Fragments at Dawn...
It's dawn here...
The Muezzin just finished his call for the sunrise prayer. I am very tired but unable to sleep.
I love the call to prayer. It pierces the leftovers of the night's obscurity, signaling a new dawn, a new day, another cycle to complete...
I remember reading in a Sufi treatise, that the Muslim prayer is highly symbolic of this cycle...The cycle of the sun, the cycle of evolution, the cycle of the elements, the cycle of life and death...And "Man" is the focal point in that cycle on Earth...
For instance,in the Muslim prayer, the standing up position i.e verticality, symbolizes Aleph,(A), the Human State. The half bent position symbolizes the Dal, (D) and represents the Animal State. And finally the prostration, or Sujud in Arabic, which takes on the form of a Meem (M) represents the Vegetal/Mineral state.
Aleph, Dal, Meem. or A-D-M stands for ADAM. The primordial Man (as opposed to male the gender.)
And I assume, every day we go through these different states...or we possess in us these different elements that make up our totality as human beings.
But it is in the vertical state, of that of being "hu-man" that we realize that Totality -- our inner and outer Unity.
And my thoughts drift to Iraq, the fragmented Iraq, the fragmented beings, the fragmented lives...The shredded to pieces existence...
A fait accompli in the eyes of most. Just like that.
Shreds, pieces, rags, bits...swept away, just like that.
I wrote to a friend the other day and told her that I was so much in rage, I am unable to blog. I saw us as a compressed, rusting, old, tin cans, amassed on some shelf, gathering dust...about to be recycled.
Very few understand what we are really going through. On the inside, on the outside...Very few.
Walk the streets in Amman, Damascus and even Cairo, and you will see us...erring aimlessly, sometimes hiding, sometimes begging, changing our accents...pretending we don't exist, pretending we're not there...we're not here...
Making ourselves small, metamorphosing into shadows, standing up with our backs against a wall...sometimes sitting against a wall and often sleeping next to a wall...
What will happen to us? Where will we go? Who wants us? What is our future? Do we have one? For how long can we endure, for how long can we remain so resilient ?
These are questions I keep asking myself. These are questions every Iraqi I meet keeps asking...
Hand to mouth, sometimes nothing in the mouth, crawling like fugitives, or shelved into forgetfulness...
Those on the inside ask themselves similar questions.
But very few really care or want to know.
We are just pawns. Place, misplace, displace, kick...and kill.
Am thinking of the Muslim prayer again...Aleph, Dal, Meem. A-D-M. ADAM.
And I realize that we have even been robbed of that.
Painting: Iraqi artist, Rafa Al-Nasiri.
The Muezzin just finished his call for the sunrise prayer. I am very tired but unable to sleep.
I love the call to prayer. It pierces the leftovers of the night's obscurity, signaling a new dawn, a new day, another cycle to complete...
I remember reading in a Sufi treatise, that the Muslim prayer is highly symbolic of this cycle...The cycle of the sun, the cycle of evolution, the cycle of the elements, the cycle of life and death...And "Man" is the focal point in that cycle on Earth...
For instance,in the Muslim prayer, the standing up position i.e verticality, symbolizes Aleph,(A), the Human State. The half bent position symbolizes the Dal, (D) and represents the Animal State. And finally the prostration, or Sujud in Arabic, which takes on the form of a Meem (M) represents the Vegetal/Mineral state.
Aleph, Dal, Meem. or A-D-M stands for ADAM. The primordial Man (as opposed to male the gender.)
And I assume, every day we go through these different states...or we possess in us these different elements that make up our totality as human beings.
But it is in the vertical state, of that of being "hu-man" that we realize that Totality -- our inner and outer Unity.
And my thoughts drift to Iraq, the fragmented Iraq, the fragmented beings, the fragmented lives...The shredded to pieces existence...
A fait accompli in the eyes of most. Just like that.
Shreds, pieces, rags, bits...swept away, just like that.
I wrote to a friend the other day and told her that I was so much in rage, I am unable to blog. I saw us as a compressed, rusting, old, tin cans, amassed on some shelf, gathering dust...about to be recycled.
Very few understand what we are really going through. On the inside, on the outside...Very few.
Walk the streets in Amman, Damascus and even Cairo, and you will see us...erring aimlessly, sometimes hiding, sometimes begging, changing our accents...pretending we don't exist, pretending we're not there...we're not here...
Making ourselves small, metamorphosing into shadows, standing up with our backs against a wall...sometimes sitting against a wall and often sleeping next to a wall...
What will happen to us? Where will we go? Who wants us? What is our future? Do we have one? For how long can we endure, for how long can we remain so resilient ?
These are questions I keep asking myself. These are questions every Iraqi I meet keeps asking...
Hand to mouth, sometimes nothing in the mouth, crawling like fugitives, or shelved into forgetfulness...
Those on the inside ask themselves similar questions.
But very few really care or want to know.
We are just pawns. Place, misplace, displace, kick...and kill.
Am thinking of the Muslim prayer again...Aleph, Dal, Meem. A-D-M. ADAM.
And I realize that we have even been robbed of that.
Painting: Iraqi artist, Rafa Al-Nasiri.
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