Come let us cast aside radio sets, news of the world, newspapers and peace talks, the trivialities of aspirers and the sanctimony of fools; leave aside the prying of the inquisitive, bugging devices, and the ignorant - leave all this and that, let us discuss matters together without a chairman or opinion-transmitting devices or loudspeakers. Let us move all these contrivances and talk.

       My princess, allow me to speak and do not interrupt me. Let me go on and do not let me get accustomed to your being a chatterer, unable to stem the flow of words when they gush forth; for I no longer care what happens to a 'hundred and one things', just as I no longer care what occurs a few metres away from me. I do not heed what ministers proclaim, or plans for development, or politics, or those with conflicting orders; for I am, my lady, a tired compatriot, exhausted with all the things that control us and make us lose the ability even to express an opinion, and transform us into parrots repeating what is said without understanding.

       These things, my friend, are what control us now and deprive us of the enjoyment of things: the sweetness of life, the taste of contentment; the frame which encloses us has now become our master, forcibly causing us to commit errors under the guise of good intentions and experience.

       Let us cast aside these things, come and listen for the first time to the roar of the sea, the chanting of angels, and let us see moonlight for the first time, and listen to our folk songs as they issue forth from the mouths of shepherds, not the mouths of the rabble. Let us take handfuls of sand in our hands to scatter in any direction. Let us see with our own eyes nature, stones and wild grasses.

       Let us cancel today's and all future appointments without prior notice and change our abodes, and forget all our present friends for they are merely acquaintances serving their own benefit.

       Let us start from zero, and disappear from the world for a few hours, then return to see it afresh. Let me call you by a new name which no one has ever used before, and let me give you an age of my own making; for I do not know our present ages, nor do I acknowledge them, because the mere acknowledgement of them is to be lost and to slide to the bottom of an abyss. Our present ages mean nothing except desolate years we have lived from our actual childhood to our contained childhood.

       My friend, let us leave the bright lights aside and search for a deserted place. Let us inhale air from its original sources instead of breathing it through windows and air conditioners. Let us live the simple life of the Bedouin and leave complicated equipment, and the complexities of the city. Let us talk and address each other with our own tongues, not the tongues of others, and write with our own pens, not the pens of others.

       Let us record our knowledge with charcoal on cardboard, and roam in every direction; and let our hands clasp firmly in agreement over things. Come... let me dress you in a pink robe for a winter siesta.

       My princess, allow me to smell perfume through the folds of your clothes, and let me tease you with obscure words which defy simple interpretation. I once asked about Woman, and found her the other side of Man; but the women I had seen in my city were but a collection of hollow pieces of wood covered with articles of adornment.

       Cast aside women, adornments, pieces of wood, and all the aforementioned. Let us place our fingers over our lips and withdraw quietly from everybody. There is no prayer except in a chancel, and no doors ever open for strangers but in a mosque; just as there is no true happiness in the cementitious environment of the twentieth century.

       Come let us draw up particular specifications for the children of the future. Let us draw the colour of their eyes, and hair, and choose beautiful names for them.

       Let us stand out in the open and allow the wind to ruffle my necktie and your hair; for I am suffocating in this air of interwoven events and its features which alter from one instant to the next.

       Let us run far away until, tired and exhausted, we fall upon the ground, not on easy chairs or anything that elevates us above the earth, for we are from it and we shall return to it, even should we die in lofty constructions.

       My little princess, things are not as you see them, or as passers-by see them; and the happy are those with power and wealth. They are the unhappy ones, especially the undeserving of them. Happiness is not something that comes to us from the outside. It springs from within our being. You see happiness in the smile of a child. You see it in the shyness of a girl on her first meeting with her beloved. You see it in the eyes of the innocent when they face the one who rules them.

       Allow me to see God in your eyes once more, my lady; do not raise your voice too much while speaking, for the voices of others are most annoying because they are so loud. Try to withstand, in spite of your limitations, the length of the journey. Let us sail in a primitive boat on the ocean. Let us discard our complications and problems, our fear of ignorance and of the unknown, come let us make sure that we follow the right path, and dream of our own paradise. Let us construe things at their truth and originate all things to God, for He is their maker, and our creator. Man cannot, no matter what power he attains, define the value of happiness permitted us, or the degree of evil with which God tests us. No doubt we shall mock them, those human beings who commit evil and lead their lives in malice. Let us pity them at the same time for God has chosen them as spiteful instruments of evil with mastery over mankind.

       My lady, you are a beauty who suddenly materialised in a desert called Libya, and a natural moon which suddenly appeared in a pitch-black night, and a magnificent poem delivered in 'Uqadh (the ancient poetry gathering). You are the most beautiful decision to start a relationship among women.

       You are all the women I have known in their goodness and their evil, in their beauty and their ugliness, in their purity and their corruption, in their virtue and their wickedness; you are my own self in spite of the differences of class which separate us, for there is no difference between us, regardless of the conflicting language which claims that class differences exist, and breach of promises.

       You asked me to define Woman? She is the most beautiful contradiction that God created, so forsake anxiety, and free yourself from the constrictions of doubt. Meet me in the usual place under the moonlight.

       Wear whatever you wish when we meet, and I shall put on what I want. We won't be restricted by the dictates of fashion. Arrive by any means possible. Let us roam the city like two runaway children searching for a safe place to hide.

       Come, let us sit like two strangers in public places, and laugh for all people, and only cry for the poor and the wronged.

       Come let us exchange topics of conversation without an observer or eye witness. Come let us establish human relationships as God intended them to be and reject the advice of the ridiculous 'Sheikh', the dowry and wedding festivities. Let us practice happiness as we imagine it and visualise it. Let us eat what we like, let us cancel night and hours and start afresh. Let us unite our living desires, which do not conflict with the desires of other human beings. Let us take off our old shoes and walk barefoot, digging our feet until they sink into the sand.

       Come let us do something out of the ordinary, let us switch off the radio and the TV, and tear up newspapers and despise those who overpower, the inquisitive, and those who occupy themselves with  trivialities, and let us walk in the desert.

       My friend, let us cancel our past allegiances to all things, except to a merciful God. Let us attend the Friday speech together and make fun of the ridiculous speaker who promises us of 'houris', and makes us anxious to meet them, for these thoughts are merely physical.

       Come let us be certain that we are alive, for I have some doubt  that we are.

       Let us destroy our personal records, travel visas, and identity papers and let us cancel all information originating from others about us and view people afresh as it pleases us.

       Come let us taste sea water, perhaps it is not as salty as we have been told. Let us submerge ourselves in the depth of the sea where our people fear to enter; let us make mistakes as we please and let others punish us as they please, under the pretext of the law. Let us contravene traffic signals, and flout conventions which separate men from women.

       Let us name things as we want and as we please, and let us acquaint ourselves with what people know.

       Let us look again at things.
       At war and peace.
       At summit meetings and at disarmament.

       At regression and progression; the adventurous left, the crooked right; and the collapsing middle. Let us place all these things into one pot, mix them, and serve them afresh as a new kind of food at the table of the United Nations.

       Let us search the shops of the city, and throwaway all artificial flowers, and use a new currency with the sales people. Let us unite for ourselves and in spite of ourselves.

       Let us live to discern the truth not as we read in Colin Wilson's books. And let us live 'Nausea' as we feel it, not as Sartre felt it. And let us really suffer and not as we were told by Frantz Fanon.

       Let us take a stand in this life which was forced upon us. Let us break the yoke, and cancel lunch and supper and breakfast, and make the former the latter and what is contrary true.

       Let us compete at poetry, not at politics and dispose of the dead words of the language which writers have destroyed and laughed at.

       Let us invent new terms for parting and meeting, for greetings and good manners.

       Let us sit alone like two opposite poles which do not meet except once.

       Let us deviate from the norm and tolerate what others say about us and feel happiness at opposing what is trivial.

       My friend, who is sad to her depths, smiling only on the surface: God does not want misery for us, but we create if for ourselves. God brought us down to this world, and preferred us to all creatures, but we reject this preference and go to war, and the betrayal of principles, and tittle-tattle. God, my little one, invites us to all the events for doing good, but we refuse the invitation and punctually attend the invitations of the devil.

       The compatriots in my city gather in Mecca to stone the devil within a circle, forgetting they stone themselves in every direction.

       I need, my lady, time to convince sinners that they are the opposite of what they expect. Help me to stand and don't leave me alone for loneliness is deadly.

       Do not let me suffer from you too much; suffice it what I suffer from other men and the pen.

       Let me touch your hair and play with it and run my fingers through it, then braid it into two long pigtails like two sad ribbons in the desert of emotions.

       Teach me how to read and how to write, even how to hold a pen. Teach me the complete alphabet and the incomplete, and with letters unlike those which I learnt from the scribe at the mosque. Teach me how to think aloud and how to use my thoughts to our advantage; and push away evil spirits with your sweet hands. Help me to understand the world. Let us discuss it and arrive at suggested solutions then choose the ideal one and follow it.

       Repeat what I have told you to make sure that you are with me. Mix up my words and let them mingle, then sort them out and arrange them as you please.

       See me pray for you.

       And worship at your chancel, pour out my words then go to sleep, enclosing my image within your eyelids. My words grow pure in your hands. Address me with your conscience, not his conscience, or hers.

       Preserve our things within both hands. Let me dream, and rave, and write.

       I ask you from my depths to comprehend life anew. I call you to celebrate the feast and every happy occasion on which I invite you to prepare for adventure. For life without adventure is worthless. Come let us take with us our modest possessions and aim for an unknown destination.

       I ask your permission to study the woman in you, learning your features. Let me observe the opposite sex as I see it. not as others say it is. Let my hands feel everything in you and make certain that nature has not deserted you as the papers and beauty advertisements claim. Let us tolerate this life together, and don't let the weight of responsibility fall entirely upon the man as happens here.

       Let us ascend to the minaret of the mosque and look down upon the people below from our height and drive in carriages pulled by horses led by an old man who never looks back.

       I entrust you to carry these words to the children of the future because our present adolescents have already been moulded and conditioned. It is difficult to undo the damage.

       Life starts for us with the joyous cries of celebration at birth, and ends with wailing and weeping at death, with a grand void between them.