With Al-Mutanabbi

Author's name: Taha Hussein

I don’t know what Al-Mutanabbi did to me, or what I did to Al-Mutanabbi, because I wanted to go slowly with him.
I spoke to him or spoke about him sluggishly, but I had hardly begun to dictate when I was pushed towards him, and pushed into him violently. I could neither resist him nor refuse him, and I was running or sprinting in the dictation with the fiercest enemy.
So that my companion would not follow me except with the utmost effort and the utmost difficulty, and if I become hopeful when I wake up and I become hopeful when I go to bed, and my hope is between that, and I hate comfort with the most intense hatred, and I hardly turn away from Al-Mutanabbi to anyone other than him or to anything other than his speech,
Even if I ended up where I ended up, I found myself exhausted and that I had reached the peak of exhaustion, and I found that I had not said to Al-Mutanabbi or said about him everything that I wanted to say.