Ma Yakfi

What is heaven other than where you are not yet?  

Turbulent emotions overwhelm as you rush to set sail alone across the ocean in search of your Eden. Without feeling convinced about your checklist, you simply leap, you finally sail—and the mind locks onto the destination. A fixation on discovering your Shangri-La and a profound longing that you will arrive, ease your worries. But once you’ve cast off, the obsession begins—not with the destination, but with the vessel itself: Is the hull sound, are the seams watertight? An incessant mind to check and recheck every plank, every rope! The ship that should carry you toward Wonderland becomes the only thing you can see, your vigilance so consuming that you forget to look up at the horizon, forget even why you departed. The journey to ecstasy stalls in an endless present of anxious maintenance.

The waves howl relentlessly as they crash over one another, surrounding you in a roar that shatters concentration. In that vast expanse of ocean, you find yourself alone with the sound of your own thoughts, facing the “person” you have always feared to meet: yourself. You can neither hear your own pleas nor answer the ones you imagine. Your voice has no chance against the wind and the noise; words dissolve like mist. Instead, you notice a rhythm, a melody, and you hum along with the slam of each wave against the ship. Without meaning to, a smirk tugs at your lips, betraying you. The wind has carved new wrinkles into your skin since the voyage began, and the vast emptiness has opened into a single, arresting truth in your mind: there is nowhere to hide, and no promise of any safety net. Even in your most melancholy hours, the sun slips behind the horizon each evening, and the stars are born for only a few brief hours before the floods of dawn erase them. At night, those twinkling lights leave no scars on the deep blue, creaseless Muslin sky; they simply fade, offering a quiet promise to return if you pay attention. In their flux lies the world’s beauty and harshness.

One night, amid the enveloping darkness, you spot the brilliant star cluster Ath-Thuraya, known today as the Pleiades, rising heliacally just before dawn. Scientists describe this as the perennial phenomenon of a star or planet emerging from its seasonal “hibernation” behind the sun, where it orbits and vanishes from view for a time before reappearing in the eastern sky. Ancient Arab navigators and nomads revered the Pleiades as the first glimpse of a bride lifting her veil from her sari, a signal for sailors to set sail at the start of the sailing season. In profound awe, you contemplate the unyielding boundaries that govern all celestial paths and their subtle sway over human lives. Whether reluctant or willing, a sense of surrender takes root in your heart: you and your boat are cradled in the vast, ungentle embrace of this improbable world.

The ship glides as if it must! Under the persistent battering of waves, the unyielding slaps of winds, the bone-shattering bites of cold at night, blinding light, and the scalding heat of the sun during the day. Despite this, your boat floats, and your pains seem only to survive you by a breath, by a single knot’s length—no more, no less. Not out of resignation but instinct, you anchor your heart in faith and remain watchful, keenly aware of the risk of drowning. You relinquish any lingering attachment to your former intent or vocation if there is still anything left. Without the prospect of negotiating at any instant with anything, going back to the berth or moving onward to the shore becomes interchangeable. Your body’s reflex to defy or oppose the moments you find yourself in is not what you do to stay afloat; instead, you offer enough from every cell to the eternal. To remain an observer until everything evaporates without animosity, like the bubbles of the sea. An inevitability that awaits you and everyone else you shared your journey with on the land!

Fatigue tiptoes on you until even your own muscles feel like a weight you can no longer carry. You drift momentarily into slumber from weariness. In your hypnagogia, the silhouette of your Eden flickers into view, stirring a deep nostalgia. The scenes feel strangely familiar, like names you have already whispered over places and moments now lost to time! You wish you could have been the hoarder of métiers and moments of life that seemed ordinary. A sigh escapes while you struggle to ease into clarity. You are left unsure yet in this world’s embrace. To you, the sea and sky seem pristine, with a lullaby, as if to assure you.