The Snowbird and the Fragrance of the Desert
When my heart becomes a fountain of blessings, a city sculpted from soft crystal, glowing
symphonies, candles, flowers, and a mass the size of rare suns and distant galaxies, I awaken
like eternal lightning. I write her name into the letters of my own, with no barrier separating
my frenzy from the utopia of our belonging—fragrant as basil, wild as quenching waves.
I remember her with rambling reverie, shamelessly before all passersby, priests, preachers,
judges, and the sultans of ancient times. I fear no blame. I sketch in my mind her warm,
mythical face across Brussels’ green squares, stubbornly and passionately. I sculpt her as a
noble being kissed by rain before the lanterns of Lake Geneva. I hide her deep within the
tunnels of Paris, and recite her like a poem around Rome’s ancient fortresses, and the
impossible cities by the sea.
I paint her as a surreal portrait, challenging the crimson sunbeam, the mirage of brown earth,
and the soft rolling hills of sand. I stand beneath her shadow like a rare statue carved from the
fragrance of Romeo and Juliet. I dip her in the oil of desert tales—across faraway dunes and
the palm-laced oases of Wadi Al-Arak, where camel caravans march tirelessly in endless
lines.
There, I inhale her as an eternal scent, a breath of pure air, a velvet rhythm in the hue of
desire, joy, and the whispers of my serene childhood. Her dreamlike glow echoes the
freshness of the ancient cities of the East. She is a fusion of daughters of the earth and roses of
the sky, a swing from which my tears, joy, and spectral murmurs have sipped for light-years.
In her, I breathe in the grandeur of the Swiss Alps with a rapture so deep it intoxicates me. I
plead for the features of the Mona Lisa, shaded with Sudanese fantasy—like tales of mystic
sheikhs in the villages of ebony and ivory. Like childhood nights of song, and the enchanted
secrets of the flourishing kingdoms of poetry.
I imagine myself emperor of ancient Eastern cities and old Western realms, poet of the warm
South and the cold North. Without chains, contemplation pours me into the court of her charm
like a flowing elixir. I am cloaked in the freshness of legacy and mood, infused with the
perfume of place. I forget my pale withdrawal stretching to the horizon, pleading through the
alleys of my deep memories. I catch my breath from the atlas of my stories, and my soul is
revived by the compost of hope and longing surging from within my sighs.
The ululations of the brown earth color me as a painting of traditional verse, the cliffs of
Darfur valleys—my beloved—stations of endless yearning and embrace.
In my exile, I flutter like the sails of small boats negotiating the cold northern winds. I wrestle
the pulse of my torn poems against the hurricanes of the unknown. I wash in my salty tears,
rebelling against old dreams, lighting the echoes of anguish as candles and wreaths upon the
cold sea.
The snow of the Benelux plains wraps me like a Christmas lantern. I become a pine tree
around which all gather, scattered snowflakes on every pavement without appointment. I feel
that my promised kingdom of rain no longer drinks the nectar of yearning, welcoming only
mighty secret defeats that assassinate me time after time. Her mysterious glances revive me to
discover Columbus’s footprints toward the new world—where the old feels thrillingly new,
and the new, an insistent old dream.
Thus, I whispered to myself during moments of serenity and distraction in the courtyards of
the light’s epicenter. It is the dialectic of life—through her, I fall in love with beauty, and so
the beauty of my soul becomes boundless. This is how the song began. This is exactly how I
was born.
In the cold month of December, the city’s streets and squares dressed in alluring lamps and
colored lanterns. Elegant wooden shops overflowed with chocolate figurines, candles, and
Christmas gifts—a breathtaking scene of precision and finesse. Gentle, refreshing raindrops
began to fall slowly, like rubies wrapped in diamond, etched upon the clothes of passersby
and brides. The glow of lanterns became an unmistakable signature. The pavements
shimmered endlessly, like tropical storm lightning.
The city was preparing to welcome us—to dance in its hall with warmth and wonder at the
height of its splendor and glory. Meanwhile, I wandered through the cells of my spirit,
swaying in the trails of my shadow, writhing at the bottom of my memories. I silently recited
the sweetest savannah songs, inhaling the scent of our Blue Mountains, the autumn rains, and
the perfume of ebony and sisban trees—an incense like the waves of the Nile, with the vision
of sandy islands like incense on the palace floors of the sultan.
On Saint Alphonse Street: Between Scattered Papers and the Pulse of a Heart
I found myself deep in thought, reflecting on the pulse of my heart — wild, unchained, yet
obedient and humbled before the alphabet. I wept with it at will when its pain stirred within
me, and I smiled as I salvaged the wreckage of my elliptical satellite ships. I was engrossed in
the chaos of paper scraps strewn across my small apartment on Saint Alphonse Street. Every
so often, I would lazily flip through the books scattered across my bed — absentmindedly,
like turning the pages of forgotten dreams.
At the heart of my solitude, I was absorbed in reading a tender, exquisite book of poetry titled
Sahara Testimony (The Desert’s Will), penned in English by my friend, the poet and lawyer
Ted Abidiola — President of the Nigerian Writers Union. He had gifted me a signed copy,
and it glowed with desert winds. Another book, equally stirring, came from my Cameroonian
friend, the poet Katcho Fato. Yet another by my Belgian philosopher-poet companion, Karel
Seghers, passed through my hands like a sacred object, read this way and that. Book after
book lay open to the winds of my restlessness.
Through it all, verses echoed in my ears — recited with striking clarity and an enchanting
voice — by my dear friend, the mesmerizing Palestinian poet Fatena Al-Ghorra. Her cadence
lingered in the corners of my evenings. A recent poem of mine, too, had been translated from
Arabic into Dutch by my brilliant friend, the Dutch-Moroccan poetess Nasrin Marbaki — a
mind as luminous as her name. Amid these precious intertwinings of literature and longing, I
found myself typing, word after word, on my Facebook page — conversing with the dazzling
muse who inspired this eternal wander.
Yes, her — the extraordinary, the mythical, the rare jewel of intricate mosaic. I knew her as
intimately as I knew myself, and yearned to know her more, if only to better know the depths
of my own soul. In her, I sensed the scent of noble desert blood — mysterious, magnetic. She
was rainbows in motion, the tides of southern islands, the purity of alpine snows, and the
serenity of the European countryside.
I imagined her as Aladdin’s lamp, and she became one — radiant and magical. I longed to see
her as a bird, and found myself transformed into a branch for her to perch. I gazed toward her
as I would the sky, and she became my canopy — scattering stars across my face in celestial
carnivals.
I whispered her name at international law symposiums without shame, proclaimed it at poetic
gatherings with flourish, and scribbled it onto plane tickets as though it were a destination. I
was so jealous of her that I became addicted to writing rose-tinted poems in her name. I dared
not utter her name even in dreams, for fear it would be stolen by cinema screens or royal
courts.
I would smile, then wander alone into my imagination, seeking her in the contours of the
earth, the flight of wind and rain, in the blossoms of alchemical trees, in the eyelashes of
children’s toys. I dared to discover her on my own. I talked to myself about her endlessly —
so much that I would lose consciousness — yet none understood me, despite the eloquence of
my wounds and the clarity of my ink.
I debated her essence until the youth deemed me mad and exiled me to my fate. I emerged
with nothing but whispers and sighs. I rested my head on the remnants of my illusions, my
groans, my interpretations, my doubts, my aching self, and the panting of my struggle.
Everything seemed mythical on the balconies of my trembling, screaming verses, steeped in
longing and the haze of daily mystery.
I transformed — ebbing and flowing like the sea — a shoreless ocean rejecting brine,
spurning grand truths and history itself. This is how I spoke to myself.
Then she appeared — like a New Year's gift in the frost of 2015. She revived me with her
elegance and wide-hearted kindness, inviting me to watch a film together at the Brussels
Mediterranean Film Festival. I leapt like lightning, excited and unhesitant, without invitation
cards or measured expectations of joy or sorrow.
She sent me a YouTube link — a trailer for a film spoken in a Middle Eastern dialect and
subtitled in French. I didn’t care for the subtitles — I cared only for her. I watched with every
cell, every breath, and even those parts of me I didn’t know existed. Her words became the
fertilizer for my songs, the muse of my day and night.
Yes, I know her well. She is a filmmaker, a screenwriter, a photographer. If I were given the
chance to speak of her, I would speak endlessly, ceaselessly, without fatigue. To call her
beautiful would be insufficient. To call her a unique angel would be a pale injustice. She is
magnetic and gifted — fluent in Italian like a Roman bard, in French with the grace of Camus,
Hugo, and Senghor, in German with the weight of Goethe, in English with the soul of Shaw
and Hemingway. Yet it is Arabic she loves the most — more than the poets of the Seven
Odes. She adores the desert, the nomadic soul, and pride like the rebellious poets of old.
I fell in love with her Bedouin spirit, her African journeys between Senegal, Mauritania, and
the Western Sahara, her European roots, her aesthetic mind, her human heart and sentiment.
In truth, I loved her love, and I loved loving her. She would discuss the film we were
watching — and truly, it was part of the spark in her eyes when I wrote during cold nights,
steeped in laments, tenderness, giggles, and the fading petals of soft-spoken words.
At the Edge of the Evening: Beneath the Royal Street Light
On that cold evening, we met outside Botanique metro station. I crossed Royal Street, heart
swaying like a pendulum, and stepped into the grand library hosting the Mediterranean Film
Festival. The air inside shimmered with hues of a secret rainbow, as if each color spoke sweet
words, ripened like fruit tinged with the letters of my poems. The rhythms of my exile pulsed
through the room — pouring me into ink, weaving my longing into the fabric of the alphabet,
and pumping into my soul a fresh blood of hope and dreams.
In her eyes — those tender, unresistable galaxies — I saw notebooks soaked in honey-scented
memories, and the trembling of my endless ache. Her gaze swept over me like clouds pushed
gently by wind toward a remote archipelago at the far ends of the earth.
The story is long — as long as the stubborn night.
The journey is a dialectic, the size of Utopia, vast like fireflies scattered over my broken
lanterns — lit by the wine of my secret laments and the bleeding joy of my confessions. Yet,
still, we had a rendezvous, ever-recurring, like a flock of butterflies or wild doves stretching
their wings above waterfalls — wings bathed in the gurgling music of water over the edges of
this earth.
