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Klari Reis

translation

 
 
 

English translation of the Arabic Calligraphy

I am writing. I am writing on me, I am writing on her. The story began to be written the moment the present began. I am asking, how can I be simultaneously inside and outside? I didn't even know this world existed, I thought it existed only in my head, in my dreams. And now here I am, an open book:

Inside the book cover, chapters are chaotic and confusing, The cover says more than the book. Chapter One is in fact the ending. Chapter Two is missing. Chapter Three builds a reference to the unknown, and the rest of the book is still in progress. Some paragraphs are written and re-written and some are completely erased with the hope they will never be read. Some are boldly typed to stand out. Some pages are ripped out, some freshly cut. Paper cuts make the reader bleed at times, reflecting the persona inside. Some chapters are written for me, by authors known and unknown.
Take a person out of her cocoon and watch her quiver in confusion.
Holding on to ideas, sleeping (sometimes not) with a vision so real, so defined, a vision of a perfect world. In the stress of confusion: an unnumbered chapter begins, and ends.

A dialogue between reality and dreams. Arguing, fighting, hope comes creeping in silence, but forceful. The more you read, the more I recollect, the more I understand that expectancy is a sharp blade tearing the pages and disrobing the soul. Sometimes it is troublesome and painful.
A chapter is obscured by absence and nothing could make it radiant.
Words written on paper thick enough for me to feel the blood flowing under the skin, under the paper. Reading, I wonder, whether this is birth or suicide? Here I might raise the question, Am I independent or not ? Or am I just autonomous enough to dream? I feel almost shameless confronting my nakedness.

I am dreaming about freedom and don't know how to talk about it. I am staring at the book and not sure what language I am supposed to speak. When a book is translated, it loses something in the process and what am I but generations of translations? I stand guilty outside and I stand guilty inside, profoundly buried in my translation, panting behind the words that are carried along by vital forces far greater than my own. I am a book that has no ending. Each page I write could be the first.

It is important that people understand that the written Arabic text is not religious. It is my own writing because the project is in a book format; a diary, in which the women become the chapters and pages.

 

 


 
Laila Essaydi