By: Manal Rabiey
I used to summon sleep with magical thoughts: what if I had a machine that could take me back to the past for a few minutes, then return me to the present?
To which moment would I go back?
I know for certain: I would return to the very first day I learned to write.
I sat on my father’s lap, struggling to shape the letter Aleph. My small hand failed to draw the head of the hamza. I erased it again and again, until despair began to creep into my heart. Then came his gentle, confident voice:
“The hamza is the shape of a falcon.”
I closed my eyes and drew the falcon’s head with its body stretched tall, and the Aleph suddenly stood beautiful before me. My handwriting was not bad, but it could never compare to my father’s. He wrote as though he were painting, like a priest whose fingers were destined for writing. His letters were a world of their own: the ʿAyn was a compassionate eye, and the Kaf was a wing unfolding toward the horizon. Each letter in his hand was a tiny canvas, filled with the feeling that accompanied his reason, until his writing seemed like a prayer flowing from the heart.
From his eyes I learned that eyes are the mirror of the soul. I could never trust those who know how to force a woman into tears, for those who master the timing of tears are false; truth comes only in spontaneity, like a tear that asks no permission.
I remember, too, when I was angry or sad, I would speak quickly and incoherently. My father would laugh until the dimple in his left cheek appeared, and say, soothingly:
“Stop your gargling, speak your words clearly.”
I would laugh back and ask: “What does gargling mean?”
He would smile and reply: “It means I can’t understand a single word.”
Then I would calm down and begin to speak with clarity. With time, I learned that hurried speech seeks not an attentive listener, but a heart to ease the turmoil of scattered words. And from my father, I learned that silence is sometimes more truthful than words.
I often return in memory to those letters he taught me: Aleph, then Ba, until we sealed it with Ya. In his hands, the letters were a sacred story; in mine, they became its continuation. They turned into my very being: the dreamer, the balanced one, the compassionate one, carrying burdens even men might flee.
To you, my father… every letter my hand has written, every dream my soul has drawn, every prayer that leaves my lips, I owe to you.
I am a woman in full, yet I speak with my father’s tongue and reason, and carry a heart that inherited his strength.
I am the structure inscribed by the hand of God with the ink of the Nile, that river flowing through my veins like a living artery—writing my destiny, guiding my path, leaving me unafraid of the end.
