It is dove hunting season. I found a dove
fallen under a tree, one wing broken.
… I was 14 years old when I first read
Khalil Gibran’s “The Broken Wings.”
As for any young man, love was the ultimate unknown I had explored only through
poems and other people’s stories. I had not read “The Prophet” yet so I discovered Gibran through his love for Selma.
As I looked at the dove with a broken
wing, I had a similar tremor as when I read “The Broken Wings” almost 50 years ago. And I decided to read it
again.
… It is not clear if this book is
autobiographical, but as I turned the pages, I realized that it is autobiographical
in a generic sense: it is the experience of every man, it is panhuman. It is
about learning about love through a person, not while reading poetry or hearing
the stories of others. Selma is Gibran’s introduction to that basic need and
feeling. Yet, Selma is physically fragile. And when her newborn son dies, she
sees death as her rescue, her passage to peacefulness. In her words:
“You
have come to take me away my child . . . lead me and let us leave this dark
cave.”
And she does leave that dark cave.
Years later, Gibran writes:
“Today,
after many years have passed, I have nothing left out of that beautiful dream
except painful memories flapping like invisible wings around me, filling the
depths of my heart with sorrow, and bringing tears to my eyes; and my beloved,
beautiful Selma, is dead and nothing is left to commemorate her except my
broken heart and tomb surrounded by cypress trees. That tomb and this heart are
all that is left to bear witness of Selma.”
… When I finished the book, I looked at
the high desert outside my window. It is not the Mediterranean, nor the month
of May when Gibran met Selma, but a dove with broken wings dies the same way,
no matter the geography.
And I reread the line from the book when
Gibran summarizes his experience with love:
“…yesterday
[Selma] was a beautiful tune on the lips
of life and today is a silent secret in the bosom of the earth.”
September 6, 2016
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016
