Egyptian poet Mohamed Okasha flies with wings that transcend narrow worlds, as appears in his new poetry book “How to Raise a Cloud”

By Ashraf Aboul-Yazid

The poet, critic and artist Mohamed Okasha faces our creative life with more than one mask. We can describe these masks accurately when we read his poetic and prose texts, follow his critical analyses, or stand before his sculptural works.

If we praise words by describing them as painted with colors, and praise arts as poetic, Mohamed Okasha has owned both arenas, and added to them his vision of reality, as a person who belongs to the Egyptian countryside, but flies with wings that transcend narrow worlds, as appears in his new poetry book “How to Raise a Cloud”:

How to Raise a Cloud

Do you know how to raise a cloud in your home? /First, learn how to catch it. /You find it born in the pupil of an eye/ Or escaping from the bosom of a girl you love/ Or sneaking out of a room in a prison/ Or from a sanatorium on the outskirts of the city/ Perhaps it escaped from the bosom of a meowing cat and passed by you/ Perhaps it escaped from a bus accident/ Or from a car bomb explosion

Perhaps / You find small clouds under every stone/ Stones also give birth to clouds / They run and burrow into the bowels of the earth/ When they decide to hide/ They draw their maps skillfully/ Just as they draw them inside the heart/

Also, clouds are thrown by the waves / And the tide pushes them every morning/ So that hunters can race to catch them/ Or stand on the edge of the desert/ And fire a bullet into the air/ Perhaps clouds will emerge from their holes/ To hide inside a cave/ And hide in bodies of little wolves

So they catch a cloud/ Dig for it under the roots of trees/ It is what colors its leaves/ And caresses the wind / Or throw your nets at a train station/ Because travel gives birth to clouds / They multiply the farther the distances/ If you find it/ Put it in a transparent glass box/ And throw it every evening a picture of a friend who has passed away/ Or pictures of many creatures who have disappeared/ Throw it your father’s jacket / And your lover’s robe / And a page from your memories/ So that it can stretch out and smash this box/ And open all your balconies / And rain on the shore of the soul.

Mohamed Okasha is a member of the Egyptian Writers Union, the Fine Artists Syndicate and the Cairo Atelier of the Arab Writers and Artists Union.

He won the Best Short Story Collection Award for the collection Echoes Without Voices (Sawiris Award 2007), Story Club Award for the story Geese Swimming Away 2004, Story Club Award for the story Jurisprudence of Verification 1 (2005), Story Club Award 2005 for the story Abdul Muhaimin (2008), Story Club Award for the story Al-Khud (2013), Story Competition Award at Sakia El-Sawy for his story Letter (2005), the Grand Cultural Competition Award (Central) of the Cultural Palaces Authority for the collection of stories The Smell of Rain (2003), Art Criticism Award / for the study of simplicity of expression and the hardness of iron from the Supreme Council of Culture in 2001. His collection Daqat was nominated for the short list for the Sawiris Award (2021), and WOW Award for poetry, Abuja, Nigeria (2024) for his following poem:

God Taught Me

I’ve had an eraser since I was little

Black and pointed like a gun,

God gave it to me and taught me morals.

 

He also taught me how to erase,

How do I blow out their remains with my mouth?

 

Since then, I have been working as a master of this vast white space.

I draw with my hand the line dividing heaven and earth,

I create a sea and a sun that shines

Then a ship sails that I don’t like, so I wipe out its bottom

Like a fireball that hit it

I blow out its remains with my mouth

 

The eraser is rubbery and soft

 

I form an old woman, an old man, and their child

And then I anoint this boy

Like a sharp knife stab

I blow out its remains with my mouth

 

The eraser is cold and dry

 

I build an old wall to collapse

So I will return and establish it under shade and light

I blow out its remains with my mouth

I plan countries and erase others

Like an earthquake struck it

I blow out its remains with my mouth

 

The eraser is smooth and soft

 

I sneak into the middle of battles

Wipe out the guns and launchers

And I wipe the lower half of the soldiers

Like the effects of a bomber that struck them

I blow their remains out with my mouth

 

The eraser has the smell of gunpowder

 

I draw children and elderly people

And erase them

Like a bomb hit that wiped them out

I blow their remains out with my mouth

Complete the amputated leg of a man

And erase his stick

Swap heads and bodies

I blow out its remains with my mouth

I paint vessels for beggars

And erase the sidewalks

I blow out its remains with my mouth

 

The eraser writhes in my hand in pain

 

I draw a man and a woman embracing

And erase the devil

Which every time I wipe it from a corner

It appears in another angle

Before I blew out its remains with my mouth

Before I fold this paper

And I put it down and put down the pen

Before I blow my remains out with my mouth

The writer, poet and artist Okasha had different grants; a sabbatical grant from the Supreme Council of Culture in the field of novels 2009 – 2010, nominated for a cultural grant to the United States of America 2009, represented Egypt in the framework of cultural exchange between Egypt and Qatar in 1999 Ministry of Youth. His publications includes (And the Heart Has Other Veins), Stories – Cultural Palaces Authority, (Echoes Without Voices), Stories, Egyptian Book Authority, (Sacrifice Duties), Stories, Dar Al-Fayrouz – Second Edition, (Ya), novel, Egyptian Book Authority, (Daqqat), Stories, Egyptian Book Authority, (Al-Majaz), Stories, The Publisher’s House, (Al-Maskoun), stories, the Publisher’s House.

His plastic art works are among collections of some foreign embassies, museums and individuals, his works of art were recorded in several encyclopedias.

His poetic texts were translated, published in a joint collection of poems by a group of poets from the Mediterranean countries In French and English, issued by Polyglotte Publishing House in Paris. Two collections of poems by a group of Arab poets entitled Madmen of the Prose Poem 2020 – 2021 by Dar Kemet… and Insan Center for Studies and Publishing.

His plastic art works are among collections of some foreign embassies, museums and individuals, his works of art were recorded in several encyclopedias. Such as the Centennial of Fine Arts, in the Fine Arts Sector, edited by Esmat Dawastashi, and the Youth Salon Encyclopedia, by Muhammad Hamza, Arts Sector, and in the book Trends in Modern Art in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century, by Amal Nasr.

Let’s end this introduction of our Egyptian figure by reading two poems from his latest poetry book:

Poor Bermuda

The mathematical definition of the Bermuda Triangle since the beginning of creation

It has three intertwined strings like the intertwining of the heart’s veins,

They open like the opening of a mouth smiling from extreme astonishment

Or like the opening of a nervous mouth screaming at a sailor who has lost his way

 

And the sky is like a womb in which the ribs grow and hold together

And that is when children scream at the moment of bombing,

Or when gunpowder explodes in a hospital for the poor

 

And Bermuda is originally kind-hearted

It goes back to an engineering family that lived near Mecca,

Drawing roads for caravans with skill and tact,

And planning the paths and departure times for airplanes,

His mother is the old circle that drew the universe as it is

His father; the sheikh, is the fulcrum of the world

And the focus of the orbit that moves the planets around him,

His brother the trapezoid who struck Bermuda with an arrow

Suddenly and killed him

 

And the sun draws with its rays every morning

Triangles born with the wings of a bird

And because Bermuda was a perfect triangle;

 

He learned all the names

And learned the language of the bird

And knew how to herd sheep

And how to draw his brother’s features in every storm

Or define them on the surface of the quicksand

 

And the sea trains the little triangles

To swim and dive every evening.

And Bermuda when he was shot with an arrow

 

It fell from the diameter of the circle

So the universe shook and the images of all the tribes faded

In a whirlpool of galaxies that never stops

That’s why his spirit flies and hovers around us

You see him hanging on the neck of a flute player

Or flying above the head of a night girl

Drawing a blue halo of light around her

Or drawn on the back of an old beggar

Looking for shelter

And because Bermuda is the victim of the first engineering crime in the world;

After that, all the journeys of the wandering souls failed

That were preparing to set out

To wash the ocean of the planets with waterfalls of light

So the calculations and distances changed

And the mountains moved and things merged

……………………………….

I have a vast farm of clouds

Bringing fruit whenever a spirit blows towards it

Spirits that migrate like a flock of birds

 

And my clouds carry pain

From the heart of a lost penguin on an icy beach

To the heart of an eagle flying with its wings in a barren desert

To scatter dew spray on the edges of trees threatened by thirst

To spray its freshness on shifting sands towards the heart

Perhaps a lost snowstorm will stop it

Or perhaps it will cast its shadow on the mouth of a volcano that warns of an imminent explosion that will tear apart limbs and hearts

 

My clouds are moved by the circulation of blood in the body of the sea

And in the body of the ant searching for the remains of time

And in the veins of the trees growing on the chests of lovers

So that they may know the rising of the sun in the cold of winter

And draw the paths and tracks for the bird

With endless white spiral lines

And carry sadness from the chest of a young virgin

To the heart of a newborn puppy

Perhaps the spirits hovering around it will color it

 

Whenever it blows on some mission

My clouds bring ecstasy from the soul of a zebra

To the heart of an old whale seeking suicide on a beach in the dark of night

And the clouds know that their flight is on the horizon

And their shadow walking on the surface of the earth

Just like the soul roams in creatures seeking to fly

And they know that the rain must make an agreement with them before it rains

To determine when to drown the sun and when to scatter its spray

I am a cloud merchant and a rain contractor

I have clouds filled with the memories of the world

If you want a cloud

Just open your hearts to me

Then I will send you my clouds with every groan.

Read: Basma ElKhatib’s Defeats are Cooked in the Kitchen

_________________

Ashraf Aboul-Yazid is a renowned Egyptian poet, journalist, novelist, travelogue writer and translator. He is author of around three dozen books and Editor-in-Chief of Silk Road Literature Series.