Credit: Kirill Abdrakhmanov
In January I visited the international conference „Outcast Voices – reflections on the marginalized, the exiled and the secondary in classical and modern Arabic culture“ at Haifa University. In one of the lectures, Prof. Alexander Key quoted the Persian and Arabic wisdom „Put out your foot to the extent of your carpet“ or „Stretch out your legs to the extent of your robe“, in its different versions across time.
The images of the carpet and robe belong to the worlds humans create around their bodies. Worlds made of fabrics, woven into a thing of beauty, for the body to wear or sit and lie on.
The carpet and robe as metaphors can stand in for any world, but I, sitting there in the conference room at that moment, thought of them as standing in for the world of the body itself. The proverbs, to my mind, touched on the central theme in natural breathwork of „staying within one‘s own house“. Only when I‘m at home, when I‘m present in my body, can the breath fully move through its designated spaces, of its own accord and in accordance to the body‘s needs.
The proverbs embody a concrete, as well as an imaginary gesture, not to overextend ourselves. In terms of the body, to refrain from pushing and pulling at our limbs and muscles, and in terms of breathing, to refrain from exerting our lungs, with their delicate, spongy tissue, held in liquid, protected by a cage of bone. It is a gesture of care and of measure. I hadn‘t found a more apt and helpful wording for it until that moment.
You can read more about these proverbs in the great online version of Essays in Islamic Philology, History, and Philosophy, page 122