Hisham Bustani
An Empty Bottle on the Beach
Translated from the Arabic by Alice Guthrie
I fought until the end, the stars looking down at me throughout with that same flickering glint. At times the wind was affectionate, at times playful, at times evil. The overwhelming sun beat down on me with its usual delicate cruelty, until my skin became like paper. The water laughed at me, bitterly sarcastic as usual—surrounded by water on all sides, thirst devouring me morsel by morsel, submerging my vision in a twilight like a light cloud covering.
I’m no longer strong enough to move my arms or legs, but the life jacket keeps me afloat despite my weakness. I no longer even have the strength to undo it so that I can slip out and drown, or the strength to turn myself over face down, and drown. I am forced to witness my death playing out in slow motion, moment by moment.
I think that I would like to swear, but there’s hardly any air left in my lungs, and my body is in a state of emergency, redistributing what’s left of its power to where the dregs of life remain, regardless of what I myself might want. I’m too weak even to swear.
In detention I was in a similar state. “Time for some swimming,” says the officer. So they put us in the tires and they beat us until all we yearn for is death, sweet unattainable death, and the beaten body collapses in exhaustion, too weak for speech, redistributing the remaining force to where life must go on.
A few days ago the wreckage of the boat was still floating around me. It had collided with something or other, I couldn’t make out exactly what. It was as if rocks suddenly sprouted in the middle of the sea. Can rocks suddenly bloom in the middle of the sea? We will just have to accept this version of events, since I don’t have any other explanation for what happened. And surely given the fact we accepted the Almighty Leader (He who took me into detention and then to the sea) without any logical or convincing reason to do so, the sudden blooming of rocks in the middle of the sea and the boat being wrecked on them should be easy for us to believe. An unexpected slap to a citizen from a security officer talking calmly to him. Whack. The left cheek bursts into flame, the ears are ringing. Sir, in the name of God, sir. Please, in the name of the President, sir. One single slap is enough to turn us into arse-lickers. And the hand slapped the boat and it smashed into pieces, and the arm dealing the blow is not visible, not connected to the stripe-adorned shoulder whose owner I would beg for mercy if I could, and the fish underneath move in freedom—surely!—awaiting the cycle of nature to be completed, while I drift with the force of the waves, and according to the differences in density of different matter.
If I was at home I would assume that our neighbour’s car alarm had gotten jammed on again. That fucker. His alarm starts going off at one in the morning, just as I’m falling sleep. Yuuu-yuuu-yuuu-yuuu-yuuu-yuuu-yuuu-yuuu-yuuu then dat-dat-dat-dat. Then it stops. But the noise I am hearing now isn’t stopping, and there are no cars nearby. There’s no one nearby. Even the floating debris have disappeared. There’s nothing except this immense expanse of salty mirror, reblinding my blinded self.
I fought to the end, and if I had had a pen and paper with me I would have written a letter with my shaking hands and deposited it in a well stoppered bottle to dispatch it by sea. The letter would have said: “I fought to the end,” and they would have understood that it meant the end of me, not the end of the fight.
But now no one will know.
Hisham Bustani is a Jordanian writer of poetry, fiction, and hybrid works that focus on the dystopian experience of postcolonial modernity in the Arab region.
Alice Guthrie is an independent translator, editor, lecturer and curator specialising in contemporary Arabic writing.