Raji Bathish is a (relatively) young experimental Palestinian author from Nazareth who writes texts that blur the boundary between poetry and prose, and shake the Arab reader out of a naive, stereotypically heroic image of the Palestinian living in occupied Palestine. I felt like sharing a particularly compelling text of his from his blog:

The Whistling of Places

1

My car breaks down

I stand, like a fragile creature; scared, wet and stripped naked; completely hapless, just like those before him and after him, living and dead.

I cannot find the strength to change the tire, nor do I know how, since papa’s driver used to carry out these tasks instead of me, before maman wasted all the money, beauty, morals and high standing she possessed. The driver used to perform various physical services – among other things – for the family members, in addition to mounting the steering wheel to breathe life into the fuel, until it waned and evaporated, dead and berated. Just as he would wait for everyone to sleep, to search for the beginning of a ruse among the winter’s mud and the smell of rottenness in the back squares, for the spark of a tragedy and a destructive secret, or a lie that might burn everything standing that did not yet exist, and the mirage (has anyone ever watched a mirage burn?). If I decide to leave my vehicle and escape, there are enough fields inside me that await bulldozers to rummage inside of them to extract transparent liquids that do not ease even the effects of a passing fever, lest we say deadly…with a retroactive effect.

2
My car breaks down
I notice a powerful white light approaching me. According to Mike Leigh’s cinematic logic, that is tantamount to a train hurtling towards me and it will pass from the beginning of the tunnel to the last bone in the body
A car stops. I get on top of it.
-I beg you, take me away from here, so that this smell turns into the smell of a mere memory, or a perfumed deception.
-Where to? Where do you live?
-I do not know.
-You do not know where you’re going? Or where you live?
-Both.
-I have never met in my whole life a person who does not know where they live! Who are you? Why do I imagine that I see you everywhere, in every occasion, every bend in the road, as if you’re a magician or a genie passing by every crossroad or exit or square in which dozens of people were stampeded to death, murdered, or committed suicide…
-No, it is simply that anywhere I live, I try to shape the alphabets of the relationship with places and people and the air anew every time. And as soon as the strip begins to be fastened, a qualitative monotony is born, somewhat specific, until I depart to another place in which I try to shape the alphabets of a relationship…etc, etc.
-Interesting, a truly interesting mutual attraction…
-Then I return to the first place once again and try to shape those alphabets. But all these formations do not always resemble each other, meaning that they might bring a troubling joy or a sticky tragedy with the taste of disintegration.

3
We notice a powerful white light approaching us. According to Mike Leigh’s cinematic logic, that is tantamount to a train hurtling towards me and it will pass, swaggering proudly from the beginning of the tunnel till the last drop of a sigh…my sigh…our sigh, it does not matter.

I chide him with silence
-Why didn’t you suggest that I change the vehicle’s tires?
-I am escaping from such places. There is something waiting for me always, something more important. I have no time, I have no time to put out the fires of non-certainty.
-I do not understand. What awaits you?
-A small child in a forgotten mountain home, at the top of a hill that looks out onto a lake of pearls. The child can do nothing but await me, and knows nothing other than his need for me and my existence, which is an extension of his existence and a reason for it.
-And is he waiting by himself in the faraway house?
-Yes, his loneliness awaits me
-But still!!
-Just as a city of secrets, teeming with the clamor of the question, awaits me. From amongst the walls of its towers there rises up a froth of tears, questions, lipstick, annihilated stars, post-filth sweat, warm semen, the saliva of sweat, the deep green dawn of a tavern, the cries of vendors, the fragrance of coffee and the bubbling of its preparation, eyeliner, eyeliner that runs, eyeliner that stains a neck that has been licked a little while ago in a party that began and will not end…and eyeliner that melts inside froth, and so on.
-But still!!

4
I leave the ever-standing vehicle
I arrive at a new place, one I have been in all my life. I try to absorb its features. I try to shape the alphabets of some relationship with it that had been broken off after I left it, with rituals that seemed dramatic at the time, as if had not been planned for ages.
I find myself returning after three days to the same coordinates where my car is located, and its withered-up back left tire. I stand near it. I contemplate the tire’s emaciation (as in spite of this, Papa’s driver taught me how to use awkward situations as an excuse to delay looking into the mirror)
I notice a powerful white light approaching me. And according to Khaled Yousef’s cinematic logic, it is tantamount to a train hurtling in my direction, which will carry me and my car to a village on the plane of whispering.

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