الخروج من كوكب الأرض

I can almost see him. My shadow. The one who never really leaves. I first met death when I was still a child, though even then childhood already felt like something I had been cheated out of. My grandmother was sitting on the roof of our house, staring up at the sky. Her eyes were open, but she was no longer looking at anything we could see. There was a strange stillness on her face, a stillness I had never seen there before. The years had folded her skin into a hundred small lines, yet somehow she looked peaceful, almost weightless. I sat beside her and held her hands. They felt dry and hard, like old wood. Then my father saw us. He came toward her slowly, trembling. He sat down beside her and began to cry without making a sound. I had never seen him like that before. I did not understand why he kept calling her name with so much pain when she was right there beside him. Then he lifted her into his arms. He carried her down the long staircase, step by step, took her into her room, lai...

At the edge of the world, I stand, defiled by mud. In that moment, existence meant nothing to me. I stood at the threshold of life, wrapped in rage, carrying all I had gathered through my journey: the ammunition of oppression, and the dung of mankind. Before the door, I stood staring at the remnants of clotted blood. I was bidding farewell to the last thing left of me. I reached out my fingers. It still held something of her body’s warmth. And I felt nothing else. Slowly, I turned on my heels like a clown whose performance had ended on stage, returning once more to the misery of his life. I turned to face a life I no longer knew, a life that might drag me farther than this. I left the silence of that defiled room. I left the building. I crossed the outer garden, passed beneath the trellis, and stepped out of the house into a street stained with filth. The eyes of poultry met mine. From the nearby stables came the neighing of horses. I left the neighborhood, knowing that my steps would ...