User:Driss seghir

Tamizouda* Dreaming
A Short Story Written By Driss Seghir

Translated By Mohamed Said Raihani

'''« Withount dreaming, without loving and without freedom, there would be no space left for real real creation, real pleasure and a real civilized life. I wonder if our rulers are free to dream and love. That is the question. »'''

Driss Seghir

Even after all these long years, he can still remember everything with the slightest details: That spring day's blue sky, that evening's gentle air, the scent of the fresh daisies, the chant of the birds and the pulse of the green heart.

Thus, hardly had your eyes met when the new life began : Your heartbeat doubled, your feelings pulsed with desire and you started shuddering from head to toes.

Were you targeted by Cupid's arrow, that day?

A short figure of a girl with sparkling eyes and a joyful smile radiating out of a round face surrounded on both sides by plaits of hair dancing lightly in the air. That was the way he used to see her in : Perfectly wonderful. He would even compare her smile, her blush, her broken looks and her flirtatious words flowing out of her scarlet lips to that of Romy Schneider's.

Up he stood whispering out his first words, advancing a step and retarding the other, stumbling over his own words and blushing before a girl smiling with consent and satisfaction.

Do you know how many years,months, days, hours and minutes have past ever since ?

Where have all these erupting emotions gone ?

Where have they all gone : poems, melodies, insomnia,longing, pain and joy ?

Where is that flat stretch of grass on which we used to run with hands clasped under the scorching sunshines ?

Where have those smiles gone ?

Where has that childish rapture gone?

Do you still remember Tamizouda* ?

Our meetings there were far from the world, far from wars, far from cospiracies,far from the whole beings.

Why did we choose that very place ?

That had been the place where Old Romans used to unload their cargo when their boats have sailed safely all along Sebou River. Could they have had love stories here too ?

Had they experienced being burnt by the flames of passion,remoteness and suffering from this eternal love the way we did ?

Where are you, right now ?

I think that I can see your body enshrouded, perfumed with heavenly frangrances and lifted high on shoulders. I think that I can hear people howling and crying all around you.

From now on, I will have nothing but memories. Today, I will come back home at sunset with a broken heart, pacing my way towards a city preparing itself to sleep, shrinking on its permanent worries.


 * *Tamizouda : An old city built ten kilometers away from Kenitra city, west of Morocco, by the Romans during their conquest to North Africa, on the left bank of Sebou River.


 * The Writer, Driss Seghir, Moroccan short-story Writer, born on May 21st 1948 in Kenitra / west of Morocco. Author of :« Curse & The Blue Words » short stories 1976; « Odious Time », novel 1983 ; « Of Children & Homeland » short stories in 1985 ; « Terrifying Faces in A Terrifying Street » short stories, 1985; « Great River Concerto » novel in 1990 ; « Dreams Of The Beautiful Butterflies » a play in 1995 ; « Last-Luck Port » novel in 1995; «His Excellency The Minister » short stories in 1999.


 * The translator, Mohamed Saïd Raïhani, is a Moroccan translator, scholar & short-story writer, born on December 23rd 1968 in Ksar El Kébir. He published in Arabic "The Singularity Will " (Semiotic Study on First-names) 2001, "Waiting For the Morning" (Short stories) 2003, "Thus Spoke Santa Lugar-Verde" (Short stories) 2005, "The Season Of Migration to Anywhere" (Short stories) 2006. He is getting ready for printing:"Beyond Writing & Reading " (testimonies) and "Kais & Juliet" (An E-Love Novel).