After I grew up, I kept yearning for Europe in every wet autumn with the first rain disturbances, and when it was Beirut, it used to sing to us, and sing with us “The Last of September is Wet.” Today, the rain does not come at this age without me remembering Al-Sayyab’s song flirting with the rain.
Rain in cities is another journey for water lovers and city lovers, so we do not avoid city rain, and let it surprise us however it comes. The important thing is that if it comes, it will move all still things, including those that sway in the soul. City rain is another pain, another joy, and a journey wet with leaves of love and longing. Ah.. if only a person could remember when he first knew raindrops, and what the feeling of the first dryness was for our generations trembling under it!
The memory of childhood will emerge, the beginning of awareness, and how one of us came to know this love, this purification, and that scent that resides in the nose forever, the first rain… the beginning of childhood, so when the rain pours down in successive showers or the heavy clouds send their intermittent drizzle, childhood appears with its innocence, and its fresh memory appears, and the scene of the first house is revealed, where sight and insight were the only witnesses to the sublimeness of the scene, and the joy of the gifts of heaven, and that reassurance and tranquility that envelop the soul and things.
A person witnesses rain in many places, but he only likes to remember what marks his memory with the specter of a lover, a laugh that hides wellness, the joy of the heart, or what the soul felt of a tear that was trickling cold at the edges of the eye. A person witnesses rain at night, dawn, and day, but only some times do they perfume it.
Today, many things remind us of the rain of cities.. and many things that rain brings with it, and things that if they were present, the rain preceded them, since the feet got muddy in barefoot childhood, and running after the threads of water and the torrent as it flows, and what it drags with it of fallen leaves, and playing on the irrigated sand dunes, and the houses that we build with small dreams, and throwing sandballs, and digging in pursuit of the flock of “Al-Faqeeshi”, things from childhood when the rain poured down, how the mud houses were irresistible or those arbors of palm fronds and trunks, but they remained with the arms of the people, and their cooperation, and that call that no one left behind, and when the valleys drummed and flowed, the people used to protect them with barriers and digging, and whatever could help, taking that water descending from “Al-Dawudi” a path far from the houses next to the palm trees.. That spring is the first city, where the story of rain began.
After that, cities.. and when the rain comes, songs are present, and warm stories are present between the ribs, evenings are present in the corners of restaurants whose glass was shining with spray, and crystal drops, you can bring Fairuz and her fear for the “attic and the red tiles”, you can bring beautiful trips to the desert, where the family was happy, and the coffee of the decorated, and what was mounted on the fires, and what was lit under them of dry summer’s markh, where food has the first breaths of the wilderness, and the songs of the shepherds, and the fatigue of walking behind the livestock, and behind the steps of the cousin and the maternal uncle, certain faces may come knocking on your door, and the rain knocking on your window, you may wash that day, and a different kind of tranquility settles in your chest, rain.. we do not know its secret, and the secret of what it does to us, and why when it comes it does not come alone, and keeps calling you from afar.. and tomorrow we will continue.
#Rain #flow #cities