Memoirs of The Lifeless
A stranger was walking slowly on a great sbakha, a salt flat, extending to all four corners of the earth. He had left his car behind, some two kilometers back. The sun was past its vertical point, and as he looked forward he saw that the land was not level but went up in some places and down in others. It was a barren space, a wasteland where the only signs of life were those entrenched tracks where car tires have pressed for years leaving their marks behind. Cautiously he walked, placing his each step carefully on the ground; in some places the earth was soft and crumbled and in others it was prickly and hard. He passed some metal rods poking out of the earth like accusing fingers, indicating boundaries of lands belonging to people who own them no longer. The color of the land varied depending on its salinity, some patches were dark and others light, in some places it was streaky and in others a solid color, but the horizon was the same color of blue, slightly darker where it touched the earth. On schedule the sun was slowly descending and his back was to it as he walked towards that darker lining; the sea was where he was heading.
He had an appointment to keep, one that was overdue and he had dismissed from his mind for a very long time. It was a conference with himself that he needed to attend, and it was a small book he had recently stumbled upon that had unexpectedly awakened something in him. The title was Naikan, a Japanese notion of self-reflection which seemed absurd to him at first. Hadn’t he spent enough time with his own miserable thoughts? Although he set them aside at times, by and large he had been stuck with them all his life. Yet he was intrigued by this simple phrase, “seeing ones’ self with the mind’s eye”, and so decided to put his very self center stage and have the eye of his mind examine it. Foregoing the book he decided to test himself first, which was what he was setting out to do at that moment, all the while keeping his senses at an elevated state of consciousness.
Coming closer the air smelled different, it was somewhat humid and a breeze brought a salty fishy scent. He could not see the sea yet because there was a barrier in front of him, a continuous wall that broke into different styles and colors, indicating where one property ended and the next one began. The only breaches in these seemingly infinite walls were wide rusted gates that were kept shut. He looked to his right and then to his left unsure how to reach the water beyond. He could not hear the waves but he could feel there was something alive behind those fences. So he turned left, keeping the high walls on his right side and the sun on his left. He guessed the time to be after four.
Walking on, the ground was different here; the sbakha ended some while back and he was now treading on ground that was almost white and cars have made their own. Although the road was edged with soft white sand, he preferred the hard road where his feet did not sink.
A short while later he noticed something strange. Standing there, like an abandoned guard, was a low dusty wall left unpainted and naked; its cemented brick skeleton visible for all to see. There was a gate, unlike the sturdy ones he had passed, but rickety and made with simple iron bars, blackened with age, and padlocked. The wall to the left of this gate continued for a few meters and then crumbled away leaving a gaping opening, and the ground was scattered with smashed bricks. The wall to the right desperately stretched to touch a neighbor’s high and painted walls.
Jumping over the broken wall he saw an old house with its back turned against him; its back was to the west and its front to the east facing the sea. It sat a long way from the wall and he had to walk a distance to reach the waterfront. The land here was flat and coarse, and all around was a great emptiness occupied with sand, sprinkled seashells and tiny shrubs. He kept the cheerless house on his right and walked some distance to the far side of this land. A Sudden slope down, stumbling in the rough sand and he found himself face to face with the sea. He sat on this side of the beach for a session of breathing and eye stretching, but a little while later the gloomy and curious presence of the house drew his attention. The sun was a large perfect orange in a pink sky; the only sounds that could be heard were those of gentle waves caressing the shore and small winds hissing over the sand.
The neglected house was a rectangular shape that looked somewhat odd, made with an assortment of random materials. Its walls may have been white once upon a time but were smudged and brownish now. The lifeless appearance was complete, except for crawling ants, spiders that occupied its crooks and corners, and a single Sidra tree hugging the northern wall defying the death that loomed over this house by the beach. Walking up to it, the house seemed pitiful in his eyes, and he wondered who and where its owners were; this place that welcomed unwanted trespassers who left their litter behind. Next to its neighboring chalets this one appeared a pittance of nothing compared to them. Even its immediate shore was not the ideal sandy beach that world class resorts boast about, or seen featured on picturesque postcards and travel magazines, in fact it was an awkward rocky cove. On one side there was a straight formation of saw-like jagged edges pointing into the sea, while on the other there was a round and rocky form jutting into the water, and this rocky line would continue all the way down the southern shore. Those who ventured to swim would meet a hard and uneven seabed, whilst sharp and toothy rocks jabbed shoeless feet. Six black boulders with white rocky tips, in different sizes and shapes, were positioned around and near the coast, a usual perch for gaunt seabirds, home to sluggish mollusks and scurrying clawed creatures.
At the straight jagged edge the stranger sat dangling his feet in the water, oblivious to the small shore crabs scuttling between the rocky fissures underneath. The tide was coming in and the rippling water, an interesting color of metallic teal, was gurgling against the rocky ledge beneath him. The sound was soothing, and as he peered down he was mesmerized by the hypnotic motion of water bathing and falling over rocks, flowing between clefts and holes. Strands of seaweeds were drifting and desperately clinging to his feet tickling him. Turning his head towards the forlorn beach house he observed a wide porch of grey brick and cracked cement, shaded overhead with dried, dusty and withered palm leaves. Beneath this shade were two large windows, each with twenty-four square panes, and a glass door with twenty of its own. The windows resembled large square eyes, and in some way it seemed the house was looking at him.
The heat was slowly abating and a small round moon was climbing up in the bright sky competing with a setting sun that refused to rest. For a moment there was a stillness in the atmosphere, and he looked fixedly at the house while the eyes of the house bore on him with interest. His senses detected some rip in the shroud of reality; he imagined that the house spoke to him.
It began by recalling happier days, when babies held by their mothers dabbled their feet in the water very near where the stranger sat, and children heedless of the sun jumped on rocks, hunting for crabs trying to spear them for so-called lunch. It spoke to him of a time in the early 80’s when this wasted house was but three portacabins formed into the shape of a U; where one was a wide majlis, the second made up two bedrooms sharing a bathroom, while the third was an old guard’s room taken from a former building site. In the middle stretched and connecting them all was a high and spacious deck, with a rope hanging between two poles, used to dry wet clothing, cutting the deck in half. There used to be a shade made with sheets of cheenko. While on the back, two extra rooms were built, one as a kitchen and the other as storage for fishing nets and gear.
For a moment there was a silence, and then the stranger discerned some whispering between the derelict house and another. The poor house explained that the aging land it squatted on was grumpy and insisted on telling its own tale, that its story be told first as it was the eldest, and because there was a time even before this bothersome house was bound upon it.
Minutes of silence passed as the land breathed, recollecting what it believed to be its most worthy of note memory. Not the thousands of grandiose dhows that had floated nearby for hundreds of years, or the whirring engines of fishing boats it had watched every dawn and afternoon for decades, nor the seasons of migrating ducks flying above each year for centuries past. No, it was a coveted memory. A memory that was exciting because it drew uncommon attention to this specific place. Ah yes. It remembered. In 1830, a peculiar Englishman, a captain had paid a visit. Coming from the farthest Yemeni tip facing the Arabian Sea, sailing along the Emarati seashore, he passed the Strait of Hormuz and into the Gulf’s waters. He sailed following the line of the land, watching its shape bend and unbend as constructed by ancient geological forces. He noted each ‘ras’ and each ‘khor’. At this place where the stranger sat – it was no exceptional point – the Englishman, as part of his sophisticated survey and detailed workmanship in mapping, had taken great care to note this tip on his intricate map including its coordinates and a description that simply said “a rocky point… the coast forms a small bight, affording shelter for the pearl boats within the reef… the coast being low, is not always discernible”. How exhilarating it was that such a bare space had been bestowed with such unusual attention.
Over a century later the land was desolate as it was seen, except that in the middle of the 1960’s a local Arab took the initiative to fence parts of its shore, sections that he would claim as his own and then sell them off to others whom ownership of realty appealed. Then, it was in the 70’s that a man in his late seventies – and you would never have guessed his age – bought this land and the two others along the northern side. You see, before they were divided these three pieces were a large whole, an amazing expanse that became an immediately desired site as it faced the inner khor and the outer sea at the same time, being the furthest point of land sticking its tongue into the Gulf waters. “With this land you will appreciate me as will your children and the ones after” he told his sons and daughters devotedly.
How wrong he was, thought the stranger, what sign of gratitude is this to desert such a bestowment to the process of decay. He wondered, if the intricate courses of time and destiny were altered at its point of sale, then what house would be here now? What landscape would meet an intruder’s eyes? Yes the old man was mistaken. Where were those who must show appreciation and value the features of such a land? They have left you discarded and exposed, he thought to himself, but had the eerie feeling that the house was conscious to his thoughts.
The whispering stopped, and for some time the stranger gazed at the seashore, the rocks and the expanse of forgotten sand behind him. He imagined the old man in his outdated thoub, white ghetra and ogal, standing by the shore gazing at the sea. Behind the old man there was a long wall of grey brick that divided his piece of land and its neighboring one on the southern side. The stranger gazed at the wall for some seconds before the tale resumed.
This southern neighbor had built this dividing wall, and when doing so extended some ten meters into the old man’s land, fencing it as his own. When questioned, the old man was neither aggravated nor lifted a brow, after all with the shape of this shoreline and a land jutting proudly into the Gulf “my neighbor may need it to shelter his women and lend them some privacy” he reasoned generously.
Not long after, the old man became terminally sick and passed away, so that this ancient land was packaged as part of an inheritance and was chopped into three with each dividing wall embedded securely into its crust. For some years the land waited expectantly, and except for the few grown boys who came to fish and relax in these cabins, and except for some Pakistani men who illegitimately frequented the empty area with their trucks as they had been since the early 70s, violating its shore, mining and exploiting its precious sand, no one else came. If you observed closely you would have noticed the millions of tiny white shells, now a great deal less than what there used to be, their size only a tad bigger than sand. These tiny white shells, known as sebban, were used to pave open-air decks where men gathered in the small town to the north of here. This was at a time when the town was much smaller than you would see now.
Abruptly the land commenced to describe its sands and the types of rocks they came from, microscopic and infinitesimal beads that it loved and have hugged its shore since it came to be. The stranger could not help but be amused at the sudden excitement in the atmosphere as the land went on to describe the formation of its rocks and their shapes that bore the forms of mythical creatures, which it then admitted it had overheard two children describing them as such. It told him of mischevious yellow ghost crabs that frequently burrow in the sands, leaving mysterious holes around its beach, and attempted to quiz him on the various footprints found all over this place belonging to man and creature.
At this point the depressed house interjected intolerantly cutting off this primordial’s dreary narration as it knew that this acrhaic thing could possibly go on for weeks, detailing each embedded and boring entity lying on its face and resting in the innards of its heavy stomach. It seemed to the stranger that this scene was a reoccurring one between them. Definitely bored and slightly provoked by its old comrade, the old house decided to interject and take the tale into its own frame.
The house’s mood changed at once and it became immersed in its own tale of evolution. How it came to be what you would see now. It told him of one memorable conversation between a mother and her eldest daughter one day, in the early 90’s, as they sat on a maroon colored rug laid on its deck. “We should build a house here instead of these separated rooms, something cozy and pleasant to stay in and hold us”, said the daughter. “That would be impossible; this is all cheenko and wood. If it had been brick it would have made things easier”, replied her mother. The daughter was adamant, and convinced her mother that she could do something with these cheap rooms. So the mother brought a Pakistani foreman to fashion her visionary daughter’s design, using brick to encase the middle space where the deck was and insulate the whole of the roof span. A dump truck heaved the sandy contents of its belly in front of the made-over house where the new cemented deck would be positioned. They added the two large windows and three different entrances; one on the back, one on the northern side and one facing the sea.
After this unfussy face-lift the incoming traffic of weekend visitors, who then came every Wednesday night and left every Friday morning, improved. The house was alive and the shore was tickled by human feet running near the water. Children rose early to roam the dry stony seabed when the tide was far out, clutching three-pronged spears for an inquisition against camouflaged crabs that dashed sideways. Older women wearing simple cotton dresses, with dried henna in their hair and shoes on their feet, waited for a high tide and the sun to set so as to pray the Maghreb prayer then enjoy a moonlit swim, hidden from unwelcome eyes. At times a boat would be taken to the water during the afternoons, where the best fishing grounds were only swimming distance away. An uncle would show the boys how to set up their ghazel, their nets, a grueling expedition that required them to set out again into dark waters at night hauling back heavy nets laden with hamour, safi and sheri fish. It was usual practice for the women to wake for the Fajr prayer, and then stroll all-around the perimeter of their vast land, before the full glare of the rising sun started its ritual roasting of the earth. At times American guests were invited for an afternoon of swimming and casual conversation, imitating the ways of their hosts as they sat cross-legged on the floor, and enjoyed a fwala that included a pot of warm aseeda strewn with fried eggs, a large bowl of fruit, a small bowl of dates, saffron tea and Arabic coffee.
Valuable memories were contained within this tired house that stood now like a gigantic memory box, a mine of gems that were special only to the humans it spoke of. It conveyed to him a sense of sadness when a few deaths later and the growing up of others, the house and land were forgotten with the typical diversions that life imposes. Overhead the roaring echo of a departing plane was heard in the sky, leaving one point on the earth’s face to touch another.
The stranger was motionless throughout the relay of memories the house was transmitting to him. He had no words to offer that would sound sympathetic to a house in mourning. He simply considered, after taking a long look, why its ribbon of happy memories was cut after years of existence. Shouldn’t one appreciate such a granted gift? And isn’t the only way to demonstrate such appreciation by dedicating mindfulness and attention to this inanimate object. Even the simple gesture of sweeping its deck of accumulated sand, or wiping its windows for sunlight to enter its hazy eyes, would exhibit some admiration towards the neglected place that it was. In his mind he saw them giving it away for nothing, and thought that if this place was his own possession, then like Shylock he “would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys”, or in his context a wilderness of jerboas or a sea of ribyan. He heard a double sigh from both the land he was perched on and its fellow house that was rooted on it. Perhaps this house should just crumble and die in vengeance while the land succumb to the tentacles of modern development that will surly seize it and eradicate all that it is. Such persons to whom this place belongs deserve their imprinted layer of history to be stripped and sanded off its surface.
The moon pushed the sun further west, and the sky was streaked in darker shades of red and purple. In the eastern night approached and stars looked down on a dying Earth. He stood to pray the three rakaat of the Maghreb prayer facing where the sun had dipped. Concluding his prayers he turned his head to his right side then the left, saying his salaams, and then bent his head down looking at his fingers and counting his istighfars. His mind was clear after a surge of meditative bonding with God. He felt ashamed of his previous outburst of animosity and lamented his frustration towards people he did not know. He criticized himself for becoming distracted from his own self, which he had set out to do, examining others’ failures instead. He thought of the Naikan book that was sitting on a bookstore shelf, squeezed between other self-help books, and decided to go back to purchase it and see the Japanese take on self-reflection instead.
Standing up he turned towards the dark sea that was coming in to swallow the ground, its waves now stronger, reflecting distorted white moonbeams, and making a point to batter rocks it had been carving for eternity. He then looked at the sad house, with its dark windows. He felt the aged land under his feet. The rip in the shroud was stitched, and he could not discern a whispering any more. Yet, he felt the unhappy two. He felt them rebuke him with their deathly silence and their lifeless façade. So he smiled apologetically and sent vibrations of devotion and sympathy, hoping for their sake that their keepers would honor their ownership and proclaim some sign of gratitude towards them. Then placing his sand speckled feet in his sandals he walked across the exposed land towards the fallen wall, and stalked the sun as he trod back to where he had left his car. All the while he wondered for how long the gloomy land would retain its novel outline, and whether the poor house would still be there if he came again.
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Translation of Arabic words:
Sbakha: a salt flat.
Ras: an extension of land into water, it literally means ‘head’.
Khor: an extension of water into land.
Majlis: a formal place where men gather.
Cheenko: a colloquial word referring to corrugated iron sheets.
Thoub: the traditional garb of men in the Arab peninsula.
Ghetra (Ghutra): the traditional head cover for Arab men, which commonly comes in red or a plain white (some choose to wear a fancy ‘shawl’ type for winter that comes in other colors – often beige), it’s pattern slightly differs from the Palestinian kufiya.
Ogal: a black band worn on the head to hold the ghetra.
Sebbaan: tiny white shells that resemble sand and were used in the construction of decks and houses in the past.
Ghazel: fishing nets.
Hamour, Sheri, Safi: common types of fish found in Qatar’s waters.
Fwala: the setting of food and drink as part of the traditions of Arab hospitality.
Aseeda: or Aseed, is a traditional, sweet, high energy food made mainly with flour, sugar and butter, resembling a very thick and heavy pudding.
Ribyan: shrimps and/or prawns (used for both).
Rakaat: each prayer in Islam is made of a number of rakaat, or units of prayer, the Maghreb prayer (the fourth prayer of the day and performed at sunset) consists of three rakaat.
Maghreb: see above.
Fajr: dawn, the fajr prayer is performed before sunrise (consists of two rakaat).
Istighfar: the asking of forgiveness from God, repeated after prayer and counted on the fingers or using prayer beads.
The Brira File 
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This article was extremely interesting.
Thank you!! 😀