A Tribute to Mikhail Naimy

Suha Naimy

28 February 1988-28 February 2001: 13 years have passed to your departure Gran’pa. As one world of Realism facing this three-dimensional world of ours, do you really KNOW Gran’pa? Can you really SEE?

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Mother May has lit a candle today, like every year, murmured a prayer that enfolds your name, like every second of the day, and asked God out loud that she be in your Ocean in the coming after-life. Your nutrition is her package as she yearns to grow in your light “here and after”.

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As for me Gran’pa, I am still trying to find my balance in this magical world deviated into madness by Humans who are your “Fledglings of God.” The nucleus of Mirdad is in me. It is growing and has no place to grow. Can you help me Gran’pa? I heard you whisper. What was that you said? I know I will not be able to Hear you because I am tied with illusionary realities. I know I have to be a better listener. I miss you Gran’pa, and the longing burns.

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“I slaughtered my love with my own hands because it is beyond my corporal capacity and way less than my soul aspiration,” al-Arqash said. Where is the Arqash, Gran’pa? I have been waiting for his love. Am I waiting for Becket’s “Godot”? I am suffocating and scared.

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The half-open half-closed door of your resting place up in Shakhroub still sheds endless questions. However, you come out of these inquiries a statue of stone, meditative, reflective, and a carrier of the millions of rooted years in a frame of oak trees and limitless horizons. Your oak tree Gran’pa is still here. It is still growing and still seeking God. Its trunk is thickening and its branches thin-out as they approach the skies until they are summarized into one tiny dot obtaining its threshold of materiality which then leaps into the dimension of the ‘unknown’ and the ‘immaterial’.

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I often see your shadow roaming in the Valley of Shakhroub, above its rocks, and on the summits of Mountain Sannine. Can you still see the changing colors of the mountain slopes as the sun rises and sets? Are you still amazed by that subtle beauty that cannot be described but through silence? Have you reached the peak of your Mountain Gran’pa? Were the “seven loafs of bread” sufficient for your journey?

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I am still in Zalka with Mother May. Our ‘Trinity’ (You, Mother May, and me), the tripod of my existence, still is, and will forever be. “Once I am, always I am.” Your corner is always yours; no one is to fill it but you. Your light is here to guide the way, and your ‘haven’ is the security that embraces us with every ticking and non-ticking second.

Poor us Gran’pa counting seconds. I say your 13^th is ours Gran’pa, don’t you think?

February 28, 2001

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