The Wanderer (Khalil Gibran, 1932)

The Wanderer (Khalil Gibran, 1932)

One thing I need to do is start reading more books from Asia, specially the Middle East. But Middle Easters are generally not very good at PRing their books to non-locals (relatively). I’m sure most of my Arab brother and sisters (not literally brothers and sisters, unless my father has been…) don’t know much about Iranian authors, and I sure as hell don’t know much about Arabic ones, but I certainly name you a bunch of Americans.

Khalil Gibran is my first real venture into this new field. Usually, I would not really jump first in Lebanese works, since I’ve not know Lebanon to really be anything else aside from a culture of trying to look sexy, and Gibran initially made me be uninterested when I was taken to his museum in Lebanon, and all it had was paintings of blurry naked women. But then I read one of his quotations on a wooden plaque somewhere and it grabbed me. So I bought a bunch of his book from one of Beirut’s libraries (and by the way, the back of the book says it is published in India, I’m shaking my head at you Lebanon…)

His most famous book is “The Prophet”, but I started with “The Wanderer”, a book of parables, surprisingly much better than I expected.

Instead of reviewing the book, I’ll just post one of the ones I loved, which is a perfect one to use for Dubai…

“BUILDERS OF BRIDGES”

“In Antioch where the river Assi goes to meet the sea, a bridge was built to bring one half of the city nearer to the other half. It was built of large stones carried down from among the hills, on the backs of the mules of Antioch.

When the bridge was finished, upon a pillar thereof was engraved in Greek and in Aramaic, “This bridge was builded by King Antiochus II.”

And all the people walked across the good bridge over the goodly river Assi.

And upon an evening, a youth, deemed by some a little mad, descended to the pillar where the words were engraven, and he covered over the graving with charcoal, and above it wrote, “The stones of this bridge were brought down from the hills by the mules. In passing to and fro over it you are riding upon the backs of the mules of Antioch, builders of this bridge.”

And when the people read what the youth had written, some of them laughed and some marvelled. And some said, “Ah yes, we know who has done this. Is he not a little mad?”

But one mule said, laughing, to another mule, “Do you not remember that we did carry those stones? And yet until now it has been said that the bridge was builded by King Antiochus.””

Okay, one more.

"UPON THE SAND"

"Said one man to another, “At the high tide of the sea, long ago, with the point of my staff I wrote a line upon the sand; and the people still pause to read it, and they are careful that naught shall erase it.”

And the other man said, “And I to wrote a line upon the sand, but it was at low tide, and the waves of the vast sea washed it away. But tell me, what did you write?”

And the first man answered and said, “I wrote this: ‘I am he who is.’ But what did you write?”

And the other man said, “This I wrote: ‘I am but a drop of this great ocean.’ ” "

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