Live Encounters Arab Poetry & Writing April 2025
The Marvelous Creatures of Nothingness, story by Rasha Abada.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
Dear Arthur, I hope you’re doing well there. I just wish your soul has found enough peace in the sudden departure from this occupied world. The “Tik tokers” have indeed taken over our planet; I almost hit our foolish neighbor, Umm Harry, with a slipper on her face as she flaunted the rapid details of their invasion on her phone screen, mockingly calling me a “cavewoman” and claiming I’m not living in the real world!
The TikTokers, my dear, are not extraterrestrial beings, nor are they merely the offspring of evil gangs birthed by Earth in its great sin with Mercury. They don’t live in those parallel worlds we read about as kids in the series of “The Future File and The Impossible Man.” They don’t bother searching for a specific world; instead, they seep and sneak through intertwined curves between worlds. They wrap their arms around Venus’s waist, stretch their legs to Neptune, lounge on Mars, and sleep on Jupiter. They defecate on Earth and urinate on Saturn. They resemble the alien creatures from sci-fi movies—a shiny human-like exterior of makeup and blowouts, with white blood tinged with orange inside, and three split tongues in their mouths.
They are as soft as egg yolk and as sticky as egg white, yet they are not easy to cook. They are, in essence, the remnants of what the “Takeaway Society” consumed and then vomited back onto us and those who brought us into this world.
What if, my dear, you discovered that the meatballs you love, made by my hands, are nothing but acidic gastric secretions, recycled with breadcrumbs to resemble meatballs? The TikTokers do just that—they turn syrup into fermented fish, and the fermented fish into something even more foul.
At the tenth glance of observing them, they appear as members of an irregularly rotating association, where the longest tongue and the thickest skin win. In this association, “information” is passed around like a basketball among teammates; the tallest player knows when to pass the ball to a shorter player, when to nudge them to retrieve it, and when to smile and hand it over willingly. In the short journey of exchanging information—be it money, fame, the thrill of humiliation, women, or traps for grooms—you’ll find “Nothingness” with gel in its hair, mocking in a short video another “Nothingness” that calls itself the Fourth Pyramid of Egypt. Then, another “Nothingness,” puffed up with arrogance, scolds them, trying to soothe the wounds, only for “Nothingness with a Rifle” to erupt in everyone’s face, making a sound through its nose while uttering nonsense. Soon, hundreds of “Nothings” appear to weigh in on the “Nothing” that caused nothing to happen!
As for us, my dear, we are the spectators, who think we stand atop seven thousand years of civilization, looking down on them with disdain as they multiply around us, among us, and within us. We question their identity, then toss our phones away, feeling superior and transcendent, thanking God for sparing us from the affliction of these seemingly alive creatures.
How foolish we are, my dear. The “TikTokers” invasion is inevitable. It wouldn’t be surprising if you suddenly opened the door to find your thirteen-year-old sister, dancing to the song “My Lover’s Chest is a Bathroom Floor” in front of thousands of followers—some hating, some mocking, some cursing, some loving, some cheering, and some devoted. And perhaps tomorrow we’ll wake up to find that we are nothing but cowardly bullies, hiding in the caves of the past. I read you a story by Yusuf Idris, and you praise Naguib Mahfouz, the Nobel laureate, while I hide my opinion for the millionth time that Idris deserved it more. Just as I hum to you, “Send him my regards,” you sip your dawn coffee and reply, “Give me the flute and sing.”
At night, you try to convince me that the magical realism of Al-Makhzanji is of a special kind, while I tempt you to read me the passages from “The Mischievous Boy’s Diaries” that make me laugh. Then, as usual, you disagree with me about the supremacy of the novel, while I remain convinced that short stories better showcase a writer’s talent and abilities. You argue with me about the extent of science’s conviction in faith according to Mustafa Mahmoud, so I ask you about the impact of faith on what we do not know and may never know, and you fall silent, ready to respond tomorrow.
All this while your mother, the coquettish in her room, posts her third video in two hours, explaining to the followers of “Nothingness” how the god of emptiness suffered from emptiness, so he played in the mud and created the marvelous creatures of TikTok to fill the earth with absurdity and madness…
And nothingness… nothingness at all!
© Rasha Abada
Translated from Arabic by Dr Salwa Gouda. She is an accomplished Egyptian literary translator, critic, and academic affiliated with the English Language and Literature Department at Ain Shams University. Holding a PhD in English literature and criticism, Dr. Gouda pursued her education at both Ain Shams University and California State University, San Bernardino. She has authored several academic works, including Lectures in English Poetry and Introduction to Modern Literary Criticism, among others. Dr. Gouda also played a significant role in translating The Arab Encyclopedia for Pioneers, a comprehensive project featuring poets, philosophers, historians, and literary figures, conducted under the auspices of UNESCO. Recently, her poetry translations have been featured in a poetry anthology published by Alien Buddha Press in Arizona, USA. Her work has also appeared in numerous international literary magazines, further solidifying her contributions to the field of literary translation and criticism.
Rasha Abada is an Egyptian writer and journalist who has published six literary books. She won first place in the short story category at the Central Competition of the Cultural Palaces in 2019 for her collection (What the Poor Did to the Miserable). Her articles have been published in numerous magazines and newspapers.