Story
If you look at it from the Bosphorus, or from the Pillars of Hercules, the Mediterranean Sea looks like a lake. A big one, yet a lake. You see coastlines everywhere. Your sight can never really get lost on a flat horizon. At least not there. You need to go to the high sea if you really want to be at sea. It’s something I discovered the first time I went offshore. No one goes offshore to stay offshore, though, do they? They told me that under the sea, at the very bottom of it, there’s movement of deep water masses: the cold water doesn’t circulate the same way as the water up here does, because the water up here is warmer. I prefer the surface current. It’s faster. The ocean water comes in from here, Gibraltar, and follows the North African shoreline. The Algerian current goes towards the Strait of Sicily and Corsica, up to the French coast. But it doesn’t stop there! It branches towards the Adriatic Sea, and, once more, towards Greece. It keeps going and reaches Tunisia and Libya, and gives rise to the Asia Minor current. Then it ends in the Black Sea. In this whole journey, only one thing stays the same: the sea water is always salty. Wherever you go.
At first, I saw it from afar, the sea. It wasn’t that different from the expanse of sand I was born in, except for the colour. The waves, though, no they kept moving, and by looking at them, I wanted to move too. You don’t get the same waves everywhere you know? It depends what kind of water it is and what lands surround it, I believe. Then, after the waves, and the sea, I saw beaches, meadows, houses…
If you look at it from the Bosphorus, or from the Pillars of Hercules, the Mediterranean Sea looks like a lake. A big one, yet a lake. You see coastlines everywhere. Your sight can never really get lost on a flat horizon. At least not there. You need to go to the high sea if you really want to be at sea. It’s something I discovered the first time I went offshore. No one goes offshore to stay offshore, though, do they? They told me that under the sea, at the very bottom of it, there’s movement of deep water masses: the cold water doesn’t circulate the same way as the water up here does, because the water up here is warmer. I prefer the surface current. It’s faster. The ocean water comes in from here, Gibraltar, and follows the North African shoreline. The Algerian current goes towards the Strait of Sicily and Corsica, up to the French coast.
But it doesn’t stop there! It branches towards the Adriatic Sea, and, once more, towards Greece. It keeps going and reaches Tunisia and Libya, and gives rise to the Asia Minor current. Then it ends in the Black Sea. In this whole journey, only one thing stays the same: the sea water is always salty. Wherever you go. At first, I saw it from afar, the sea. It wasn’t that different from the expanse of sand I was born in, except for the colour. The waves, though, no they kept moving, and by looking at them, I wanted to move too. You don’t get the same waves everywhere you know? It depends what kind of water it is and what lands surround it, I believe. Then, after the waves, and the sea, I saw beaches, meadows, houses… Days filled with sunshine, and starry nights. ‘You don’t need to leave to see all that. Just look out the window, and you’ll see with your own eyes that the world is all the same’, the people who stayed behind used to tell me. It’s not true. In order to know whether the world is all the same, you need to see it all first! The moon and the stars are never the same, nor are the waves. When I was at sea, there were those who sang so as not to get bored, those who told stories, those who kept quiet and listened, and those who recited slow litanies that would put you to sleep.
Days filled with sunshine, and starry nights. ‘You don’t need to leave to see all that. Just look out the window, and you’ll see with your own eyes that the world is all the same’, the people who stayed behind used to tell me. It’s not true. In order to know whether the world is all the same, you need to see it all first! The moon and the stars are never the same, nor are the waves. When I was at sea, there were those who sang so as not to get bored, those who told stories, those who kept quiet and listened, and those who recited slow litanies that would put you to sleep.I would leave all those words and those mixed, and yet understandable tongues behind me, and I would watch the sea. On one of those journeys I’d heard of some strange sea creatures, half women and half fish. Sirens they called them. I wanted to see if they truly existed and if their chant was as they described it. I was searching for her in the sea and she was waiting for me amongst dusty roads and ancient walls! In the crack of a wall in an alley that leads to the square, the square in Cairo, the big round one that’s almost like a full moon…
In that alley, right in that crack, there was a flower that was growing stubborn and indifferent to all that was around it. It was a beautiful red flower, smug and solitary, determined to grow from nothing. Every morning on my way to the square to find a job, I would look at it… almost fearing it might have disappeared during the night… It was as lonely as me and just by looking at it I could feel less lonely. One morning, as usual, I stop to check if it is still there. Hearing some noises behind me and I see some people hurrying to the square. I turn back and a girl suddenly passes between me and the flower, tears it off, and puts it in her hair. “Why did you tear it off?” I ask her. “It was there on its own, it had survived the night…” She looks at me, intrigued. “It’s no time to be alone, don’t you know that?” I had searched for her under the sea and I found her in a dusty square! The siren. Although she didn’t have a fishtail, or scales instead of skin. I want to talk to her, tell her my stories and my travels… I want to tell her who I am, where I’m from, and where I’m going. So I take her hand, and she doesn’t pull hers away…
In that alley, right in that crack, there was a flower that was growing stubborn and indifferent to all that was around it. It was a beautiful red flower, smug and solitary, determined to grow from nothing. Every morning on my way to the square to find a job, I would look at it… almost fearing it might have disappeared during the night… It was as lonely as me and just by looking at it I could feel less lonely. One morning, as usual, I stop to check if it is still there. Hearing some noises behind me and I see some people hurrying to the square. I turn back and a girl suddenly passes between me and the flower, tears it off, and puts it in her hair. “Why did you tear it off?” I ask her. “It was there on its own, it had survived the night…” She looks at me, intrigued. “It’s no time to be alone, don’t you know that?” I had searched for her under the sea and I found her in a dusty square! The siren. Although she didn’t have a fishtail, or scales instead of skin. I want to talk to her, tell her my stories and my travels… I want to tell her who I am, where I’m from, and where I’m going. So I take her hand, and she doesn’t pull hers away…
“Who are you?”, she asks.
“I have many names”, I answer. (“Who am I? What’s my name? Or what do they call me?”)
“Tell them to me, then.”
“Do I need to tell you all my names to tell you who I am? The names they give me say nothing about who I am. They call me stupid and wise, foolish and smart, a foreigner, a migrant, an illegal immigrant… I’m all of this and much more. When they ask me who I am, I just tell a story. It’s easier!”
She looks at me sideways now, but she keeps her hand in my hand.
We’re walking away from the square and the noise. That red flower is still in her hair.
“The world’s changing, you know? Not many people want to hear your stories,” she says with a curious smile on her face.
“If the world changes, I change with it. You can’t possibly know how to get by in this world if you don’t turn with it!” I say. I don’t know her well, I don’t want to argue.
She looks me in the eye, honestly, “Why do you keep running away?”
“I don’t run away, I travel.”
“Is there a difference?”
“There’s a huge difference.”
“I don’t think so. Staying makes the difference. That’s the only way to know if you should run away.”
I don’t know what to reply, so I mumble something, “Men don’t have roots at their feet! Sand burns and makes you dance until you get to the cool water. I don’t run away. I dance waiting for a quiet moment. In the meantime, I enjoy the journey! Men are made for travelling as stories are made to be told and to be on everyone’s lips. That’s why they cross rivers, seas, and mountains.”
It looks like my answer doesn’t satisfy her, so I immediately ask, “How about you? What do you do? Who are you? I saw you in the sea a long time ago.”
“Really?” she says laughing.
“Are you a siren? During my travels, I saw you watching me from under the water.”
“And why were you watching me?”
She never answers my questions.
“I had never seen a woman under the water, in the waves.”
She starts running while she laughs. I run with her so as not to let go of her hand, quick and unsure.
“You haven’t traveled enough, then”, she says.
We walk under a palm tree and sit down in the grass.
“Why were you on your way to the square?” I ask her.
“I go with the spring, and change,” she says.
“People are making bonfires in the squares to welcome the good season.”
“And what are they burning?” I ask stupidly.
“Ideas,” she answers. “You burn the old ones in order to forge the new ones.”
I start laughing, “I thought ideas were too light to be held in a hand, and too heavy to be burnt!”
She’s serious. She doesn’t want to laugh with me. The red flower burns in her hair.
“When ideas are too light they fly away like balloons and when they’re too heavy they can’t even move an inch,” she says slowly.
I add stupidly, once more, “You need the right ideas, then!”
She stands up and lets my hand go. “What do you know? You leave as soon as the wind changes!”
I’m sad all of a sudden, but it only lasts for a moment.
“Me? I know nothing. I’m Giufà the Idiot, have you forgotten?”
“You’re Nourredine the Wise too, though,” she says while she leaves, summoned by the square with its sounds and illusions.
Illusions? Who knows. I saw her in many other squares, in all the different places I went. She always had a red flower in her hair. I would see her amongst the protesting, screaming, and jostling crowd, but she would immediately disappear, like a fish darts through the sea. So I kept travelling, looking for a red flower and for the shape of the stars beyond the horizon. When I travel, I always tell my stories: that’s all I’m capable of, and at times I feel like stories are the ones telling me. I plant words and the wind carries them far away. It lays them down in the crack of a wall, where a red flower then grows.
They tried to stop me. They still do. They always have done. But it’s not like I’m going to stop! Why? Because when you pursue freedom, it cannot be reached. And the sirens do not let themselves be caught.
Illusions? Who knows. I saw her in many other squares, in all the different places I went. She always had a red flower in her hair. I would see her amongst the protesting, screaming, and jostling crowd, but she would immediately disappear, like a fish darts through the sea. So I kept travelling, looking for a red flower and for the shape of the stars beyond the horizon.
When I travel, I always tell my stories: that’s all I’m capable of, and at times I feel like stories are the ones telling me. I plant words and the wind carries them far away. It lays them down in the crack of a wall, where a red flower then grows.
They tried to stop me. They still do. They always have done. But it’s not like I’m going to stop! Why? Because when you pursue freedom, it cannot be reached. And the sirens do not let themselves be caught.