I Remember Elsayyab…

I remember Elsayyab, screaming uselessly in the Gulf: 'Iraq, Iraq, there's only Iraq…' Only an echo answered. I remember Elsayyab, in the Sumerian vastness the feminine overcame the infertility of mist and bequeathed earth and exile together. I remember Elsayyab, poetry is born in Iraq, so be an Iraqi, my friend, if you want to be a poet. I remember Elsayyab, he didn't find life as he imagined it between the Tigris and the Euphrates, didn't contemplate the plant of immortality like Gilgamesh, didn't think of resurrection… I remember Elsayyab, taking laws from Hammurabi to redeem a wrongful act and walking like a mystic to his grave. I remember Elsayyab, touched by fever and hallucinating: 'My brothers prepared supper for Hulagu's army, there were only my brothers for servants…' I remember Elsayyab, we didn't dream of nourishment too good for a bee, didn't dream of more than two small hands to shake our absence. I remember Elsayyab, dead blacksmiths rose up from their graves to make our chains. I remember Elsayyab, poetry is an experiment and an exile - twins - we didn't dream of life other than it is, dreamed only of dying our own way. 'Iraq, Iraq, there is only Iraq…'