Señor Gabber

Jalil Gibran

Mister Gabber

I am bored with gabbers and their gab; my soul abhors them.

When I wake up in the morning to peruse the letters and magazines placed by my bedside, I find them full of gab; all I see is loose talk empty of meaning but stuffed with hypocrisy.

When I sit by the window to lower the veil of slumber from my eyes and sip my Turkish coffee, Mister Gabber appears before me, hopping, crying, and grumbling. He condescends to sip my coffee and smoke my cigarettes.

When I go to work Mister Gabber follows, whispering in my ears and tickling my sensitive brain. When I try to get rid of him he giggles and is soon midstream again, in his flood of meaningless talk.

When I go to the market, Mister Gabber stands at the door of every shop passing judgment on people. I see him even upon the faces of the silent for he accompanies them too. They are unaware of his presence, yet he disturbs them.

If I sit down with a friend Mister Gabber, uninvited, makes a third. If I elude him, he manages to remain so close that the echo of his voice irritates me and upsets my stomach like spoiled meat.

When I visit the courts and the institutions of learning, I find him and his father and mother dressing falsehood in silky garments and Hypocrisy in a magnificent cloak and a beautiful turban.

When I call at factory offices, there too, to my surprise, I find Mister Gabber, in the midst of his mother, aunt, and grandfather chattering and flapping his thick lips. And his kinfolks applaud him and mock me.

On my visit to the temples and other places of worship, there he is , seated on a throne, his head crowned and gleaming sceptre in his hand.

Returning home at eventide, I find him there, too. From the ceiling he hangs like a snake; or crawls like a boa in the four corners of my house.

In short, Mister Gabber is found everywhere; within and beyond the skies, on land and underground, on the wings of the ether and upon the waves of the sea, in the forests, in the caves, and on the mountaintops.

Where can a lover of silence and tranquillity find rest from him? Will God ever have mercy on my soul and great me the grace of dumbness so I may reside in the paradise of Silence?

Is there any place where there is no traffic in empty talk? Is there on this earth one who does not worship himself talking?

Is there any person among all persons whose mouth is not a hiding place for the knavish Mister Gabber?

If there were but one kind of gabber, I would be resigned. But gabbers are innumerable. They can be divided into clans and tribes:

There are those who live in marshes all day long, but when night comes, they move to the banks and raise their heads out of the water and the slime, and fill the silent night with horrible croaking that bursts the eardrums.

There are those who belong to the family of gnats. It is they who hover around our heads and make tiny devilish noises out of spite and hatred.

There is the clan whose members swill brandy and beer and stand at the street corners and fill the ether with a bellowing thicker than a buffalo’s wallow.

We see also a queer tribe of people who pass their time at the tombs of Life converting silence into a sort of wailing more lugubrious than the screeching of the owl.

Then there is the gang of gabbers who imagine life as a piece of lumber from which they try to shape something for themselves, raising as they do so, a screeching sound uglier than the din of a sawmill.

Following this gang is a denomination of creatures who pound themselves with mallets to produce hollow tones more awful than the tom toms of jungle savages.

Supporting these creatures is a sect whose members have nothing to do save to sit down, whenever a seat is available, and there chew words instead of uttering them.

Once in a while we find a party of gabbers who weave air from air, but remain without a garment.

Oftentimes we run across a unique order of gabbers whose representatives are like starlings but deem themselves eagles when they soar in the currents of their words.

And what of those gabbers who are like ringing bells calling the people to worship but who never enter the church.

There are still more tribes and clans of gabbers, but they are too many to enumerate. Of these the strangest, in my opinion, is a sleeping denomination hose members trouble the universe with their snoring and awaken themselves, from time to time, to say, “how erudite we are!”

Having expressed my abhorrence of Mister Gabber and his comrades, I find myself like the doctor who cannot heal himself, or like a convict preaching to his cellmates. I have satirized Miser Gabber and his gabbing friends- with my own gabbing. I have fled from gabbers but I am one of them.

Will God ever forgive my sins before He blesses me and places me in the world of Thought, Truth, and Affection, where gabbers do not exist?