Missing Justice

Yemenat

Ahmed Saif Hashed

“Haifa” — a breath of the sea that revives the beloved. Her gaze lifts from the shoulders a fierce, grinding fatigue. With the palm of her hand she wipes away the rubble of ancient sorrow, extinguishing the flames and smoldering embers of longing. Like rain on parched earth, she makes it green again and dresses it in new radiance. She is God’s gift to His virgin land — a spark of the Divine spirit and its secret. “Haifa” is the Sufi’s refrain, possessed by the One; a ceaseless cascade of forgiving grace. She dwells in God’s realm, in the universe’s hymns to His name and the worlds’ prayers for His majesty. Haifa is a girl without equal.

I am a poor, destitute man crushed by hardship — God made me in the bottom of a well. I try to salvage what remains of me, but fate refuses. No one hears my voice, strangled deep within the abyss and weighed down by sorrow and loneliness. The abandoned well dried up until it became stone; I bled in it to the last drop. I tried to climb out and failed; everyone abandoned me. Deprived of resources, I petrified there and became part of it.

How can I compare? The difference is like that between a speck of sand smaller than an ant’s eye and a galaxy stretching to the far reaches of the universe. The gap is vaster — like the difference between a creature and its First Creator. She is a daughter of light from a noble house; I am a very simple man, crushed between her millstones and an imperfect love. I was born afflicted from the first day. I still live my emptiness, hear its misery creak within the marrow of my bones, and endure