Wonders of Childhood: on the Margins of Formation *.

Ghazoul, Ferial J.

Muhammad 'Afifi Matar (Translated and Introduced by Ferial J. Ghazoul)

This translation renders into English the first twelve sections of the renowned Egyptian poet Muhammad 'Afifi Matar's memoir--written in the late 1990s--revolving around his childhood and earliest recollections of life in his Delta village. His mother dominates the unfolding of his narrative, with her tenderness and courage in coping with a difficult existence. He depicts his fascination with his mother's Qur'anic intoning, with a poet's visit and recital in his village, and with the illustrated books he had access to as a pupil. His attachment to his art teacher, and his fear of jinn and animals, is beautifully rendered from a child's point of view.

Introduction

Muhammad 'Afifi Matar, the renowned Egyptian poet, is known for the sophistication of his poetics, and the multiple allusions in his poetry. He is a poets' poet who has kept his trajectory apart from other literary schools and cliques. His voice is passionate and singular.

Born in Ramalat al-Anjab, a village in the Delta, in 1935, Matar attended the kuttab, a Qur'anic pre-school, as most villagers do. There he learned to repeat chapter and verse from the Qur'an in a strict and traditional set-up, where obedience and memorization are valued. Later, he went for his primary and middle school to Menouf, a nearby town, and, much later, specialized in Philosophy at 'Ain Shams University in Cairo.

In 1997, Matar published a work on his upbringing and formation, a text that wavers between a memoir and a poetic Bildungsroman. It is divided into short fragments, or chapters, each recalling an incident that has left its mark on the poet. The work, Awa'il ziyarat al-dahsha: Hawamish al-takwin (Wonders of Childhood: On the Margins of Formation), deals with recollections of childhood and adolescence. In it, books and the pleasure of discovery, along with the sense of wonder accompanying the experiential, are striking. Matar reproduces the moments of youth as he experienced them at the time, against a background of popular beliefs and rituals--from the mandatory ablutions before his father's five daily prayers, to his mother's folk beliefs. Matar dedicates the work to his mother, who heroically managed her difficult life. He depicts her tender reciting and intoning of the Qur'an, her constant household chores, and her struggle to keep her son Muhammad (also known as 'Abdallah) away from the clutches of death that had taken away seven of her children.

The translation in this issue of Alif comprises the first twelve chapters of the memoir, covering Matar's childhood. The other twenty-three chapters that follow depict Matar the adolescent. The translation is based on the first edition of the memoir published in 1997. The memoir has received an award and has been reprinted in Cairo (General Egyptian Book Organization) in an Award Winning Series in 2006 (with three additional chapters).

Wonders of Childhood: On the Margins of Formation

 To the loftiest of the lofty,
 Sayyida Ahmad Abu 'Ammar, my mother
 The surge of blessing in difficult times
 and the noble tenderness in the storms of hardships.

 My heart was caught between the claws of a bird of prey
 obsessed with journeys in the summits. In its height: fear
 and terror; in its advances: possibilities of disaster; in its
 skirmishes: chaotic play between hope and death.
 Wonder startled it with the unexpected whenever it
 alighted to relax, opening up the horizon to paths of bitter
 knowledge and abundant estrangement.

I. Motherly Intoning

When my mother used to ask me to repeat what I have memorized from the short suras up to the long ones, from the 'Amma section to the Tabarak section of the Qur'an, and correct my mistakes with her melodious voice--her face illuminated with joy; her eyes shut--the lofty rhythm would embrace everything with its purity and the world would take the shape of an enthralling rosary of voices and taut harmony.

In the morning of the first day I attended the kuttab, a cloud of intertwined rhythms had been gathering from a distance above the house of Sayyidna, our master. As my steps were getting closer to Sayyidna, the intertwining and resonance of these rhythms increased. The kuttab was a large room in the house of Sayyidna. When I took my place on the mat among a group of beginners, I became frightfully and alarmingly aware of Sayyidna's voice as he was scolding his wife and young daughter who were behind the door. Then, he raised his hoarse and harsh voice with the verses of the short suras. I said to myself: The Qur'an must be a woman, and the verses unadulterated motherhood unknown to men. I realized that everything I had learned from the Qur'an by heart had dropped out of my memory ... so I cried.

II. The First Loyalty

A thin thread of distant kinship attached us. I was proud of him and impressed by his strength. As a family elder, he was commanding, yet tender.

I used to roam around him, fearing his angry eruptions, and the attacks of his demented mind. I would contemplate his strong body with its protruding muscles, watch his long, coarse, and husky fingers-scales and ridges heaping on their joints-as he would fold iron rods and stiff steel with this hands, and as he would rub the basalt stones, and break glass and coins between his fingers. He would make bets with people on difficult manly tasks--from gorging himself with great amounts of food to lifting heavy weights, from pushing others around to salvaging bulls and camels fallen into the wells of water wheels.

His wife was slender and spent--slowed down by her ailment and hardly able to walk. When she passed by and called him with her weak and cracked voice, he rushed to her with eyes bright with joy and the glimmer of childhood. He walked humbly behind her with his head lowered down. I said, then, to myself: Whatever your strength and power will be in the coming days, and in the prime of your manhood, do not let go of your command and do not humbly hand your loyalty except to the weakest and most fragile of things: a buzzing insect, the weeds of a pond, the egg of a bird, the smell of sweat, or the tear of an oppressed.

III. The Chill of the Stressed Letter G

Like a blossom cut off from its tree, I used to sit in front of the ironing shop just after dawn, getting warmed up by the glowing live coal in the center of the big foot-iron with its sturdy box. I would stretch my hand, and hurriedly carry the hot glow to the sides of my ice-cold ears. Feet, bare or wearing shoes, would have left their traces on the carpets of sawdust in front of the shop. After having warmed up the bread my mother put in my cloth bag, and exactly at 7:30, the ironer moved his glowing brazier into his shop. Through the transparent glass, the brazier would be emitting shattered gold and fluid silver. Then I would run as the bell of the nearby school jingled.

When a fair, blue-eyed, and tall boy looked at me and made fun of my shabbiness, and of the country way I stress the letter G, an icy hand clutched my body and the rips in my rugged clothes opened up to the fingers of icy air.

IV. The Poet

In the expanse of the fields, I used to hear them breaking into melodious songs, with what they had memorized from the poet's words. The air would be filled with horses and rattling sabers. The bright serenity in the morning would take its embellishment from the spears, javelins, and battle scenes.

When I saw him for the first time with his lofty height, elegant head-dress, and a quftan flowing with silk, brocade, and rainbows, I thought him a body of music pouring forth words.

I stayed up all night with them until dawn. He was narrating the story of the eagle that had snatched the pearl necklace from the hand of the lover and soared with it toward the seventh heaven, while the lover ran under his shade, screaming and entreating him to return the necklace of his beloved. I panted and became wet with sweat. After that, whenever I saw a bird gyrating in the air, I would always look between its claws in the hope of seeing some necklace of some lover.

V. Confrontation

Boy's manhood and girl's motherhood begin in our village at the age of seven. With the roughness of early weaning from play and poor man's games, our steps begin to intertwine with the struggle for food and the endeavor of melting in the family's sweaty work.

I had not yet forgotten the horrors of ifreets and supernatural jinn, when my family entrusted me with the responsibility of standing at the waterwheel circle in order to prod the cow with the tip of my stick whenever it stopped. It was a strikingly beautiful, moon-lit night when I suddenly turned and found a small monkey jumping around, and gazing at me with his bright eyes. I let out a loud scream of alarm. When my father dashed towards me, inquiring what has happened, I was too ashamed to divulge my fear of a small monkey. I said the cow stepped on my foot with its hooves. My father went back to his place in front of the water in the irrigation canal.

I said to myself: Your dad did not see the monkey! So I gazed at the point of the terrifying danger, and went little by little towards it. I discovered that it was nothing but the shadow of the mulberry tree moved by the night breeze. I felt deeply ashamed with a sense of secret dishonor whenever I looked at the faces of members of my family.

VI. Heart Rending

I did not know that this book would open up for me the gate of laments and tears which would increase proportionally with time.

I was illiterate then, and had not yet enrolled in the kuttab, when I found the book on the shelf of my uncle's house. I took it and started turning the pages one by one, wetting my fingers with my saliva and counting in a loud rhythmic voice: Here is one, here is two, here is three, etc. Suddenly, a picture appeared under my fingers. I brought it close to my eyes to see its finest details.

The picture was of a little girl with shabby clothes, crying and lamenting under a coffin carried by four men. Her screams broke my heart, and my eyes were wet with tears. A dusty whiff of grief arose from the pages, which I continue to smell. From that distant moment, I have been gathering tears from books: My heart is rent for the cries of the dead and the living.

VII. Fearful Beings

In order to go to the school in the nearby town, my mother used to accompany me everyday at dawn to the train station, by the light of a tin lamp with a thick wick, while the wind fooled around with its flame.

We used to walk along the road between the ghost trees. She would tell me, in her persistent chattering, about those who died under the train wheels and how they came out in the dark night to relive their lives. The women come out carrying sacks of grain or flour, the men straddling their riding animals, boys and girls bantering and fooling. She used to say: "If you get scared and run, they will chase you and hurt you in an incurable way. But if your heart is strong, and you recite the Qur'anic verses you know by heart, they will disappear and go back to their death beds in the silence and darkness of the earth."

When my father said that it was not appropriate any more for me to seek protection from my mother, the earth narrowed down on me; the twilight before dawn encircled me with ifreets, jinn, and the ghosts of the dead. I was alarmed, and the roads of escape were closed. I said to myself: It is death and no more! In a semi-suicidal challenge, I went out in the darkness before dawn, and I passed intentionally by the places of the hidden dead and the concealed ghosts, by the hiding spots of jinn and ifreets.

VIII. An Apocalyptic Scene

I have come to know many a winter in different countries, and I have experienced its air and gale, its storming cold, pouring rain, and swift wind. Yet one single winter night--with its fearful events-was engraved in my mind. It came to be the emblem and the indicator of 'winter' whenever the word occurs in writing or speaking.

My father was away on a trip, and we--my mother, my siblings, and myself-were trying to warm ourselves by sitting around the glowing ceramic brazier. As winter beauty was chasing summer beauty, the clamor of wind and the rattling of thunder started to reach us. The rain falling on the firewood and straw on top of the house sounded like downpour, rising more and more until raindrops started dripping and seeping inside the house. It trickled everywhere. As the sky was shaking with thunder, and the waters were flowing under the doors, we were completely taken aback. I remembered what I had heard about Noah's flood, as my mother was struggling against the water and scooping it out with all the kitchen pots and kneading pans we had. But the water was rising, rendering the house floor into a slush in which our feet were plunging.

With an alarmed look in her eyes, my mother screamed in the loudest voice: "Oh boy, 'Abdallah. This is the Day of Judgment!" Images of graves splitting open with their corpses, figures of the dead dragging their shrouds and skeletons, and of the living as they die just before resurrection, broke out in my memory. The horror of the scene made me scream and burst into tears: "Mother, are we to die when father is away and alone? And how can we be resurrected and he is not with us? Can't we wait a little?"

IX. The Escape of the Sheatfish

I did not know that I was participating in fabricating a lie, which the family had to pay for without a chance of confessing and showing regret.

Two days had passed since the strange man had been with us. He had a dark face, very bright and wide black eyes, and manifest body strength. He was working for us in exchange for food, and some money. He was so furtive and silent that he left no opportunity for anyone in the family, or among the neighbors, to ask him about anything that might define his personality.

After having been to the fields at dawn and come back, he asked my father if he could fish in the distant canal as it had almost run dry, leaving puddles of water full of fish, and asked if I could come with him to see it. My father ordered me to go, and when we reached the distant canal, he said to me: "You will be with me when I fish. If your dad asks you, tell him that the canal is almost dry, and the fish are jumping around in the shallow water."

I did not see any fish, and the canal had plenty of water, which made fishing difficult, but my joy in participating in a fishing expedition made me lie and say to my father what the strange man asked me to say.

The strange man said that fish are plentiful only in darkness, at night. Day time proved to be a burden for me as I was looking forward, and waiting for the fishing adventure. My mother prepared our supper and we took it with us. The strange man placed me behind him on the back of the donkey.

The strange man said: "Sit under this tree and do not move, so that I can search for a better place for fishing." I sat waiting, and the wait was long. I was overcome by sleep, and when my father and some neighbors startled me, I woke up scared. They looked for the strange man and the donkey everywhere, but found no traces of them. It was a memorable day in the village history.

X. The Circle of Death

I did not see her relax once, for even a moment, since my eyes opened upon her, and since I became part of her world, a heavy burden added to her numerous burdens. In fact, all her burdens were but one burden which struck her very existence the way tyrants strike without mercy. It was the burden of the sole master and proprietor, the axis of life--when awake and asleep. If she felt sick, he would become fidgety, and he would puff with anger and impatience. He would urge her into getting up. All day and night, she would rush like a bee to attend to his desires--which were stated as commands, in a combative language charged with condescension and reproach, with exaggerated and extreme modes of criticism and scorn.

The house was constantly visited--day and night--by the smoke circling up from heating the water five times a day on the firewood under the earthenware jug. Whenever he slept, or went out, or returned, his presence polarized the life of all those in the household--his habits and moods devoured them all. She would have tolerated all this, seeing it as normal, but she could not tolerate or forgive him smothering her children with his cruel blows. Thousands of times she told me about this; her last words as she lay dying was a death sentence of a unique type, or a delayed retributive justice.

Her husband had a son from another woman in another distant village, whom he had divorced before he married her. The other woman took her son with her during the nursing and early childhood period. When he was seven, my father went to take him back from his mother so he would live at home with his younger siblings.

My father's son was spoiled by his mother, and puffed with hatred for his father and siblings. This pushed him into rejection and rebellion from the first moments of his entry into our household. He was then stunned by his father's violence, and horrified by his merciless strikes and blows. Thousands of times my mother said that the strikes of my father on his poor son left red and blue marks on her own infant son. She took her husband's son and escaped to her father's house, not only for his protection, but also to protect her two older boys. It came to be known by the neighbors as the story of the stepmother who defied the known legacy of stepmothers, by making the protection of her stepson a matter of life and death for herself. But her husband's impetuous tyranny and glowing anger overwhelmed her. Thus, she buried her two sons. In twenty years, she handed six male and one female offspring to the grave, and miscarried twice. She was absolutely sure that the blood of the dead smears the hands of her husband, and twirls around his neck.

Only two sons and a daughter of hers escaped death. They grew up with their half brother, and they all eventually married. When her husband's son had a baby, an extraordinary vitality possessed her. She took the baby on her lap to take care of him. We were all dumbfounded when her breasts leaked milk at the age of sixty!

Her husband died ten years before her, but she continued to tell the story of her dead children. When she felt her end was approaching, her only request to her children, and to all her relatives, was not to have her join her husband in one grave.

XI. The Flood Scene

He stood among us with his short-sleeved, open shirt. His hair was pitch black and cut short army-style. His complexion was dark and luminous. His eyes were somewhat protruding; he had gapped teeth and youthful vitality. He used to take pleasure in articulating words, and narrating historical information in an attractive and smart way.

He was only a few years older than we were, and seemed as if he were one of us. We used to listen, captivated, to his discourse on European Renaissance. Occasionally, he would surprise us with a display of fascinating prints and copies of the art work of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raffaello. It was the first time I saw the genius of colors, art, and design; and came to know the motifs of painting and sculpture. I grasped their relation to the Renaissance and Humanism, and the emergence of Literature and Art inspired by the Classical period, and its aesthetic values and intellectual achievements.

I cannot, now, reproduce the exquisite pleasure that overtook me and made me tremble, making my eyes wet, as I examined the richness of paintings in the Sistine Chapel--Genesis, the Fall, the Flood, and the biblical narratives of prophets and the struggle between good and evil, and the universe of angels and saints. I almost cried as I was following the details of the Flood. My eyes were fixed on a woman carrying her infant, while her son was holding on to her leg. The painting was so wrapped up with fear and horrified anxiety, with the touch of wet storms, and the explosion of earth and sky with water.

The History teacher in the early 1950s in the Middle School of Menouf became one of my spiritual heroes, a cultural pioneer who opened for me the gates of profound excitement and exhausting search for the universe of plastic arts, with their varied ages, schools, and artists.

I used to wait for him every morning in front of the school gate. He was one of a galaxy of teachers who would come every morning from Cairo, and other cities and towns, by train. I never had conversation with him. How could someone like me address the history of humanity with its art, literature, and epics as it was embodied in a man?

In the mid-year exam, I wrote in my response a comment on the lack of precision in one of the questions. I thought that the depth of our silent relationship had created a space in which one can join into a dialogue. I thought he would be delighted with my comment.

The next day, he called with anger: "Who is so-and-so?" I stood up anxiously. He said: "You are a rude boy." And before he could go on, he was shocked to see me break into tears in silence. He said: "What is wrong with you"? I said while crying: "Any teacher but you. You in particular." He asked me to clarify. I asked him with tears in my eyes: "Don't you know how much I respect you and admire you?" His eyes were wide with surprise and he asked me to sit down.

Just before the end of the school year, he disappeared for good, and we did not hear of him anymore. I found out that he was transferred to another city--Cairo or Benha--and I felt horribly orphaned, and estranged. I was particularly annoyed because I knew neither his full name nor his address, as I never dared to ask. Thus, he disappeared in the darkness of the unknown. But his face and his voice remained a beacon for me. Whenever I entered a museum, or an art exhibit, or turned the pages of an art book anywhere in the world, his face and voice would come back to me. I have asked thousands of times: Who are you, Sir? What is your name? And where are you now?

Thirty years later, when I was in Ramses Square with members of my family, I saw him talking to someone in the distance. It was him; nothing had changed in him except a few gray hairs, and a light plumpness. He had the same elegance and grand, inspiring presence. His gapped teeth were the same, and so were his shining eyes. Both he and I turned around, gazing at each other in recognition and with cautious recall. I said to those with me "Wait for me," while I dashed to him with joyful excitement. I was about to catch up with him when the crowded Square separated him from me. I began to run like a madman, while gazing at faces, but his own face had disappeared. When my eyes became wet with tears, I saw the Square as if it were a scene from the painting of the Flood.

XII. The Son of Two Mothers

As if I were the axis of a hand mill, around which a deadly stone moved to grind my siblings, one by one: three brothers died before I was born; another three brothers and a sister died after I was born. I stood between these two waves, rocked by stormy death. I lived with the stories of the ones that passed away before me, and I gulped down the sorrows of those who were snatched by death from my own arms.

My mother fought valiantly to break from this death curse, to have me avoid the violent fate, and save me from the ravishes of the uneven struggle between her and the tribes of jinn and ghosts. She undertook the fierce battles in my defense, starting with the twilight of dawn. She took me by hand, holding with the other hand a stripped palm leaf, and--in a tradition well-established in the practice of professional beggars--she passed by seven doors of households, all owned by someone called Muhammad. In a voice that melts hearts with sorrow, and provokes pity and mercy, she asked for alms from each household for the poor boy 'Abdallah. The offering was decided to be a hollowed silver coin and a flat loaf of bread. Thus, she collected the hollowed silver coins and seven flat loaves of bread. We returned home before sunrise. The fiat loaves were my food for seven days, and as for the coins, she asked an ironsmith to turn them into an anklet which she put around my right foot and warned me that I should never take it off, no matter what.

At sunset on some day, my mother took me to a woman in the village who would 'buy' me, and adopt me so I would became her son through purchase and adoption. They had already arranged this, and the horrific ritual began.

The other woman made me enter into her wide gallabiyya, and then got me out from the wide hem of her robe seven times. I was crying out as I was sliding over her naked body. Then my mother firmly said: "This is your mother; you had been deposited as trust with me, and now I am returning you to her."

She left me and went out, while I was crying out and hanging on to her clothes. The other woman was holding me tight, and trying to keep me in her household. She started indulging me, and holding me in her arms. She offered me a feast of eggs, cheese, and yogurt sweetened with sugar as I curiously gazed at what was around me in the house.

She pointed to a boy about my age and said: "This is your brother Mitwally. You will play and sleep together, and together you will hit anyone who assails either of you."

The night passed while I turned over and cried, trying to understand and believe, trying to implant the sentiment of belonging to this new house. I was asking myself: Who is my father then?

When the sun rose, the woman told me: "Go to your other mother. From now on, you are the son of both of us. If she angers you, or if you want to play with Mitwally, or eat or spend the night here, do not hesitate to do so."

Thus, I became born of two mothers. They shared my love, and overshadowed my early childhood with their warmth and overflowing tenderness. I did not hesitate to move from one to the other. As I grew older, and after escaping the scythe of death, my mother fully explained the act and its meaning. But I continued to feel deeply that I am the child of two women, with double existence, and I doubly succumbed to the tragedy of their deaths.

* Alif thanks the author and the publisher for their kind permission to translate sections 1-12 of Muhammad 'Afifi Matar's Awa'il ziyarat al-dahsha: [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]