Abdelrehim Ali: ‘The Impossible Possible’

I often ask myself this question while I twiddle my pen so as not to kill it out of fear of failure, so I restrain its recalcitrance a lot so that it is not blamed for disclosure and some interpret it falsely. But I return and ask myself why do I not love and say that I love a person who was with me? One who did not let me down until I was certain that he would not let me down.

After my first meeting with the man, one of my colleagues told me, “When you go home, they are going to meet you in the village with horns.”

I smiled at his face and took pity on him. Some of my colleagues who work in journalism struggle to make the words soft for them while I take liberties. The words come to them in urgency while they come to me unnecessarily. They put stones at the back staircase to see the reflection of its shadow, and some wear workers clothes to enter through the door, and some come in absence because in attendance there is no presence, and some win in the lottery, and some lie with the pen and paper and believe themselves. So you see, many of those who claim to be prophets were men or women, and some acquire the status by virtue of seniority.

I say this neither to boast nor to belittle that fellow who I mention in the words or do not mention, but there is a link in this between me and the owner of the story, as we both drank from the same spring of the medicines of the books and the chains of the verses of the Quran from the meanings of the words hanging like lanterns in the cold winter nights in the villages, from the rise of men before dawn.

Perhaps I liked the man because he was the other half of my story with the moon when I told him of my dreams in the city before I packed my bags and left the village, and perhaps I was one of his recipients in his village when I was visiting it with him.

When I lost my father’s return from work after an absence, I went out waiting for him, so he would give me what my father would relieve me of before traveling. Perhaps it was him when he waved like a sea of anger and then calmed down without a leaf falling from the spring of his page in the autumn of boredom.

Perhaps it is the sparkle of tears in the eyes of the sky when surrounded by clouds. Perhaps they shared a rosary that they bought from the sheikh of Arabs, so their knuckles hugged each other... Perhaps.

Perhaps God wanted the seed of goodness to blossom in my heart, so he made the coincidence separate the iron fence so that I could arrive at the tale.

Perhaps God wanted me to put gold in the scraps of my papers, so that even if poverty struck memories and history became a beggar who holds out its hand, I gave it what I once hoarded, for I do not throw away the letter even if its states change.

Perhaps it was the uproar around the man that provoked me to enter the story, between an admirer shouting his love and an angry man throwing stones at him, many fans are still asking about the story!

Perhaps I pushed the door without hitting the bell and despite the guard to see his picture without screens, occasions, “strips” and dubbings. I was raised to see people before the montage, not after. I see them in black and white, I see them from the pupils of my eyes, not from binoculars and magnifiers.

Perhaps I liked in him that magical bag that he always carries with him without you seeing it. He takes out a robe and a mat if a guest comes to him who loves the expanse of the countryside, and he pulls out of his bag a suit, a tie, and forgotten poems.

He makes love poems, weeps, and worships in the mihrab of his beloved. He prays where God is on the banks of the Nile, on Mount Tur, and in the bosom of his mother. In the Church of St. Mark, Al-Azhar Mosque, on the papyrus halls, and in the pyramids. He listens to the recitations of Mustafa Ismail, Abdel Basset Abdel Samad, El-Minshawy and Muhammad Rifat, and reads the fragrant biographies of Pope Kyrillos, Sheikh Abdul Ghani Al-Nabulsi and Muhammad Abduh.

Every now and then he forces you to extend your hand to his heart to make sure that all this falsehood did not reach him and did not change his pulse.

He brings out of that bag situations, books, writers, poems, and people, and on a blank page he mixes them all together, arranging stories that make passion attract a chair to sit and listen, and it is not enough, and neither does the passion wane.

He is busy with his work, studying and following the news and responding to the whole world at the same time without recorded messages, and then rising and looking at the sea through his window, talking to someone there at the point where the water meets the sky.

The capitals of the world allure him, opening their arms to him every evening. They greet him with laughter, bringing tears to his eyes. He sits on the Nile Corniche with his back on the Cairo Tower and writes with his hand on the surface of the Seine in Paris. I am from there where our innocence was hidden in the Book of Reckoning, and the dream was ahead of us, shaggy hair and soul, panting with confusion while we were behind his panting, weeping and laughing, mixed with the warmth of memories and the sparkle of wishes... humming and humming.

He takes out a photo album from his bag, telling about Ibrahim Fathi, Bachir El-Sebaei, Ibrahim Aslan, Gamal Al-Ghitani, Ibrahim Abdel Meguid, Mohamed Makhzangi, Helmy Salim and Rifaat Sallam.

He meditates on the personality of Refaat al-Saeed, then puts his album down and goes out to respond to Mohamed Hashem’s call. There he collects the titles of his library and the years of his life, with the likes of al-Jabarti, Ibn Iyas, Salah Essa, Abdel Azim Ramadan, Tarek El-Bishry, Refaat al-Saeed, Ismail Sabri Abdullah, Fuad Mursi, Ibrahim Saad El-Din, Milad Hanna, Taha Hussein, Ali Abdel Razek and Louis Awad.

In this bag is the turban of his father the sheikh, pictures of figures of the left, supplications for travel, beads from the country's riches, and a bottle of perfume from his mother's forehead, which he collected while her heart was running behind him to ward off death.

In this bag there is an umbrella for a passerby who is tired of walking, a handful of provisions, a handful of water, a pen and an ink pad, and addresses for those who are lost.

In this bag are lamps of expensive hopes, paid for over six decades, which he makes a provision for his daughters and son and those who seek his heart.

Once, as we crossed the desert between the mountains, I opened the car window and ran next to him, seeing his convoy of cars from the front, and I asked myself why this convoy does not bring the same man to pride?

I asked him how?

He told me, “In Humaithra, you will see.”

There, at Humaithrah, breezes were delivered from a teacher to a student who became a teacher to a teacher who was a student of a teacher who was a teacher from heaven, and it is from good learning to listen in the presence of the saints.

I read the nameplate of the man there, his name and place of residence. I knew how he is called and what he is called and from where he comes with his succor and extent, and I knew that God makes happiness and some are endowed happiness and those are selected who take it from the hand of God to the hearts of the poor.

I knew with the man there, where the gentlemen sleep, that the mausoleum is not a mausoleum, but it is a “bank branch” to the disbursement of succor and exchanging bad deeds with good deeds. It is linked to a “central bank” in Mecca and Al-Baqi’ and a body in the heaven. If you want to visit and desire more, then you must give charity as worship.

On the wall of the saint, I read letters, so I counted them on him, and he added, “Among us are those whom God has singled out for glory...not by fasting or staying up late.”

How?

He said, “Do you love me?”

I told him that God had inspired his Prophet to sit with only lovers and I would love to be one of them.

He said to me, “Which one is the sincerest in obedience? The one who obeyed the king in the absence or the one who obeyed him in the presence?”

I told him, “In the absence.”

We were interrupted by a woman present.

Her wailing revealed the severity of her grief, “By the Prophet, sir.” Weeping bridled her tongue, but then the words fought the bridle, “By the Prophet, sir.”

Our conversation wraps up and he gets up and approaches her, “Calmly and tell me what’s your problem.”

She said, “Sir, I am from Desouk. I visited our master Ibrahim [El-Desouki] and told him, and I went with the last of my money to our lady Umm al-Awagiz (Mother of the Helpless; i.e. Sayyida Zeinab) here and Sayyida Nafisa. My son is alone imprisoned, and my heart is suffocating.”

He grabbed her by the hand and sat, and she sat down next to him, and he said, “Calm down and tell me what the story is, and it will all be resolved by God’s command.”

Two days later, I was in Desouk at the creditor with the value of the debt. The man was hitting one hand with another and wondering about the story and asked me about the owner of the gift. I said God. He said, “And then who?” I said God. He said, “And then who?” I said God. He said, “Who sent you with the money?” I said, “One who delivers goodness preserves the grace by giving thanks.”

I read Al-Fatihah, and before I returned, he called me, saying, “Have you paid the debt?”

I said yes.

He told me, “Don't move before you finish the procedures and see the son in his mother's arms. Here our role is finished.”

To talk about the rest of Abdelrehim Aly that is the impossible possible.