Chants and Memories

The day science told us that sounds do not die, that they linger about us beyond these distances receding ever farther, and that our failure to catch the waves swimming upon them constitutes no scientific denial of their existence — from that day the mind, as in a trance, began to imagine: what if a man were granted to hear with his own ears the shrieking of his first grandfather, the man of the forest, in the days when he struck flint against flint and the picks prevailed; when he would fall upon death itself and wrench apart the jaws of lions; and in the days when he built his house upon the thick boughs, and the whirlwinds raged and the waterskins of the sky burst open, so that when he came home at evening he stood bellowing before the roar of the torrents rushing, wailing, toward the sea, bearing upon them the wreckage of his house and the torn limbs of his children!

And the day he vanquished nature: he brought forth the wheat, kindled the fire, pressed the oil, wove the wools, built the ships, and went off trading and grew rich, and returned to be welcomed by the trilling cries of fair women and the chanting of the old men.

And the day he became a thing to be coveted, and people — all people — grew used to falling upon him; and the rounds of periodic wars surged forth, echoing with the neighing of horses, the clash of armor, the rattle of iron, and the crackling of houses tumbling down; and the eerie moaning of mighty cities rose up — cities whose builders had sweated blood — and men took pity on the labors of the grandfathers and dealt gently with the conqueror; he softened, then turned lion-fierce, then pounced, a merciless butcher, slaughtering, demolishing, and setting fires.

And the day of Dido — the day her voice went pealing above the tumult of the waves, cleaving the darkness, thundering and flashing like the thunders and the lightnings, falling upon the hearts of men as whips fall upon the backs of mounts till they bolt as though jinn were in their legs; and for a thousand years the voice of Dido went on roaring above the walls of Carthage:

Let him whom victory escapes die where he stands!

And the days of great Sidon — the day she sent out the white flags and their bearers were slaughtered, and she sent hostages again and their flesh was hacked apart; so the men and the women rose up and heaped their riches into piles and hills, then their throats loosed cries of terror and horror, and they took up their children and rushed into the flames, and their bodies were roasted; and the dawn came up... the fires died down and the smoke melted away, and there among the ashes were forty thousand skulls; and whisperings rustled in the ears of the Persian invaders at which their hearts were torn from their places — and after that the glories of Persia crumbled.

And so... and so... chants and trills and camel-songs, chants of victory and of defeat, wailing and ululation — can it be, truly, that they still linger beyond these stars??? Will our grandchildren, in the days to come, turn a little knob and hear the events of history from the mouths of those who wrote it with their blood and their hides?

*

And there is one voice... sent forth by a celestial spirit that was not flesh, looking out from two eyes melting with sweetness beneath a luminous brow crowned by silvered locks of hair... there is one voice I wish I could hear with my ears as I hear it with my heart, every time I feel the weight of the millstone of the days upon my ribs.

It is a voice that never ceases saying this:

"A new commandment I give you! That you love! Love! Love as I have loved..."

*

And my memories began to unwind, and I began to call back the voices that have accompanied my life in the processions of death and of life... at the funerals of patriarchs and of great men, of the poor and the rich, at the funerals of my father and my mother and my child and my brothers... at the celebrations, in the days when the budding literature would shout "God is great" and cheer for a fine verse of poetry that carried a wink toward some meaning of liberty; and in the hours of terrors and of sectarian strife.

And I began to hear the old voices — the day the end began, when constitutional life was restored to the parts of the empire of the sons of Ottoman, and the youth of Beirut went wild with joy, and serenity settled among the divided sects, and festivals were held in the quarters of the Muslims and the Christians, and rockets were fired and the houses were lit up, and throats burst forth with this refrain of simple, telling meaning... because before then, people had lived in two camps, and most of them would look upon the other only askance and with averted faces!

Good evening to both ranks, to both ranks
Good evening all is well
Good evening

And the voices of the men of the harbor, the day the Italian fleet rained shells upon it, tearing open the chests of those who had massed to attack a cruiser anchored out at sea with pistols and daggers — and with curses upon the sisters of Italy...

And the voices of the martyrs... the day we shut ourselves up in our chambers and fell to whispering to one another their cries of the immortality of liberty and the immortality of free men, murmuring that anthem of theirs:

Ask Damascus and Egypt and Iraq,
and ask, besides us, the seven heavens:
how much have we left in the bellies of books

And after that — how many a demonstration, how many a procession, how many a hope strung into verse or into zajal??

*

And today... I do not think we shall add to the voices crouching far behind the clouds any new voices and chants. The people have grown weary of engineering castles in the air, and so we have seen them cease their clamoring — save for what is deep, wrung out of hopes, or what is far off, trembling among yearnings:

Whether the building up of the Lebanese home; whether the devouring of the long stretches to make life obtainable — cheap, dignified, and precious.

Whether the cleansing of Lebanon of the odors of filth and poverty and disease, and the care of the child, the old man, and the young man running after his loaf of bread.

Whether the genuine struggle to restore human dignity to a hundred and forty thousand homeless men and women — a struggle every man is able to wage, if he hears that voice which lingers still in the air of these homelands and in the folds of the waves of the sea:

"A new commandment! That you love! Love!"