MS. SIBA

The smell of wheat-brown bread...



The smell of her,



I'd sniff



into and out of her,



as I would kiss her furrowed forehead.



The Images Triggered :



A small kitchenette,



and vegetable patch in front,



a small gas stove,



and bare brown shelves,



a tiny corridor,



as ample as the life she lead,



and memories mingled,



with the dust of the books stacked,


all around...



then out of nowhere, a Gustave Dore',



hanging somewhere above the staircase,



in it, a wide-eyed monkey,



staring at the slow-moving world underneath,



staring at her charcoal head,



revolving around



what should have been,



but never was...




Ms. Siba Al-Fahoum was a Palestinian professor who lived for the Palestinian cause, and died heart-broken with the way things have come to pass...She was brilliant, dedicated and passionate. At one time, a very close friend of the late Ghassan Kanafani -she was the last member of staff (at their small journal in Beirut) to bid him goodnight, before the morning after, when he was torn to bits in an Israeli-implanted car bomb in his garage. She was at one time, Abu-Amar's personal translator, but turned away, when her disappointment with his handling of the cause surmounted her frustration. She lived and died alone. She was as great as God could make a human.