Write of me, for I am the myth that lives, from mountain rock they revived me..
they carved me upon the columns of the Acropolis from stony veins, and they raised me high..
I am the one whose father drew him upon stone, they placed me in beautiful Córdoba and Aristotle’s book between his hands..
One day, seventy years ago or more, my grandmother had a house in the valley on the outskirts of Damascus, and every summer the soil of the field would give rise to tales woven from the stories of herbal basil.
It was a patch like soft silk spun by the earth, and at the edge stood willow trees that loved their river, bending toward it like a bow, and whenever they took a drop of water from the river, the branch would rise upward to thank the One who created the universe..
I was a child opening like almond blossoms, singing to the earth and to the breeze, and from between the dancing willow leaves, looking at the golden coins coming from the sun..
I stood there with my family, and I saw her apparition in a book on a Damascus sidewalk, they said her roots go back to Alexander, the young man with a helmet like a rooster’s crest, passing by the philosophers of Athens before he set out toward the rising sun..
In Athens they said there were the dream tales of Plato, and the writings of secrecy and truth in Socrates’ cup of poison, and the irony of philosophy in Diogenes..
They said there was the one who lived who came out naked from his bath to shout, in the madness of reason, that he had found that truth.. And on the stone theater there was Sophocles speaking of the pain of the world.. And Hippocrates in the corner easing people’s suffering..
Shadows and an apparition and shadows.. and stories repeated by the history of humanity, and the world turns upon the world, and the columns of Athens remain above the roofs of the world..
Yes, I remembered everything, and the girl with the Hellenic face, holding the small radio between her fingers, leaning it against the trunk of my grandmother’s apple tree in the far end of the field..
She pulled me by the hand, a hand like Christ speaking to me, wiping the sigh from my soul.. “Come with me,” she said.. She took me like a dove beating its wings, as if ancient magic were encircling me, as if the enthusiastic teacher were telling us about what lies between Athens and Rome, as if humanity and love were here, and there the wild beasts, source of joyful survival and curse of fear..
On that day, I felt that every tree spoke the language of the girl I did not know… but she tapped upon my blindness like a cosmic dance, and its rhythm an extension of embraces and kisses! Be silent, son of man, for the saint is praying when the columns of freedom dance in the streets of Athens thousands of years ago..
Behind the walls of red grapevines, like sugar lips, arising from the overflow of love, between the roots of the Greeks and the roots of those from the dam of Ma’rib after the flood.. as between the island of Socotra in the Arab sea and the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean.
The song trembles, and my body follows it with longing... When Maria extended her hands and our fingers intertwined, she imprisoned me between melody and the face of dreams, and a history still beating in this world.. I did not know the language of the Greeks at that time... “Teach me, Maria, for despite your roots, you are also a daughter of my homeland, from your ancestors.. Come, and deliver me to your eyes, like a child crawling toward humanity, without a name..”
Seventy years ago, this is what happened.. As if dreams create their truth, or as if truth creates dreams from itself.. Write, O son of the sea among the rocks of Cyprus, that this is what happened..
We were thirty in the hall, all of us in old age.. Minutes earlier we were extinguishing the pains of time with the sweetest anticipation. And now, across all the years, Maria arrives.. wrapped in the vine of time, to remain the bride of Athens in Nicosia, her work to guard a temple of love dwelling upon the hills of Athens with white walls and blue windows reflecting the sea and the sky of eternal passion.. Her smile carries me across the years, as if what happened in my grandmother’s field a lifetime ago has returned to live between her hands..
Dance, O time of love, ignite! Time disappears now.. seventy years erased... Here Maria returns, among the elders, Aphrodite of the world, lifting us to a throne where she is queen.. Her smile, her eyes, and her fingers pull me toward the most beautiful thing in this universe so I may dance between her hands..
Yes, I am Adonis the lover.. and every seventy years I shall return.. Her touch is a stream of elixir.. Thus I learned the path back through time..
Andrea! Costa, Yorgo.. hold on to Maria.. Come, and you too, Georgia, Dora, Androulla, ... beauties of the world you are, you were, and now you return as young women, when you dance Maria’s dance..
Zouheir