note: this sound file is best experienced with a headset + closed eyes.
If the Arabic language could invite me to live inside of it, I know it’d host me inside her Ṣād • صْ. I’d stand at the tip of the tale and slide down the valley of it’s deep curve, like my drops in life, I’m grounded by it’s mediterranean’s smooth wave, it lifts me up again to hike it’s mountain to get back on the line – and naturally portraying the path I walked with the tip of my tongue at the edge of the fronts, from the depths of my chest, I hush the sound ص.
But within you, Ṣād, lies the spaciousness.
I seek you when my س is in rage, your reverence is an ornament to my name. You transform my softness, you change my condition, you produce my outcome, you’re Me, when I’m becoming: صَارَ (ṣāra).
In words of resilience, like صبر, and in prayer صلاه، and in fasting صوم and in honesty صدق and in the path of الصراط, and in the closing of surahs we say صدق الله.
You’re the chord of the mystical صوفي, and in the knot of my friendships صداقه, you’re the companion صحابي, and you’re in my every morning صباح. you’re the صلاه accompanying my سلام during in-text صلوات upon our beloved (ص).
So here’s to you, bold beauty of the script, the host of the ض، and one of the boldest traits/صفات of Arabic’s character. You’re the opener of the 38th magnificent chapter in the Quran, Ṣād, and like an Arabian desert wide spread with meanings.
Whether for a poet or a mathematician, you’re a devine mystery that represents beyond what a word can convey. You’re even an unknown in the algebra’s fold — both the fold of your shape and that of the function — you represent the mystery coordinates of a place, hidden and veiled in grace. You’re the Arabic sister of the Y in the western’s algebra, even seeking you as a Y is a question? Why? You’re a linguist’s cipher, and a mathematician’s quest. You symbolize my answers, unknown to a س full of questions.
Welcome to my virtual notebook, theletterṢād.
theletterṢād 