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TITLE: When the Spirit is Free |
AUTHOR: Lillie Haikal |
PUB: |
DATE: January 11, 2001 |
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Today, I was introduced to a very cherished stranger whom I reckoned as my loved one the moment I knew where she came from, way before time smoothened the road to knowing her enough. The moment my eyes fell on her, I felt a demanding urge to embrace her for long hours and to perish the thought of letting go. Her face glistened with distressed tranquility and the look in her eyes inspired me with a feeling I haven't undergone before. We met through a common friend who purposely arranged for our coming together, and who knew well enough how much knowing her would profoundly touch me. I found myself focusing on every word she pronounced during our conversation, to an extent that I sometimes got truly absorbed in her and almost lost touch with the place we were at and the few strangers by whom we were surrounded. Often, I found myself gazing at her and subsequently freewheeling forth into a state of troubled peaceableness. How I wished I could ask her if she belonged to this life or if she were sent from a celestial moorland unknown to mortals, only to stir countless nameless feelings in me. Her frequent silence I felt was not out of preference for privacy but out of sorrow her heart deeply enfolded; a bitter sorrow that seemed to have inhabited her spirit and taken control of her tone and avidity towards life at large. Her finespun accent and faint voice both carried the aroma of my bloodline and genuineness of an Arab heritage drenched in nobility of descent, originality, goodness, and pureblooded pedigree. Her wounding silence spoke of a silent occupation; unforgivable oppression that has been verifying its despotism ever since injustice unlawfully proclaimed its monocracy on mankind. I saw through her the same way a mother would see through her baby, in all my inexperience in motherhood. I needed not be a mother to see through a chagrined spirit; chagrined I felt her, yet possessing enough dignity and faith in her Arab cause to humble any atrocity. A high-flying soul she is for she believes that no burning present can ever extinguish a glorious past, and no bitter today can ever stand in the way of a prideful tomorrow. She knows that kneeling and relinquishing are not thought of and will never be turned to. On one sunshiny day, rightness will dominate anew, as long as the human heart endures and persists. One approaching day, the sun and moon will both rejoice afresh and take turns in wiping away unworthy memories of an unworthy past."Don't forget us, Lillie," were her last words of farewell to me.My dearest stranger smelled of the Arab Syrian Golan Heights. END |