سِفرُ سعيد

On the journey of travel... I walked, stretching my arms towards the sky, contemplating it as one reads from a written book, and I asked myself: what magic is this that, if gathered for this moment, would prefer not to exist? Just when my heart was in its oblivion, the ringing of the phone shook me like a tremor of longing, and it was my friend Muawiya.

And Muawiya, my brothers, is a man of journalism, a steadfast guardian of words, but today he did not stand firm. He said: I thought of you when I saw Saeed Al-Surahi on the screen. My heart could only tremble like one who knows before being informed, and I felt a whirlwind of tears constricting my ribs and crowding my breath. And there he was, mourning him!

So I said: Woe to you, Muawiya! Is this how a friend is to his friend? Without preliminaries, without a hint to warn, without mercy? Saeed is in the mercy of God.

Saeed was, at first, my father's professor at that university that denied Abu Iqbal a doctorate! What a pity for that stage! And what cruelty can fate bring when a lifelong dream dissipates before you, simply because you chose to be a champion of truth, a guardian of your word!

And it is one of the wonders of coincidences that the last meeting held with Saeed was last Ramadan, regarding a literary battle whose dust is still swirling. Oh, the fate! I was the last to sit with him at the dialogue table.

I arrived at his home in Jeddah, that city which was the first leaf of his expression. He welcomed me, offering me espresso with his own hands, then handed me a cigarette, signaling the start of a long conversation where he would swim in the realm of literature and the orbit of criticism. And what beauty envelops a person when you see him in that demeanor! We would pause from time to time, and he would smoke a cigarette, exhaling his worries, and conveying his art through the camera.

Then we walked in the beautiful garden of his home. It seemed to me that one of the reasons for the brilliance of his criticism was the purity of the essence of his garden.

I bid him farewell with the farewell of the affectionate, kissing his head twice: once because he was my father's teacher, and once because he was Saeed.

I left the house, having promised him to return, to see his library, for I have an unquenchable longing to see the libraries of writers.

And today! After he has departed, all I have left from those appointments is the hope of meeting in the dreams of the sky and the paradise of Eden.

Woe to the literary journey! And woe to the pain that gnaws at the body of culture! For when he departed, a cultural pillar that was on the verge of collapse fell, and Saeed came and rebuilt it anew. But he forgot — oh, the sorrow of separation — to advise us on how to build after him! How harsh the farewell is when it is without return.

With the departure of Saeed Al-Surahi, the Arab cultural scene loses an authentic critical voice that knew no flattery, and an intellectual project that remained faithful to its bet on reason and difference. He spent his life outside the brackets, deserving to have his name written in the memory of Arab culture with ink that does not fade, and with a pen that does not break.

“A Life Outside the Brackets” was a testament to a life overflowing with art and beauty, pain and sorrow. Yet, with his enchanting generosity, he could turn clay into a masterpiece, a tear into ink, and a heartfelt laugh into a history worth telling.

It is as if Al-Hassan Al-Tihami foresaw Saeed's departure when he said:

The decree of death in the world is ongoing

This world is not a place of permanence

While one sees a person in it as a reporter

Until he is seen as a piece of news