«الساعة ساعتك»..

"The hour is your hour"..

This is how my grandmother would respond when I asked her: What time is it?

She owned a large clock

like the ones that chime in old movies..

She didn’t know that an hour has sixty minutes,

and all clocks are false in her belief

except for hers that wakes her before dawn..

The clock of the grand mosque in Shahara looks like a wonder box,

I gaze at its silver pendulum

and a spoonful of broth comes to my mind,

there was no bird inside it to come out at the hour..

The silver pendulum still moves inside my head

I remember it before I sleep

and all the hypnotic movies come to my mind.

I won’t talk about my father’s "cross" clock..

the one that lit up its hands in the dark,

the one that fell to the bottom of the pond,

the one he gifted me when I finished the Quran..

It still works,

I now place it under my pillow and hear its ticks

beating like a heart.

I am trapped by time

busy adjusting my breath every two seconds..

I have never been wrong in measuring the distance between our house and my father’s pharmacy,

four hundred and sixty-three steps

each step is a second by the measure of my little feet..

The candy clock that resembles a rosary

I used to wear it and nibble on its beads..

I grew up and adorned my wrist with a Seiko clock

or a Max, Orient, Casio..

For twenty years, I haven’t worn a watch on my hand,

time has lost its meaning since my father died.

My father would bite my little hand and say to me: this is a clock..

His teeth left a big smile on my hand

and I would boast about that temporary clock

filled with my father’s breaths.

It was the most beautiful clock

without hands..

I look at the clock

and see his smile imprinted on my hand

and I wish that time would set its clock to that moment and stop.