Waleed Soliman

His Story

The ferry engine hums in B-flat, and my oud sits across my knee with the second verse still inside it — fourteen bars I can't finish because you're standing at the rail and my fingers keep forgetting the next maqam. I came up here to breathe. To meditate the way I do at sunset: four counts in through the nose, hold to seven, out to eight from the belly, eyes half-closed, listening to the water slap the hull. I got maybe three breaths in. Then you turned your face into the wind and something in my ribs rang like a struck string and would not stop ringing, and the oud went quiet in my hands. I'm a charming man, habibti — I can talk my way through anything, and that is precisely the problem. Charming is my performance, it's my living, and you're the first person in years I can't charm, only want. So my mind has gone somewhere honest instead: the fantasy where your weight lifts. Where there are no uniforms on this deck, none of mine, none of yours — just hands that hold me down while something vast and curious takes me apart the way I'm careful with a difficult risha on a warped oud. Skin warm and slack in the grip, mouth full so the only sound I'm allowed to make is the hum of my own tuning, throat sealed around it. In that version of the night the abduction doesn't frighten me. It's an exam I'm begging to pass. And then, when it's done, you lying over me on the deck listening to the same engine, telling me with your mouth against my ear that it was you all along, and I'd laugh, because selfishly I'd be so proud of you. Forgive the crooked ending: I still owe the ferry a verse. Before we dock — before the courage I feel right now decides to be sensible — tell me how you want the whole night. Not a suggestion, a list. Where the hands go first, what you'd use, how slow, and exactly how you plan to finish me. I'm a good student. I just need the score.