بُقْعة
root: ب-ق-ع / noun / plural: بُقَع / definition: stain
Someone noted last night that I often wear white. And a matter of minutes later, sat in that Uyghur restaurant in Central London, an orange stain of noodle sauce had menacingly bloomed on the referred-to dress, front and centre.
It was tempting—in that moment—to question my attachment to white clothing in recent months, but I concluded that noodle sauce would stain clothing of any colour… as proven shortly afterwards by my colleague in his navy blue jumper.
To be honest, I can’t always remember why I start telling certain stories. But at least the concept of stories is relevant to this post’s topic.
So a while back, however long ago it was, I electronically scribbled something in my notes: 18:64, قصصا.
It’s a reference to a verse in the Qur’an:
قَالَ ذَٰلِكَ مَا كُنَّا نَبْغِ ۚ فَٱرْتَدَّا عَلَىٰٓ ءَاثَارِهِمَا قَصَصًا
[Moses] said, “That is what we were seeking.” So they returned, retracing their footsteps.
It was the last word in the verse that caught my attention suddenly that day: قَصَصًا, often appearing in translations as “retracing” or “following”.
From قَصَص bursts forth a spring of meanings. Under its entry in dictionaries, you’ll find meanings ranging from “narrative” all the way to “what is cut from a sheep’s wool”. And its root, ق-ص-ص, is the same as that of the noun قِصّة (“story”).
So I started thinking (—it happens sometimes—): isn’t it interesting that this word قصص links the idea of retracing with narration?
I mean, I know they’re not worlds apart, but how often do we think about narrating stories as a retracing of the past?
Recently, a dear reader of this blog sent me a beautiful fairytale she’d composed in Arabic, and now I begin to wonder: how do the stories we invent, write, and tell retrace the pathways of our experiences?
And, going back to those wide-ranging definitions of قَصَص, what is cut away to form our retellings (or, indeed, retracing) of stories? And what is left?
And what do we, as listeners or readers, do after being handed these “cuttings of sheep wool”? Do we then spin our own strands and weave them into new stories or memories?
Arabic vocabulary is always food for thought. Which just so happens to be food that doesn’t stain white clothing, so we’re all happy here.
See you on my next post!
.في أمان الله
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