IF UNCLE YUSSEF DIDN’T COME

The sea sits beside Ahm Yussef
who only kisses Belmont[1] girls.
When I told him I'm afraid of death, he told me “you're an idiot.”
And because I leave my father home, busy with his loneliness, I've secretly made Ahm Yussef my father and haven't told him.

A priest, and the earth his monastery,
sitting in the Crystal Coffee Shop, chatting with the skies,
his prayers like a stone thrown at a pane of glass.
However, when you see someone angry at sailboats, heading off to deep water…
you will recognize Ahm Yussef.

I came today and didn't find him.
I asked Ahm Khamis , the waiter. He told me he hadn't come yet.
It's always like that: Even when he's sitting right there, I feel he hasn't come yet.

I used to sit at his feet and he would talk about the girls I love: young, their bodies trees of unripe fruits, their bones like pigeon bones, their smell, the taste of the sea in January. “ ‘Il tempo di mele’ ” he said to me in Italian, the age of apples.

I used to see him going to the sea to bathe at midnight, swimming in girls' nectar, the girls who swam all day, concealing their transparent bathing suits in the shy sea.

He comes out drunk, filling his bottles for the road, and when the bottles are empty, he’ll wake up frightened, gasping: “Volio una donna,” I want a woman.

If Ahm Yussef didn't come, many things wouldn't change.
We would just prepare a big funeral, sit playing chess along the corniche.
Everyone would talk about his girlfriend, his last haircut,
and once this speech poked the white space inside us we call sorrow, we’d remember we'd forgotten Ahm Yussef…. all alone.

The sky will be one solitary bed for him to stretch his body as he likes,
and a dark cloud will make the warmest blanket when his belly's bare.
In heaven he'll grow bored with all the naked girls and unforbidden wine, so he'll try to turn heaven into a perfect copy of the Crystal. And he'll treat the angels to lentils!
I picture him now reeling in the stars with a fishing pole, a bottle of beer beside him, laughing so hard at me when he sees me pass, smelling of girls.


[1]Belmont is a brand of Egyptian cigarette.