My Friends

by Hisham Matar

When I was growing up, he had to me the reliable air of one who believes in time, in the human initiative to measure it, but also in its supremacy over human affairs; that everyone, their deeds and character, will not only yield to time but be revealed by it, that the true nature of things is concealed and the function of the days is to strip away the layers.

The trick time plays is to lull us into the belief that everything lasts forever, and, although nothing does, we continue inside that dream. And, as in a dream, the shape of my days bears no relation to what I had, somehow and without knowing it, allowed myself to expect.

“Translation, any act of translation—from one language to another, from a feeling to its expression—inevitably changes the sense. Even a faithful interpretation,” he claimed, “loses a measure of meaning, sheds it, very much as when a cliff is corroded by rough weather. This,” he went on to say, “inserts, whether involuntarily or not, new implications.”

“Even though it is right to see such inaccuracies as instances of loss or corruption, we might also welcome them for their unmanaged expression. In other words, as well as being bad, there was something good and, indeed, hopeful about the event, for, if nothing else, it proves that whatever we touch is altered; that no matter how weak, unimportant, poor, restricted or unfree our lives might appear to be, it is impossible for us to pass through the earth without leaving a mark.”

I tried to teach him not to judge too quickly, that some books, like some people, are shy.”

Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life…

The silence that followed, which was not in my head as much as in my hands, an object too delicate to let go of, brought me to a complete halt.

My voice gave way, as in those landslides you see in the news, filmed from a great height, when after a relentless rainfall everything shifts—houses, roads, lampposts, trees—a crack in the air, and the land pulls apart. I covered my mouth.

As I listened to him, courage scaled the walls and smuggled itself in.

The silence that followed was as veiled and vast as the cloudy sky above.

“At first I thought, to be a parent you have to be an idealist. Then I learned that to be a parent is to be continually coming up against everything that is not ideal about you.”