The Caracas Cat

Despite the scarcity of meetings with the great Yemeni poet, critic and professor Abdulaziz Al-Maqalih, the most beautiful Sana’an mornings was when he hosted us in a poetry symposium in which I was among its readers, with the creative poetess Mai Muzaffar, and in the presence of the novelist friend Ali Al-Muqri.

At that time, our professor presented me with the title of “Sinbad the Poet.” The late innovator was clever and eloquent, and he summarized in two words everything that represents my biography, in his opinion.

As for the nickname “Ahmed Ibn Fadlan of the 21st Century,” it is the cherished title given to me by Raisa Khanum Safulina, a member of the General Council of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Tatarstan, a member of the International Federation of Journalists, a member of the Union of Journalists in Russia and Tatarstan, a member of the Photographers Union in Russia, and the founder and coordinator of the Diplomatic Club; “Public Diplomacy – Dialogue of Cultures”.

I visited Kazan several times, until its people became like members of my family, and I made sure every time to visit the Bulgar on the Volga River, where the traveler Ibn Fadlan arrived more than 11 centuries ago, making the date of his arrival the official day to accept Islam into the land of the Russian Empire’s ancestors.

This week, in Korea, we passed by Naksan Temple, on the mountain with the same name. It was nice that Monk Mumoon received us and prepared traditional tea for us, with its rituals. I was in the company of my friend Lee Sang-ki, and the most famous Korean general Min.

Mr. Sang-ki suggested that Monk Mumoon give me a Buddhist name, so the chosen name was (Sea Sail), inspired by a story we exchanged about the Korean Sinbad. We talked about the late monk Cho Oh Hyun, for whom I translated the collection “ Far Away Saint,” which was published in Muscat, and which was discussed by the Al-Zaitoon Workshop in Cairo. It was nice to take memorial photos in the temple, and specifically in the hall that keeps the late monk’s paintings.

I may mention my favorite nickname, the Cat, which is a traveling cat associated with every city I visit, and my wife, the TV director and writer Fatima Al-Zahraa Hassan, calls me on the phone. I am once a Munich cat, and another time a Seoul cat, and when I visited Latin America for the two Poetry Festivals in Medellin, Colombia, and Caracas, Venezuela; I was once a Medellin cat, and once a Caracas cat, in a single week!

When I published my second book of travel literature, as part of the “Al-Arabi Book” series, I chose to call it “A River on Travel,” and I said that I am that river, whose qualities I want to carry, that it passes by carrying fertility, and always strives to maintain its purity, carries on his head the people who love and sing to him. A River overflows like the Nile, and he passes his beloved ones between two banks of security and tranquility, or he tries.

Nicknames are beautiful, because they are the bridge of nostalgia. We remember them and a smile passes by, with faces float to the eye, and their echoes cross time across the ear.