Behind the Mask of
By Amany El-Sawy 🇪🇬
In
أنا بخير
Balygh Hamoud Saeed Dzamreen crafts a poignant soliloquy of existential endurance—one that wears the mask of a simple phrase: "I’m fine."
Beneath this socially coded response lies a layered confession, raw and unfiltered, of a soul teetering at the edge of collapse while desperately clinging to the illusion of normalcy.
The poem opens with the speaker interrogating the very phrase that frames it. “And what shall I answer?”—this rhetorical question sets the tone for a work rooted in contradiction and emotional dissonance. The body is described as functional—lungs still breathing, limbs still moving—but these movements are ghostly, untethered. The imagery of arms “playing with emptiness” and feet
“swimming through space”
evokes a dissociative state, suggesting the speaker inhabits their body only partially, like a phantom haunting their own flesh.
The use of serpents in the fingers, trembling silently, is a powerful metaphor for suppressed anxiety or neurological fragility. Yet, the speaker asserts they still manage to “grasp a spark of existence”—a line that encapsulates the poem’s central paradox: decay interwoven with resilience.
There is a delicate musicality to the speaker’s descent into abstraction.
Sight, sound, and speech—all core human faculties—are present, yet distorted. The speaker can see shapes but not their meanings, hear sounds but not comprehend them. Language itself becomes burdensome, with words stumbling out of a “cage,” resisting articulation.
This degradation of sensory coherence reflects a mind fraying at the edges, subtly hinting at mental or emotional exhaustion. Sleep, the most natural retreat from suffering, becomes an artificial construct. The mention of a colored pill “that deceives the hours” is both heartbreaking and brutally honest. It speaks to the normalization of medicated survival—a reality for many who suffer in silence. Even the act of pain is transformed into a transaction: the speaker buys their scream back with silent sedation. This commodification of suffering underscores the social pressure to remain composed, digestible, and undemanding.
Furthermore, memory itself falters—names blend with streets, the speaker forgets their own reflection. The most haunting line may be, “I leave myself on the thresholds of estrangement,” a metaphor that suggests exile not just from place, but from selfhood. Nonetheless, despite the unraveling, the voice remains upright—barely. The phrase “with the patience of giants” introduces a mythic endurance, a stoicism that defies the poem’s inner chaos.
It is not triumph that the speaker achieves, but persistence: a cold, steady march along a crumbling path. By repeating the phrase “I’m fine” at the end—after exposing the unbearable weight behind it—the poet dismantles the façade of well-being that modern society demands. It is a declaration, not of wellness, but of defiant continuation.
To conclude "أنا بخير" is not merely a poem it is a performance of survival staged in the collapsing theater of the self. Through disjointed perception, quiet despair, and reluctant endurance, Dzamreen exposes the fragility that often hides behind the everyday lies we tell to others—and ourselves. It is a meditation on the cost of silence, the price of composure, and the quiet heroism of still being here.
Guardian Arabia
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