KHAL AND HAWI 243courageously and constructively the grim reality of the present. In 'The Black
House' (p. 32) the only thing the poet is capable of is prayer:
My black house is full of bones
From which the light of day has fled.
Who will bury them, so that one day
They may come back to life,
Pushing aside the rock?The poet has no energy to bury them, and he can only pray.
Khal's best-known poem is that which gives the volume its title, 'The
Forsaken Well' (pp. 36ff.). Superficially, it is the story of the poet's neighbour
and old friend Ibrahim, an ordinary man in the eyes of the world which is not
aware of his existence, but whose belief that his death might bring about
peace and plenty, remove injustice and put an end to evil and misery on the
earth, prompts him to walk straight into the enemy fire, totally deaf to the
warning and the advice given to him to seek safe refuge in a nearby shelter.
The verdict of the world is that he was simply mad, but the poet knows other-
wise. The poem is clearly a modern variation on the theme of crucifixion,
and it emphasizes the need for the deliberate act of self-sacrifice to revive
society. Ibrahim is the poet and the man of vision who in the pursuit of his
ideal runs counter to self-interest, with the result that he is taken by lesser
mortals, men of cruder substance, to be mad. However, by making Ibrahim
an ordinary man in a sense, the poet asserts his hope in the salvation of his
culture: we only have to turn to the well we have forsaken, the inner spiritual
depths within each of us; it is an arduous process demanding nothing less
than total self-abnegation, but, nevertheless, it is possible. The same theme is
treated in 'Memento Mori' where the need for self-sacrifice is further empha-
sized (p. 52).
The water image is not accidental in 'The Forsaken Well'; it is part of the
contrast between water and desert, life and death, which is to be found in the
work of Khal just as much as in that of Adunis, Hawi and Sayyab, and which
plainly has an ultimately religious (and anthropological) significance.
But there is another symbol in Khal's poetry, namely the sea, which stands
for the spirit of adventure, the passion for the unknown, the metaphysical
quest so essential to the rebirth of the Arabs. This comes out very clearly in
the poem 'The Call of the Sea' (pp. 65-78) which consists of three parts: 'The
Prayer', 'The Journey' and 'The Return'. In 'The Prayer' he urges his soul 'to
tear off the black veils, to look out on the new and rebel'. In 'The Journey' we
read that the narrator and his companions are the adventurous few who gave
up the comfort of their homes in search of heroic ideals. By the use of terms
such as Halleluja and the mention of sacrifice to Astarte, Adonis, and Baal, the
journey is given a religious, sacramental and spiritual significance. 'The