Status Updates From أثر الفراشة

He said: 'Hope is neither something tangible nor an idea. It is a talent.' He took a beta blocker, putting the question of hope aside, and for some obscure reason felt quite happy.

He opened the window on what remained of a horizon and saw two cats playing with a puppy in the narrow street, and a dove building a nest in a chimney, and he said: 'Hope is not the opposite of despair. Perhaps it is the faith that springs from divine indifference which has left us dependent on our own special talents to make sense of the fog surrounding us.'

When he thought about hope, the gap widened between a body that was no longer agile and a heart that had acquired wisdom. He did not repeat the question 'Who am I?' because he was so upset by the smell of lilies and the neighbours' loud music.

When he thought about hope he felt weary and bored, and constructed a mirage and said: 'How shall I evaluate my mirage?' He searched in his desk drawers for the person he was before asking this question, but found no notes containing thoughtless or destructive urges. Nor did he find a document confirming he had stood in the rain for no reason.

The spectre of the dead man appeared to them from a cloudless sky and when they opened fire on him they did not see a single drop of blood, and they were afraid.

'What has the woman done wrong?' They said: 'She will give birth to a memory.' 'What has the tree done wrong? They said: 'A green bird will appear from it.' And they shouted: 'Fear, not justice, is the basis of power.'

Let us then turn our attention to comforting the frightened man.' When they went down the road of sympathising with the killer, some foreign tourists passing by asked them: 'What has the child done wrong?' They answered: 'He will grow up and frighten the frightened man's son.

Scholars of the distinction between life and reality say: 'If this ordinary event had taken place anywhere but here, in this holy land, would we have even known the victim's name?

'Justice emanates from the generosity of power. The victim should apologise for the trauma he has caused the killer.'

The killer looks at the spectre of the dead man, not into his eyes, without regret. He says to those around him: 'Don't blame me. I'm afraid. I killed because I'm afraid, and I'll kill again because I'm afraid.' Some of those present, accustomed to favouring psychological analysis over the laws of justice, say: 'He is defending himself.'

If there is any point to jealousy - which is supposed to be the same colour as the sunflower - then it is that we view our surroundings with the heroic spirit of one defeated, and learn to focus on correcting our mistakes in honourable contests.

I am seduced by a metaphor: yellow is the colour of the hoarse voice that only the sixth sense can hear. A voice whose tone is neutral, the voice of the sunflower, which does not change its religion and always worships the sun.

I envy her this focus that transports her far away from our fragile life. I envy her the way she embroiders time with a needle and yellow thread broken off from the sun, which hasn't been occupied. I gaze at the yellow flowers and feel they are lighting me up and dissolving my darkness, and I grow less heavy, finer, and we end up reflecting one another's translucence.

Yellow flowers make the room lighter. They are looking at me, rather than me looking at them. They are the first messengers of spring. A woman, who is not distracted by war from studying the disfigured nature left to us, gave them to me.

The tree is a standing prayer, directing its devotions upwards. When it bends a little in the storm, it bends majestically, like a nun, looking upwards all the time. In the past the poet said: 'If only the young were stones.' He should have said: 'If only the young were trees!'

The tree is forgiveness and vigilance. It neither sleeps nor dreams, but is entrusted with the secrets of dreamers, standing guard night and day, showing respect to passers-by and to the heavens.

A tree does not attack another tree and does not imitate a woodcutter. When a tree becomes a boat it learns to swim. When it becomes a door it continues to keep secrets. When it becomes a chair it does not forget the sky that was once above it. When it becomes a table it teaches the poet not to be a woodcutter.

The tree is sister to the tree, or its good neighbour. The big one is kind to the little one, giving it the shade it needs. The tall one is kind to the short one, sending it a bird to keep it company at night. No tree attacks the fruit of another tree, and if one tree is barren the other does not make fun of it.

We are unsure which way the wind is blowing, for what is the use of achieving anything too late, even if there is someone waiting for us on the mountainside, inviting us to offer up a prayer of thanksgiving because we have arrived safe and sound, neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but too late?

Wisdom has procedures similar to those of a doctor examining a wound. As we look behind us to see where we stand in relation to ourselves and reality, we ask: 'How many mistakes have we made? Have we come to wisdom too late?'

At a light-hearted stage of life we call maturity we are neither optimistic nor pessimistic. We have renounced passion and longing, and calling things by their opposites because we were so confused between form and essence, and we have practised thinking calmly before expressing ourselves.

Photographs, toothbrushes, combs, cosmetics, shoes, underwear, sheets, towels fly in every direction like family secrets broadcast aloud in the devastation. All these things are a memory of the people who no longer have them and of the objects that no longer have the people–destroyed in a minute. Our things die like us, but they aren't buried with us.

Salt, sugar, spices, boxes of matches, pills, contraceptives, antidepressants, strings of garlic, onions, tomatoes, dried okra, rice and lentils are crushed to pieces just like their owners. Rent agreements, marriage documents, birth certificates, water and electricity bills, identity cards, passports, love letters are torn to shreds like their owners' hearts.

And cotton, silk, linen, papers, books are torn to pieces like proscribed words. Plates, spoons, toys, records, taps, pipes, door handles, fridges, washing machines, flower vases, jars of olives and pickles, tinned food all break just like their owners.

In every object there is a being in pain - a memory of fingers, of a smell, an image. And houses are killed just like their inhabitants. And the memory of objects is killed: stone, wood, glass, iron, cement are scattered in broken fragments like living beings.