Asma

“Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: But a woman who fears the Lord,
She shall be praised.

(Proverbs 31:30 Modern King James Version)”
― Anonymous, Modern King James Version of the Holy Bible

“I WANT her though, to take the same from me.
She touches me as if I were herself, her own.
She has not realized yet, that fearful thing, that
I am the other,
she thinks we are all of one piece.
It is painfully untrue.

I want her to touch me at last, ah, on the root and
quick of my darkness
and perish on me, as I have perished on her.

Then, we shall be two and distinct, we shall have
each our separate being.
And that will be pure existence, real liberty.
Till then, we are confused, a mixture, unresolved,
unextricated one from the other.
It is in pure, unutterable resolvedness, distinction
of being, that one is free,
not in mixing, merging, not in similarity.
When she has put her hand on my secret, darkest
sources, the darkest outgoings,
when it has struck home to her, like a death, "this is _him!_"
she has no part in it, no part whatever,
it is the terrible _other_,
when she knows the fearful _other flesh_, ah, dark-
ness unfathomable and fearful, contiguous and concrete,
when she is slain against me, and lies in a heap
like one outside the house,
when she passes away as I have passed away
being pressed up against the _other_,
then I shall be glad, I shall not be confused with her,
I shall be cleared, distinct, single as if burnished in silver,
having no adherence, no adhesion anywhere,
one clear, burnished, isolated being, unique,
and she also, pure, isolated, complete,
two of us, unutterably distinguished, and in unutterable conjunction.

Then we shall be free, freer than angels, ah, perfect.


VIII

AFTER that, there will only remain that all men
detach themselves and become unique,
that we are all detached, moving in freedom more
than the angels,
conditioned only by our own pure single being,
having no laws but the laws of our own being.

Every human being will then be like a flower, untrammelled.
Every movement will be direct.
Only to be will be such delight, we cover our faces
when we think of it
lest our faces betray us to some untimely fiend.

Every man himself, and therefore, a surpassing
singleness of mankind.
The blazing tiger will spring upon the deer, un-dimmed,
the hen will nestle over her chickens,
we shall love, we shall hate,
but it will be like music, sheer utterance,
issuing straight out of the unknown,
the lightning and the rainbow appearing in us
unbidden, unchecked,
like ambassadors.

We shall not look before and after.
We shall _be_, _now_.
We shall know in full.
We, the mystic NOW.

(From the poem the Manifesto)”
― D.H. Lawrence

“احملي هذا الاسم بكبرياء أكبر.. ليس بالضرورة بغرور، ولكن بوعي عميق أنّك أكثر من امرأة. أنتِ وطن بأكمله.. هل تعين هذا؟ ليس من حقِّ الرموز أن تتهشم.. هذا زمن حقير، إذا لم ننحز فيه إلى القيّم سنجد أنفسنا في خانة القاذورات والمزابل. لا تنحازي لشيء سوى المبادئ.. لا تجاملي أحداً سوى ضميرك.. لأنك في النهاية لا تعيشين مع سواه!”
― أحلام مستغانمي, ذاكرة الجسد

“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.”
― Simone de Beauvoir