"Today My Sight is Sharp" by Yousri Alghoul (tr. Liddell)

Today My Sight Is Sharp By Yousri Alghoul Translated by Graham Liddell You were totally heedless of this. Now We have lifted this veil of yours, so Today your sight is sharp! —Qur’an 50:22 The cold eats away at me, and the darkness surrounds me… Alone in this place for ten days, I’m frozen, unable to scream or implore them to make a hole so I can breathe. Men enter and exit without showing me the slightest compassion. One of them said in disgust, “We must get rid of this old man as soon as possible.” That was all. Are they going to fly me away on more planes, the way the people before them did, or will they hurl me into some forest at the border? Will I become ash and rise again like a phoenix, or will I rot, my body be eaten by worms? My thoughts are scattered, and I can’t think straight—just like I was two months ago. *** My kids would not stop insisting that I travel, because heart operations at German hospitals are very precise, they said, and the doctors have a great deal of experience. Regrettably, I eventually agreed, and I floated above God’s green earth. I flew over the foothills of mountains, over rivers, far from the midday heat of the desert where I had spent two-thirds of my life. I daydreamed about women whose scattered hair composed poetry in the air. I imagined casual laughter and smiles that come unannounced, in place of the frowns of my bosses at work. I remember that, before settling in the Kingdom, I visited Moscow for a scientific and engineering study in service of the oil ministry, and I tried to take some pictures. The funny thing was that one day, a woman who was just passing by had grabbed me from behind, hugging me, and babbled something I didn’t understand. Then my friend took a picture, and she kissed me and left. I came back from my journey with the scent of that young woman’s perfume surrounding me. Even when I got married, the smell wouldn’t go away, and soon my heart was stricken with fatigue. It almost split in two when one of my sons died in a car accident, leaving me here alone with my remaining days and dreams. My eldest son came to me and said that he and his siblings had gotten me a Schengen visa from the German Embassy, then booked a plane ticket to Berlin, with a layover at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. I was delighted. I had never visited Paris before. I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower and the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. I wanted to get a glimpse of some charming young women with a passionate lust for life. Maybe I would find a woman at the airport who would hug me and kiss me and leave, filling me with new life. Oh, if only I had never left! If only. For no sooner did I arrive in Paris than I felt a constriction in my chest and fainted. The captain of the plane called the medical team in the airport, and they raced me away to a white room with a strange smell. There, I heard one of them say, “He’s dead.” I laughed. I didn’t die! But all it took was for me to hear my son saying, hysterically: “So now what?” The sound was clear, perhaps clearer than it had been before… Yes, now I could hear ants crawling, water trickling, and footsteps inside a room filled with lights. I wasn’t heedless of anything anymore—today my sight is sharp! “He must continue on to the destination from which he received the visa.” “But he’s dead.” “We know that, but he can’t be kept here, because the country authorized to determine his fate is Germany, which granted him permission to visit, not France. They took me to the Federal Republic of Germany. They put me in a dark room, where I couldn’t hear anything but a blonde girl moaning as she writhed in the arms of her coworker, who brought her there to be alone whenever the opportunity to make love presented itself. Iّ t was as if they wanted to take revenge on me and my Arabness. I am the only one left, compressed in this refrigerator. All of those who had accompanied me in here have since returned to their homes and their graveyards. And this oaf won’t accept anything less than getting his jollies two or three times a day to remind me of my virility, which disappeared into the abyss along with my time. A few days ago, somebody came in irate, cursing and insulting all Arabs and Muslims, informing his elderly colleague: “They won’t approve his return to the Kingdom!” “Why not? Didn’t he live there? “Yes, but he’s not a citizen, and the only document he has is for another Arab country.” “I don’t understand. What do you mean by a document for another country?” “They say he’s Palestinian from a small city with no airports or seaports that’s blockaded by two countries; one of them is Arab and the other is the state of Israel.” “Why don’t they bury him in the country he got the document from, or the one where he lived his life? It’s so simple — just dig a little hole in the desert and be done with it.” “I don’t know. They’re such idiots.” The days passed, and the blonde’s moans were endless. This beast, indulging in his pleasure, was killing me. I tried to scream but no sound came out… “Please stop! Respect my death, at least. I’m still in my refrigerator, shivering in fear of an unknown fate.” The bastard groaned as boastfully as he could, right in front of me. Finally, a high-ranking hospital official came in, and the doctors and nurses gathered around him. I heard the soft voices of the nurses while they were talking about the latest developments on the geostrategic status of my body, which would have an impact on the demography of the Arab world. “Sir, we have been in contact with the Palestinian embassy. They’re working with the authorities there to bury him anywhere they can. It seems the matter is complicated, because the country that granted him his document is refusing even to allow his entry into Gaza and also refusing to bury him on its own land, because the document expired decades ago.” “How, in your opinion, can this be solved?” “We have no choice but to hand him over to the embassy here and get the matter of his burial off our plate. The refrigerator is expensive, and the insurance company wants to be done with this mess, whatever it takes.” “I’ll make a recommendation to the relevant authorities so that we can get rid of the corpse.” “Sir, we’ve already solved the problems of so many living Arabs. I don’t think this dead man should be a burden for the state. “Certainly not. Don’t worry about it.” They left the room, but there remained a doctor with blond hair and Caucasian features who opened the refrigerator door, smiling as he removed the white cloth from my face. Then he began reciting the Qur’an. He spoke to me as if I were alive, and told me some of his little secrets, including the details of the illegal migration journey that had brought him to this city. He spoke to me as if I were a member of his own family, which came to Frankfurt after the Srebrenica massacre. He told me the story of the Bosniak Muslims and about Bosnia and Herzegovina. Hearing his tale, it was as if I were reading a novel after passing through Barzakh into the hereafter. He told me about his life, which had become joyless after the loss of his companion, a woman who looked like the Mona Lisa. It was as if he needed to pour out all of his pains, but he couldn’t find anyone to listen but me. I dozed off during his long speech. For the first time, I was able to sleep, and I let out a deep sigh of relief. Surrounding me was the scent of a young woman who, once upon a time, kissed me, then stole my heart and left.