The Visit | A translation of Iman Mersal by Khaled Mattawa

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While climbing stairs

breathing must be regulated.

A short pause in the middle is required.

As for descending

it is enough to follow the banister

to avoid falling.

And when going out it is better

to keep one’s head raised

and not look around.

The person behind the door

must open it quickly

before the one standing outside wonders

what defeated will

brought her here.

Time usually disappears

at the moment of crossing the threshold.

At first the hall seems

mustier,

darker or wider than we imagined.

Is there a painting so one may ask who painted it?

The eyes have to find something

to help them feign surprise.

~

A camphor tree is cut with a shining ax,

then a year at least . . . in the sun.

Shelves are nailed to the wall.

Books and knickknacks are placed on them

to give some people

places that suit their dreams

and that protect some intellectuals from boll weevils.

But most important

is to fill the first few minutes with attempts at conversation

about mutual interests.

Can I change my place, please?

With eyes wide open we walk toward disaster.

There is no confusion.

With the power of fear alone

we pluck the thorn that pricks our friendship,

cemented by translated novels

and the availability of esthetic reasons for infidelity.

~

We will plan a safe coincidence,

and convince ourselves

that our clothes were stripped off us by mysterious winds

and that the body

is only an attempt

to fulfill an old desire for connection.

We will plan a coincidence

assuring ourselves that guilt is an invention of conformists.

We will not celebrate

relaxed like murderers

who return to the crime scene

and do not feel compelled to say a word to anyone.

—I will give you what my wife failed to know about me.

—I will not grant you

what I failed to offer him.

~

He is surprised by how thin she is

so he talks about the transparency of her skin,

and how the hidden kindness under her shoulders

is a modern expression of femininity.

She assigns her vocal cords the task of hallucination

for she had mistaken the harvest

for those green plants

after they wilted.

“Hooked to the dialysis machine

there

for six hours—

the patients around me nailed

to their beds, stranded

without resentment—

I try to find a way to know you

other than swapping thoughts and memories.

Twice a week

I come out cleansed by the dialysis machine.

Without the nausea caused by the urea,

I smoke with greater pleasure.”

~

Have you read Justine?

Don’t worry . . . you’re my sister

and we won’t lose beyond our natural tolerance

for loss.

He draws the curtains

blocking the light from the house opposite.

The darkness is complete and quintessential.

The darkness is final and guaranteed.

I press my fingers to my head

as if about to scream at people far away.

One day I will confess everything to them

in a tense voice matching a danger worthy of pride.

It will be wonderful

to widen my friends’ emotional arteries—

constricted by chronic safety—

with details that I wish had happened.

I will not tell anyone

that I hid from you the old scar on my knee,

the scar

my lover used to kiss

before his ritual of weeping.

Your balcony is attached to your neighbors’

and your kitchen utensils never collect dust.

I did not intend to know your house this way.

The wife

now gathers clothes from the clothesline

and steps on the flowers in the rug.

Perhaps the flowers are still wet

with the scent of two bodies that had little time

and so obtained pleasure from the terror rising inside them.