Creeping Darkness

When Sorrows Encircles Your Soul

Lonely, with the shiver of a cold night, after a long working day, that ended around 11:30 pm. When I am happy, lights fly from my heart to enlighten the world around me. On the other hand, when I am sad, darkness prevails, creeps inside my chest, covering my heart as well as all the universe with its heavy stain.

Looking from the window at the deserted street in this late hour of a winter night, I convert my look to the sky, trying to catch a moon. I can not, my ears then seem to hear a very old song from an Arabic TV series, it says;

Speed-up angels, help the moon
Free it to encircle the Earth

Speed-up boys to rescue it

Before the darkness drowns it

I bless "Mahmud Mursi", the giant Egyptian actor, who played in that series the role of two twins. The First is the kind and fair governor "Sadeq Halawany" who was murdered by his own twin brother "Saqr". Why fairness and truth dies swiftly in our country? The mental image of "Saqr" with his rich rural outfit, recalls its contrasting image, "Abdulla Gaith" in the masterpiece movie "The Unlawful". Wherein his image was a live representation of poverty, ignorance and illness triad. The Holy triad in our sad valley of Nile. As holy and ancient as Osiris, Isis and Horus triad. It had even outlasted the Oserian triad by 200 centuries now. I recall "Faten Hamam" in the same movie, when she was raped and conceived her rapier's baby. She was trying to find some sweet potato roots to feed her children and her handicapped husband, when the land owner caught her and raped here in the potato field. Dying from puerperal sepsis in the village yard, she was giving her last breaths saying; "A potato root was the reason, O' my baby, it was all about a potato root"

This lady was pushed to steal by poverty and illness of her husband, raped by vanity, and let to die by the ignorant village society, who thought she deserves her agonizing death being a fornicator. Now, here image is replaced in my aching head with that of "Jean Valjean" in Hugo's everlasting tragedy "The Miserables" I can not recall the name of the actor. Yet, his image is engraved in my mind, while he entered a small rural restaurant, shivering of cold and hunger altogether. He was asking the waiter, with his eyes carrying a mix of fear, hope, misery and pain, saying; "Soup and bread, I have money ... I can pay"

Another image of "Faten" as a farm girl crosses my mind, from "Taha Hussein" masterpiece this time, "Prayer of a Singing Bird". She played the role of "Amna", the smart sister of "Hanady", who was a simple village girl seduced by the civil engineer, to whom she used to serve as a housemaid. Upon pregnancy, he dumped her, to be back to her family, whereby she was murdered. In that movies "Amna" asked a very fair question. Why we kill the entrapped bird while we do not dare to touch the hunter? I do not agree in general to depicting man as a hunter and woman as the bird, it is a form of a stereotyping. However, in that movie, the girl was a real naive victim who lost her life under the motto of love. By the end of that movie, Taha Hussein narrated "Prayer of the singing bird, was it narrating the very same song, in that deserted space wherein Hanadi was slayed"

She was always such an esteemed artist Ms. "Hamama", never spoiled her reputation with adventures with Gulf Sheiks. Unsurprisingly, she did not have to announce a repentance and did not have to veil and stop acting. She was a real actress, unlike many of today's stars who act in movies to increase their value as whore I am afraid. Controversially, an actor who was accused for prostitution according to Egyptian laws, was one of the repented actresses lately! another, who used to be famous for her semi-porn movies also was one. I had always believed that who adopts modesty in his behavior remains modest for life. He deviates sometimes as a human being, then redirect himself. Those who goes for an extreme behavior are always liable to shift to the opposite extreme.

Closing my eyes, I hear rain drops over my window. I open my eyes to find nothing, I then feel and smell the scent of a rainy weather without realizing it. I recall one of my beloved "Nezar Qabbani" poems;

When it is rainy in Beirut

I need some intimacy

you choose the place

you choose any place

a bar, a cafe over a bridge

invading the holiness of seas

when it is rainy in Beirut

my sorrows grows and branches

so, I need some intimacy

I need a woman ...

who knows love chemistry

Me too, I am not in Beirut, and it is not raining, but I need some intimacy. Even in a dry weather, my sorrows grows and branches. I feel lonely to bones. I remember then a verse from New Tastement, when Jesus asked his disciples to stay with him, in his last night in land, he said; "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: stay you here, and watch with me""What? could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" Matthew: 40-41. The very same story across human history. The inspired leader, the man with the mission and faith, usually imagine all his followers carries the same degree of faith and dedication. He cannot imagine that he is very special, and he can do what others will be too weak to tolerate. This is the everlasting tragedy of great souls.
Matthew: 38. Leaving them to his prayer, he came back to find they all fall asleep. So, in his most difficult hour, he prayed alone. He then said to them

I imagined, according to the biblical story, that Jesus knew the next day to be his last day on earth. What could he feel then? What kind of a night a man can spend if he knew it will be his very last one? How merciful is God letting us know not about it. I then heard in my ears the Quranic verse "And the agony of death comes in truth.This is that which you were trying to escape" Qaf: 19.