"Attaqadoum" (The Progress) - No 15 - Mars 23, 1942
A wounded soul performing with great élan
Men standing in rows, shoulder to shoulder, bodies intermingled, necks lengthened in an attitude of meditation, making the defunct's last farewells, heart broken performing great élan to rise to the dispensary of the firmament to be taken care of, hoping to find there the most effective balsam to cure its wounds. Why do these voices declaim such lugubrious songs? Are they disturbed by the storm which mixes with the fresh air the clouds of dust blowing in the wind? Why do these hearts quiver in a plaintive and undecided lamentation? Are they terrified by the appearance of a ghost or frightened by the fingers of the nothingness playing a tune on the piano? Hearing can be disturbed, the ear reached of deafness, but they open with the first accent of the inexistence and shake with the first shock of what is prescribed. Let the eye pour as many tears as it can, let the heart palpitate and whisper the song as it pleases, neither the embolism which harms the health, neither the deep silence, nor the melancholie that one feels by thinking of eternity, can make an end to the force of circumstances.
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We are nothing in front of the vastness and the unicity of the universe
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We are nothing in front of the earth and the sun
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We are nothing in front of the darkness and the light
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We are nothing in front of the valleys and the mountains
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We are nothing in front of the torrents and the storms
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But we are all because we are thinking reeds
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We are all because we are the fine flower of the life
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We are all because we are narrators who describe with precision the terror of the storms, the thunder of the hurricane and the sinister atmosphere of the catastrophes
The lamentations of broken souls, the tearings of unfortunate hearts arrive to our ears and we make restitution for the damage done to cause a rupture of silence in the mountains, a rustle of sheets in the forests, a murmur in the river and a movement of waves in the vastness of the ocean. We hear cries and lamentations and we welcome them warmly as if they were melodies free from any pain. We see the anxiety and the terror and we draw of them for humanity a more terrifying paintwork. The eye keeps observing everything on earth. It sees hesitation and fright everywhere and represents the disaster which watches us through a frightening image suggesting death and destruction. Those who deplore the misfortune see their lamentations accompanied by a dismal melody, issued from the life's drama.
Said, you are asleep on an ultimate pillow on which rests your aching head;
Said, you are laying yourself down to sleep in the last bed which serves as a refuge for your ego exhausted of tiredness;
You kept organising public subscriptions with in your hands the bowl intended for the mites in order to collect the necessary funds of assistance for the profit of the poor and needy among the students to encourage them to pursue their studies, but your efforts did not meet enough charitable hearts to enable you to conclude your generous undertaking. You kept proposing your good offices in order to conceal the discords caused by the mobiles of the psychological blindness. You launched a first cry in the inaugural number of the newspaper "Almaghrib", then you amplified it by a second cry in the cultural supplement of this newspaper. You persevered in your acion and permitted to the team of your collaborators to wear an aureole of prestige by qualifying it as one of the most beautiful creations of the review "Al Taqafa Almaghribiya."
Said, son of the past, shade of the present and symbol of the times to come. When the spirits finally awake, they will carry your message as far as required by its transmission from a generation to another.
Truth of yesterday, dream of the present, memory of tomorrow. The weak and declining spirits will know that you lived only to tighten a wire, to increase a circle, to explore the trace of a torch in order to light the way borrowed by the caravan. You made a point of giving to your message the broadest possible diffusion, from the starting point in the Sahara until the contours of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean
Said, not only the city of Salé, this narrow piece of earth, neither Morocco in its limited geographical dimensions, nor the Arab world whose horizons are less extensive as one thinks, are weeping over your departure and deplore today that you are no longer of this world. But, in fact, especially the burning hearts carry ad infinitum the sense of direction of the emotion and the pain. It is the broken hearts that are unable to find an explanation to the life enigma which are schocked that you passed away and celebrate in the depths of their despair the most somptuous ceremony in order to perpetuate the memory of your funeral. You lived for a duty; you died in full achievement of this duty. May God have you in His Mercy!
Hussein Cherkaoui.
