I Saw a Fire

Wael Farouq - In the Arabic language, if we miss someone, we say *awḥaštanī*, meaning "you made me feel *waḥša*." This verb does not mean, as it does in many other languages, that we miss something because of the absence of another. The Arabic *waḥša* is hunger, desert, emptiness. *Waḥš* is the desert animal, wild and undomesticated.

The *waḥša* is an emptiness that engulfs existence. In *waḥša*, the human being is not alone, but single, "one," that is, without another; and nothing pains the single, the "one" more than the certainty that he will never know and never be known. It will not compensate him for having known before, for knowledge is a continuous event, the past of which does not compensate for the present.

Opposite to *waḥša* is *uns*, from which we derive the word *insān*, human being. Among the meanings of *uns*, we find: happiness, pleasure; feeling at home, in the family (the opposite of exile); amiability; seeing and (re)knowing; resting, feeling relieved and safe in the presence of someone or something; listening and stillness.

For *uns*, there is no specific time, place, or mood. It is something that we are and need in every situation: in joy and times of celebration, or in sadness and sorrow; when we feel safe and when we are afraid; when certainty fills our hearts and when doubt tears them apart. *Uns* is a word that gathers together all the meanings of humanity. Therefore, if you say to a person, in Arabic, *awḥaštanī*, you are saying to them, "I am a void that only your presence can fill."

After years of painful exile and exhausting homesickness, Moses decided to return to his country, Egypt, but lost his way. On a very cold and pitch-black night, a storm broke out, and his heart was filled with doubts, fears, and hallucinations. In the midst of the storm, alone and lost, Moses saw a fire, and his heart was filled with *uns* ("*Innī ānastu nāran*," Qur'ān 20:10).

The *uns* led him to the fire that illuminated his spirit so that he could meet and speak with God. The transition from the uttermost *waḥša* to *uns* requires nothing more than a well-opened eye and a heart that seeks encounter.

Another Ramadan has returned, and the war in the Middle East still continues. However, even submerged in the *waḥša* of war, the bullets and mad shrapnel do not prevent a boy's eyes from filling with the beauty of a girl, nor his heart from overflowing with love for her; and war does not prevent the flicker of hope and the radiance of a dream in her heart. In the stingy cruelty of war, there is a child who babbles his first words, and pure, copious laughter from his parents' hearts.

In the hell of war, in some room, a grandmother's faint voice covers the sound of explosions as she tells stories of beautiful princesses in eternally happy cities. In the *waḥša* of war, there is life, as fragile and fearless as a flower blooming from the black asphalt. In the hell of war, there are flowers blooming because in that black darkness, there are eyes that never cease to look for light or a chink through which a bud can push itself to announce that nothing is impossible for life.

In the *waḥša* of war, weapons incinerate everything. Everything burns; only stories illuminate, predisposing hearts to *uns*.
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*Unrevised transcription and translation by the author.*