GREY // MAHMOUD NASR

Red, stark amidst the swarms of grey. Colossal white walls. A deluge of indistinct faces. And then—red.

It shouldn’t have been there; grey was the only color allowed within this white immensity. I still wonder how she managed to keep it on, that little girl with a red ribbon in her hair. Did the clothing officers fail to notice it? Or did they let it pass, granting her a miserable last jot of luxury? 

It was this red that woke me up, pointing out the monstrosity that reigned within me. When it was all grey, it was easy. It was normal. It was a mere cleansing of the dirt from all the white, producing it anew and shimmering—purified.

But now, how can I destroy this red ribbon? This innocent, fiery, and zestful color.

And then my hands were red. Their faces were red. Their clothes were red. I only saw red. At the back of my eyes, it was flashing red. My ears were blaring, ‘RED’. The confines of my mind were swamped with red. My heart seeped in red. I was bathing in red. Despite all the blood that I’ve shed, I’ve never seen this red. 

Ten . . . Nine . . . Eight . . . Seven . . . Six . . . Five . . . Four . . . Three . . . Two . . . One. 
I pressed the button—red. I heard the screams—red. 
And then I saw no red. Wiped. Cleaned. Gone.

White.

SANDSTORM // HANAA MANSOURI

"Don't breathe with your nose and mouth uncovered"
And when you do it tastes like burnt bread
You feel like the inside of an old old box
Your stomach bounces against your diaphragm
Your esophagus is half its normal size
There's a stone stuck between your lungs
Rocks rattle inside your skull
Sending scorpions
Snakes
Cacti
Sand swishing
Around like rocks in a jar
Somewhere in the middle 
There's a palm tree
But it gets held onto until it dissipates
Disappears
Disintegrates
Like that mirage you saw five minutes ago
"Don't think about it"

DAY 2 // HAYAT

The sum of formalities we tie ourselves into is just a sum of things to hang on to, some language in case we lost our spoken or written ones one day. All the thank yous, pleases, door holdings, these are a language of their own semantics cannot categorise, I call them a thread of human language, in fact I think they are the most humane ones, the most original and raw ones. Deprived from grammar rules, history and origins. Their origins are the first human, probably. Adam being too yearning for heavens and Eve trying to comfort him and the only way to do so is to pass her palm on his shoulder, asexual, missing any form of obligation for Adam to return when receiving, insignificant but significant at the same time. Something people who go on Oprah and write books about how to know the secret of a woman’s crossing her legs in front of you try to explain, the cheap books market holders. Body language, common language, whatever it is they call it. 

To wave is to want attention, to say hello, to prove you’re here. To nod is to say yes, to sex, to mass murder, to mass production of wide-screen televisions. 

I am crossed legs, frowning shouldered, blank faced now. It’s almost midnight and I am okay with living, I will go downstairs and chit chat with my parents whose bodies will be positioned in a way which they don’t position in front of everyone, for the parties to go on. I will say goodnight, leave a faint smile and squeeze my palm on the mug of tea I will take to my room with me. In a best-seller, I am barely mentioned, my understanding of this all doesn’t mean anything, unless I take it to a publisher to polish it and promote it to be the book of the books, the one which will get you company in bed, let you know when to tell your husband to stop stealing your money, tell you the secret of the secrets of why politicians always look down and then straight into the camera when deciding on a new war, because after knowing why and how we shake hands, rest our faces on our hands when being told we have six weeks to live, we would know things other don’t. Or maybe just be more careful next time we hold someone’s hand, maybe that would dodge us another pinch in the heart.  Be more careful to not huddle on our knees and kiss a stranger’s feet next time a stranger tells us what we write keeps them from tearing their wrists open, that would make us look to vulnerable, too out of place. Keep your shoulders proud for people to be more attracted to how you have your shit together through your spine, always smile, always position your body in a way to show that you’re playing the role and you’re okay with it, you’re having a good day, a good day.

WATER // RAGHAD

Today, I am 70% made up of acid.

I wake up and the walls of my belly are caving in. Everything is rising up until my windpipe is a pond of burning matter. I rage over geographical borders. I will explain to you; not everything that’s said nowadays is hallow. I know, history used to draw us into a picture, and if we looked up, it’s holy. If we looked down, it’s holy. And if we hit shore, oh land, all your water was holy. And I’m looking for the point in time where we got banished outside of self-love, through narrow doors, shoulders caved in like shame.

So I look to the north of you, land, and I see a golden crown on fire. It was still holy. I look south of you, land, and I see genesis, I see heaven cultivated with blood. It was still holy. Today, I don’t believe in your borders, only your skies. Transcending beyond your pride, I know you used to offer love in abundance. Arabia-felix, you were beating with joy. But I rage dipping my feet in your Gulf of oil pipelines and green waters, your Red Sea about to burst at the seam like it did for the israelites.

Today today I’m tired tired of your repetition, land. 

When we broke the holiest of waters and screeched into being it was that same water that sustained you. Your motherhood was massacred when you failed our mothers. 
Now let us learn how to belong to all of you

DAY 1 // HAYAT

The history of letting go in order to get in books started with Moses, they don’t mention it, but if you set foot close to his grave you’ll see the crowds of all the words God couldn’t sing into his left ear which he cut off, you’ll see the other half of the truth that wasn’t handed to us. A man’s desire to stay a king, to stay in between the walls that held his mother’s perfume, and just as I am trying, to stay a storyteller.

Sometimes, we need to shed parts of us to stay faithful to the stories we’re telling, Van Gogh and Moses cut off their ears, the modern storyteller misses a step on the staircase, forgets how much sugar to take with their tea, not pack books when travelling, fall in love more often than they should or claim that they don’t believe in love in the first place, publicly, in our papers or in cafés where atmospheres and people with better stories than us come to get their coffee are sold. In the romantic era, John Keats decided to leave Fanny Brawne for his body to ache for her so that his poems would swell. Milena and Kafka never touched, and that turned him to an insect, something so ugly and gruesome that the norm of crushing a bug was created. 
 I stayed in bed for so long the other day staring at a wall the furniture pieces started making noises afraid that my silence will eat me up and turn me into a sibling of theirs, or that’s how heavy my heart felt anyway. I couldn’t reply to the messages confirming the ride to my mother, it’s been over a year since I last saw her but I tell the nightstand with a short hand that it’s because of all that I put into the paper the night before, the paint chips on my eyelids and I refuse to not write again. This is how far one would go. If you’re not a Majnun howling with the animals, if your pain isn’t as big as the world the words will come out dull, the vocabulary will be home-work good enough only.

O ALLAH // JUMANA ALJOHANI

O Allah, I seek refuge in you from being among the ignorant.
O Allah, this life is inclined to drag people into the gutter,
And I seem susceptible to falling.
I stumbled and stumbled and each stumble seems to weigh more than the former.
O Allah, I seek refuge in you from the evils of my feelings, my seeing, and my hearing.
Make the trivial and temproray matters in life seem as they really are.
If forbidden matters in life seemed artistic,
Make me appreciate Your presence and Your mercy instead.
If forbidden matters in life seemed aromatic,
Make them malodorous and remind me that Paradise is just divine in all its forms.
O Allah, Your mercy is beyond all the power of mankind,
Beyond the Earth, the seas, and all that is infinite.
When everything, O Lord, seems like a forlorn hope,
When I am at the edge of giving up,
Just remind me of the reason why I’m here in the first place.

ICH // WIDED KHADRAOUI

This is your face,
a women says holding up a 
leaf from an azemmur
as a mirror
and this is your story, 
pressing dust into my palms. 
This land of barbed questions,
in spite of everything,
this is your only identity.
I didn’t recognize myself in the shade of the Aurès.

This is my inheritance, 
centuries of spilled blood, 
storing it for the alter of the ancient gods.
Cultivating false courage, 
this is how legends are destroyed.
From the mountains 
they still come unrepentant.
Still grinding galena,
still trying to rediscover the 
geometrical path to Home.

The nations who call themselves the free people.
The attempt to eradicate continues,
occupied, then ruined.
Yet history could not be eliminated,
which rooted itself deep 
soaked with lineage and 
the bold repetitions of stories
articulated by women who
can not differentiate 
between
warrior and queen, 
thinking they are synonymous.

For too long we have been silent as you 
attempted to block admission, 
imposing the shape of your words into our mouths, 
and
breaking loom after loom.
Under the risk of collapse,
on the verge of revolution 
we’ve finally realized that we too, are 
also the guest of eternity. 
Now, we can finally master tifinagh* 



*Azemmur = olive tree tifinagh= our language

1. // DANAH GARII

تُعدُّ تُعدُّ منابر المساجدِ
ولا تدري أين إيمانها

A CONFESSION LIGHTENS ONE'S CHEST // ANONY MOUS

I am surrounded by fools
by vapid minds,
selfish chatterboxes.
By rudeness,
disrespect of the third degree.
I am surrounded
with the embarrassments of this society.

I am surrounded.

I am nothing.

[I am back in college.]