Tarek Eltayeb was born in 1959 in Cairo. He has published five novels, two collections of short stories, five poetry collections, one play, one autobiography and a collection of essays in Arabic. His books have been published in German, English, Italian, French, Spanish, Macedonian, Romanian and Serbian translations. His poems have appeared in different languages in various literary anthologies, magazines, and journals worldwide – in Swedish, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Bosnian, Maltese and others. Tarek Eltayeb currently teaching at three universities in Austria– namely the University of Vienna, University of Graz, and the University of Krems.
COFFEE AND WATER
A hundred times a day, he says,
“I’ll have to return. Here, there is no mercy.
There, there is kindness and warmth and …”
Then he falls silent.
I ask him, “There?
Where is that?”
He points somewhere.
His face is expressionless,
and he does not say anything anymore.
I take his hand.
We go to a cafe
and sit down at a quiet corner table.
I order coffee for him
and water for me.
I speak to him in Arabic
and mix water into the coffee.
He is annoyed, “Are you crazy?”
He tries to remove the water
from the coffee.
He tries to.
He tries to get the water back
into the water.
Translated by Wolfgang Astelbauer