Mafluq's Chit-Chat!

Me ...

These days I am about to "crack" from my own self .. after having long been "cracked" by people .. For I am lazy, listless, pessimistic .. I spend the day yawning and lounging .. I move a hand only to reach for a cigarette, and stir a lip only to take a "sip" of coffee .. If I speak, it is under compulsion; and if I walk, it is because the cars have vanished from the road at the hour I walk ..

"Laziness" has become with me an art among the arts .. I have perfected it and drawn up its formulas and rules .. And I have found for myself in Beirut partisans who warm to my idea and proclaim it, hoping that Arab society will turn, as a result of their call, into a lazy, quiet society that hates noise and din .. and adores silence and calm ..

The café chair draws me to it — me and a band of young men — hour after hour ... until the chairs all but groan from the sitting, and not one of us rises except to throw himself into the first car and then hurry to bed, to find in it rest after the "toil" of the day ..

And this idea of laziness .. which I regard as a "justification," a period of preparation for a great leap that will make up for the production I have missed .. afforded me a unique opportunity to think about this society we live in .. How many hours have I sat watching the passersby from the window of the "café."

This enormous human mass runs panting in the streets, jostling one another .. shoving and pushing for the sake of the loaf .. And this perpetual movement that shatters the nerves does not quiet down and fall silent until it has folded into its belly thousands of suffering souls who failed to obtain the loaf .. And this mighty, struggling people ... how much it has endured and how much it has struggled to keep its existence — and its existence is shaken and will not hold firm .. And this crawling train of human beings .. where is it crawling .. toward a dim future bristling with thorns ..

And I wept .. yes, I wept .. and with me wept this mocking, playful pen that has lost its faith in every value and every order .. It wept because in its imagination it went back centuries, to the day the "Westerner" came to these lands .. He looked, and saw the mountains drawing near to the sky .. and his face lit up, and he climbed to the mountaintop, then raised his head to God, begging .. that God might grant him crumbs to live on .. But God drove him away and the heavens cast him out .. So he went down into the belly of the valley and took up his pickaxe, bringing it down upon the barren earth so that it yielded honey, and upon the hard rock so that it yielded gold .. And he looked at his land, wet with his sweat, and saw it as God's paradise upon the earth .. and he fell upon it with his lips, kissing .. and embracing .. Then he climbed to the mountaintop and raised his head to God in thanks, not in begging .. and said: O God, forgive me the humiliation of begging, and accept from me thanks for Thy blessings .. Thou art indeed Forgiving, Merciful ..

Yes, I wept .. and I "cracked" at myself and at the hundreds of young men like me .. the lazy .. the bewildered .. How is it that they do not work alongside this struggling people — they, the educated elite — for the building of a homeland and an existence stronger and firmer ...