{"id":7640,"date":"2022-03-15T20:00:23","date_gmt":"2022-03-15T18:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/?p=7640"},"modified":"2022-12-25T11:39:06","modified_gmt":"2022-12-25T09:39:06","slug":"the-angels-of-desire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/the-angels-of-desire\/","title":{"rendered":"The Angels of Desire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
“Untitled,” oil on canvas, 400x200cm, 2015, courtesy Egyptian artist Alaa Awad<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/h4>\n

Youssef Rakha<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Angels are sexual predators. That\u2019s how they appear to me in dreams. Predators<\/em> is not the word, though. What I mean is that they take the initiative. I might look like a dirty old man. In that perverse hunting drama I\u2019m always in the role of prey<\/em>. REM changes me. While awake I\u2019m aggressive and agnostic. In sleep I become a passive seeker after the light. Because even though the mood is erotic, when that happens it\u2019s like being in the presence of God. I feel small and helpless but exalted, the way you might feel if you met God. A sure sign that an angel is visiting me.<\/p>\n

Dreams are the right kind of setting. Desert shepherds knew this thirteen centuries before Freud. In classical Arabic, the words for dream<\/em> and wet dream<\/em> are practically the same. Angels are supposed to have no bodies. But, like the Greek gods, they can take human form to make love with people. They do this in the poems of Omar ibnul Farid, the thirteenth-century saint who wrote about the women he loved as if they were God or vice versa. Those poems are amazing. Though it\u2019s not like I think about any of this when I see angels in my sleep.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to say I know them by the gossamer wings folded in the smalls of their backs. But they don\u2019t have any. I suppose I could call them something else, really. To look at they are always ordinary people. Either a real person or a person who could<\/em> be real, all things considered, like a friend in an alternate universe. Sometimes they\u2019re what the cliche tells you is a symptom of middle age. But at other times they\u2019re the wrong sex. That doesn\u2019t stop the dream from being scandalous. Mostly they\u2019re past or potential partners, melds or shadows of partners, so ordinary you could see them the same day. It\u2019s the way I feel about them that gives them superpowers.<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t have the ability to kill me, for example, but they make me so happy I die. In a dream you don\u2019t need to look in the mirror to see your own face. I never take the time to judge their looks. I know they\u2019re beautiful because of how beautiful they make me<\/em>.<\/p>\n

They pop out of cubist screens that layer images of Cairo. Sounds and smells, too, whole worlds in a kind of sci-fi, multidimensional gallery. I will be in motion, on a kind of journey. The timeline is jumbled and I\u2019m going up and down, not just forward and backward. But I know the journey is my life because that gallery is not just Cairo. It\u2019s Marrakech, Berlin, Kathmandu. All kinds of places I\u2019ve been and people I\u2019ve been with. Dinners and joyrides. And I\u2019m moving through the porridge of it not knowing what it means. I don\u2019t expect to know but it hurts that I don\u2019t. It really hurts, physically. Because it makes the journey worthless.<\/p>\n

Then if I\u2019m very lucky there\u2019ll be a moment of stillness. That\u2019s the moment when a dream person becomes an angel and we start being intimate with each other. And it\u2019s only a moment but it can last a lifetime. In that moment the journey has meaning.<\/p>\n

I guess I should explain that there is rarely any sex in my dreams. Sometimes there are aliens. Sometimes there are tigers on escalators, where they\u2019re not supposed to be. Even when the laws of physics are broken nothing seems too strange. And neither does the thought of making love with an angel. The truth is that my dreams are more or less chaste. Intimacy happens mostly by suggestion, the way in black-and-white Arab films you know sex will take place when the bedroom door is slammed shut. Or, if it\u2019s a girl\u2019s innocence taken out of wedlock, a glass would drop and shatter. I guess that kind of thing is dream logic too. Except that the symbols in my dreams are far more cryptic.<\/p>\n

They are so cryptic I\u2019m not sure what I\u2019m talking about, typing this. It has to do with the body, my body. It has to do with being in a body, the pain and rapture of having one and using it to be with another. It also has to do with the meaning of life. But it\u2019s neither sex nor religion, that thing. I guess I want to say something about why desire is important, why it\u2019s so much more than an appetite. To show how we can be sensible and celibate and still live for desire. How ultimately like desire is the thing religion gets at by denying it.<\/p>\n

You know how sometimes you are ready to die for a stranger. You have just met this person. You don\u2019t know or trust them. You have no idea whether you really<\/em> want to spend any time with them. But you desire them so much you will die to make them happy. Maybe that doesn\u2019t happen to everyone but it has definitely happened to me. And it\u2019s taken many nights of sleep to understand.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s because life has no meaning. You could own and accomplish everything you imagine and still not get over that pain. It\u2019s as if being in the world is a sickness, and death the only cure. Those things that you have and do, they are painkillers to help you forget. Then a complete stranger turns up and suddenly you don\u2019t feel the pain anymore. For a moment you\u2019re convinced there is<\/em> a cure after all. It\u2019s right in front of you. It\u2019s not that the person has magic powers. You\u2019re ready to die for a complete stranger because they have spared you death.<\/p>\n

But I want to bring things together now. I\u2019ve been calling my dream partners angels because they give my life meaning. I think that\u2019s because I desire them. It\u2019s because I desire them in a place where desire can never be fulfilled. Which is the same thing as saying where you can count on desire. Because in actual life sooner or later desire will either be fulfilled or frustrated, and then it will become something else. In dreams as long as my partners look kindly on me I can present to all of my body, alert and satisfied, indefinitely. This is the closest I can imagine to being in heaven, where God might reward me for withstanding meaningless.<\/p>\n

Heaven can happen in waking life too, just never as frequently or perfectly. When it does it\u2019s so fleeting it usually turns to hell. It takes hellish effort. And it\u2019s never without consequences. So when you\u2019ve reached middle age and basked in the mellowness that comes of it, when you\u2019ve had the time to diet and exercise while you read ibnul Farid and think about Georges Bataille\u2019s unbelievable statement that the sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space<\/em>, maybe that is all that heaven should be. A good night\u2019s sleep.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Youssef Rakha meditates on dreams and desire, and why he might just be ready to die for a stranger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":7641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,68,50],"tags":[255,507,536,726,1258],"coauthors":[2184],"class_list":["post-7640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","category-review","category-tmr-19-desire","category-tmr-issues","tag-arabic-poetry","tag-desire","tag-dreams","tag-georges-bataille","tag-omar-ibnul-farid","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Angels of Desire - The Markaz Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Youssef Rakha meditates on dreams and desire, and why he might just be ready to die for a stranger.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/the-angels-of-desire\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Angels of Desire\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Youssef Rakha meditates on dreams and desire, and why he might just be ready to die for a stranger.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/the-angels-of-desire\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Markaz Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-03-15T18:00:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-12-25T09:39:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/alaa-awad-egyptian-artist-the-markaz-review.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"735\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Youssef Rakha\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Youssef Rakha\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/the-angels-of-desire\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/the-angels-of-desire\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Youssef Rakha\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/dd32a314f0b135f5fcaa56d0a8fcd8c7\"},\"headline\":\"The Angels of Desire\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-03-15T18:00:23+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-12-25T09:39:06+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/the-angels-of-desire\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1248,\"commentCount\":1,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/the-angels-of-desire\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2022\\\/03\\\/alaa-awad-egyptian-artist-the-markaz-review.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Arabic poetry\",\"desire\",\"dreams\",\"Georges Bataille\",\"Omar ibnul Farid\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Essays\",\"Latest Reviews\",\"TMR 19 \u2022 DESIRE\",\"TMR Issues\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/the-angels-of-desire\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/the-angels-of-desire\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/the-angels-of-desire\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Angels of Desire - 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