سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere] Quotes

“[Happy New Year to Our Complicity]

Let us make this year
truly new,
and truly happy,
by ceasing to be complicit,
and by abandoning
the same worn-out phrases:
"Wishing you a wonderful year!"
or
"Happy New Year!"
Enough of deceiving ourselves.
We are not well.
We are not happy.
And there is nothing new
under a sun that still rises
with weary reluctance,
its heat growing fiercer each year
over a world filled with killing,
war,
and gratuitous death.
And so long as we do nothing
to change our miserable reality
except through dubious funding
from abroad,
then allow me, my friends,
to wish us all
a new year overflowing with more:
more shopping malls
and more consumption,
more bombing,
destruction,
occupation,
and partition,
more military bases,
more arms deals,
more gunpowder,
missiles,
and bombs.
Allow me to wish us a year
in which even more cities
and civilizations are destroyed
in the name of revolutions
orchestrated by those
who care for nothing
but wealth.
I wish us a new year
filled with a silence
more hideous
than the silence of a devil
who sees the truth
and refuses to speak,
for the sake of salaries
and lucrative deals.
And may every year find us
the wound
conspiring with the dagger
buried in our side,
while we shop
and shout with perfect innocence:
"Happy New Year!"

31 December 2024”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[The Losers]

The losers are closer to my heart,
for they were right.
Integrity does not prevail,
as it does in those trivial Hollywood endings.
It always loses,
outnumbered by those who are afraid,
by those who are willing to sell,
and by those whose interests
cannot coexist
with the demands of honesty.
I love the losers
because they were right.
And I,
who once placed my faith
in humanity,
lost as well.

12 December 2024”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Lights]

The lights of churches and monasteries,
of Christmas trees
and radiant mosques.
Dim lights
glowing in warm houses
in foreign cities
where I wandered alone.
The lights of distant cars
moving across bridges,
seen from hotel windows
on clear, moonlit nights.
The light of candles
and lanterns.
The lights of tiny shops
hidden in ancient, forgotten lanes.
The lights of ships
sailing toward destinations
I shall never reach.
The lights of streetlamps
on dark, rain-soaked winter nights.
The lights of remote beacons
and unseen fishermen.
The faint glow
I once caught
in the eyes of kind strangers
in places
tourists never visit.
I loved every one of those lights.
Now they undo me,
because they remind me
of the beautiful light
in your eyes
that has been extinguished.

13 November 2024”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Ideas]
Good ideas are bombs,
usually exploding
somewhere close by,
while all that reaches us
are the shrapnel
of understanding.
For we never truly understand an idea
until the bomb hits us head-on
and kills us.

14 October 2024”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Botox]
During a friendly exchange with a stranger
while waiting in line at a supermarket,
she greeted me with a warm smile and said,
"Today is my fiftieth birthday."
I replied,
"It seems time has treated you gently.
Happy birthday."
She smiled and answered:
"Time has never been gentle with me, my dear.
What you're seeing
is one of Botox's little miracles."
Half joking, I asked:
"They say it freezes the face
and dulls its expressions.
Is that true?"
"It makes no difference to me anymore at this stage of life," she said.
"I no longer need expressions.
There is nothing left
to smile about
or frown at.
I spent decades
trying, in every possible way,
through words
and through gestures,
to express myself.
All in vain."
Her words were followed
by a desperate laugh,
one that reminded me
of the philosopher who wrote
that, as we grow older,
we gradually replace our fears
with our laughter.
Then she continued:
"There comes a moment
when you discover
that neither words
nor gestures
accomplish anything.
Every person has a defining event,
a dividing moment
that freezes everything.
After it,
nothing remains
as it once was.
Each of us has a moment
that shocks us into silence,
and after that
everything freezes,
just like the effects of Botox.
What follows
is little more
than a series of weary,
hopeless attempts
to pretend
that we're doing fine."
Before I could find
the right words to answer,
the cashier called her forward.
The timing was perfect.
The words froze
on my tongue,
just as Botox freezes
a face,
in an age
when neither expressions
nor words
seem to matter anymore.

13 October 2024”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[A Shopping Mall and Bullet Holes]

While walking through the city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
a country worn down and drained by the wars of the global elite, much like my own,
I reached a street corner
and noticed, on my right,
the vast building of a modern shopping mall.
On my left stood an old apartment block,
its walls riddled with bullet holes,
as though they were eyes
still bearing witness
to the senseless deaths that had unfolded there
in a war where the gunfire ceased,
yet neither its causes
nor the criminals behind it
ever truly disappeared,
remaining hidden,
like foul pus beneath a boil
that may burst
at the slightest awakening of consciousness.
And I wondered bitterly:
When will the world understand
that violence does not erupt by accident,
nor stumble into existence by chance?
In our age,
every violence is arranged in advance,
sanctioned by a small elite
that decides, with full intent,
that any people who refuse
the gospel of malls,
consumption,
and triviality,
must be disciplined
through the gratuitous death
of those who resist.
And that, at any cost,
the minds and souls
of the survivors
must be riddled with bullets as well.
At that same intersection,
I noticed an elderly woman.
Her hair was red,
and her eyes were deep and sorrowful,
like bullet holes.
I also saw a group of young people
dressed in the fashions
displayed in those very malls.
The old woman looked at them
as though she wished
to tell them everything that had happened.
But they did not notice her.
Their eyes were fixed
on the screens
of their smartphones.
And then, with a heaviness in my chest,
I found myself asking:
Did anyone ever tell them
what happened here?
About the sound of gunfire?
Could they tell the difference
between artillery fire
and fireworks?
Did this broken woman,
who seemed shattered by what she had endured,
ever tell them
the true price she had paid?
Did she tell them
about all the holes
still lodged
in her heart
and in her history,
paid for with her life,
so that all these malls
and all these cheap consumer goods
might fill their gaze?

4 July 2024”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Buying and Selling]

Everything is up for sale.
Everyone is for sale.
For the majority wish for nothing
but to buy
and to sell.
They sell life itself
to purchase a living.
And what a living it is.
They sell without shame,
without dignity.
And whenever you encounter
a gesture of kindness
or the hint of a smile,
you soon discover
that it too is manufactured,
a marketing device
intended to facilitate
a sale
or a purchase.
You see them,
and their children,
and their grandchildren,
busy selling:
houses and cars,
bodies and desires,
fruits and vegetables,
homelands and farmland,
natural wealth
(after counterfeit revolutions),
clothes,
shoes,
and every manner of object,
genuine or fake;
cheap gifts and souvenirs
in tourist cities,
phones
and their absurd accessories,
and endless catalogues
of little things and large,
all supposedly capable
of making them
happier,
more modern,
more attractive,
more human.
And between one sale
and the next,
they pause
to speak of principles,
of the Creator,
of morality
and religion,
of what is forbidden
and what is permitted.
Between one purchase
and the next,
they speak of dignity
and freedom.
They theorize about
the meaning of life,
about politics
and revolutions,
about nature
and the environment,
about chronic illnesses,
about the latest technologies,
about everything
except the fact
that the cause of it all
is their willingness
to sell whatever their hands can reach
in exchange for
a single moment
of triviality.
And you find those
who perfect,
and those who chase,
the game of buying and selling,
moving in flawless step
with the latest fashions,
yet inhabiting miserable bodies
from which the soul has departed,
along with every trace
of human tenderness,
never to return.
And congratulations
to all who have successfully adapted
to this game
of buying
and selling.

29 June 2024”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Departure]
Everyone wants to leave.
Those who are here
dream of going there,
while many of those who are there
long to return here.
And there are those
who have come to understand
that life is impossible,
neither here
nor there,
and so, in vain,
they search for alternatives.
But a few have understood
that what makes life impossible
is not geography,
but complicity;
that most of those who leave
and most of those who stay
never part with their complicity
or their habit of surrender,
and so they recreate
the very conditions,
the very causes,
that made them leave
in the first place,
wherever they go.
A few have understood
that no place
will ever be fit for living
if the compliant,
complicit self
is the very thing
that gave birth
to the reasons for departure.

20 June 2024”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Faded Wildflowers]

As I gazed
at a collection of withered mountain wildflowers
pressed between the pages
of my books,
I noticed that some of them,
though radiant
at the moment they were picked,
had lost their colors,
or seen them vanish altogether,
as though they had never existed.
Others,
their fading only deepened
their beauty
and their mystery.
And there were those
that had preserved
their original color,
as though insisting upon immortality,
even while suffocating
between the covers of a book.
They had retained their grace,
much like the pages of certain books
that grow richer
and clearer
with time.
And in that moment
it occurred to me
that the ends of people's lives
resemble these withered flowers.
There are those
who fade
and leave no trace,
as though they had never been.
There are those
whose true colors
are revealed only by death,
colors that may prove
a little more beautiful,
or far uglier,
than anything life had disclosed.
And there are those
whom withering itself
renders more radiant,
as though they are teaching us
that the art of living
cannot be mastered
without mastering
the art of fading.

5 June 2024”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Twins in the Wound]

It took me years to understand
that we did not love one another
because we were compatible,
or made for each other,
but because we were broken
in the same places.
We are twins in the wound.
Our own people abandoned us,
and cast us out,
when they discovered
that we were not like the rest.
When they realized
that we refused to play
the game of the crushing
and the crushed.
And so, my love,
I hid you from everyone,
not out of shame,
but out of fear
of the cruelty
and ignorance
of the crowd.
And from loving you in secret,
I learned
that the only love that survives
is the love that masters
the art of hiding
from the eyes
of the watchful
and the hypocritical.

15 May 2024”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[The Triumph of Good]

If only reality
were like cartoons,
adolescent fantasies,
and the endless parade
of films and television dramas
made for the easily deceived,
where good always wins
in the final act.
But anyone
who watches the world
closely enough
comes to discover
that the triumph of good
may be nothing more than
a fiction,
a trick,
invented by the wicked
to convince us
that goodness
and decency
ultimately prevail.
The world is turned
completely on its head
the moment we grasp
that goodness,
morality,
and virtue
may themselves be stories
spun by the wicked
to ensure their dominion
over those still innocent enough
to believe
that good wins
when the credits roll.

26 February 2024”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Arabs and Garbage]

A strange thing, this relationship
between Arabs and garbage.
Who told them,
who taught them,
to throw it away at random,
wherever
and however
they please?
When will Arabs understand
that placing garbage
where it belongs
would solve half
their environmental
and social problems?
And that the other half
would begin to disappear
the moment they stop
throwing away
their human treasures:
their skilled,
their talented,
their gifted people,
driving them beyond their borders
to enrich strangers instead?
When will Arabs stop
discarding
their finest minds,
only to replace them
with imported foreign refuse,
which they revere
simply because it arrives
with white skin
and blue eyes,
claiming to possess
skills and expertise
without which, they are told,
the natives cannot survive?
When will Arabs understand
that putting garbage
in its proper place,
whether the garbage
that governs them
or the garbage
they import,
would solve
all their problems?

20 February 2024”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Securing Tomorrow]

I watch with sadness
as most people busy themselves
accumulating more money,
winning more promotions,
building larger houses,
buying additional properties
and possessions,
new cars,
ever more goods
and consumer luxuries.
I see them consumed
by the desire to possess
everything their hands can reach,
all in order to secure tomorrow,
to guarantee a life
of comfort and abundance.
Yet few realize
that tomorrow may never come.
And if it does,
it may arrive
sad,
frightening,
and desolate.
Few realize
that it may not rain tomorrow,
that the earth may grow dry,
and that this very obsession
with acquiring more and more
is precisely what will lead humanity
toward its ruin,
after exhausting
every possible form of life.
Few have understood
that fear,
panic,
and the relentless need
to secure tomorrow
are precisely what have made
tomorrow so uncertain.
What a bitter paradox.

7 February 2024”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[A Rose in Time of War]

I saw a red rose
growing from black earth,
kneaded with shrapnel,
blood,
and shattered glass.
I said to the rose:
“Congratulations!
You survived
war,
death,
and destruction.”
The rose replied:
“How dare you congratulate me?
I did not survive the war.
My mother carried within her
the promise of countless seeds.
They all died,
and I alone remain
in a world without roses.
And even I
did not survive whole.
Only part of me survived.
Here I stand before you,
half alive,
bearing witness
to humanity's hypocrisy
and its massacres.
How dare you congratulate me?
Every seed my mother bore
was destroyed,
while I remain alone,
struggling beneath
this black earth
and this terrible ruin.
I lay buried
in utter darkness.
The only comfort I knew
was the sound
of church bells
ringing in the distance,
though I never knew
whether they rang
for a feast day
or for the funerals
of victims betrayed by fate.
The only comfort I knew
was the voice
of a muezzin,
chanting from afar
with a grief-stricken heart:
'I bear witness that there is no god but Allah...'
And let me tell you something more:
I would never have bloomed
in this barren,
blackened soil
were it not
for the salty tears of children
who wept over this earth,
mourning their families,
their futures,
and everything they had.
And here I stand,
not a survivor of what happened,
but a witness to its ugliness.
Even now,
I hear gasps
and cries,
and I cannot tell
whether they belong
to victims taking their final breaths,
or to newly born babies.

20 December 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[The Flock of Geese]

She had always wondered
why she was overcome
by an inexplicable sadness
whenever she saw
a flock of geese
crossing the sky.
Did those flying geese
remind her
that she had squandered years of her life
caught in the trivia
and absurdities
of everyday existence?
Or was it that the birds
reminded her
she had lost
the power of flight?
Sometimes she thought,
with sorrow,
of how she had wasted
so many years,
like a naïve bride
dreaming
of the perfect groom.
A bride planning
every last detail
of her wedding day,
never realizing,
until her wings had been cut,
that the wedding,
the groom,
and the bride herself
were roles,
illusions,
invented by society
to neutralize those who wish to fly,
those who dream
of creating new worlds,
rather than dying
strangled or suffocated
inside a world
designed for them in advance,
a world
they had no hand
in making.
And now,
she hears the cries
of another flock of geese
passing overhead,
just as the finest years
of her life
passed overhead.
Another flock,
awakening in her
that overwhelming desire
to leave,
and to reject
the illusion
of stability.
The illusion of the wedding.
The illusion of the groom.
The illusion of all those guests
who spend the wedding night
dancing,
celebrating,
and rejoicing
in the clipping
of her wings.

14 December 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[The Game of Silence]

So many learned the rules
of the game
and chose silence.
So many remained silent,
believing
their silence would save them.
So many were undone
by that silence,
struck down
before they could utter
even a single cry of protest,
before they could tell the world
that the cost of silence
was far higher
than the cost of resistance.

12 December 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Spices]

Sad are the scents of spices,
whether in one's homeland
or in exile.
At home,
they drift past the nose
offering a brief reprieve,
a breath of hope,
making us forget,
if only for a little while,
the chains of religion and gossip,
the farce of politics,
and the brutality of those who rule.
At home,
spices soften
the weight of customs and traditions
that break people's backs.
Everyone longs
for a meal
that might help them forget
the terrors of their homeland,
its tragedies,
and its unfitness
for living.
In exile,
the scents of spices awaken
everything people have lost,
including the loss of the land,
and the loss of the homeland itself,
with all its sweetness
and all its bitterness,
its nobility
and its failures.
Sad is the sight
of an exiled woman
standing in a kitchen
filled with the fragrance of spices,
reminded of what happened,
of what might have been,
of what should never have happened,
and of losses
that can never be recovered.
How many societies
have been destroyed,
leaving behind
nothing but
the scent of spices
that season our food
and flavor our wounds.
Are spices perhaps
like old songs?
We loved them at home
because they played upon a wound
we longed to heal.
And they sadden us in exile
because we learn too late
that exile does not heal wounds,
but drives its knife
deeper into them.
And like exile itself,
the scent of spices declares
that the story of the wound
is not yet over;
to suppress it
is deadly,
yet telling it
brings no cure.

11 December 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Are You Afraid of Sadness?]

During an old interview,
a celebrated Iraqi actress
was asked by the host:
“Why are you afraid of sadness?”
She answered:
“Because sadness quickly escapes our control
and takes us somewhere
we can never come back from.”
Yet as she spoke those words,
a shadow of sorrow crossed her face,
revealing to any attentive observer
that the actress was no longer fully there,
not even in the interview itself.
Sadness had already taken her
to that distant place,
and it seemed
there was no coming back.

19 November 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Coming-of-Age Ailments]

If only the ailments of adulthood
were like the ailments of childhood:
healed by a mother's kiss,
a bowl of hot soup,
a glass of warm milk,
and a spoonful of honey,
even if it were adulterated.

14 November 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Colors]

Once, our identity cards
described our skin
as the color of wheat.
Elsewhere, peoples' complexions
were compared
to olives
and chocolate.
There are eyes
the color of honey,
or green pistachios,
and hair
the color of chestnuts.
All these names
remind us
that we are born of nature
and among its most beautiful gifts.
Yet the racist West
insists on shrinking humanity,
painting it
in politicized colors
where only white
is deemed to matter.
And all other colors
become synonyms
for no one
and nothing,
until the world is reduced
to a field of snow,
or a blank white page,
and nothing more.

31 October 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[A Moment of Joy]

The world's ruling elites
hold their breath,
wondering
who will unleash
the first nuclear weapon.
The wealthy,
the financiers,
and the guardians of the markets
watch the rise and fall
of their fortunes
in quiet panic.
Elite writers,
media personalities,
and academics
drawn close to power
live in fear
of a revolution
that might carry away
those who govern,
and them along with them.
Doctors,
engineers,
and countless professionals
scan the labor market,
anxious that the comforts
they have grown used to
may disappear.
Only the waitress
in the corner restaurant
is genuinely happy,
overjoyed by the tip
left by the final customer
of the evening.

30 October 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Politicians of the Global Slave Market]

To succeed as a politician
in the grand circus
of global political depravity,
one must be willing
to auction off
one's people
and the wealth of one's country
in the imperial marketplace
of human bargaining.
The hallmark
of such politicians
is the ability
to sell everything precious
in the name of honor,
everything sacred
in the name of principles,
and surrender itself
in the name of peace.
As for recognizing them,
nothing could be easier.
They are distinguished
by the absence of action.
Their entire vocabulary
consists of little more than
condemnation,
denunciation,
expressions of concern,
calls for restraint,
and carefully rehearsed appeals
for calm,
all intended
to keep victim
and oppressor
exactly where they are,
for as long as possible.

8 October 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[The Flower Seller of Arequipa]

On a refreshing spring evening,
while wandering through the city of Arequipa in Peru,
I met a young Venezuelan
in the heart of the city.
From his eyes,
his greeting,
and the kindness of his spirit,
I knew at once
that he was homeless, like me.
I knew he came
from one of those countries
to which they had done
what they did
to Iraq,
Syria,
Libya,
Yemen,
and the list goes on,
growing longer
and more painful.
After a long conversation,
in which we exchanged stories
about attempts to plunder our countries
and scatter us across the world,
we stopped before a Peruvian flower seller
who had spread her flowers
on a simple mat
along the pavement.
She was a woman
in her late forties,
perhaps younger.
Time, after all,
is harsher on those
who struggle
for every mouthful of food
and every sip of water.
I greeted her in Spanish
and, picking up a bouquet,
said jokingly:
“May I buy these
at the local price,
rather than the tourist price?”
The flower seller smiled.
And through my new Venezuelan friend,
who translated her words into English,
she replied:
“Flowers are beyond price,
dear visitor.
If poverty and injustice
did not exist
in my country
and in the world,
I would not sell flowers at all.
I would give them freely
to every passerby.
And that is precisely why
I sell them as cheaply as I can.
Not because flowers are cheap,
but because I believe
every human being
deserves a bouquet of flowers.”
Her words touched me deeply.
So I asked her
what flowers meant to her.
She answered
in a gentle voice:
“Flowers sadden me
as much as they delight me.
They sadden me
because I know
that most people in this world
are like flower buds,
stifled by circumstance,
never allowed to bloom.
And they delight me
because their fragrance endures,
even after our harsh hands
have cut them.
Flowers, like all that is precious,
are mortal.
They taught me
that mortality itself
is what makes natural beauty
so beautiful.”
Before I parted
from that kind flower seller,
she asked me in turn
why I loved flowers.
I said:
“I owe flowers
everything I know
and every step
I have taken in life.
And as an Iraqi,
I have always dreamed
that we might plant flowers
for one another
instead of landmines.”
At that,
she placed a bouquet
in my hands
and embraced me warmly.
I then gave the bouquet
to the kind Venezuelan guy,
and in my heart
cursed those responsible
for the impoverishment
and displacement
of millions
of good and gentle souls
throughout the world.
And I thanked fate
for a precious human moment
that could never have happened
without a love of flowers.

21 September 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Sounds]

Few are the sounds
that deepen silence
or make it more eloquent.
There are sounds
without which silence
would not be complete:
the ticking of a clock,
the sudden hum
of a refrigerator coming to life,
the chirp of a cricket,
the rasp of a cicada,
or perhaps
the croaking of a frog.
And there are sounds
that make existence itself
more strange,
more lonely:
the sudden thud
of an insect striking
a door
or a window,
as though
it had chosen
to end its life.
Like the groan
of a rusted door
we close behind
someone dear
as they leave,
certain
they will never return,
certain
that nothing will remain
quite the same
after their departure.
There is the whistle
of a kettle,
like an alarm siren
warning us
that peace
and stillness
are only fleeting illusions.
And there are sounds
that contain
the tragedies of the past,
sounds from which
the listener's memory
never fully recovers:
the cries of a woman
weeping and screaming
as her husband beats her
in the neighboring house;
or the cough
of an elderly woman
we visited with our families
in childhood,
spitting,
sighing,
again and again.
And how could we forget
the whistle
of a ship
or a train,
announcing
that there is no escape
from departure.

15 September 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Today's Songs]

They ask me
what I make
of the songs of today.
And I answer:
I have never joined
the choir of those who say,
"nothing could be better than what once was."
Yet I cannot help noticing
that modern songs
grow shorter,
noisier,
more shrill,
day after day.
And I find myself wondering:
might this be the voice
of a generation worn thin,
crying out at the world
that it can no longer bear
the silence
of mute demons
who look away
from its rights?
And could the ignorance
that surrounds us now,
the ignorance we hear
and see each day,
be nothing more
than the offspring
of neglect
and a frightening absence
of belonging?

11 September 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Where Are You From?]

Wherever I go,
people assume
I am from somewhere else.
And the first question they ask
is always
that melancholy question,
the one that never fails
to remind us
how fragile belonging is:
"Where are you from?"
And they are right.
My grandmother used to say
that I am an ancient soul
from a time
and a place
that no longer exist.
My friends say
that I carry my home with me
wherever I go,
and that, for that reason,
I belong
to every place
and every age.
As for me,
more often than not,
I find myself wishing
I had never been at all.

1 September 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Fate's Smile]

A fragment
of an old Turkish song
still rings
in my ears.
A song that played on the radio
in the days of adolescence,
during those long,
oppressive,
melancholy summers.
Its melody was steeped in sorrow,
recorded on humble equipment,
and at its close
the singer would murmur,
in a voice trembling
between defeat and hope:
Bize de bir gün kader güler, güler inşallah...
"One day fate will smile on us as well... God willing, it will smile."

12 August 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Pity]

Amer sat down
in the same old wooden chair.
Roua still remembered well
the furniture store
where she had bought it,
less than a month
after they were married.
The store was gone now.
And perhaps that great,
stormy love
that had filled the days
before their wedding
had also closed its doors,
shut down by boredom
and the shocks of passing years.
She began cutting his hair,
a habit that had started
back when they were poor
and Amer could not afford
to spend money on a barber.
The years passed.
Many things changed.
Yet Roua went on
cutting his hair
in that same wooden chair,
roughly once a month.
He sat there,
clothed only
in his underwear,
and she studied
his softening body,
growing softer still,
and the belly
that seemed to grow larger
with every haircut.
Her thoughts drifted elsewhere
as she wondered:
Had she truly loved him
back then?
Or had it merely been
a consuming passion
that, over the years,
had turned into pity
without ever passing
through the winding corridors
of love?
Her feelings swayed
between love
and pity
with every touch
of the scissors.
She was afraid
to admit,
even to herself,
that the story
had been pity all along,
for the price of such an admission
was nearly the whole
of her life.
Yet neither could she swear
that it had been love,
for she had not felt
love for him
in a very long time.
Then suddenly
she noticed Amer
looking at her
as though he could read
her thoughts.
A tear slipped
from her eye
without her willing it.
And she went on
cutting his hair
as usual.

3 August 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Missile]

A missile fell
near the heart of the city.
According to our correspondent,
its shrapnel killed
a widow
and a divorced woman.
The blast also struck
at least two people
from what are called
"minorities,"
and four others
who spoke languages
other than the country's
official one.
According to our correspondent,
the missile also killed
eight foreigners,
several homosexuals,
two prostitutes,
and two beggars.
It seems
that the only ones
who escaped its shrapnel
were those who classify people
under labels such as these.

19 July 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“[Hands]

Too many hands
no longer wave in peace,
no longer reach out
to shake another hand,
no longer rest upon a shoulder
or rub a weary back
to comfort
and console.
Too many hands
no longer care
to caress,
to cherish,
to soothe.
They no longer trouble themselves
to wipe the tears
from the eyes
of the brokenhearted.
Too many hands
have lost all concern
for creation
and generosity.
Too many have ceased
to write,
or to sow the earth.
And too many fingers
have abandoned the struggle
for a world
less cruel,
less ugly.
Now all that the hands
of our paralyzed age
desire,
all that they long to embrace,
is the iPhone.

29 June 2023”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]