Daisy al-Amir: The Next Step 173

It was a thirst like enchantment that had driven him to the sea, pregnant with
its hoard of memories and a myth sunk deep in oblivion. As he crawled on, he
didn’t care now about his split skin, or the limbs that had dropped off one by
one, or the voices issuing from the gates of hell, or the drops of blood coloring
the earth, leaving a bloody thread behind. A great star of joy shone in his eyes as
he saw the water nearer than his own heartbeat, its arms wide open to receive
him; there was the lofty blue, calling to him with the longing of a body known
so very well.
One last crawl and he’d be in the water, would drown, once and for all, in its
everlasting sweetness. One last crawl. But the head rolled right away now, parted
from the body that lay lifeless on the wet ground, mute like a stone, while the
eyes in the head gazed longingly on the blue and white waves that threw an-
other dying fish onto the shore.
—Translated by May Jayyusi and Christopher Tingley

Daisy al-Amir (1935)

Iraqi short-story writer Daisy al-Amir was born in Alexandria, Egypt. She
lived in Iraq and Beirut, and for a short period in the 1950s she lived
in Cambridge, England, where she pursued her study of English. She has
worked in Beirut as Director of the Iraqi Cultural Center. In her stories,
al-Amir has been able to depict images of a woman’s loneliness and fear in
the face of war or entrenched social traditions. There are several collections
of her short stories: The Faraway Country We Love (1964), Then Returns the
Wave (1969), The Happy Arab Home (1975), The Whirlpool of Love and Hate
(1979), and Promises for Sale (1980).

The Next Step

‘Alya, the most popular girl in our city and the daughter of a wealthy and pres-
tigious merchant, was elected Beauty Queen. The news passed quickly from
mouth to mouth, and the next day it appeared in the papers.
We were not surprised. In our minds, we had all already crowned her Beauty
Queen—and Queen of Culture, of Elegance, of Gentility, and of Modesty as
well!
What more can I say about ‘Alya’s other qualities? Well, aside from all this,
she was devoted to charitable works, and this naturally endeared her to all our
hearts—we, the children of this nosey city . . .Yes, I admit it! We were a meddle-
some lot of people, even though inquisitiveness is properly a characteristic only
of small towns. But our town had been small once; it had grown rapidly after the
founding of its large university, which attracted many professors, intellectuals, and
 174 Daisy al-Amir: The Next Step

students. It was our town’s rapid growth that had preserved its original tendency
toward snoopiness.
We used to know the history of every single person who came to our little-
big city. I cannot say exactly how the details became known and spread so
quickly, but I do know that every bit of news was relayed speedily from one to
another, as though its spreading were part of our daily duties. I do not deny that
keeping a lookout for news was a great diversion for us natives. Newcomers
were preoccupied with the affairs of the university and its intellectual life, while
we, the shop owners, the café frequenters, and the backgammon players, had
nothing else to do than indulge in gossip. However, we were not malicious, I can
swear to that. We simply related the news just as we heard it, without any exag-
gerations. This was a virtue acknowledged by the newcomers themselves. We
would dig up some item and then relay it among ourselves, never blowing it up
or adding anything to it. Moreover, we never felt joy at others’ misfortunes; on
the contrary: we felt elated at happy tidings and sad if the news was painful . . .
And that day we were happy, for ‘Alya had a prominent place in our hearts!
She had grown up under our eyes. We had loved her as a child, and our love had
grown as she had grown, and so had our interest in her and her life . . .
Yes, that day she had been crowned Beauty Queen! Silently, our eyes asked
the question: “What next? When will the next step be?” We wanted to celebrate
her wedding, to see her settle down. In our minds we selected as candidates
the best young men of our city, sons of natives and sons of newcomers alike.
However, our conjectures as to her future husband found no echo, except in
our most private conversations.
We thought hard about ways to transmit to her our mental strategies for her fu-
ture and wondered what her reaction would be if she were to hear of our schemes.
Would she realize that they were only due to our love and care for her? Or would
she think us meddlesome and curious, heedlessly disrespectful of her privacy?
One day someone came to me wearing an anxious face and told me he
had heard from a confidential source that ‘Alya had been consulting the city’s
medium.
‘Alya consulting a medium!? I felt great anger build up in my head and would
have slapped the bearer of that tale, had I not feared that this might cause gossip
about ‘Alya herself. The talebearer had more to tell me; I could see it in his eyes.
But I rejected it with all my heart and shouted in his face, “‘Alya has her pride!
She would never love anyone who didn’t love her! Not even Old Man Fate him-
self would let her stoop to magic to make someone love her! She is a woman to
be worshipped! Any man would dream of her looking at him just once!”
But after a while the truth became plain to us: ‘Alya was indeed visiting a
medium. Our curiosity almost killed us. At first, however, we could do nothing
but remain silent.
Who could this man be, whose heart ‘Alya was trying to read, we asked our-
selves. We were ready to kill him if he did not love her . . . But, we thought, if
‘Alya loved him then we had to love him too, for her sake.
 Yusuf Habashi al-Ashqar: The Banquet 175

The only thing to do was go to the medium herself and beg her to tell us the
truth, to help us help ‘Alya and to satisfy our murderous curiosity. But the me-
dium held back and would tell us nothing. The secrets of the craft could not be
revealed. However, we could see in her eyes two conflicting tendencies, equally
strong: one, to come out with the secret; the other, to keep it.
Finally, the character of our old city gained the upper hand over professional
ethics, and she divulged the truth to us.
Afterwards we stared at each other, stupefied:
‘Alya had been resorting to magic in order to be able to feel love! What did it mean?
—Translated by Sharif Elmusa and Thomas G. Ezzy

Yusuf Habashi al-Ashqar (1929–1992)

Lebanese novelist and short-story writer Yusuf Habashi al-Ashqar was born
in Bait Shabab, Lebanon. He studied at St. Joseph University and the Leba-
nese Academy of Fine Arts, where he read philosophy. He worked at the
Social Security Fund in Beirut. Ashqar was one of Lebanon’s most accom-
plished writers and was deeply involved, in his writings, with the struggle
against bourgeois culture and values. He published four short-story collec-
tions: The Taste of Ashes (1952), Winter Night (1954), The Old Land (1962),
and The Parasol, the King, and the Death Obsession (1981); and two novels,
Four Red Mares (1964) and Roots Don’t Grow in the Sky (1971).

The Banquet
Winter. And War. War. Will it ever end?
War is everything. War is knowledge. War is the provider. War is the despoiler.
War is power. War is everywhere, within the hearing of everyone and in the
heart of all.
It is War that we ask about winter, about flour, about light and warmth.
Winter is cruel, O War.Will it ever end? In our village only firewood remained
outside War’s will. Praise be to firewood, for War would be God without it.
War is. It will never end. It has found rest in our eyes, in our houses, in our
malice, and in the beast in us. It is the banquet in our houses, the guest of honor
in our halls. With its gaping single eye it looks around and enjoys the wasted
world.
Today the winter laughed, with the jingle of golden bracelets on its wrist.
The sun rippled through the clouds, one layer, two layers, three, its fingers
moving like those of a guitar player. Its fingerprints stuck like kisses to the bricks
of our houses.
Give us your bracelets, O sun. Gold can be stored for time of war.