In the summer of 1990, a war was raging in the region, and catastrophes were looming. It was a year of dust and a profound existential reflection on a nation that had walked and moved in poetry but drank and ate with wars. In Raqqa, eastern Syria, we passed by a man by chance, asking for water. He was crying alone, far from the nearby mud houses. A man in his fifties, as tall as a cypress and with the dignity of a knight, he was crying bitterly, his tears soaking his embroidered Arab robe in this sweltering heat, adding even more embroideries. I got out of my car with all the vigor of a young man in his twenties and asked him, "Do you need anything? Can we offer you some assistance?" He said to me, as if whispering to me alone: ​​My father died and the roof of the house collapsed. Then he said in a voice I will never forget:

I am not crying... and I am crying over the marsh and its bounty

Once upon the river's scarcity and its bounty

He who gave the attab and its bounty has passed away

And the sea of ​​attaba has become dust upon dust

This attaba verse fell on my head like a heavy club, and I sat down beside the man, powerless. I memorized it in one gulp, with its quirks and its ailments, its ambiguity and its revelation. I embraced the grieving man who cried in front of a stranger out of respect for a relative. We men understand this. I memorized this verse like the stroke of a sword and kept repeating it until my hair turned gray and I lost my father, who interpreted the verse anew with a single stroke of the sword as well. He explained to me all this crying that breaks stone, even though I had been preparing for the situation since that scene that had spoiled the colors of life for a young man in the prime of life. Pay attention; It is also a coincidence that death inevitably comes to relatives and strangers, and that the death of a father - as we have seen - is a violent wind that tears down tents and exposes men's nakedness, turning them back into children.