Three quarters of a century lie behind me—seventy-five years exactly. A long life by human measure, yet for the life of our planet, scarcely more than a heartbeat: less than a second on the vast clock of time. The twenty-five years that may still come feel like a gentle invitation, all the more precious because the past remains so vividly alive, refusing to fade into what has been.
The familiar triad of past, present, and future serves us well only in our earliest lessons. Life itself is never whole without its other face—death. They are inseparable, like day and night, two movements of the same eternal rhythm. So too is the oneness of the self, immersed in this immense universe, scattered with billions of planets and stars-
Returning to these seventy-five years, can a few words truly gather all that one has seen, read, written, and dreamed? Perhaps only three: Freedom, Dignity, and Love.
In the days to come, my old-new novel al-Fusforee will be published by Dar al-Farabi in Beirut. It is dedicated to the children of Gaza and the refugee camps—those who have taught the world, and especially those in power, the very alphabet of freedom, dignity, and love.
I thank my friends, warmly, for their congratulations.
