This is the wind that blows embers. And these stars crashing above us are like suicide drones. And this knife whose edge is the limit of the world itself. All of this, all together. Nothing can be separated from something in it, and it cannot be explained. And every attempt to explain it will end up detonating it.

I prepared myself feeling the need to visit the great love miracle the earth encountered. I am waiting for the ghost ship, the wind blows it in the last hours, before the last time stops in the deepest hours. Before the morning breaks like a blade over water. When a bird is afraid to fly in the darkness of the vision, I will ride the great wave of terror and disappear in a sea of darkness that has no limits.

About to meet love in its miracle; The one who walks on water step by step, knocks on his door, and fragrant wine I smelt. The walls carried beauty cohesive with drunkenness and affection carried by thunder and wind. The time is about to come, the long horizon is empty and there is no shadow of a ship's existence like a taut bow, but there is no sign of leaving.

The Realms Lighthouses fell without the sound of the wind, following the divine Marry. Every vector is permissible and the ways of the planets above the sky map have changed. Now lie a thousand sheep pointing to the yard and on the path of illusion they draw their short anxious line. There is no adventure, it is an abstract wandering in the open gloom.

I remember the dead, and the color of their tears in the flower—and perhaps they were all innocent before that—they did not die of hunger or thirst, even if they were thirsty, they died of delusion. A beautiful seabird has no shape, and blood may not bleed from a dead person. I remember the hidden cities of the seas I remember the dead, the sunken ships, the treasures and the ingots of refined gold, the shining eyes and the beautiful braids of hair in the resolution spread, the slender fingers of broken hands open.

I do not catch the waves In the shady paths at the bottom, the smooth rounded flags are scattered where the weapons of the great pirates rest. As long as you walk through the night and dig in the resolution. The layers of that death, the burials followed in silence, the dead I questioned.

In secret I watched enough, and I was the only living witness in a thousand massacres without memory, today was a feast and the loudspeakers said: Every human is here is a criminal until evidence of his innocence is established, and I heard the trumpets of the invaders blaring in the long night, and I saw how souls distorted generation after generation, and I was terrified by the brightness of my mirror: Perhaps I am like a monstrosity, a monstrosity torn by shadows. And I was amazed by her a tear in the heart that refuses to shed, and tears no matter how tender, is it enough for the elegy of beauty?

Time is realizing, a tremor of profit is reflected by the rocks, time is realizing, a wave is lamenting from the farthest reaches of time, time is realizing, I am not alone. The brave heart knows that visions are fulfilled, and the horizon is about to turn, I am waiting for the great moment. In the wall I am waiting and the black clock is pulsing—the pulse of a distant rhythm—its dance, swaying anxiously, leaning to the right to the left, from left to the right.

I see what was and then and what will be, and smell the scent of complete and maximum stillness. To never again represent the sufferings of the experience of the ages, not to break with tension, or continue to come, I saw Jesus in his misery, accompanied armies in the greatest conquests, intended to carry of coffins, sang for two thousand seasons, wandered in the land of beauty and reached the outskirts of shops and saw how the majestic cities are destroyed in.

Thus I said to the messenger that raise from fear:

Whoever writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read but to be learned by heart.

In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that one must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks-and those who are addressed, tall and lofty.

The air thin and pure, danger near, and the spirit full of gay sarcasm: these go well together. I want to have goblins around me, for I am courageous. Courage that puts ghosts to flight creates goblins for itself: courage wants to laugh.

I no longer feel as you do: this cloud which I see beneath me, this blackness and gravity at which I laugh—this is your thundercloud.

You look up when you feel the need for elevation. And I look down because I am elevated.

Who among you can laugh and be elevated at the same time? Who­ ever climbs the highest mountains laughs at all tragic plays and tragic seriousness.

Brave, unconcerned, mocking, violent-thus wisdom wants us: she is a woman and always loves only a warrior.

You say to me, "Life is hard to bear." But why would you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening? Life is hard to bear; but do not act so tenderly! We are all of us fair beasts of burden, male and female asses. What do we have in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of dew lies on it?

True, we love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

And to me too, as I am well disposed toward life, butterflies and soap bubbles and whatever among men is of their kind seem to know most about happiness. Seeing these light, foolish, delicate, mobile little souls flutter-that seduces Zarathustra to tears and songs.

I would believe only in a god who could dance. And when I saw my devil I found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn: it was the spirit of gravity­ through him all things fall.

Not by wrath does one kill but by laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!

I have learned to walk: ever since, I let myself run. I have learned to fly: ever since, I do not want to be pushed before moving along.

Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself beneath myself, now a god dances through me.
— Thus spoke Zarathustra

If I cast an atom of what is in my heart on the mountains of the earth, it would melt, and if on the Day of Resurrection I were in the fire, I would burn the fire, and if I entered Paradise, its structure would collapse.
— Al-Hallaj

What will be said in the spirit more eloquently than what a drunk said: “The spirit is hermaphrodite”? But it occurred to me, during a prayer session, that the living error that mingles my existence has to do with oblivion, forgetting that arduous, dissipating meaning in Pythagoras's jest: "The world is a number and a tune."

And I remembered that in the power of the term an eternal postponement of the meaning, as much as in the word dawn of night and day, so I began to seek the soul with its opposite, and the body with its subtleties hidden in it, and I said: Let him who did not see the glass of the bottle sleep, but I saw the soul, the lamp that whoever saw it did not sleep.

And I said: O Lord, let me have lords commensurate with my sins, and friends symbolized by metaphors, by the arduous metaphors with which we used to communicate in a wine session, we are the false prophets who spoke of the soul, so we spoiled the sanctification of the earth, we crushed the only vine whose hearts tired of watering it. But the soul is whose soul?

The emaciated young man who slapped his beloved's face with a black flower, alone realizes that his funeral will not end as long as he and her are two souls, struck by an oar in two rivers that do not meet. Thus, the black flower that fell in the mud and was trampled by feet became a sign of the brokenness of the soul.

Whose soul I repeat my question with in mind the names of all those who ended up in this translucent wreck, whose feet were broken as they followed the playful path of this sacred amoebia, otherwise how could someone, in a drinking session, suddenly remember that he and his soul are two contradictory things, and that they are together superfluous for the need of the world?

Perhaps he was confused that night, laughed out of terror, or hid his fear by smoking, except that when he returned home, and before going to sleep, he wrote in his diary: “The spirit is hermaphrodite,” and when he woke up, he did not know exactly what he wanted.