A Dumb Lover, A Short Story Written by Habib Daïm Rabbi , Translated by Mohamed Said Raihani

“ I will not profess , as a lover, that life without love is pure wreckage. Nor will I deny its bitter sweetness, the way those who have never experienced love will do. Nor even will I confirm it as fervently as those who have lived it to the last breath of life.

Love may be a delicious fantasy experienced with the same pleasure that wine, honey and poison are tasted. Yet, unilateral love may throw the whole story down to the abyss of the Self where the Other is waiting to slaughter the one who will love from all his heart….”



Habib Daïm Rabbi

Critic, Novelist & short-story writer





Bad luck made him stumble over an unexpected question. An unbearable man asked him, on no occasion, about the meaning of the word "Dumb" which an unknown lover has started his poem with. In vain, he followed the movement of the flowing lips: dumb, dumb, dumb…

He picked up no signal out of all the mimes. After a while, when he was running out of patience, there comes relief. He answered, in trouble:

- "Dumb" is related to whoever does not react or, rather, whoever means not to react.

That was the end of the grudging encounter between a heavy-going inquirer and a heavy-hearing answerer.

The curious man will go further in his folly while the deaf one will pout recklessly. He will surely remember this moment with indignation and spit in the face of impudence. However, there will be some doubts, in his mind, regarding the word "Dumb".

"Dumb" might sound to him inappropriate as a synonym of "being speechless". Why does dictionaries not accord the very word to the people who cannot hear like him? But that may lead too far beyond the logic of the story.

He was silently burning with her love. He would watch her from afar just to have a glimpse of the jar touching her wild hair whenever she would head for the spring. Love is humiliating but , when it comes to a dumb man, love turns repulsive.

He has gone further in his loss. With that beauty walking by, his eyes turn into two gateways for a rhymeless dumb poem. What a beauty! It is just as if his love was pacing on a cloud: swift, light and dumb.

She crosses the hill to and fro. He can no longer keep his distance. He contemplates his "dumb girl" through the stems of sugar canes. The secret is no more exclusively his, it has already become hers, too. There also can be a third party, the censurer, who may invade the scene to inquire about what a so-called poet said in his love poem.

Now, despite her earlier refusal, there she comes, closer and closer. She herself can no longer resist his love.

Being dumb like him, she handed him a cane quiver to pour his breath within. He did . His tears flowed down on the cane piecing it into seven holes. From that time on, in the same fields, flutes with the slightest puff of air, would sing very sad notes which censurers attribute to a dumb lover who used to hide away in the sugar-cane fields!





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* The writer, Habib Daïm Rabbi , is a Moroccan Critic, Novelist & short-story writer, born in Al-Jadida in 1955, author of "The Turning-Point" (Novel), "Small Wars" (Short stories), "Illusion Mill"(Short stories), "Daisy" (Short stories), "Writing & Inter-textuality" (Study) and "Correlative Texts"(Study)…



* The translator, Mohamed Saïd Raïhani, is a Moroccan scholar & short-story writer, born on December 23rd 1968 in Ksar El Kébir. He published in Arabic "The Singularity Will" (A Semiotic Study on First-names) 2001, "Waiting For the Morning" (Short stories) 2003, "Thus Spoke Santa Lugar-Verde" (Short stories) 2005, "The Season Of Migration to Anywhere" (Short stories) 2006. He is getting ready for printing:"Beyond Writing & Reading " (testimonies) and "Kais & Juliet" (An E-Love Novel).



* "A Dumb Lover" is the first narrative text in the "The Anthology Of Love", An Anthology of Moroccan New Short Story, Volume 2, directed by Mohamed Saïd Raïhani.

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