The Messiah's exit

By Nur Elmessiri
Hieronymous Bosch would not have felt uncomfortable at Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish's readings last week. He would not have wondered: What does the crucifixion or the blood of martyrs have to do with a conference hall at a Cairo 2001 book fair? What can bureaucracy know about the suffering of word become flesh? Bosch had eyes eccentric enough to see Golgotha all around him. Instead of transporting us to Jerusalem 33AD, Bosch brings the terrible martyrdom right to our doorstep, offering us a vision of the banality of human evil.
The greatest living embodiment of the Arabic language -- or one of the greatest -- is to read his poetry this evening and Press Center staff seem unaware. No one is to blame for not knowing. After all, the Cairo International Book Fair is a gargantuan event, with endless seminar sessions spanning topics as diverse as "At-home Blood Sugar Level Analysis and Prevention of Complications," "Preparing Egyptian Heroes for International Status," and "Scientific and Technological Information: The Challenge of the 21st Century," to name but a few.
Darwish had read on Monday; he is not reading this Wednesday evening at the Lotus Hall as scheduled; maybe he'll read again sometime in the next few days. We make our way through the fairground's plastic kushari containers, past the Misr Café booth's blaring pop songs, through hordes carrying Haridi crisps promotional cardboard lunchboxes, past "the flying, smiling phallus" (or so a friend baptised this CIBF2001 fixture, an erect billowing orange cloth column of a creature) and into Al-Maqha Al-Thaqafi (the Cultural Café). We drink our coffee and put out our cigarettes on the cigarette stub- and garbage-strewn moquette-covered floor.
It was from this Cultural Café that we had sallied forth two nights earlier to the 6 October Hall to hear Darwish read. Like a bad long-distance telephone connection, the excitement in the air was staggered, interrupted by the beeping of security check portals and the ringing of mobiles, and diffused by the negligent lack of knowledge of what was about to take place on the part of the accidental tourists who had lingered on from the previous session. Language is about to matter; the length and breadth of human experience is about to be wrought into the splendid shape of Arabic letters curled around breath and vocal chords; death is about to be put into its place by the imperative form -- and the men in business suits come and go, networking, meeting behind closed doors, incapable of letting go for a moment of their VIP status or of turning cameramen away.
Suits galore, especially in the front rows, and we are not earnest undergraduates who believe in the transformative power of language anymore. We are not even beau monde sponsors of literary salons. A different Cairo encounter with Darwish, this is not the Cairo Opera House Small Hall, October 1997 (when he was herea last); it is not the American University in Cairo's Ewart Hall, April 1995 (when he was here the epiphanic time before that). It is certainly not 1977 when "In the month of March, in the year of the Uprising, the land told us" -- in Darwish's "Poem for the Land" -- "Its secrets of blood. In the month of March five girls/ Passed in front of the violets and the gun. They stood at the door/ Of the primary school, and blazed with the roses and thyme./ They opened the anthem of dust [...]/ This is my song/ This is the Messiah's exit from the wound and the wind/ Green like the plant covering his nails and my fetters/ And this is my song/ And this is the ascent of the young Arab man to the dream and to Al-Quds..."
This is not shahr Azar, the month of March. It is Monday 29 January, more than three months into the post-Madrid-and-Oslo Intifadat-Al-Aqsa, several years into the IT revolution. We wait for Darwish who has just arrived at Cairo Airport, after an absence of three and a half years during which he died for an eternity of several minutes, came back from the dead and wrote his Mural.
The greatest living poet of the Arabic language -- or one of the greatest -- has just arrived from Ramallah, has taken time to grace the Egyptian Ministry of Culture-organised CIBF with impossibly, heart-breakingly beautiful words, and someone complains about how long we have been kept waiting. An official comes through the door behind where the podium is and which leads into the annex where the VIP press conference is taking place. He offers an apology for the delay. Every now and then members of the audience clap to precipitate Darwish's arrival to the podium.
He comes through the door and there is warm applause. To a packed auditorium Darwish reads "I am Joseph, O My Father" (1986), "The Violins" (1992) "I See My Ghost Approaching from Afar" (1995), "Houriyya's Teachings" (1995), extracts from Mural (1999), "Muhammad" (October 2000) and, most recent of his poems, "The Offering" (2001). In between poems he jokes with the friendly audience, asking where Samir Sarhan could have gone to. Sarhan returns to the podium, expressing the wish that one day he and Darwish will pray side by side in Al-Aqsa.
Though one was immensely grateful to the powers-that-be for allowing a real poet to be in our midst, one left the 33rd Cairo International Book Fair's 6 October Hall thinking thoughts similar to those expressed in Darwish's "Blessed be that which has not Arrived" (1973): "-From what year did this sadness come?/ -From a Palestinian year that never ends/ All the months looking alike, all the dead alike/ They did not carry maps or drawings or songs for the homeland/ They carried their graves/ And went on with their mission/ And we walked in their funerals/ The Arab world narrower than the coffins of return."
Return we did on Thursday 1 February to where Darwish was to read, thanks to Abdel-Mo'ti Hegazi's generously giving up half of his poetry reading time to host Darwish. The hall, with its overwhelmingly dominant official CIBF poster, was the same -- as was the atmosphere. This time Darwish read: "When He Moves Away" (1995), "On Canaanite Rocks in the Dead Sea" (1992) and -- as on Monday night -- he read "Al-Qurban" ("The Offering").
The voice this time was softer, as if the words which in the Monday night reading of "Al-Qurban" belonged to the high priests had been taken over by Everyman. The offering, beloved of God, is voiceless, must indeed be without words if the sacrificial ceremony (Jerusalem 33AD, today) is to go through to its official end. No one -- neither high priest official nor bystander Everyman -- wants to have anything to do with this fida'i moment, other, that is, than to give orders: "Come, Be, Ascend, Remain..." In spite of the voices speaking in the imperative form, voices which taunt and mock with a hypocritical love absolving itself of all responsibility, the lamb of sacrifice, al-fida'-fida'ina, is utterly alone. He is sent to his death by officials and spectators who will wash their hands clean of the blood with which they have not the slightest intention of communing. The spectators clap approvingly of the double bind. They understand the imperious demand "Do not break. Do not be victorious. Be in-between, suspended." There is a complicity between the "we" of the poem and the we who are the clapping audience in the 6 October Hall at CIBF. Bull's eye: Darwish's pointed words have once again unerringly hit the nail on the head.
Different the martyrdom of the 1970s, different its imperatives, different the relation between al-fida'i and those addressing and surviving him. Lines from "Ahmed El-Zaatar" (1977): "Beautiful you are in exile/ Murdered in Rome [...]/ Do not steal him from eternity/ Or disperse him on the cross/ For he is the map and the body/ And the blazing forth of the nightingale [...]/ Ascending towards the healing of the dream [...]/ Ascend from the drought of bread and confiscated water [...]/ Ascend from the boxes of vegetables/ And the strength of things ascend/ Belong to my first sky, to the poor in all alleyways/ Singing:/ We are steadfast/ Steadfast/ Steadfast."
Lines from "An Anthem to the Green One" (1977): "Renew O Green One my death and explosion/ In my vocal chords are ten thousand dead asking for water/ Renew O Green One my voice and my dispersion/ In my vocal chords is an open palm shaking the palm tree/ For the sake of a boy who may come a prophet/ That is, a fida'i/ And renew O Green One my voice. In my vocal chords is the map/ Of the dream and the names of the living Christ[...]/ Continue O Green One/ The colour of fire and the land and the lifetime of the martyrs."
The cold air of the month of Touba, the dark, emptying fair grounds -- what next? The martyrs have gone to where martyrs go, leaving us behind. Mahmoud Darwish's poetry documents our survival. This time he did not transport us to glorious heights, but like Bosch, showed us where we were.
The Offering
By Mahmoud Darwish
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Darwish guest of honour at fair 1 - 7 February 2001
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