6 Things I learned from Mustapha over the weekend

You could say my love for animation and excellent story lines stem from my need to have some form of method to appreciate the arts or it could be my excessive need to escape the confines of rigid reality. Whatever it may be, I am glad that I have watched some of the best animated cartoons and anime of my generation, from Naruto to Moana to even Wall-E where more than half the time, the communication was not verbal. Still, I understood the message it sent across and I enjoyed it.
During the weekend, I settled down to watch another animated cartoon since there was no place to go thanks to the incessant downpour which led to the flood on the streets and caused a literal lock in throughout. Not that I minded overly much since I’d rather be at home than attempt to go somewhere and risk being stuck in crazy, unexplainable Lagos traffic.
So I consulted my movies folder and settled in with my cousins to watch a cartoon titled ‘The Prophet’. I was immediately blown away by the pure artwork the first scene was. There are no other words to describe it but call it what it is which is ‘pure art’. It was a picturesque scene of the fictional village of Orpheles. The use of lines and subtle use of colour all came together in a beautiful blend of harmonious discord.

Pure Art of Harmonious discord: A view of Orpheles

The story begins with Almitra, a young girl who hasn’t spoken since her father died over two years ago and finds very creative ways to get into trouble to the dismay of her mother who goes around doing her best to pay for damages and apologise for her daughter’s unruly behaviour.

However, Almitra and her mother were not the ones who captivated my soul in this eighty-five minutes cartoon.
That day, Almitra refuses to go to school and follows her mother to her place of work. Her mother works as a housekeeper to a prisoner who is under house arrest and is known simply as the poet or his given name, Mustapha. Ignoring the stern warnings to not go into the house by her mother who drops her off with the guard at the gate, she sneaks into the house and into Mustapha’s room where he is hard at work on a painting.

This begins a chain of events that lead to Mustapha’s journey and his untimely and very sad death. However, this article is not about the events or even about the cartoon no matter how much I have gushed about it already. It’s about what Mustapha had to say on 8 different topics: Freedom, children, marriage, work, eating and drinking, love, good and evil and finally Death. Mustapha had something profoundly beautiful to say about them all. I understand this cartoon is based on the collection of poems written by Kahlil Gibran, a collection I am definitely going to add to my reading list. For now I shall enjoy Mustapha’s words on these 6 topics and the beautiful work of art that accompanied each of them.

Mustapha on Freedom

To become free, what will you remove that is not a part of yourself

I have seen people throw themselves down and worship their own freedom, like slaves before a tyrant, praising him though he slays them.

I have seen the freest amongst them wear their freedom as a handcuff and my heart bled within me for you can only be free when you no longer speak of freedom as a goal.

And how can you be free unless you break the chains you have fastened around yourself. In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains though its links glitter in the sun.

And to become free what will you remove that is not a part of yourself. If it’s a tyrant his throne was built within you, and if it’s a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you and if it’s a fear you would drive away the root of the fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.

These things move within you as light and shadows and constant half embraced. You’ll be free indeed not when your days are without a care or your nights without grief but rather when these things bind up your life and yet you rise above them unbound.

Mustapha On Children

Your children are not your children

Your children are not your children. They are the son and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you, not from you.

Though they are with you, they belong to themselves. You may give them your love but not your thoughts for they have thoughts of their own. You may house their bodies, not their soul for their soul is in a house of its own you cannot visit not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them but see not to make them like you for life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children’s living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with that his arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archers hands be for gladness for even as he loves the arrow that flies, he loves the bow that is stable.

Mustapha On Marriage

Fill each others cups but drink not from one cup

You were born together and together you shall be forever more. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Yes, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heaven dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love. Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous but let each of one you be alone even as the strings of a lute are alone yet they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of life can contain your hearts and stand together yet not too near together for the pillars of the temple stand apart and the cypress and the oak tree grow not in each other’s shadow.

Mustapha On Work

Work is love made visible

All work is noble.

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.

For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons and to step out of life’s procession that marches in majesty and proud submissions towards the infinite. When you work, you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turn to music.

And when you work with love, you bind yourself to yourself and to one another and to God.

And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth. It is to build a house with affection even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house. It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit. It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit and to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

Often I have heard you say as if speaking in sleep one who works in marble and finds the shape of their own soul in the stone is nobler than one who ploughs the soil and one who ceases the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man is more than one who makes the sandals for our feet, but I say but not in sleep but in the over wakefulness of noontide that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than it does to the smallest blades of grass

They are great who turn the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by their own loving.

Work is love made visible.

Mustapha on Eating and Drinking

Since we must kill to eat, let it be an act of worship

Thanks to the earth for its gifts.

Would that you could live from the fragrance of the earth and like an egg plant be sustained by the light.

But since we must kill to eat then let it be an act of worship.

When you gather the grapes for the wine press say in your heart I too am a vineyard and my fruit shall be gathered for the wine press. The wine shall be kept in eternal vessels.

And when you crush an apple with your teeth say to it in your heart, your seeds shall live in my body and the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart.

Your blood and my blood is the sap that feeds the tree of heaven and together we shall rejoice through all the seasons.

Mustapha on Good and Evil

In our longing for our greater selves lies our goodness

Let us not be too quick to call others evil.

For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst.

Truly when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves and when it thirst, it drinks even of dead waters. You are good when you strive to give off yourself yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself for when you strive for gain you are but a root that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast.

Surely the fruit cannot say to the root be like me, ripe and full and ever given off your abundance for the fruit, giving a need as receiving is a need for the root.

You are good when you are one with yourself yet when you are not one with yourself, you are not evil. A ship without a rudder may wander aimlessly amongst perilous aisles yet not sink to the bottom. You are good when you walk to your goal with bold steps yet you are not evil when you go limping. Even those who limp do not go backward.

Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles but you who are strong and swift see that you do not limp before the lame deeming it kindness. In your longing for your greater self lies our goodness but in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea carrying the secrets of the hillside and the songs of the forest while in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.

In our longing for our greater selves lies our goodness and that longing is in all of us.


Even though it had a bitter-sweet unexpected ending, I can say this particular animation blew me away from point zero to point hundred. I wish to find more like this. In the mean time, I shall scour the internet for the original work and learn some more from Mustapha.

Winifred Yachiga Amase

Written by

Writer/Editor, Graphics and UI/UX designer and avid reader of all things I find curious. I write about things I love, experience and observe.

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