June 15th 2016

Earlier tonight, I was writing about a person I had been in love with. Well, I was actually writing about how that person made me feel just before I had stopped being in love.

Love doesn’t phase me, not in the way it used to when I was younger and I thought Disney and all the cutesy stuff I was watching behind my parents’ backs were right about this whole bogus idea of a “one true love.”

I am far too susceptible to the vibrations of hearts (& far too Arab) to disbelieve in the power and levels of love — but I do disbelieve in that there is a single love that is the “right one.” I suspect one reason for that is that I’m a divorced woman, but I don’t think that’s the only reason. I used to read classical arabic ‘udhri love poetry and think that was all about a one true love, but it isn’t. The subject in one poem might be one woman, but as my friend D — said in a conversation we had one night, sitting in a room in our alma mater, past midnight, wishing we were still college kids, “it never really was about Layla, it was always about Majnun.”

Majnun is the arabic word for crazy. And Majnun is Layla’s lover — he is so overcome by his love that in classical arabic literature he is immortalized only through that love.. we call him Majnun Layla.. Layla’s Madman.. he is made mad by his love of her, though their love was never cemented through any real comversation or physical contact. In arabic when we say ‘udhri love poetry we mean love poetry that is unconsummated, virgin, something of a fantasy, something greater than reality.

The sort of love that, if you try to bring it down to the earth, it either disappears or fizzes out. Or it crashes down, hard, and burns.