History of Ash by Khadija Marouazi EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Khadija Marouazi
- Language: English
- Genre: Literary Satire Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
THE SEA . . . THE SEA. I will only turn toward the sea. It is what my soul has
held onto for these twenty years. I will not turn toward the prison gate.
Whenever Mama would visit, she would insist, and when she no longer
came, she would pass along this advice through Leila or other friends:
“Mouline, don’t turn toward the prison. That way you won’t go back. That’s
all I ask. Don’t turn toward the prison gate!”
Then she would add these words—which came to sound like the
invocation of God’s name as one year followed another—with a sense of
suffering and expectation that continues to eat away at me: “Whether I’m
alive or dead, don’t turn toward the prison gate. Push forward, and don’t
look back. That way, you’ll never return.”
But what remains of life after twenty years spent in a cement chamber?
Twenty years swallowed up by the cold walls and the echo of slamming
prison doors. What life remains other than this trifle which will throw us
directly from prison into the hospital, where we’ll talk about it for the rest
of our lives? After the walls have sown their long-lasting poisons in us so
we can harvest those illnesses all at once, those illnesses that had been
planted in us bit by bit. I will turn my gaze from the prison gate and face
forward, toward the sea. Because Fate insisted on taking all of Mama’s
other wishes from her, I had no choice but to grant her this one request.
I
will not turn back, but how will I know which way the sea is? When we
entered Gharbia on that cold dark night, we entered its prison, not its civic
space. We entered its prison cells, not its streets. We arrived in groups over
the course of twenty-one days. We were brought in at night so we wouldn’t
be noticed. Would I know the way to the sea? Poetry can often act like a
compass that keeps you from getting lost. This is where Salah once said,
A prison
A graveyard
A sea
from prison
to prison, I will always flee . . .
Salah said it when the sea was far away. I took two more steps. The
graveyard seemed to be spread out over a hillside, with us on the plateau,
trapped there like the Prophet Jonah in the belly of the whale. But how did
Salah know the geography of this place? Out of all of us, he was the one
who had his face pressed up against the prison van’s window when it took
us to the hospital. Salah looked out the window, smiling like a child who
had lost his toy and was determined to get it back. He looked out and
smiled because his toy appeared before him, just a stone’s throw away, just
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