It was late summer when he had to leave home to finish his high school education. It wasn’t until a couple of months later until he started to feel homesick, and started to miss her, so he wrote to her in his mother tongue. He wrote many poems about her, and his first was like this:
“Tree leaves have fallen, it is already fall.
A wind coming from the south took the bloom of childhood away with her.
The sky has darkened, and is full of black sad clouds.
The sun that was almost never gone has come down.
The day has shorter, the nights are longer,
And it is possible now to make up for the missed days of Ramadan.
Moments from the past have revived to my mind
Like the revival of souls back to life,
And have incarnated on the faces of those around me.
I could see the faces of all those I love around me like they have never gone.
I could see a white bright light glowing through these faces.
I could see a smile penetrating thousands of years accumulated sorrows.
A jovial face occupies my entire mind that I know so well.
It is her face, her soul was hugging me, kissing me, singing to me so I sleep,
Calling me “TamTam” as she always did when I was a kid.
I still can hear that name and look around to see no one is there.
Where have you gone? Where have you left? Why have you left me alone?
Tears have fallen down for all those faces, I woke up from a dream I thought it was real for moments.
I got into a deep hallucination; I started to talk to myself, or better say, sing and dance alone to hide my madness.
So I don't see unpleasant looks from people that don't understand the meaning of longing to someone, the meaning of longing to home.”
Perhaps, the words he wrote about her are all what he has to keep him alive, to keep him sane. Other than that he has lost everything that makes him, him. And it wasn't long later until he missed her and wrote to her again, and was still in his mother tongue:
“It has been a couple of day since the last time I stood on your house's door. It has been ages since I have sat down with you on your house's balcony to drink our typical cup of tea. It has been several months since we have walked our steps to the indefinite destination, indefinite purpose. But you are still roaming in my mind like a nomadic gypsy holding his guitar on his back, he barely stays anywhere until he leaves, like Arabic migrant, as he comes out of his country he cries longing to his family, or like a Palestinian refugee that simply wishes to go home. And whenever you come to my mind, you leave me in peace like a yellow Buddhist monk you filled his mind with tranquility and quietness. You still walk on the banks of my memories with the sea sound and on the moon light. You still walk in the best of my imagination roads, you walk and walk in crowd, but I only love to follow your footprints and some remnants of your smell that I am still filled with. I still dive in my thoughts of you, despite my complete knowledge that I cannot swim, and my awareness that I would drown in your lake, but I blindly believe that you will get me out.”
His last hopes that she would help him and get him out were written, he has called for rescue. He has realized how much of his identity he has lost, how much he is changing, but only those words are what have kept some parts of him, and he has forgotten them now.
His next prose wasn't surprising that it wasn't written in his mother tongue. He cannot remember her clearly anymore. It was like a Pallid Dream to him. But this time it was soon for him to meet her again, and it was like this:
“Remnants of a specter have visited me in my sleep yesterday. A mysterious ghost wearing a vestment with the color of local eggs shell. He put a maroon scarf with violet spots, and wore a leather shoe. He didn't talk to me. He passed beside me as if he didn't see me, but before he left me, he said, “Another specter will visit you soon, a beautiful warm spirit, a spirit contains everlasting love, a spirit that hasn't forgotten you yet, wait for it.” He whispered in my ear that it is coming on the 13th night of the lunar month. And I woke up on the memory of you, I wonder if the coming specter is you?”
He couldn't remember her. He has completely lost every memory of her, apart from unclear dreams that he couldn't understand. But he was on his way back home, maybe he would understand now:
“My love!! I have written the details of our meeting dream on tree leaves last spring, but this dream has fallen with the falling of the leaves in the fall, and our meeting was colder than Norway's dark nights in the middle of winter, though I came to you in the hottest days of your summer, but I am still hoping for remnants of a dream.”
He finally met her, but he doesn't seem to recognize her. She didn't change much, but he has. He is not the same person he was, he has lost himself.
