Tears of the Palms

Tears of the Palms

At the banks of Shatt al-Arab, where the Euphrates and Tigris embrace the earth’s waist in an eternal aquatic dance, the south sleeps beneath the cloak of palm trees, drenched in the fragrance of damp clay and the scent of swaying fronds—fingers of prayer brushing the sky. The sun slowly sheds its robe of daylight, leaving the horizon ablaze with a searing orange, as if the south were kindling a new dawn from the ashes of dusk. The air is heavy with memory, floating like a whisper of water above the river’s mirrors, which never cease to yearn. The palms weep tears that are not water, but a dew that falls upon the earth’s waist like an ancient covenant, as if the soil itself sighs while drinking in the sky’s light in an eternal silence.

The orchards open their arms to passersby, breathing in the fragrance of lemons, ripe dates, and the lingering scent of amber along the riverbanks. Small boats drift upon the water’s surface like the verses of an unfinished poem. Here, everything whispers in a secret voice—the trunks of palm trees recount summers that never left memory, the water bleeds names hidden by silt in its depths, and the fronds sway as if listening to a forgotten song carried by the wind from distant mud-brick homes.

But the south does not sleep. It remains suspended between light and remembrance, between the embers of longing and the coolness of water, quenching itself with the palms’ dew, shedding tears that seep into the earth’s veins—tears that never dry but ascend to the sky like a prayer left unfinished by the call to prayer, like a river overflowing upon time yet never drowning.

~Firas Alwaily

United States of America