Between the First Voice and the Silence of the Universe

Yemenat

Fares Al-Aliy

Yemeni poet and writer

Did the growth of human knowledge bring us closer to understanding existence, or did it take us further away from our first sense of its sacredness and mystery?

I write to you today from that fragile, open space where thought stands at the edge of awareness and nothingness. For a long time, I have found myself gathering scattered pieces of knowledge: reading at length in books on history and religion, reflecting on revealed and human-made texts and their accounts of the moment of creation, and returning to stories of wonders and mythical creatures that were long dismissed as legends. Then archaeological discoveries and excavations began to reveal evidence of enormous creatures and ancient remains from distant ages, creatures and structures that once existed on this earth. Even the worlds of international cinema, including The Lord of the Rings film series, have added to these questions and opened up new ways of thinking about the depths of this knowledge.

These were not just things I read about to pass the time. As they accumulated, they began to form a world of meanings and symbols in my mind: a visual and intellectual language through which I engage with myths, epics, fantasy worlds, and supernatural beings that exist somewhere between darkness and light.

Over time, I began to sense a hidden thread connecting the stories of jinn, rebellious beings, and demons in religious texts with the primordial schism depicted in modern myths and epics. In these stories, beings of light and power emerge from a single origin, then follow different paths because of choice, envy, and the desire for dominion. Some choose to remain with the light, while others, driven by envy, rebel and make darkness their identity and their way of being.

Out of this