Loves and Kisses 36.291055
Old Mercedes
Hekmat xx
ﺣﳬﺖ xx Dear33.519466 Raafat
I don’t want to design buildings
I am an architect
I don’t want to be a murderer
I enjoy killing things
I am an author
But I am a character
I enjoy long walks on the beach.
Super
*pause*
Duper
*pause*
Naughty
Dear Raafat, Does it feel weird when some people call you Hekmat? I don’t think I would like anyone to call me Raafat. God! Especially in the US. They still pronounce your name Radford here. I hope it’s less embarrassing for me. Do you think if we have Arabic names, we can’t be thought of properly? Hekmat xx
I am Raafat - I am Hekmat - I am the author - You are the reader - We are the authors. “Gamal!” It must be Hekmat I follow the voice to an old Mercedes parked next to a very long segmented concrete wall. “Gamal, Habibi!” Its Hekmat. I didn’t recognize him. It was either because he looked different, that he was another Hekmat, or that I have never seen him except in stories of my grandmother. He was a handsome older man. He came close, held both of my ears and gave me a hopefully platonic kiss on my lips. The fact that I wasn’t wearing any underwear is still not helping * naughty *. “Your grandmother talks about you everyday”, he said opening the door to his car, “Hop in”. Hekmat. The st-a-tic from his cassette player. The type of st-a- tic that makes you feel nostalgic about the death of archaic technology. The st-a-tic before you hear a man’s voice. Poetry. Nizar Qabani. Hekmat recites “Fa ziraaki barru l’aman.” . . . . Pause. . . . “Lissa faker albi yiddeelak aman, walla faker kel-ma, hat’eed elli kan,”. His cassette was an urban legend, some kind of utopic myth of Golden age glory, but it’s here, in Hekmat’s car, in Trablus, off the Tauras Express! I want Hekmat to be a ‘chauffeur’ for a fictional world. Migrating my provocative words through universal accents.
Dear Raafat, How do you feel when other people use my voice? To put it more clearly, how does it feel to hear my words become other people’s mouth’s? It turns me on. Hekmat xx
I get a middle eastern erection.
“The lilies in the backseat are from you to your grandmother, she would love the gesture, and if it’s physically possible for her to love you more than she already does, the lilies would do that too.” Hekmat explains. I almost blushed, Hekmat kept driving, “Don’t tell your grandmother I took the long way home, I just thought you would like a welcome-back tour” I smiled. We kept driving. Hekmat’s eyes. My eyes. Our eyes. See Oscar’s Fair, well the Southern part of it, Medina. It’s magic what the fermentations of narratives does to a man. Everything changes. Milestones shift, benchmarks are birthed; timelines slice and splice forming tangible yesterdays that had never happened. The Fair is inaccessible by car, nor is the Medina. I see. You see. We see. The only trees that seem to have survived the city, “Your grandmother refuses to believe that Trablus
doesn’t smell like orange bloom anymore, so I planted a miniature orange grove under her balcony,” Hekmat stretches his arm and grabs the bouquet from the backseat and hands it to me, “She now thinks that it had been a phase, that wind blew West instead of East for a decade. Now the wind is back to normal, and she had always been right, the city and the perfume of orange bloom are inseparable.”
Dear Raafat, I don’t like replicas. I do not want to be like you. I am not but I don’t want this to end up the way you want it to. Figure it out. Hekmat xx
I asked Hekmat if he knows everyone living in the city. He knew everyone. I knew he would. I know . . . . . . . .I could be exiled from the Arabia. But we
*pause*
can’t.
My Grandmother was the size of the city. My grandmother was the city. I told him I want everyone in this city to inherit something tangible from my grandmother. My grandmother wanted me to see what she saw when she looked over from her balcony. She saw herself in the city, and this is where I was going to start. Hekmat smiled and told me this would take months. I said nothing. I knew he would get it done in a day *pause* tainted love.