Essa means Jesus.
My friend was neither God
nor prophet, but a rebel soul
and humorist, like Jesus.
When Essa laughed, everyone laughed. I think joy was his gospel.

He and I sang
“set fire to the rain”
together,
and danced wildly to “Sway.”

He loved “Django Unchained.”
Essa had no chains.

Once, we were sleeping
at our friend Emad’s house,
working on our graduation project.
We read in high voices close to Ouda’s ears to wake him up.

At one of our tashas,
I picked on him for putting
too much tomato sauce
in the shrimp zebdya.
He ran after me
and threw a pillow at me.
Then we ate all the zebdya
and wiped sauce from our chins, laughing.

Once he laughed at a poem I
wrote about tasha with a whole grilled lamb, a huge dream dish.
I can see him now sitting in heaven nodding, laughing.