A Pakistani woman, a poet, essayest, and native of Pashtun, Hibah Shabkez, responds quite frequently to my musings in this blog. And, I am so, so honored with these visits from this extraordinary young soul who is now studying in Paris. She is about a third of my age but blessed with a wisdom, including a keen grasp of language, that I’m only now beginning to tippy-toe into,  I’ve been exploring her work on the internet, and now own a book of her poetry, “Alack, The Ashen Waves of the Sea: Selected Poetry,” which is available at Amazon.com for a very reasonable price.  But I will share here the most stunning bit of wisdom that I’ve seen put into words in my decades of spelunking about in the metaphysics of language. 

In her brief essay from the on-line journal, “Nighting Gale and Sparrow,” Hibah puts into words a linguistic complexity which has burdened me for decades.  Of late, I’ve come to somewhat understand this complexity but, have never been able to put into words as eloquently as she has. She explains that language initially blinds us to the Truth even as it assures us, often, that we have it most assuredly. The threat of understanding this wisdom that she offers is something I could not have handled most of my life; but now, it is immensely freeing, reminding me that all of us are in the same existential dilemma; and it is this “dilemma” that unites us all…if we can humbly accept its “condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything.”  (T.S. Eliot)  It takes all the pressure off and gives new meaning to the old hymnological bromide, “Burdens are lifted at Calvary”; or to word it without the hint of religious savagery, “Chill out. Carry on.  All is well. We’re in this together.”

ScareZone by Hibah Shabkhez

When you touch the edge of something hot—a frying-pan, a clothes-iron—you gasp and flinch away, before the knowledge, before the shock and the hurt and the searing of flesh. Locked in the thumping of your heart then, there is the secret triumph of assault successfully withstood, the inexpressible comfort of knowing it could not and cannot hurt you because you did and can again make it stop. But the drenching heat of liquid cannot be flung off, only sponged and coaxed away from the skin. And so they say doodh ka jala, chhaachh bhi phook phook kar peeta hai. (Urdu translation, “Once bitten, twice shy.”) It doesn’t take all men, you see, it takes only one; and just so, it takes only one vile lie to break a language’s heart.

When first you write a lie, a real lie and not simply a truth incognito, whether it be falsehood or treacherous half-truth, language recoils from you in pain, vowing never to trust you with words again. But if you must go on writing lies, for money or grundy-respect, seize the language and let it feel the sting and the trickling fear of the skin parting company with the flesh, over and over and over again, as you hold it unscreaming under the current. You must let body and mind and heart and soul be quite maimed then, until there is no difference left for any of them between truth and lie, between the coldness of lassi (urdu–”buttermilk”) and the heat of milk-tides rising from the saucepan. Thereafter you may plunder with impunity all of language and force it to house your lies. And if you will never again find words to tell a truth in, it will not matter, for you will have no truths left to tell.