“I'd love to have all my teeth. That would be one thing, but being twenty would be even better. Twenty with all my teeth of course. You need a mouthful of molars if you want to gnash your teeth and we never seem to have enough. There’s a whole lot of anger, but what good is rage without teeth. It’s like a fig tree in a pot. They say that fig trees soften the hearts of hanged men, who hangs himself from a tree in a pot? That’s ridiculous.
Just breathe. We'll cool the damp air you breathe out and a trickle of water will flow, the labour of a life that was taken from you. We know that the ground beneath your feet is not soft and that its temperature does not make life any gentler. We also know that in bowed heads, there are two long, thin cavities, flute-like tubes called syrinxes. Syrinx like the organ in a bird’s throat that allows it to sing. The bird drinks your water and its syrinx sings. But as a bird's beak is its only remaining tooth, when it chirps it is actually biting. And when it sings, it is gnashing its teeth. Isn’t spring lovely?
I would love to have a land to call my own. And all the wind. A land without bones would be better. Everything else would be in vain. And maybe a cloud too, which we could follow in a procession to bury our dead. Not forgetting an eye. A real one to tell of all these things. For my bluest eye is brown and you can't see anything out of it”. - Marwan Moujaes
Marwan Moujaes (Lebanon) is a laureate of Cité internationale des arts' "2-12" residency programme.