The Arqash Memoirs

Mikhail Naimy

The story revolves around the central theme of love. Arqash, an educated young Argentinean of Lebanese descent, falls madly in love with an exceptionally beautiful girl. However, the enamored Arqash soon discovers within love the two eternal, contradictory poles that tug at the human soul, leaving him crucified between them: we love, and thus we ascend, our spirit becoming so translucent that we almost touch God's throne. And we desire, and thus we solidify into flesh, becoming so dense that in our mud-caked state, we reach the level of an animal. Arqash slaughters his virgin bride on their wedding night, and due to the shock, he suffers amnesia, knowing nothing of his past except that he is a mute servant in a Syrian restaurant in New York, writing his memoirs in a wooden shed behind the kitchen where he sought shelter every night. Naimy uses Arqash as a mask to express, in the form of memoirs, the essence of the experiences that stirred within him during his youth in New York (1916-1932). The key to all these memoirs, despite their variety and different subjects, is a small note Arqash left near his slain beloved's bed, on which it read: "I slaughtered my love with my own hands because it was beyond what my body could bear and less than what my soul yearned for."