“You’re not adults, you’re children.” That’s all their father said when they walked in the front door. Muhsin went into the kitchen and asked his mother for a glass of water. She stared at the paint splatters all over his clothes. When he came back, he saw his brother sitting in the chair. Then he heard his father’s voice. “You sit down, too, Muhsin.”
Muhsin sat there for a minute, afraid to look up.
“I don’t need to tell you why I’m angry, do I?”
“No, Baba.”
“Which of you wants to tell me what you did wrong?”
Hassan spoke up first. “Everyone at school was…”
“Everyone else was going down to the streets? Demonstrating against the king is not wrong. On the contrary, it’s patriotic. You want to try again?”
The two boys said nothing.
“Your turn, Muhsin. Tell me what you did wrong.”
“We painted graffiti?”
“No, that’s not wrong either.” There was a long pause as their father waited.
“OK. Do you want me to tell you what you did wrong?”
“Yes, Baba.”
“Look at yourselves. You got paint everywhere. Who saw you when you came home, huh? Did you walk by the baker, or did you go the other way?”
“By the baker.”
“It’s too late now, but that was a mistake. Let me tell you what you did wrong: it’s not what you were doing, it’s how you were doing it. You were doing something adults do, but you were going about it like children. Go wash yourselves off. And give your dirty clothes to your mother.”
The doorbell rang while Muhsin and Hassan were in the bathroom. They heard their father’s voice talking to someone in the hallway for ten minutes before the door finally closed again.
“Get out here right now, boys.”
By now, their sister was home. Muhsin saw the fear in her eyes as they walked into the room. Their father was fuming, his voice quavered. “You want to do what you think is right? At least do it right. Listen to this:
The one thing that is braver each day than I is my sense of self-preservation
It moves not, and stands not, unless it is driven by something important,
I have struggled with dangers until they were left saying:
Has death itself died? And has terror been…”
No one said a word. Muhsin and Hassan looked at each other, and then again at their father.
“Tell me something about these lines.”
Hassan went first. “The poet is saying to be brave?”
“No. Muhsin?”
“The poet is saying to be cautious?”
“Are these lines even complete?”
“Why are you telling me what lines mean if you can’t even tell whether they’re complete? Let your sister try. Rahma?”
“It’s the long meter. Acatalectic. There’s a missing foot. This line is probably: Has death itself died? And has terror been terrorized? That would make sense given the parallelism of the line, and it would also resolve the metrical gap.”
Their father smiled at his daughter. “Good. What else?”
“Mutanabbi is probably the one who composed it. At least, I think so. In any case, it would seem to mean that in fighting, your caution must be bold and your boldness cautious – then you will be invincible. That sort of paradox would be typical of the poet.”
Muhsin and Hassan looked up at their sister and then their father.
“Well done. Good guess. It’s Mutanabbi’s panegyric to Ali ibn Ahmad ibn Amer al-Antaki. Hassan and Muhsin, go to your room and think about how foolish you were today. You want to make a statement? Learn to recognize the difference between a complete statement and an incomplete one, then you might be ready.”