The farewell

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

MANILA, Philippines - Bernard Inocentes S. Garcia is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of San Carlos in Cebu City. His family resides in the southern, coastal town of Dumanjug, Cebu. Aside from Kahlil Gibran, his favorite writers include Graham Greene, Philip Roth, Orhan Pamuk, and Juan L. Mercado.

Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet begins with a departure. Outside the city gates of Orphalese, Almustafa stood on a hill waiting for the ship that would take him back to the isle of his birth. In the distance he saw the ship approaching the harbor with the mist, the winds were calm, and the sea as tranquil as the morning sky. But the sight of the crowd gathered at the foot of the hill gripped his heart with sadness.

Before embarking on the ship, he went back into the city to bid farewell to the people of Orphalese. The crowd followed him as he returned to see the woman who had welcomed him on his first day in the city. It was only fitting that he would seek her first to bid his farewell.

Or was it? Long before the people saw the arrival of the ship, Almitra had foreseen the act of his leaving. Some people, he knew, would avoid the long rituals of farewells for a few more hugs would only delay the act of departure, if not of forgetting. He had to see her though to cast one loving look at her whose wisdom was a light to the path he was leading. 

Almitra loved him, yes. Would she stop him from leaving? In the early days of his stay in the city, the people must have frowned at the sight of her in the company of a stranger. She must have suffered for strange were the ways of this man and stranger still were the ways of love. Twelve years was long; even a few days spent in loving bliss was hard to let go.

Along the way people waved and called out his name for they learned to love his odd but gentle soul. Almustafa continued walking but said nothing. Deep in his heart was a secret he couldn’t speak. He felt he left much of himself in the city and took with him more than just memories of the place. He’d forever remember the men in their fields, the children in the springs, and yes, Almitra, she who understood him most.

Almitra was praying at the temple, perhaps, for his safe departure or for him to stay. When she heard the voices of the people, her spirit was lifted. She rushed out of the sanctuary and saw him standing before her, the same man who filled her days with quiet joy. He looked at her with so much tenderness. She knew he had to go, and the day of his return was uncertain. She asked him to break his silence and reveal the truth that he kept in his heart.

Before my imagination further drifts and spoils the story, I have to cut the narrative. Published in 1923, The Prophet has been one of the world’s most widely read and translated literary pieces. It’s a compelling read, one that would bring you to the imaginary yet familiar city of Orphalese with its hills, valleys, and fields of wildflowers. In the words of Almustafa, the Lebanese poet speaks about the timeless truths affecting human life from the moment of his birth to the time of his death.

Through Gibran’s words, you’ll see yourself frolicking in the river with your beloved filled with laughter and drunk with love. If all these are poetic nonsense to you, perhaps, you’ll see your once great love running in the same river, yes, with the other one, the two of them who broke your heart. The book is much more. It’s beyond the romantic stuff of hugs and kisses, of sharing handkerchiefs and tears with friends, of make-up sex.

Sometime ago I gave the book to someone. She said it was beautiful, and my attempts at poetry sucked to death. A few farewells later, I saw her again inside a bookstore. Nothing much had changed in her, or maybe she gained a few more pounds, but I would lie to her about it. She was as beautiful as ever. Like a thief, I hid behind the shelves to peek over at the titles she was buying. Somehow I wished to find The Prophet in her hands although I knew only a few fools would buy a book they’d already read.

She reminds me of the last lines from Kahlil Gibran’s poem on love: “To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;/ To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;/ To return home at eventide with gratitude;/ And to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.”

There’s always someone whose eyes, lips, and the way she smiles or reads a book will forever be etched in our memory. Farewell is not about forgetting the past but keeping memories that give us depth. Love, Gibran writes, should not end in bitterness but with “a song of praise upon your lips.”

The character of Almitra, it’s been said, was based on Mary Elizabeth Haskell. Like Almustafa and Almitra, Gibran and Haskell did not end up together. He pursued his artistic calling, while she married another man. At 48, he died in New York City on April 10, 1931. He didn’t marry.

In his will, Gibran left the contents of his art studio to Haskell where she discovered all her letters to him spanning 23 years. Along with his letters to her, which she had also kept, she gave them to a university library in North Carolina. Old and gray-haired, Haskell traveled to Gibran’s beloved country and buried him among the cedars of Lebanon, thereby fulfilling the poet’s, like Almustafa’s, final wish: to sail home to the isle of his birth.

In return, Khalil Gibran immortalized Haskell in The Prophet. She was the beautiful Almitra walking in the fields of Orphalese in summer afternoons, and after Almustafa’s departure, she was a vision of a young woman in love, standing alone at the harbor, “silent, gazing after the ship until it had vanished into the mist.”

Despite the farewell, the story shows, there are things that do not end.