A young Palestinian in New York finds his poetic aspirations challenged when he encounters one of his countrymen, to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance.
The narrator of this story — who is, it must be assumed, to some extent, I — will endeavor at no time to be precise or reliable in the course of telling it. This is not because the events, as they actually happened, are not interesting or compelling — quite the contrary. It is because they are so intriguing as to seem implausible; and because the narrator — myself, I mean — is altogether intent upon convincing himself first of all, and then the readers, of what he is narrating, what he is reporting. So he will permit himself to embellish on the one hand, while on the other, omitting some details that would make this true yet impossible story a plausible fantasy. The one thing that could be annoying here is that the narrator — which is to say, I — will not identify which parts of the story are factual and which are not, but instead will, for various reasons, let everything blend together. One rationale is that this approach may be more stimulating to readers, who will apply their own active minds to the effort to distinguish, if possible, fact from fiction; also, and indeed perhaps more to the point, the narrator himself — that is, I myself — can no longer differentiate between what actually happened and what is invented. Here the narrator is not — in other words, I am not — concerned with offering any means of helping the reader to understand or analyze this story; it may be that there is nothing in it that requires any explanation at all. All the narrator — meaning myself — asks of those who read this preamble, which is perhaps dull and altogether unnecessary, is that they take whatever is interesting in the story (if anything is) as fact, and whatever is not interesting as invention. Anything belonging to neither category — well, if they can guess what that is, then they don’t necessarily have to read it at all.
Last month, I had the strangest telephone conversation I’ve ever had in my life. The caller was an old man, an Arab, who spoke in a voice full of mystery and sadness. He spoke with a calm that momentarily threw me off. He said he had something for me. When I asked him who he was, he replied in the manner of someone who has suddenly remembered that he would rather not remember. “I’m a father,” he replied. His voice had a lugubrious hoarseness, which grew still more distinct when he said that he would like to see me, in ten minutes if possible, at the corner of the street where I live. I am known for my caution and my wariness of strangers in a city where everyone is a stranger; nevertheless, I found myself hurrying from my apartment, on my way to meet with someone I had never laid eyes on before. Exactly ten minutes later, I saw a black-clad man coming toward me. After greeting me briefly, he handed me a folder enclosing some papers and said, “These are for you. My son, Mahmoud, entrusted me with giving you his writings. He said he liked the way you spoke about poetry. Mahmoud died yesterday.” Upon this abrupt death notice, it took me a few seconds to realize that the man had swiftly vanished. I felt the need for more clarification from him, but I was too shocked even to try to catch up with him. Mahmoud died? How? When? And how did his father know my address? Mahmoud died?
I hurried back to my apartment, pervaded by a vague image of Mahmoud’s features, smiling, distant. I went into my room and sat down at my desk, where I riffled through the papers Mahmoud’s father had given me. They were all handwritten, each page comprising something resembling a poem made up of just seven lines: no more, no less. It was as if Mahmoud had scrupulously measured out his writing, or as if he was more concerned with the number of lines on each page than with their substance. Were these actually poems? I was in no fit state for reading poetry; I was scanning the lines for something, anything, that might explain what had befallen Mahmoud: a message, a sentence, or a word that would shed light on how he had died, and why he had chosen to give his writings to me. But I could find nothing there. Only these lines Mahmoud had written, staring up at me with a provocation insufficient to draw me into their contents, a sheaf of pages each bearing the same title: “An Unwritten Poem.” I counted the pages/poems: thirty-five — which also happens to be my age. Each with the same form, same title, same script — and all composed in red ink. I felt I was face-to-face with a genuine riddle, especially since Mahmoud had never once told me that he wrote poetry.
I spent two days searching, but of course it was pointless — how to find a man with no name?
Mahmoud and I were not particularly close. I saw him only at the library in central Manhattan, where I went to read. I was in the habit of spending a certain precise interval there each Saturday: from ten o’clock in the morning until two in the afternoon. There is a section of the library designated for Arabic literature in English translation, which gave me the chance to talk to some of the library patrons who were interested in Arab culture. It pleased me to find that I was the only Arab to frequent the library, since this enabled me to show off a bit, to play the expert in a literary tradition about which the others knew relatively little. I would set up my laptop on a table near the relevant section, and tune my ear to listen in on people who congregated there to look for Arabic novels. When I heard them murmur the names of Arab writers, I would step in and offer advice or set someone straight — such as, on one occasion, the girl who thought Season of Migration to the North had been written after September 11, and was set in New York. After several visits to the library, I became a familiar face, known to the employees there. They appreciated that, with respect to Arabic literature, I was on a mission, which had begun to bear fruit when visitors to the library requested novels recommended to them by “the young Palestinian man sitting over there,” as they referred to me.
My first encounter with Mahmoud took place during one of these visits to the library, and the fact is that it was an inauspicious introduction: I was surrounded by a group of readers, to whom I was holding forth on Mahmoud Darwish, reciting some of his poems in both Arabic and English. In my recitation of the poem “Eleven Stars,” I concluded one of the stanzas with, “I am the Arab’s last gasp.”
I was abruptly interrupted. “Last sigh,” said a good-looking young man I noticed was standing some distance from the group gathered around me. “You recited the stanza incorrectly,” he said. “Darwish’s word was ‘sigh,’ not ‘gasp.’ You should memorize Darwish’s poetry properly before reciting it to others.”
This was offensive from several standpoints: my being blatantly called out in front of people who thought of me a walking library of poetry; my realization that there was another Arab in the place after all, who was even more performatively zealous than I was; and, worst of all, that the correction issued to me pertained to one of the poems by Darwish that are dearest to my heart. Yet what seemed an insult in the first moments was transformed to hearty laughter on the part of the young man himself, followed by my own, and then that of all those clustered around me. The young man introduced himself as Mahmoud, and told me that Darwish was his favorite poet, too. I was surprised to learn that he came often to the library, for I was quite certain that I had never seen him before. I was even more astonished when he told me that he had heard me several times, expounding on Arabic literature to library patrons, “ardently,” as he put it.
I think a year passed after that, but for some reason I never saw Mahmoud anywhere except the library. He didn’t become one of the circle of friends with whom I used to go out, even though, in a foreign country, a shared native language normally tends to bring its speakers together. I continued to see him only at the library, every Saturday, and we would pass the time talking — in Arabic, of course — about literature, especially poetry. So great was his passion for poetry, I discovered, that he had memorized an astonishing number of poems and lines from poems. He also told me he was merely an aficionado of literature — he had never thought about composing it.
“What about you?” he once asked me. “Do you write poetry?”
“I used to dream of writing poetry, but I don’t think I ever will. I don’t believe I have it in me to compete with Mahmoud Darwish, and a poet who can’t do that should give up writing.”
“I think, though,” said Mahmoud, looking at me, his expression opaque, “that you have a beautifully poetic view of life, so why don’t you turn that into written text, rather than constantly tossing off the odd poetic phrase here and there?”
I decided not to touch the folder without first trying to find Mahmoud’s father. I spent two days searching, but of course it was pointless — how to find a man with no name? Mahmoud had never once told me his full name, or where he or his family lived. In fact, I knew nothing about his private life. It was like a story that began and ended within those library walls — as if, beyond them, he did not exist. Something I found all the more surprising was that Mahmoud’s father, if my memory was accurate, didn’t resemble him at all, either in appearance or in the sound of his voice. It occurred to me to contact the cell phone company to ask about the origin of the call his father had made to me, but I hit a dead end there, too. They told me that the call had come from a private, unregistered number. To compound my perplexity, Mahmoud and I had never exchanged phone numbers — so how had his father found my number?
I wandered around my neighborhood, 66th Street in downtown Manhattan, near the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. I figured that, if Mahmoud’s father needed only ten minutes to get to where I was, then perhaps he lived somewhere nearby. Perhaps, although clearly it was hope alone that was driving my thoughts, and making me so naïve, for the last thing one should expect in New York City is to run into anyone a second time by chance. I started asking around about Mahmoud at the library itself, only to discover, to my surprise, that no one knew him. I described him to the young woman in charge of the literature section.
I reckoned that loneliness was a condition familiar to anyone who was passionate about literature.
“Oh, yes, now I remember him,” she said, as if something had just dawned on her. “He was always quiet. Nice-looking guy. I didn’t know his name was Mahmoud.” Or, “Maamoud,” as she pronounced it, exacerbating my irritation. (I very nearly demanded that she make an effort to pronounce his name correctly. “MaHmoud” — is that so much to ask?) “Is something wrong? What’s happened to him?”
I looked at her for a moment, considering how to respond, but decided not to tell her what had happened to Mahmoud. I didn’t tell anyone what had happened to him. No one but me knew Mahmoud, no one. No one in that library, male or female, had found any pretext for talking to the quiet, handsome young man who, for an entire year, perhaps more, had gone there regularly. I was overtaken by an impulsive desire to kick aside everything that was in front of me and get out of there.
Could it have been suicide? Several times Mahmoud told me that he felt bored and lonely, and that, during this period, he had no girlfriend. I found this odd, considering how remarkably handsome he was, but I reckoned that loneliness was a condition familiar to anyone who was passionate about literature. At the time, I myself was single. But why would he kill himself? Might love have anything to do with it? I remember Mahmoud asked me one time whether I had ever experienced unrequited love. Naturally I said no. I pointed out to him that it would be crazy to endure love without reciprocity in New York, which supplied opportunities for love the way the sky supplied rain. But he smiled at me, concealing something that was on his mind, and then he sighed. I teased him, saying that no woman could resist him. When he didn’t reply, I sensed that my joke had fallen flat. A little annoyed, I told him his silence was like a desert without sand; at this, however, all at once he smiled, his face lighting up strangely, and then he told me goodbye and left the library in a hurry.
•
I waited three more days, hoping that Mahmoud’s father might call me again. In the meantime, I started spending five hours a day at the library. Maybe something would happen. I had also instructed the girl who worked there to keep a sharp eye out and to let me know if she heard any news of Mahmoud. Obviously, I was like someone chasing a mirage, my heart set on some idea that nothing had happened to Mahmoud, that his father and the folder full of papers were just a bad dream. Maybe someone had played a prank or a joke on me, a grim but meaningless joke. The reality, though, was that Mahmoud and I had no friends in common. We had nothing in common but words and poetry. I recall that, once, Mahmoud and I had spent a full hour discussing Darwish. Both of us were thoroughly animated, our voices rising to such a pitch as to draw the attention of everyone in the library. I said to Mahmoud that Darwish compelled others to recognize the difference between conscious effort and natural talent.
“And don’t forget, he was handsome, too!” I added, laughing.
“You’re better-looking than he was,” Mahmoud observed earnestly.
“Maybe. I’m no Darwish, though.”
To be honest, I must confess here that I lied to Mahmoud when I told him I didn’t write poetry. The truth was that I had made multiple attempts, but in general, I didn’t feel confident enough to show my poetry to anyone. One time, I recited a poem to a girl I was in love with, and she commented favorably. But in my heart of hearts, I was convinced I was merely imitating Darwish. I used to sit, pen in hand, and as I searched for inspiration, waiting for the muse to appear, I would write down a stanza by Darwish, as a foundation stone upon which to construct a poem I would then complete on my own. Darwish was always present — he was the co-author of every attempt I ever made to write poetry. One day, I started one of my poems with Darwish’s famous line, “Who am I, after the night of the stranger?” Then, rather than build a new text on this line, I wrote out the whole poem. Filled with boundless anger and despair, I tore the paper to shreds and threw it away. I have no recollection whatsoever of writing an entire poem by drawing on my own ideas instead of resorting to Darwish. My talent for poetry — if I had any — was confined to my facility for spontaneous poetic utterances, but the poem as a well-defined form persistently eluded and defied me. No sooner would I sit down and start thinking about lines and meter and rhyme — or even prose poetry — than my mind would seize up, as if silenced by the hundreds of poems I knew by heart.
During one of my encounters with Mahmoud, I could not hide my frustration. I had spent two hours the previous night trying, altogether in vain, to write a poem. On this occasion, I was driven by two desires: to write a poem all on my own, and to show it to Mahmoud — but I did not tell him this. Mahmoud noticed that the atmosphere was a little clouded. He produced an iPod from his pocket and asked me to listen to a piece of music he liked. When I told him I wasn’t in the mood, he didn’t insist. Setting the iPod down on the table, he startled me by asking whether I loved poetry more than music.
“Of course,” I replied without hesitation. “Nothing can compare to a beautiful poem. Nothing surpasses language, nothing — not even Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.”
“I may have to disagree with you a little,” said Mahmoud.
“Don’t. Please don’t. You should know that the loveliness of a poem originates in two things: the beauty of what the poet says, and the beauty of what he leaves deliberately unsaid. The impact is in the words that are there and those that are not.” I remember that I was highly emotional when I made this assertion — I may even have been trembling slightly.
“Then write poetry, man!” said Mahmoud, his eyes shining with grief and excitement arising from some unknowable cause. He seized my arms and shook me vigorously. “You’ve got to write. What you’ve just said is no less beautiful than a poem of Darwish’s. You must write!”
The truth is that my strange friendship with Mahmoud somewhat alleviated my feelings of impotence with respect to the challenge of writing poetry. I was better off than he was, for I was at least — as he acknowledged — adroit at commenting on one idea or another by improvising poetic phrases. He, on the other hand, despite his intense love of literature, could not — at least in my presence — create out of his poetic memory an original text. He expressed himself in phrases that were at most direct, brief, even terse, and when we met, he spent much of the time listening to me, present in a way that was nearly an absence, so much so that I sometimes felt as if I was talking to myself.
•
A week went by, and the presumed death of Mahmoud became more and more of a reality. There was nothing, anymore, linking me to him, words alone having been the basis for our friendship. Nothing, that is, except the folder. I had left it on my desk ever since that blasted night. Boarding the subway, I thought about stopping at the library to ask about some novels and other books, and about Mahmoud, of course. Heading toward the section housing Arabic literature, I contemplated with sorrow the table where I had been accustomed to sit with Mahmoud. Then I went home.
With the loss of Mahmoud, I felt that I had lost something of my language and of my memory, which he and I together had summoned up with poetry. When I got home, I decided to invoke Mahmoud’s presence, and to this end I resolved that I would, that night, read what he had left in the folder. Were they really poems? Mahmoud was not a poet, as far as I knew. I opened to the first page. I grasped it firmly and read the title again: “An Unwritten Poem.” A moment before I started reading the first line, my eyes fell upon the signature beneath the poem. I couldn’t believe what I saw. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Yes, that was my name written there, in full:
M— D—
This was followed by a certain date. It was becoming difficult for me to concentrate. I went through all the pages, all the poems, to find the same dedication: my name, and a particular date. The very day on which I was born: March 9th, just the month and the day, not the year. I flung the papers away, and sat covering my eyes with my hands, silent.
Minutes passed before I picked up the folder again and looked at it. This was certainly a cruel jest. What was Mahmoud up to, exactly? Thirty-five pages, thirty-five poems of the same length, title, and dedication — my name and my birthdate. Was Mahmoud writing me? I started reading the first poem. In the middle of it, I spotted that expression I had once used with Mahmoud:
“silence like a desert without sand.”
In the second poem, I found another expression I had used with him:
“My body is formed according to the rites of desire.”
Gasping for breath, I finished reading the poem. It was the same story with the third poem:
“when the winter night sleeps with me.”
Likewise in all the poems that followed. Mahmoud had built each of his poems upon a line he’d taken from me. This was completely unbearable. Mahmoud had been robbing me, transforming my own words into poems I had never once managed to write myself. I was in no condition to assess the quality of his writing, but at least he’d done it; he had written poetry.
I came to the final poem. It featured the shortest lines in the whole collection, each no more than three words. Together they formed an expression of mine, and I well remember the moment in which I spoke it:
“I shall draw
Your voice:
A river
That kindles me
With warmth
When
You sleep.”
Mahmoud was mocking me, surely, dispersing words I had spoken into seven lines to form a poem. Was he demolishing all my attempts at writing poetry? Showing me how easy it was for someone to compose a poem? Why didn’t you read my poems to me, Mahmoud? I was engulfed by a violent desire to weep. My name was there on all the pages. Was I the author of these poems? Could I possibly ascribe them to myself? Mahmoud was dead now, wasn’t he? It seemed to me that the words of his final poem — or my words, to be precise, or . . . whose? — were laughing at me. I saw Mahmoud lying there on the page along with them. His face radiated a beauty sufficient to raze a city to the ground. I no longer had the strength to stand. I fell to my knees. Who are you, Mahmoud? I’ve never in my life been in love with a man, but I love you. You’ve killed me, but I love you. I heard his voice coming from somewhere far away: “I told you you were more handsome than Darwish. These are your poems.” My poems? What about Mahmoud? Did he ever exist in the first place? Did I ever exist in the first place? Did the words exist?
