Our Elsewheres: Excerpt From The Third Bank Of The Jordan River By Hussein Barghouthi

Dana, my love!

I will exit this city tonight. I will leave it to the yellow lanterns in streets empty of anything but dumpsters and stray cats on the sidewalks. I will leave it exiting through the dark suburban alleys where a girl fears rape.

I will leave it mounting a small horse headed towards the deep valleys and gloomy trees. I will prepare tea on wilderness fires under the stars and drink my tea alone, and hug the horse’s sweat-wet neck and in me a desire to weep and on my countenance glisten the glimmers of strange fires. From my leather Zuwwadah[1], I will take out a child who was born dead and hang him on an olive branch for the fires to dance around him like ghosts. Then the horse will definitely neigh and sit down so I can tell him about freedom.

I will exit this city tonight transiting the last railway station. I have nothing but my hands, I will drag them behind me like a hyena drags a woman from her nightgown as her yellow hair dangles behind her, across an ice desert where red horizon rays illuminate my course. I will run on all fours among the hungry polar wolves and search for a prey or a lost traveller. I will deny my mother and father when they stand far away in the darkness of desperation calling for me. I will exit this city and try to be alone in this moment just as I was alone before it, I won’t carry my books or memories, and I won’t bid farewell to my friends, I will be alone and attempt to live as such. I will search for a green night and orange stars. 

[ . . . ]

As for me, I will fly like a row of wild white doves in that blue sky, the sky of clean freedom above the Mediterranean where the sun glares freely, and I’ll try to acquire my food from the spume. Far out, I will see the wet mountains glisten under the rays after the rain is over. The water of the little ponds will be clear on the surface of the rocks for the shepherds to drink from; I can almost perceive one of those shepherds now: his stick on his shoulders, a hand on each end. He’s whistling to creatures that cannot be seen with the bare eye, as they catch warmth under the sunlight, as Neruda said; to the raindrops falling from the green grasses onto hedgehogs; to the snails moving slowly as they’re hung down from the shining rocks in the mountains of Palestine; to the rustling of sheep between wilderness trees; and to all that is alive and sweet and free under this blue morning sky. We’ll meet there, my love! There where the springs aren’t betrayed by their sounds, where everything stands naked in its true form and beautiful at once, where the cascades fall without feeling the tragedy of falling, where we can hug for one time, for the first time, with purity and humaneness and warmth and you, as well, must try to fly!

Farewell, my love who sleeps on a yellow bridge that ties red mountains, and waits for the green knight of her dreams who rides an orange. “The Land of Sad Oranges”[2] farewell! I’ll leave the private soirees where empty whiskey bottles and mundane chatters glisten behind the lit windows of private villas, I’ll leave the women upset because some engineer is dancing with the lady in the pink dress with a plastic rose as a fancy lady sits in a corner, watching the event and mumbling in confusion:

“And how I wished if you were for dance to ask me

And my arm puzzled me in where to lay it!”[3]

I’ll leave the zinc panels fly away with the darkness and wind in “al-Shati” Refugee Camp, as the children wake up panicking from their sleep and breathe the salty freedom of the sea. I will exit this city crossing through the northern borders, crawling under the barbed wires, my stick, luggage and kerosene stove on my back. Perhaps I work as a sailor between Beirut and Greece:

“In his heart, there’s a fish

From the waters of the China Sea!

Sometimes you can see it

As it crosses through his eyes”

as Lorca said. I’ll stare into the night mixing with the roar of the sea on the decks of ships, the wind will ruffle my curly hair that will travel lonely in a starless space. I’ll leave the next city on the next night through its poor suburbs where girls fear the barking of stray dogs as they dream of freedom.

Footnotes:

[1] A pouch used in older times to carry food while travelling.

[2] Title of a novel by Ghassan Kanafani

[3] From the poem “Ila Rajul” (“To a Man”) by Nizar Qabbani, famously sung by Najat Al-Saghira

Hussein Barghouthi is a Palestinian poet-essayist (1954–2002) who taught at Birzeit and Al-Quds Universities, is best known in English for the memoir-novel The Blue Light. Newly translated works have introduced global readers to his visionary, philosophical prose.

Excerpted with permission from Seagull Books.