To a traveler who did not travel
It is no longer allowed for you
to travel to any other place,
to any other homeland.
I am the last homeland you seek,
the one that grants you
the legitimacy of love,
and offers you peace and safety...
It is no longer allowed for you
to leave my tropical domains,
for my chest is the last sandy shore
where your weary head may rest.
The last exile
that opens its doors to you,
grants you its citizenship,
and feeds you the apple of poetry
and the bread of freedom...
It is no longer allowed for you
to return to the tenth century,
before the discovery of womanhood,
to leave the age of water
and enter the age of dryness,
to move from the civilization of the poem
to the cave of Al-Hariri’s Maqamat...
It is no longer allowed for you
to leave things as they were
before the dawn of Islam,
before the dawn of Christianity,
before the dawn of love...
It is no longer allowed for you
to pack the beautiful time in your bags
and lock it with a key.
No longer allowed
to abandon the rivers that bathed you
and return to desertification.
No longer allowed
to leave the pigeons hungry,
the coffee pot empty,
the poetry books scattered,
the siesta bed cold,
and return to the age of ignorance...
It is no longer allowed for you
to play with the maps of time as you wish.
There are maps we drew together
that you cannot change, or tear apart,
or set aflame.
There are historic places in our love
that you cannot erase,
nor alter their scent.
There is a shared inheritance of love
between you and me
that you cannot carry onto a plane
or smuggle into your hotel room—
for it will explode within you...
It is no longer allowed for you
to escape forward,
to sail against your bloodstream,
against your feminine memory,
against the chemistry of your body
made of herbs and
ancient Arab medicine...
It is no longer possible
to turn again into a dish of rice
in Abu Lahab’s guesthouse,
or a slaughtered camel
at the door of his tent...
It has become impossible for you
to leave the mirrors you entered,
the divan you stretched upon,
the sheets soaked with your sweat,
the bathrobe that dried your skin...
Impossible for you
to commit suicide with your combs,
your rings,
your watches that lost
their sense of time...
I love you as you are,
defying all class differences
between your bourgeois position
and my vagabond life,
between your blue blood
and my popular ink of newspapers,
between your refined breasts
and my fingers that
never learned fork and knife...
It is no longer allowed for you
to stand on the right side of love,
while I have stood,
since the scent of the first woman,
on its left...
It is no longer allowed for you
to mix your cultural fundamentalism
with my madness,
your inherited fear of man
with my inherited belonging
to the party of woman,
your bowing to tribal texts
with my rebellion against all texts,
your Roman towers
with my freedom...
O traveler who never traveled:
When you were here,
time was tailored to your body,
trees leafed with you,
rivers overflowed with you,
the moon rounded with your chest,
wheat multiplied beneath your arms,
frogs swam in the waters of your knees,
birds learned to fly in your open plains,
the sun rose from your upper lip
and set beneath your lower lip,
and poems fell one after another
into the baskets of your breasts...
When you were here,
everything was tuned
to the rhythm of your femininity.
What famine will sweep the world
the day you lift your hand from it
and travel?
When you were with me,
jasmine invented its whiteness,
the rose its fragrance,
the sea its blueness,
the poem its music,
the moles their residence,
and the nipple...
searched for a bed to sleep upon...
When you were my beloved,
beautiful words were alive,
language was alive,
the quince of your breasts
was in endless blessing,
love letters multiplied
like wheat in mailboxes,
children embraced their dolls and slept,
the moon left on our windows each night
a golden bracelet
and a box of sweets...
My lady: travel on any plane you wish,
any ship you wish,
to any island you wish.
But you will never escape
neither geography nor history,
nor the terrain of my body.
You cannot fly against
the direction of love,
against the direction of womanhood.
For I am the one
who draws your geography with my hands,
who marks the lines of longitude and latitude
upon your body,
who defines the equator’s place.
So where will you go?
P
To a traveler who did not travel
