My homeland is a vast desert

Description

Plato held them in such high regard that he felt no compunction in referring to them, through Socrates, as the “second self.” His student, Aristotle, held them in such low regard that he felt no compunction in famously declaring, “Friends, there are no friends in this world.” As for the Sufi mystic Sufyan ibn ‘Uyaynah, he felt no qualms in rejecting them and their ilk when he advised a man who came seeking his counsel with the famous saying, “Deny those you know.” He then replaced it with an even harsher solution when he decided to console the man who had been shocked by the initial harshness of the saying, saying, “Examine one hundred disagreements, then ninety-nine of them, and remain doubtful of even one.” The ancient Arabs, however, rejected the myth of vinegar more than any other culture in the ancient world, placing it as the third of the three impossibilities, like the phoenix. Despite this historical campaign, humanity has failed to quench its thirst for vinegar. Indeed, many sages have clung to their belief in the existence of this phoenix, or rather, in its necessity, even if it is a myth. This conviction led one of them to make vinegar a prerequisite for eternal happiness. Some might rightfully call this belief foolish, since worldly experience has consistently refuted it. But upon contemplating this enigma, we find justification for this group of sages when we discover (through reflection) that attaining the loyal vinegar is a need—not a conventional one, but a metaphysical one: like the need for another life beyond this earthly one. I mean that it is an inner thirst, akin to the thirst for immortality. If we believe that humankind is fundamentally a social animal, then its inclination towards social bonding is not merely an instinctual response, but a kind of insidious drive at its core, a code embedded in its genes. This emptiness was traditionally filled by Homo sapiens through the intimacy of relationships within what later came to be known as the family (whether the family that brought them into existence or the family they themselves established). However, this ailment soon transformed into a fatal yearning, comparable only to the yearning for God. It is a yearning for what Plato called the “second self,” a valiant (and simultaneously pathetic) attempt to rebel against isolation. A heroic (and, of course, doomed to failure) attempt to escape the confines of alienation, after the seeker discovered that everything in his worldly life is nothing but illusion: power is illusion, glory is illusion, and even love is illusion, because happiness lies not in attaining, but in relinquishing, in liberating. Hence, the necessity of the friend arises from the thirst born of the absence of freedom, the contrast with the myth of the friend, and the satiation of the spiritual yearning for truth. The principle of the “second self” becomes alienated due to misunderstandings stemming from ignorance in interpretation. This second self is an identity that has no external existence, and searching for it in the labyrinth of creation is a futile endeavor, for it is the freedom attained not so much through religious seclusion as through spiritual solitude. Therefore, the friendship Plato expressed through the metaphor of the “second self” is only realized through another experience, which Saint John expressed through another metaphor: “the second birth.” In his magnificent testament, he said, “No one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born twice.” If entering the kingdom of God is freedom, then the “second self,” as Plato described it, is hidden within us, not in the world. This means that our salvation does not come from outside ourselves, but is within us, which can be summarized in a small, amulet-like commandment: Be your own friend! Why? Because the Latin precept says, “Seek nothing outside yourself.” How much the things around us contribute to our rebirth! Likewise, from the desert, from its contradictions and the absurdity of its sands, from the depths of its stillness and the fury of its winds, Ibrahim al-Koni launched his creative thought, philosophizing about the word, indeed the letter and its meaning, and making you haunted by anxieties and in harmony with manifestations that carry you far away to a world your soul yearns for—a world of liberation from the shackles of words. And the meanings, in their various forms—literary, scientific, social, historical—will spare no effort in discerning their essence. As in his poem “Vinegar,” it leads to the truth that you should not seek vinegar from anything outside yourself, for your own self fulfills that eternal need you have always sought. Your search is but a journey of suffering in pursuit of truth, because, as al-Koni says in another text in this book, “Truth is only attained if we pay a profound price for it.” Al-Koni continues his writings, and you journey with him and through them, as if you are living a spiritual, emotional, and philosophical experience in which the body is absent, and the soul is enraptured by its presence.