Sayyidatina | Masih

By Y. A. 

Inspired by “The Madonna of the Roses” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

The high walls encapsulate the garden, an oasis within the desert. Once gilded in shades of gleaming gold, they’ve given away to a sort of rustic bronze; archaic bullions reaching high into arid sky. A remnant of a time in which Canaanite filled the dusty air. The sun is bright, and stray rays scatter across the burnished stone floor polishing it in sunwake. At the back of the garden a woman stands between two white pillars, chipped along their ornate carvings. Pale erythraean roses bloom around her in between bushels of dark green leaves. Her face, pallid and sullen, frame her tightly pursed lips, which covet behind them her harrowing shrieks. Her eyes are wide and wet, as if the Galilee would burst through if she let the dam that is her facade fall. She covers herself in emollient drapery, juxtaposed to her own stirn porcelain. In her arms she cradles a baby, begotten by none other than “Be, and it is.” He is young, the world has not yet danced around the sun since his mother shook the date-palm in pain, and yet he sits high in the throne that is his mother’s grasp. Atop his head, curls of saute sunglow crown him a king and the breeze carries with it the smell of a primordial myrrh. Husks of carob and locust tinged in balsam litter the floor beneath them, and with every stir, the mother snaps another dried branch. Concealed behind the monolithic walls, the baptismal Jordan surges down from Mount Hermon, nestled deep within the Golan Heights. The flapping of the river is the only sound that rouses life beyond the garden; the only noise that breaks focus from the mother and her son. The sun begins to set like a cup of spilt wine, turning the sky a deep vermillion. Even now, the morningstar still crests the bloodlet sky. A calming sensation takes to the ground, belligerent against the fixed heaviness of the desert air. An entropy of ecstasy and tranquility. A single, crystalline tear, cabochon in ariolation, traces down her reddened cheek. It splatters against the stone floor, rippling through the immaculate moonglade.

Y. A is a Muslim writer. His work chiefly chronicles his attempts at nurturing an interfaith dialogue through the use of his interplaying Jewish, Christian, and Islamic themes.