Borders on the eerie, one would have thought, when a particular theme or an image or a person becomes a type of landmark that is always there at one's defining moments. At turning points, to the worst often, to the better seldom, or a combination that is the equilibrium at the line where the two cross.
For me, in particular, I dare say that it doesn't come any more spooky, even satirical, than a certain age-old musical scale, that is as old as Sumeria itself. So profound that music of East and West have adopted it an unsung hero and invisible pillar in perhaps every single composition, and this scale is non other than the infamous Iraqi Nawa.
It struck me as very odd, this very night, that whenever there was a moment of note, pun not intended, an event of the forever hessian matrix, forever vortex, that is this incomprehensible and insignificant slice in the time-space continuum that is my life, this scale of one form or another is always there. It was there when I met him a man, having left a child - I was humming it all the way on the plane that took us some 4,000 kilometres from what was once a glorious land, to meet him and be exiled with him - his tears put the final touches on the quarter-note that is somewhere around the Mi♭ ; there when I walked into an empty house years ago, and the scale would not leave my head all day, till that very moment of stone cold sober reality; It was there the afternoon my life turned up-side-down, yet again, one afternoon when I went to collect my precious ones and found them missing - I had been listening to it all day; it was here all week this week, being played on my Oud.
Tonight, though, was the final straw. My youngest loves sleeping to me humming it, or listening to a recording I made a while back playing it with some friends, followed by my reciting the scale in a way that Baghdadis did for thousands of years - nothing special really, but there you have it - the girl's a natural musician by some fluke genetic programming.
Why tonight? it is precisely because this is the very first night in almost eleven weeks that they are spending a night with me, at their home, having been made homeless and snatched away from their little world at school, by the insignificant cult-fanatic-cum-insect, who is also my grave and unforgivable error to their's and my own humanity, and happens to be their biological mother.
My bubbly Reema slept, as is her usual passionate little self, to the themes of Nawa being played on my iPhone from that recording she loves so much. I listened to her breath slowing down into a peaceful beat matching the sublime rhythm that is there, but is really not, and watched her little rosy lips smile in delight as she journeyed into quiet surrender to the sultan of deep sleep, being rocked gently on the way by every single note and quarter.
It is at that moment that I broke down in tears, not at the injustice and the endless whys that have come to haunt me all my life, piling up with every single turning point, but at the thought that tomorrow, some time, I shall be saying goodbye to them, and once again the house will be empty.
Q E fucking D
