Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Six November-December 2024.
Arab Poets & Writers
Physical Escape, story by Sherif Saleh.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
Physical Escape
As I was drinking my morning coffee on the balcony, I realized that I had not put on my body. I couldn’t see my hand holding the coffee cup, nor the shadow stretching beside me! Where did I forget it? Perhaps it is still lazily sleeping in bed as usual, or perhaps I left it hanging on the nail behind the bathroom door after my shower! Or… or perhaps the light layer of steam during my shower obscured my vision, allowing it to escape from me. It slipped away from under the towel and vanished. I got up to search for it in the places where I usually leave it: in the bedroom… in the kitchen and bathroom… on the couch where I typically lie in front of the television. When I returned to the balcony, I spotted it from behind the curved bars, walking in the street with its usual slight bend. “There it is! That’s my body!”
I rushed down the stairs, eager to catch up with it before it escaped and disappeared forever.
I don’t know how it sensed my presence behind it and vanished. I stood looking around the corner of the street, searching for it with my eyes amidst the crowd of passersby! From afar, I saw it take off its shoes and run barefoot in the light rain, then it veered off into a muddy side street where all the shops were closed. In this narrow street, it was just me and my body, and I could hear its ringing laughter even after it disappeared from my sight.
A girl suddenly opened her balcony on the ground floor of a blue-painted house, with a rose garden in front of it, and I asked her, “Did you see my body?”
She shook her head and denied with her finger that she had seen it, then closed the balcony in my face angrily. Her confused smile before she closed the balcony hinted to me that she was in cahoots with it and that my body might be hiding from me now behind this jasmine tree… What would stop it from climbing the girl’s balcony and hiding under her bed?!
My body had always been fond of playing hide and seek in places I least expect, leaving me to chase it wherever it goes. Many times, it has gotten me into countless problems. Once, he spent the night at a café on Faisal Street drinking tea with milk.. and once he was trapped in the bathroom of our neighbor’s apartment when her husband suddenly arrived… I don’t know what terrifies him and makes him flee from me like this?! Why doesn’t he give me a complete chance to wear him? Afterwards, we could both go wherever we want!
Once, I barely managed to put on the right leg before he rushed away, escaping before I could finish with the left… He took off, chasing a girl through the alleys between the neighborhoods until he dashed into her father’s butcher shop, where the father lunged for the cleaver and chased him with his ugly dog. On another occasion, after I had only put on half of my head, my body leaped out of the window and vanished for a whole week, loitering on the beach of Alexandria.
Why does he flee from me like this? Is he looking for someone else to wear? He feels that we do not belong to each other! Neither of us was made for the other! It’s as if some mistake has bound us to a shared fate… a fateful coincidence that brought us together without any harmony, and neither of us has the right to object to the other!
I left an abandoned alley in the pouring rain, hearing its panting echo in my ears, as if it were running nearby.
On the beach, in that crowded café filled with the faces of strangers, I saw him glancing at me secretly from behind the edge of the newspaper while smoking shisha, even though he knows I can’t stand the smell of smoke.
I stood there, swallowing hard. My certainty grew that I would never regain my body if I was chasing him. Why don’t I return to my apartment and leave him the freedom to decide, either to come back to me at his leisure or to escape from me forever… to find rest and ease?!
I took off my clothes in the small bathroom and surrendered under the warm shower after running and tiring and panting in the rain. And while my eyes were closed from the soap foam, I felt him sneaking in. He came to me, exhausted. He returned like this on his own and embraced me. It was a fleeting moment of gratitude for his presence, lasting no more than a few seconds. As soon as I sat down to have my coffee on the balcony, I saw him running down the street, but this time he was attached to the string of a red balloon that carried him into the sky.
© Sherif Saleh
Sherif Saleh (1972) is an Egyptian short storyteller, novelist and journalist. He published nearly ten literary books and awarded several national and international prizes.
Salwa Gouda is an Egyptian literary translator, critic, and academic at the English Language and Literature Department at Ain-Shams University. She holds a PhD in English literature and criticism. She received her education at Ain-Shams University and California State University in San Bernardino. Furthermore, she has published several academic books, including Lectures in English Poetry and introduction to Modern Literary Criticism, and others. She has also contributed to the translation of “The Arab Encyclopedia for Pioneers,” which includes poets, philosophers, historians, and men of letters, under the supervision of UNESCO. Also, her translated poetry anthology, entitled Dogs Pass Through My Fingers, was published recently through Alien Buddha Press in Arizona, USA. Additionally, her literary translations have been published in various international magazines.