Reflections On The Arab World - So Much Lost Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

In the beginning the word made man
Keening for Eden where it all began -
Bargain a son for a better life
But bleed the ram in sacrifice.

Forsaking hunts and herds and skins
For riverside cities where science begins
Growing corn to the water's edge
Finding a founder in rush and sedge

Tablets and marks in mud as token
Pictures to sign where words are broken
Back from the desert the prophet utters
What scribes from Byblos seal in letters.

All revealed and then recorded
The covenant that God awarded
All concealed and then discarded
It only heals the broken-hearted.

So many cities but so much lost
So many pyres where books are tossed
So empires rise and empires fall
Divine the writing on the wall.

...


Our barber here in Island Bay
Is a neat little man from Iraq
Who is a lapsed Moslem
Because he likes bacon and booze:
I get to say: ‘shukran kteer'
And he says: 'ma'a salama'.

And this morning I talked to May
Who runs the Blue Belle cafe
And is a Maronite from Zahlé
Whose sad dark eyes weep for home:
I get to say: ‘shukran kteer'.
And she says: 'ma'a salama'.



It sets me thinking about the time I spent
In the Middle East back in the 1970s:

...


Zapping across the pitch-black Green Line,
In war-broken Beirut -
With a friend I met having coffee on shari' al-hamra -
In his backfiring jalopy during a cease fire
To visit a crêperie in Jounieh
Risking it all for a taste of life.

...


Negotiating a road block around a sleepy sentry
With a friend at in Beiteddine and being shot at
Only to be redeemed when a column
Of Druze army trucks came into view
And the firing stopped as the
Officer inspected our passports.

...


Stealing a weekend in Jerusalem
With a lovely curly-headed English nurse
And being buzzed past the Silver Star
In Beit Lehem where Jesus was born
By a Greek Orthodox Monk who was clearly
‘Majnoon' beyond the point of crazy.

...


And spending time in the Gulf States
Half wisely - on reclaiming sand from the harbour
For industrial estates or developing
A milk-recombining plant and dairy
That used the emir's air-conditioned
Friesians as a selling gimmick.

...


Or sleeping out under a crescent moon
On the flat roof of the Authority offices
In the terraces or zhors of the Jordan Valley
Debating with my Arab friends
The merits of dehydrating irrigated tomatoes
For paste while the cities parched.

...


Or Damascus as it used to be
A glimmering but dusty Parisian jewel
And a trip to North East Syria
To the Caliphate where Halabiye or Fort Zenobia
Had been built as an outpost on the Euphrates
By the Romans - and left deserted.

...


And living in Dokki and Zamalek in Cairo
Troubled with heart's unease from loss
And seeing a little girl twirl before me,
Dress and no knickers, on the footpath at El-Gabalayah
Then being swept by an invisible force to
Smack against a bus and lie broken and lifeless.

...


And returning to an apartment block
With its dark steps in the centre of Cairo
Trying to find Clea in the confusion
Finding the right door but missing the right floor:
Starched crisp sheets tousled in Crete
And walls paved with mosquitoes in Mamoura.

...


And back further in the 1960s:

About camping with our Land Rover
In the grounds of Mena House near Cairo
And the yard of the Coptic Cathedral
At Sohag under the auspices of the archbishop -
And one of my fellow student adventurers
Casually squashing a scorpion under his sandal.

...


And how there used to be a Barclay's Bank
In the main street in Tobruk
And we tried to get photographs
Of a thermos flask in an unusual place
Among the totally deserted grandeur of Leptis Magna -
Where the August sun furnaced and forged.

...


And how my mind died to fragments in Tunis
Laid low by sunstroke and dehydration,
Moving into a nightmare limbo land
As the gates closed and the seas retreated
Only to recover to copious draughts of lime cordial
And the wolfing of fresh fig jam on baguettes.

...


Of trying to set to rights more recently
Now time is slipping underneath my feet:


When I returned full of good intentions
Bitter among the lemon trees at Marna House
In Gaza pondering the devil of a state
Of peace without promise, meanness without ends
Presaging dead children swaddled in white cloth:

‘Shukran kteer - ma'a salama.'


Where will I find you my lost world
That youth's sweet scented text should close?

With Durrell in Alexandria?

"I have been thinking about the girl
I met last night in the mirror:
Dark on the marble-ivory white:
Glossy black hair:
Deep suspiring eyes in which one's glances sink
Because they are nervous, curious..."

Or with Cavafy - burning leaves?

"Don't mourn your luck that's failing now,
Work gone wrong, your plans
All proving deceptive — don't mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
Say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don't fool yourself, don't say
It was a dream, your ears deceived you:
Don't degrade yourself with empty hopes like these."

Or perhaps with the Prophet Ghibran
Weighing impulses and the impetuous:

"The devastating wars which destroyed empires
Were a thought that existed in the mind of an individual.
The supreme teachings that changed the course of humanity
Were the ideas of a man whose genius became distinct.
A single thought build the Pyramids,
Founded the glory of Islam
And set ablaze the library at Alexandria".


And all I love, may verse confide
A deeper truth mere breath may hide.

'Books are written in Cairo,
Published in Beirut and read in Baghdad'
Was the old saying - and before that
There used to be a library in Alexandria.

...


And who tried to burn so many truths?
Was it the ruthlessness of the pagan Emperors Caesar or Aurelian?
Or the mobs of the Christian Patriarch Pope Theophilus?
Or the Muslim army of Amr ibn al `Aas ordered by Caliph Omar?

So many cities but so much lost
So many pyres where books are tossed
So empires rise and empires fall
Writing must weigh and measure all.