But I am learning to feel terrible fatigue. Sometimes, when I climb a hill, I have to stop, breathless, my feet no longer support me.  There, the yellow stripe on the horizon, in the cooling sky- which landscape takes in its last flames? —Before I can take a look, it will have sunk, forever. And the ships on the bottom of the sea, the buried cities, the palaces under the desert sand - my helplessness suffocates me! - Time passes, wasted - each hour with its only insight that I have failed. 

Lost visions, wasted hopes, so much futile torment - and I rear up: faster! - catch up with the galloping horses, the fleeing clouds! - ah, at dawn the blessed islands, their shores bathed in light! - Where do great consolations await me - where at last?

I urge myself to be cautious: "Dampen your great happiness. Rein in your impatience. Calm your heart. Let it rest..." But what good is foresight to me? - In the meantime, the pain has broken down the dams and has become boundless. Shoreless: tomorrow's paths flooded. - I must learn to walk on water and pass through fire with uninjured feet. I learn to believe in miracles: miracles are my daily occupation. Only in this way can I endure, only in this way can I bear to be without hope or foresight. The day is just beginning: enchantments are in every field.

In these countries I wander through all the rings of time. The divisions of the centuries are abolished, the old monuments become images of incessant return.- What discoveries are still in store for me? - Patience! - Sometimes I don't know if I've been delivered to a martyrdom or to a nameless joy. The abundance dismays me, I can no longer choose, I wander thirstily through the vineyards and sleep under date palms that shower me with their fruit. I touch everything: grass, bark, shells and kernels, the rough wool of sheep, clay baked in the sun, the coolness of the bulbous clay jars, the flat breads that come unsalted and warm from the round ovens, the hissing iron, the lions’ heads made of stone, the blue pearls, the amulets - everything with undivided tenderness. I hold the wind in the bushes and bend over the dark depths of wells. No memories tie threads, no names bring back acquaintences, and the light of these blessed days is so clear that no shadow comes between me and these objects: I encounter them unmediated.

I walk on, a valley opens up, the slopes to the left are striped with terraces, to the right square, yellow fields, a huddled herd of mud houses, above the white mosque crowned by a blue-green dome. The valley exit is closed off by a white mountain wall. The sky is transparent, melting light. And I look - absorption, painless silence - and hear the spheres circling. Wonderful interweaving of stripes of light that are born with the evening. and haunt the immaculate vault, innocent as young animals, eerily graceful as mist dancing at the edge of the forest, swift and sparkling as fireballs. The mountain wall has become a brazen shield, loneliness crackles in flashes around its edge.

My tired eyes return to take in the whole valley, the slopes are plunged into darkness, the terrasses are gone, the fields are sunk into sleep -, the white mosque -, a pale crescent moon -, the night's peace is as gentle as dew.

In an early hour, I hear the singing of Norias— I’ve come from the stone desert, from a long twilight—, the sun was a pupa and lay motionless at the dividing line between day and night. Cold and powerless light held the plain in a leaden embrace. The stone desert: it is poor land, where withered tufts of grass constantly gasp for breath and scatter their seeds to the wind like thirsty cries... My path finally wound over bare rock slabs that resembled the backs of turtles. In the east, where the ball of the sun still lingered lifeless, I knew that the world was unborn, under floods of sand. - The journey in the twilight lasted so long -, my courage began to sink. - Then I heard from far away, but clearly and unmistakably, the singing of great water wheels: a beam laboriously turning on its axis, the creaking of wooden spokes -, and gurgling floods, from the river current caught and scooped into clattering shovels, carried up in the swing of the mighty rotating wheel, poured out and fed in smoothed wooden troughs to the canals, to the fields, to the waiting gardens. A whole network of canals spreads out over the green earth, where the music of the water was like the sweet sound of strings! And the serene cheerfulness of that morning... Lambs played on a strip of meadow, wooly sheepdogs circled the herd that slowly moved towards the hills. Shepherds in large coats of stiff felt, and farmers behind the spiked plough that, pulled by a pair of oxen, threw a thin fringe of foaming clods. Unveiled women climbed down to the river bank, their necks bent under springy yokes weighted by two buckets. Others, with clay pots on their heads and one hand on their hips, walked the paths between banana leaves. And everywhere a web of silvery veins, as far as the eye could see - in a distant field a man in a white tarboosh walked, urging his donkeys on with harsh calls. The broad shadow of the norias moved slowly across the fields like the hand of a sundial. Across the river, on the hill steps, lay the white city, bathed in cobalt light. 

***

Am I surprised that my eyes sometimes want to go blind, to take refuge in a motionless moon valley?- But soon enough I’m looking for jackals in the deserts of Mesopotamia, where the old canals have silted up, the old dams have collapsed, the rivers have changed their course and the cities that once fed them on their banks have crumbled into dust and sank. I am shooting wild ducks in the swamps of Birs Nimrod, I am resting in the shadow of the Tower of Babel, and in the morning I enter the dead streets, climb the torn hill where the castle and temple once stood, and look in vain for the hanging gardens. There is the Processional Way paved with gold: grass overgrows the tiles, on which a shepherd boy sleeps, his head resting on the back of his lamb. Boy Daniel, look up - that I may meet the innocence of your eyes! - I have stayed too long in this place that has gathered together the seven wonders of the world and the splendor of sin.- Boy Daniel, look up - you and I, we will not be afraid. The king of Babylon has lost his rights, the stone of Hammurabi lies in ruins, grass grows in the temple courtyards, the princesses sleep next to debtors, the gates of the prisons are open, and you have climbed out of the pit unharmed. Let us not be afraid, let us not be afraid! Ah, the confusion of languages, the splendor of sin! - David, your voice can no longer move the king's heart…

What am I still listening to? - An inhuman silence, and outside the desert wind, constant as the tide, blows yellow sand over the last ramparts. I must shake off the dust from my feet, I am touched by fear - by a fear of what? - of a world long since corrupted, long since sunk into ashes? I am setting off on a journey south, where royal cemeteries await, graves filled to the brim with ownerless riches. It would be a pleasure to rummage through the gold that has fooled thieves, and to let the precious stones, pearls, necklaces, bracelets and browbands, the snakeheads of precious clasps slip through my hands. The necklace of lapis lazuli, intended for the pale beauty of a princess - useless as a rosary, and the diamond diadem that no longer adorns curled locks: I will be intoxicated by the transience of the royal houses, I will breathe the incense scent of blown ashes. And finally I will descend into the dead riverbed, to the rustling lizards and will hear jackals barking in the night. The journey will end in the Shatt-el-Arab, in the fever swamps of Bassorah. There the ferries set off in the moonlight and the pearl fishermen of Kuwait unfurl the sails of their frail boats. Yes, this journey will come to an end one day, one day I will reach the shore of the sea, the coast of the Gulf of Persia, and my eyes will see nothing but the round horizon. There, between the sky and the water’s surface, oblique rays climb up and down, saturated with muted light. In this city there is abundance, the sea brings pearls and shimmering food to the shore, the fishermen effortlessly pull in their heavy nets, and the treasures of Arabia pile up in the bazaar. Hospitality welcomes the stranger. - Sea-blue Kuwait! - I will quench my thirst with donkey’s milk and tempt my hunger with unknown spices. I await the heat of your winds, the refreshment of your painted fans -, a pale faint awaits me -

And I will stroll to the harbor in the evening when the ships return home. I will see them turn into the graceful bay with fluttering white sails. Light cheerfulness of evenings… What enchantments shall I turn to? - In that city there will be unheard-of poisons, I will sink into a sleep I have never known - laughter will shake my dreams, I will be a tightrope walker at dizzying heights above the people of the marketplace. In what arts shall I practice, in what joys, in what oblivion! - Jugglers, magicians, firebreathers, snake charmers, I no longer distrust your knowledge: it can be learned with the hashish-eaters and the opium smokers, one can taste the death of mortal rapture... ah, terrible relief! - My temples burst, I must dispel the accumulated images, the accumulated torments -, rock myself on suspension bridges -, bathe in cool foam crests. Look at the tail of the comets and how they hiss and die out -, the sea smooths out and longs for the moon -, I play with silver-bearded dolphins -, I sink, there’s no more painful breathing, a gently rolling tide carries me away. - What else should I expect, what love is there still waiting for me?

Flee, flee -, flee -, covered in sweat, I kneel in the wind, where should I turn?

-Mother! - But that’s not how one behaves...

Samaritans came along the road and picked me up. - "Poor you, where are you going?" - I had to lie: the city of Kuwait, the happy coasts -, little consolation to them! - No scornful smiles on your mouths? - Why don't you do your duty and show me mercy? - Give me water for my thirsty eyes!

*****