‘lovers’ quarrel with abdelhalim hafez’
— Nix Thérèse
My favorite poems always make me pause to think, “I wish I could argue like that!” The clarity of voice won me over immediately. We begin the poem with “you ruined it all by dying”, which can be seen both as a striking accusation and a confession of vulnerability. The speaker continues to toe this line throughout, speaking in a way that’s confident yet sensitive enough to win our sympathy.
Yet the “lovers’ quarrel” between Adbelhalim Hafez and the speaker relies just as much on what’s unsaid. My favorite lines of the exchange come close to the end: "[speaker]: loving you tips a body off a building // [Halim]: the word for love and wind sound the same in arabic.” Applying the qualities of wind to love usually doesn’t feel toxic. Often wind is a renewing force that keeps us fresh and on our toes. But here, love and wind are both faulty in their inability to fully hold. If the wind around the falling body becomes love, love still cannot save the woman. Love can cradle, but has no bottom for a safety net. What is the use of surrounding something you won’t catch? What could be a simple fun fact turns into another twist of the knife: when love and wind are thrown into comparison, you constantly come up short.
Leaving the body and building ambiguous also collapses the timeline. We’re kept in the present tense, which makes all bodies touched and hurt by Halim’s absence align into one. But this one is always thrown to the abyss instead of his arms. We the readers are the lucky ones who can become the body falling midair, but remain safe. When we give some of ourselves over to the impact that Elhillo has gorgeously crafted, it’s still less tenuous than the real wind. Let’s lean into the trust fall while we can.