For those who missed the online launch of Mona Kareem’s I Will Not Fold These Maps, with translator Sara Elkamel and editor Nashwa Nasreldin, there were several interesting discussions: on the figure of the poet-translator, on the relationship between friendship and love poetry, and a long talk about humor. Rare is the collection of poetry that is serious and generative, but can also make a reader laugh out loud. As part of the event, we asked Mona about the role of playful humor in her poetry.

“Humor came later into my poetry,” Kareem said. “I’d always thought that it’s unseemly to joke, and also maybe wondered: How do you even put humor into poetry? And I think the poets that I was reading, I was not attracted to their humor, maybe. A lot of the humor that is in Arabic poetry is political satire, so it was a very specific genre that I wasn’t practicing. But then over time I started to realize that there is a power to humor in really every genre, as a relief, but also it allows you to approach subjects and experiences that are very difficult and violent. If you are trying to avoid reproducing violence or trauma as it is, if you are trying to distill something in it that evokes something that makes it relatable, or accessible to a stranger—to make it vulnerable—humor plays a beautiful role there. 

“I remember maybe the first poem that I wrote with humor. Funnily enough, I wrote it in English. And it was in 2017, when I was searched at the airport and felt very humiliated, and I wrote the poem—it’s a very short poem—and right away I felt myself mocking the policewoman who searched me. And it felt like I was able to take something back by mocking her, and somehow I felt that I liberated myself from that awful experience. The memory stays, of course, but I don’t have to only remember it through her lens, what she had done to me. I was able to reverse it, in a way.” 

“Before that poem, humor would show up more as sarcasm,” she said. “We are ok to use dark comedy, because we think that’s intelligent. It was very subtle, and I never embraced it, I never allowed myself to explore it. But after that moment when I saw there was something therapeutic about it, I was just like, Oh! I can do this all the time. I can use humor as a way of, so to speak, breaking the fourth wall and making a connection with the reader. 

“You see it in my essays as well, where maybe I might do it in a snarky way, but really I began to pay attention to all my favorite writers and noticing how humor generates something—it just really shifts relations. Sometimes it makes people uncomfortable, but in a good way. Uncomfortable in a way that brings them to question some conceptions, or even aesthetic expectations that they have.”

Sara Elkamel then talked about the process of translating the humor of the poems, moving it from the Arabic into an English.

“I think what I’ve done is sometimes to extend the qualities in the language that are associated with humor—so for example, hyperbole. In one unpublished poem that I really, really love, its title is “Absence without Arms,” so already the title is really intense. There’s one stanza that says: In your absence I did nothing unnatural; I archived my dreams. And I don’t remember what the word for archived was in the Arabic, but I feel like archived is such a heavy word to then contrast with what came before, so maybe I sometimes just use the bigger words to create more of a contrast.

“And then also Mona makes up these occupations, so there’s a Death Policeman, there’s Disease Police, and I think maybe one option I could’ve used with these terms was to use “policeman of death” and not capitalize, for example, but I preserve it and capitalize Policeman and Death to make it seem like an occupation, to extend the humorous tone. I’m still experimenting with how to preserve the playfulness.”

You can find a reading of one of the humorous poems in the collection at around 40:00, or watch the whole launch event on YouTube:

Next month, Poetry Translation Centre is releasing a collection of poetry by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, A Friend’s Kitchen, translated by Bryar Bajalan and Shook. To mark the occasion, they have shared an excerpt from the introduction and two poems from the collection.

An excerpt from the introduction to A Friend’s Kitchen

By Bryar Bajalan

In his poem ‘The Book of Sorrows’, Al-Saddiq illustrates the difficulties of living in exile and being exposed to new culture and a new way of life. In the poem he writes, ‘It was my first winter in the darkness of the small room near the big train station; the bustling of late-night workers coloured my lonely window with remarkable varieties of the pleasures of life, remarkable life.’ As Louis Aragon puts it in ‘Mimosas’, in this poem Al-Saddiq extends his hand to the subway and they both emerge from the ground to breathe.

In 2021 I attempted to puzzle out the strange phrases, allusions and metaphors in ‘The Book of Sorrows’ in order to create a film based on the poem. Al-Saddiq was very excited to hear about the film and to consider new ways to experiment with poetry. He is always open to exploring the vast possibilities of poetry and poetry translation that other forms of media empower.

I had planned to spend three days with Al-Saddiq to shoot the film. I was in a hurry. In the very early hours of our meeting, I asked Al-Saddiq, ‘What is the “remarkable life”?’

Al-Saddiq didn’t answer me with words.

We started our journey from Queensway, a busy thoroughfare in west London. We grabbed some falafel sandwiches and sat to eat in Hyde Park while talking about modern Iraqi poetry. Al-Saddiq gave me a tour of each of his haunts in those early years, including a tiny makeshift nest on the second floor, a little falafel shop, his local pub, and several bookstores, as well as the corner where the Sudanese gather to play dominoes while they run their businesses.

Then, in the same way Sufis commemorate the death of their forebears, we visited the house of Sarah Maguire, founder of the Poetry Translation Centre and a champion of Al-Saddiq’s work in translation, to keep her legacy and memory alive.

*

Al-Saddiq once told me that he is inspired by the Sudanese poet Muhammad Mahdi al-Majzob, quoting him: ‘I dream of a generation that makes writing as essential a part of living as drinking water’. For Al-Saddiq, to write is to live. His poetry is an attempt to establish our interconnectedness and foster a sense of community. Like a dervish, Al-Saddiq is seeking comfort and emotional relief in times of trauma and grief. Poetry, and this translation project, is an attempt to understand the ‘strangeness of the sounds’ and climb over the ‘wall of language’. It is looking for familiarity in a place where: ‘Everything… / Everything… / Invokes your exile / Everything shouts: Hey, lonely!’

Every time Al-Saddiq and I meet, every time we read, translate, and live out a poem, every time we cry and laugh to our bones, every time we gossip about the poets who couldn’t keep up the good work – that is the remarkable life.

The Book of Sorrows

It was my first winter in the darkness of the small room near the big train station; the bustling of late-night workers coloured my lonely window with remarkable varieties of the pleasures of life, remarkable life.

Your warm voice on the phone ignited winter’s spine with a flaming, flirtatious whip, while the rain splattered against the window of a car moving so fast it seemed to drag the bridge towards the abyss.

Not just the train station, not your warm voice on the line, not the nostalgia hoarded in the tiny window of my screen, not your name or room number, not the colours in the window.

Our interwoven fingers stirred something in their own right, as did the number for the ambulance, the many colours of the box!

*

My Corpse in the River

The killers are dancing on my body
I had joy enough
Before the traitorous bullet
The square was full of hopes and dreams
I think it still is, now spurred by my blood On the protest square

Hopes and dreams
Still glimmer
Women of all ages – the mothers and their ululations Making food
And the young men with their youthful zeal
Everything stimulates our will to live!
The songs
The cheerful graffiti, the incantations and prayers
I become magnificent exploring the festive square
I’m blooming – this is my soil
I’m blooming – this is my homeland
And I am the link between them
I am the master of this place and possibility!
My body is still in the river
I listen carefully to my comrades’ banging on the tunnel And on the iron bridge – just as we had agreed
I listen to the doves’ cooing
So fragrant – and their trilling, brighter than brightness I still choose joy and I’m close to drowning!

My body is in the river – still
And I listen still, delighted by the voices of my comrades

Still delighted by their embraces
I forget the roaring torrent of bullets and betrayals
I am still listening to the ululations – till the very end I survive by the thinnest thread of a scent
Still alive, my body in the river
Living this life!

Find more about the collection at the Poetry Translation Centre website.

This summer, we will run select pieces from summer issues of ArabLit Quarterly. This excerpt from a tenth-century poem by Abu Dulaf, translated by Brad Fox, ran in the summer 2020 CRIME issue of the magazine, available as PDF, e-pub, and in print.

By Abu Dulaf

Translated by Brad Fox

The Banu Sasan was a name associated with bands of thieves, beggars, and other outcasts beginning in the eighth century. Stories and legends surround them, and many poems were ascribed to them. What follows is one such poem, extracted from a text written down by the tenth-century Iraqi traveler and writer Abu Dulaf. It’s written in slang, and Abu Dulaf’s version includes lengthy notes, which can be read as satirical, pedantic, or simply interesting. Clifford Edmund Bosworth published a faithful but not very accessible English translation, including Abu Dulaf’s notes and adding his own, in 1976. I’ve integrated some material from those several layers, while striving for a taste of the original qasida—a poem essentially unrecoverable, but still somehow recognizable.

Brad Fox is a writer and translator. His new book The Bathysphere Book was released by Pushkin Press/Astra House this May. His first article on Arabic dream narratives, trickster tales, and encyclopedism appeared in World Art in February 2020. Earlier work has appeared in The New Yorker, Guernica, and in the Whitney Biennial. Find him at bradfox.org.

WATCH: An interview between Brad and ArabLit Quarterly editor-in-chief M Lynx Qualey where they discuss the charlatanism (both real and invented) of the poem, the Banu Sasan, and his translation.

This summer, we will run select pieces from summer issues of ArabLit Quarterly. These two poems originally appeared in ArabLit Quarterly’s KITCHEN issue, published in the summer of 2021 and edited by Nour Kamel.

Two Poems By Rym Jalil

Translated by Mariam Boctor

*

My Mother’s Kitchen

كل يوم اضحك على نفسي 

وأقول عارفاه

مطبخ امي المآسي مش سيعاه

لابد بناء علاقة سطحية

اكمنه له سيد واحد

من بداية الامر لمنتهاه

Every day I lie and say 

I know this place.

My mother’s kitchen 

brims with afflictions

I must pretend to befriend it

we all know it can have only one master 

from its beginning to its end 

مكان مقدس صعب زيارته

حيث كل المواجهات

ساعات حواديت حقيقية

والعادي ساحة خلافات

A holy place that’s hard to visit

every single confrontation within its walls. 

A few hours of truthful conversation

but mostly, a landscape of fights

ليه مش واجب سرد الماضي

كجزء من واقع آلافات

ليه مش من حقك تشارك

(كحجر أساسي في الحكايات)

Why isn’t it a duty to narrate the past

as part of a thousand present realities? 

Why isn’t it my right to share my story

(as a cornerstone of stories)?

فهمت من رصة بهاراتها

انها محبكاها حبتين

كان هيجري ايه لو فيه مكان

لاثنين

 The arrangement of her spices

shows she will not budge.

Would it hurt if there were space 

for two?

الازمة مش في المساحات

لكن في احتواء الاختلافات

ان كنت ناوي ع القبول

ضميرك حتماً هيحاسبك

اصل مش من الأصول

تطرد من مملكتك

It’s less an issue of space 

than of spanning differences

and even if you could yield 

your ego would resist.

It would be too much to be expelled

from your kingdom.

كل يوم اضحك على نفسي

وأقول عارفاه

مطبخ امي المآسي مش سيعاه

خريطته معقدة ومفزلكة

وعليه ضابط مرور

لو انحنيت قصاده

ممكن تاخد تأشيرة عبور

Every day

I lie and say I know this place.

My mother’s kitchen 

brims with afflictions

the map is complicated, annotated

and there’s a border guard; 

and if you submit and acquiesce,

your stay may be extended 

ضريبة التأشيرة صمت تام

(تسمع-تسمع-تسمع)

واخر وسيلة تواصل

هي الكلام

The admission tax is silence

(you will listen, you will listen, you will listen) 

there is absolutely no communication

in words. 

طاستين وكباية

نصيبك عشرين حكاية

وسط الف حقيقة

مش شايف لهم نهاية

two bowls and a cup

and your serving is twenty stories

buried in a thousand 

truths without end 

ياما سالت ع السر

وطلبت افهم بهدوء

بس مين يقر

ولا يكلمني بالذوق

سالت نفسي كتير

محتاجة كام سنة

يكون لي مساحة

ويكون مطبخي

I often asked for the secret 

many times I asked, peacefully, to understand

but nobody would reveal it

or speak to me, gently.

oftentimes, I asked

how many years would it take 

to have my own space 

my own kitchen.

وانت رافضة تفتحيلي برطمان الخلطة

كأن وجودي في حياتك

(غلطة)

كان بدون خطة

انت رافضة تتقبلي كياني

حتى لو بمحض الصدفة

And you refuse to unscrew your spice jar for me

my presence in your life

(a mistake)

unplanned and unintended.

you refuse to accept the core of me

even if accidentally

سنين معافرة

بشوف كتير

بحاول ادور على فكرة

مدخل للتغيير

بس متعودتش اشوف

في الضلمة

ولا اتعودت أحب

مجاملة

Years of struggle

I’ve seen a lot 

I’m trying to spin an idea

find a way to change

but I’m not used to seeing 

in the dark 

and I don’t like

pretending.

*

A Kitchen of My Own

مطبخي الجديد انا حافظاه

عارفة كل ركن فيه وحباه

حيطانه بتحضن

أطباقه بتحتوي

واخدني زي ما انا

ووجباتي مكفياه

I’ve memorized my new kitchen 

every single corner of it’s loved:

 walls embrace

and plates hold.

It takes me as I am 

and my meals are enough 

في مطبخي الجديد مفيش موانع

اني اعك

اني اسرح

وعلي وقتي الخاص اخترع

وصفات تفرح

In my own kitchen there are no restrictions 

on screwing up 

on daydreaming 

or on my own time inventing recipes 

to relish.

رقصت مع الملح بحرية

اكتشفت حقايق تشرح

قهوتي في ساعة صبحية

تروق على دماغي

 بالتحميصة اللي هي

I dance freely with the salt 

I chance upon truths that ease my heart 

my coffee at dawn

tickles my brain 

with just the right roast

معودتش أخاف من الشطة

بقيت اكلها بمزاجي

بل وبرحب بيها كفكرة

حتى في لحظات الضيق

باخد نفس

(عميق)

وبلساني بدوق العبرة

I’m no longer afraid of the chili pepper

 and eat it on my own terms.

 I welcome it 

even in moments of trouble

I take a breath 

(deeply)

and my tongue tastes the lesson.

يوم ما حرقت الزيت شوية

كافئت نفسي بكنافة محشية

اصل عقابي دلوقتي قراري

اطبطب علي روحي

واجيبلها هدية

The day I slightly burned the oil

I treated myself 

to stuffed kunafa.

Punishments now are my own to decide.

I plump my soul, 

 give her gifts galore. 

*

Rym Jalil is a writer and poet based in Cairo. She wrote her first poem at the age of nine. Her first published poem, “Higher Power,” was a collaboration with Sara Fakhry Ismail, which was released as part of a series of events on independent publishing at Cairo Image Collective in September 2020. Most recently, she worked alongside other artists and writers eventually leading to a collective online publication “Our Bodies Breathe Underwater,” which featured three of her poems. In her poetry, mostly written in Egyptian dialect, she uses autobiographical events and abstract imagery interchangeably. Jalil holds a BA in Radio and TV broadcasting from Ain Shams University. 

Mariam Boctor is a writer, translator, researcher, and curator based in Egypt. Their work has been featured in The Outpost, Mada Masr, and the Contemporary Image Collective’s publications Taste of Letters, and the forthcoming Our bodies breathe underwater. They are passionate about medicine, herbs, food, and the body. They love cats and sing sometimes.

In 1971, the great, maverick Iraqi poet Sargon Boulus (1944-2007) published a single issue of an English-language literary anthology that he called Tigris. The magazine—a whisper on the literary landscape that appeared three years after Boulus’s arrival in the US—brings together work by Boulus and several of his literary friends, in translation by Boulus and Etel Adnan.  

This slender publication was recently re-issued with an introduction by the scholar Salih J Altoma and includes a conversation about Boulus between Altoma and the late, brilliant Lebanese poet-artist Etel Adnan. It is shared here with Altoma’s permission.

Clearly, Boulus never aimed to become a magazine mogul. As Etel Adnan told Altoma in a 2013 email, sent via her partner Simone Fattal, she met Boulus after he arrived in Beirut in the late 60s, at Yusuf al-Khal’s place. “Sargon was very young,” she wrote. “He had those wonderful black eyes and big smile, looking so real, so innocent. I liked him immediately.”

After Boulus flew from Beirut to New York, Adnan helped him make it out to San Francisco, met him at the airport, put him up, and helped him find a job at the Bechtel Company. She wrote, in her reflections:

“When Sargon came to San Francisco, I introduced him to Violette Yacoub, an Iraqi ‘Ashuri [Assyrian] like him, with the idea that she could help him. Few months later he told me that she was looking for a grant for him, and that he had to show that he was involved in some cultural activity, so he decided to start ‘Tigris’ and he asked me to publish Jebu as the main poem. I didn’t ask about who or what organization were giving him the grant. But he did receive the grant and stopped publishing ‘Tigris’ after that.”

Thus, as Altoma notes in his introduction, Tigris was not an end in itself, but rather a temporary solution to the lifelong problem of how to devote oneself to poetry across different countries, eras, and styles: how to live poetry. Yet, in so doing, the small anthology includes significant work: Etel Adnan’s “Jebu,” translated by Adnan, and poetry by Boulus, Fouad Rifkah, Yusuf al-Khal, Mouayad al-Rawi, and Riadh Fakhouri, all in Boulus’s translations, as well as a work by Ankido, a “street-activist poet-café worker of importance to the Palestinian Liberation Movement.”

Altoma re-issued the work in an effort to make the magazine available to Boulus’s Arab readers and researchers, noting that the magazine was available only in a handful of libraries in the United States.

This summer, we will run select pieces from summer issues of ArabLit Quarterly. This piece, by scholar, poet, and translator Kevin Blankinship, originally appeared in the summer 2020 CRIME issue of the magazine, and expands on the translation challenge Kevin hosted that summer.

By Kevin Blankinship

“Stop! so that my first glance at you can, with a second glance, repay what it owes for ruining my heart. That which causes damage, must also pay damages.” 

Using the language of crime and punishment—in this case, a monetary fine (gharaamah) as compensation for harm done—Abu al-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi, “the would-be prophet,” turns an erotic motif into praise for Sayf al-Dawlah, his favorite patron. Like Palamon and Arcite when they first set eyes on the Amazonian Princess Emily, al-Mutanabbi’s soul suffers with just one look, only this time not the look of a beautiful lover, but a mighty ruler. Notoriously difficult to unravel in Arabic, this line demonstrates the poet’s knack for inventive comparison, even at the expense of intermittent readerly confusion (al-Mutanabbi’s line claiming that Eve herself would be barren if not for Sayf al-Dawlah caused some heartburn for the critic al-Tha`alibi). 

But in a broader sense, crime as transgression takes in a spate of ideas, images, and conceits from Arabic literature. They roam the waterfront from the figure of the “blamer” (`aadhil) of pre-Islamic verse who scolds the poet in star-crossed love, to the mystical drunkard of Ibn al-Farid’s khamriyyah telling his sober faultfinders that they’re in fact the ones to blame. Abu l-`Ala’ al-Ma`arri injects a Solomonesque moment into The Epistle of the Horse and the Mule when he has a magistrate rule between two men over ownership of a female donkey, which one of the disputants fancifully insists was born to a mare. Speaking of magistrates, it is the judges themselves who get arraigned by Abu Zayd al-Saruji, the trickster protagonist of al-Hariri’s maqamat, as he outwits the court with rhetorical flair, betraying a roguish moral reversal that is justified—at least in Abu Zayd’s eyes—by hard times.   

Crime’s fecund rhetorical topsoil was on full display this spring with the Arabic Translation Challenge, which it has been my pleasure to host and curate. What began on Twitter as a diverting pastime has grown, unexpectedly, into a vibrant community of translators, commenters, and observers, some returning every week since March. On Tuesdays, we put up a challenge, including a brief introduction; an Arabic text of poetry or prose to translate, whether classical or modern; and a mention of any existing translations to help participants along. Then, we invite translations from you, dear reader, with a deadline of that Friday at noon EST.

Then on Saturday, we do a roundup of highlights from that week. This part has raised more than a pair of eyebrows as I’ve tried to explain it. “It could be fun, but in some ways it might not,” one colleague wrote hesitantly. “It sounds a little like judging a contest.” An understandable reaction given the nature of such things. After all, I have chosen to call it a “challenge.” What’s the point of choosing some translations for display, if not to show them a kind of favoritism? Yet the roundup is less beauty contest than art exhibit. The goal has been to showcase a range of styles without privileging any of them; to see the bewildering field of talent itself is the real prize. And of course, we want as many people as possible to play the game.

The first crime-themed verse, posted on 12 May, reflects my own years spent with Abu al-`Ala’ al-Ma`arri, a figure as difficult to pin down as he is to read. The passage of choice is his epitaph, supposedly self-written, which expresses an overall disdain for this world that, in al-Ma`arri’s case, takes the form of anti-natalism:

Of the more than fifty translations submitted for this line, several caught the echo of Greek tragedy, with its nemesis or divine punishment that determines the protagonist’s fall; in this case, however, the nemesis is life itself. In this gloomy vein, John Leake reproduced the chorus’s speech from Oedipus at Colonus, in the English of Sir Richard Jebb: 

Not to be born is, beyond all estimation, best; but when a man has seen the light of day, this is next best by far, that with utmost speed he should go back from where he came.

And distilling the sense of crime done to all living by life itself is Stuart Brown’s devastating English version:

Every father kills his son

Mine did so to me, but I to none.

Sticking with the theme of crime, though going in a different direction, the next challenge put up one of the best-known gems in all of Arabic literature: the first and penultimate lines of a qasidah khamriyyah by Abu Nuwas, “Who Has Dangling Locks” (d. 813/15 CE), remembered by posterity as a world class philanderer, mocker of religion, free spirit, and above all, the baron of classical Arabic bacchism:

Often bowdlerized, the poem that these lines come from pits a radiant wine against the Mu`tazilite theologian Ibrahim al-Nazzam. One of Mu‘tazilism’s tenets is that God does not forgive grave sins (kaba’ir), only “small” misdemeanors (sagha’ir). If this is what you believe, says Abu Nuwas to the would-be philosopher, “You have learned some things, but much more escapes you!” More than that, he concludes, taking away my pleasure—i.e. stopping me from drinking wine—is itself a crime, since it also robs me of God’s forgiveness!

Attesting to the celebrity of these lines are the multiple English translations that exist, including this one by Philip Kennedy:

More than one person picked up a Hibernian vibe from these lines; or as Haroon Shirwani put it, “I think Abu Nuwas and the Dubliners would have got on really well!” In what was a first for the Arabic Translation Challenge, and perhaps for Abu Nuwas in any language, @soorsie on Twitter translated into Scots:

And condensing the mix of sacred-and-profane that defines Abu Nuwas, @PressTaras translated into Latin with elegant shades of the Vulgate (noli me tangere, “touch me not”; et ne nos inducas in tentationem, “and lead us not into temptation”; cura te ipsum, “heal thyself!”) as well as Martin Luther (Esto peccator et pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide et gaude in Christo, “be a sinner and sin boldly, but more boldly believe and rejoice in Christ”):

But in deference to those for whom such license is a full rewriting instead of a translation, let’s remember that translation itself has often been called a crime. Most famously, incensed Italians who felt that French versions of Dante departed from that work’s beauty coined the catchy phrase traduttore, traditore, “translator, traitor.” Since then, academic debates have jettisoned the idea of faithfulness to a source text that this phrase takes for granted. But academic debates sometimes—often?—forget how readers beyond the ivory tower think about translation. After all, reading a text presumes a message to be decoded, however vague or deceitful; and the fact of a message presumes a messenger, or in Stanley Fish’s words, “an intentional being, a being situated in some enterprise in relation to which he has a purpose or a point of view,” even if that being is fictional or hypothetical. That such beings exist in reality, or even just in the minds of readers, is a possibility that cannot be waved away if one would appreciate the instinct to call some translations less effective than others.    

Clearly, the notion of crime, even within the translation process itself, is deep-seated. Perhaps deep enough to be part of human nature. Who among us has never felt the gnat’s bite of a need to break the rules? But whichever came first, chicken or egg, no one would doubt the fundamentally human urge to misbehave, not least through the irresistible crime of translation.

Kevin Blankinship is a professor of Arabic at Brigham Young University. He is also a contributing editor at New Lines Magazine and his work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and more. He tweets as @AmericanMaghreb.

This summer, we will run select pieces from summer issues of ArabLit Quarterly. This poem, by famed Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala’ika, tr. Emily Drumsta, ran in the summer 2019 SEA issue of the magazine, available as PDF, e-pub, and in print.

By Nazik al-Mala’ika

Translated by Emily Drumsta

The Iraqi poet Nazik al-Malaika was one of the most important Arab poets of the twentieth century. A pioneer of free verse poetry, over the course of a four-decade career, she would publish prolifically and carved out a space for herself between old and new, tradition and innovation, the time-honored and the iconoclastic.

Emily Drumsta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Brown University. She was the recipient of a 2018 PEN/Heim Award for her translation, Revolt Against the Sun: The Selected Poetry of Nazik al-Mala’ikah, which appeared in 2021. 

This summer, we will run select pieces from summer issues of ArabLit Quarterly. This piece, by blogger, writer, and teacher Rehab Bassam originally appeared in the summer 2021 KITCHEN issue of the magazine in Fatima El-Kalay’s translation.

By Rehab Bassam

Translated by Fatima El-Kalay

For a bowl of rice pudding for two, you’ll need: 

A quarter cup of rice—but first take the milk out of the fridge. 

Arrange the grains of rice on a big white plate; pick out any impurities. 

Put everything aside—your bitterness, your grief, your anger, your disappointment, and any negative thoughts.

Prepare plenty of patience and spontaneous smiles. Take your time with the steps; never trust a recipe that claims you can rush the process.

For best results, make sure you are alone in the kitchen, or better still, the whole house. Shut off all mobile phones; slip into something comfortable.

Wash the rice more than once, until its water runs clear, then soak it in two cups of warm (not boiling) water for thirty minutes.

In the meantime, pour five cups of milk into a clear glass jug. Relax. With utmost tenderness, hold the jug between your palms, allowing your palms to hug it. This hug will warm up the milk. Think happy thoughts, hum a dreamy song: 

I belong to my love, and my love belongs to me
hey, little white bird
no more sadness or reproach
I belong to my love, and my love belongs to me 

Remember that all your steps will become part of the rice pudding, and that everyone who eats it will sense this. Even the song becomes part of it.

Especially the song.

In a medium-sized pot, pour the milk.  Drain the rice and add it.  Stir gently in one direction for fifteen minutes.

My love calls out to me
he says: winter has gone
the wood pigeon has returned
and the apple blossoms

Now think of a beautiful word, or a long kiss, or a warm smile across a crowded room, or a satisfying hug.  

Hum, yes. And smile too. 

Yes, yes. Let your eyes twinkle; it befits the rice pudding. 

The morning’s at my doorstep
and the dew
and in your eyes
my spring blossomed into beauty 

Take a pinch of cinnamon with one hand and a pinch of vanilla with the other; delicately sprinkle both into the mixture. Now rub your hands together and bring your attention to your neck, patting your palms against it. This detail is essential for a good rice pudding.

On low heat, continue to stir the pudding for fifteen more minutes until the rice is tender. Whisper a secret close to the pot. Choose your secret wisely. Add half a cup of sugar and continue to stir, until dissolved, completely, completely. The sugar always comes last, after a long wait. The lower the heat, the sweeter the dish.  

Sigh. 

My love calls me
I come without question
to the one who stole sleep from me
and my peace of mind

Serve warm in a pink glass dish, topped with a sprinkling of cinnamon.

With partially opened lips, place your special imprint on its surface.

Eat slowly with your fingers, with someone you love. 

I am on his path
his path is beauty
hey, lovers’ sun
weave our story

*

All italicized words are from the song I Belong to My Love by the Lebanese singer Fairuz.

Rehab Bassam is a lover of books and baked goods and is obsessed with cats. She studied English literature, worked in market research, advertising, editing, and translation. Spent almost ten delightful years working in publishing as an editor, translator, and publishing manager, with a passion for children’s books. Currently living in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, where she’s raising two kids, runs an Arabic school, and is working on her first novel, and (maybe) a couple of children’s books. Rehab was among the first Egyptian bloggers and one of the few who used her blog to publish her short stories. Selections of her blog posts were compiled in a book called Rice Pudding for Two (Dar El Shorouk, 2008), which became an instant bestseller.

Fatima El-Kalay was born in England to Egyptian parents, but grew up in Scotland. She has a Master’s degree in creative writing and writes poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. Her work has been published in Passionfruit, Rowayat, Anomalous Press and Poetry Birmingham Literary Review.  She was shortlisted for the London Independent Story Prize ( LISP),  and in ArabLit Quarterly for their first short story in translation competition. Fatima teaches fiction and poetry writing. She has a poetry book in progress and a collaborative short story collection that is due for publication. She is based in Cairo.

Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT) have opened calls for submissions for its forthcoming issue, with ‘water’ as its theme. 

They write:

For our November 2023 issue, we invite new translations of poetry that relates to water. Waterways shape every culture and every language in the world. As billions around the world contend with water scarcity, floods, hurricanes, pollution of oceans, rivers, and lakes, the harms of water privatisation, the theft of water rights from indigenous peoples, and more, MPT would love to highlight poetry in translation that explores how poetics shape our imaginations as water-based creatures. We welcome poetics that hold space for both angry witness and hope, for intimate realisations in aquatic environments, or otherwise in the presence of H₂O, for both the most gargantuan and smallest-scale of waves.

Find out more, including detailed submission guidelines, here. 

Deadline for submissions is 11.59PM BST on September 21, 2023.

Last May, poet-translator team Mona Kareem and Sara Elkamel launched I Will Not Fold These Maps, a collection of Kareems poems translated to English by Elkamel.

Among the launch events was one hosted online by ArabLit; it can still be watched on our YouTube channel.

As part of the launch, Kareem and Elkamel recorded several poems together. The two shared below are not from the collection, published by the Poetry Translation Centre, but these recordings were arranged by the PTC. You can enjoy them here or at our YouTube channel, read by the poet and translator, in generous celebration of Women in Translation month.

Mona reading “Happiness” in the original:

Sara reading “Happiness” in its English translation:

Mona reading “A Break for the Horizon” in the original:

Sara reading “A Break for the Horizon” in its English translation:

Get their debut translation, of Mona Kareem’s poems in Sara Elkamel’s translation, from the Poetry Translation Centre. 

In early September, the Library of Arabic Literature published a new collection of hunting poems by Abbasid litterateur, poet, and caliph for a day Ibn al-Mu’tazz (247/861–296/908), in James E. Montgomery’s stunning translation. In his introduction, Montgomery calls into question the prevailing image of Ibn al-Mu’tazz as simply a “poetically gifted aesthete with no taste for politics; an ambitionless, pleasure-seeking son of a murdered caliph brought up by a doting and overprotective grandmother; a reluctant ruler who was forced to grasp the reins of power for just one day before he was discovered hiding in the home of a jeweler friend and was executed on the spot.” Instead, he insists, we must take seriously the role poetry played in the circles of power in Abbasid society.

Hunting poems (tardiyyat) in particular are closely connected with these elites and, in Montgomery’s words, “remind us that hunting was not a discrete pursuit but was an inflection of the apparatus of rulership.” The hunt thus figures as a miniature of political life, with the caliph proving that he lives up to an ideal of heroic masculinity necessary for success in both hunting and politics.

Such weighty implications for statesmanship aside, Ibn al-Mu’tazz’s tardiyyat are also simply delightful. Meditations on starlit early-morning departures accompany adoring descriptions of the non-human members of the hunting party: swift dogs race arrows shot from lithe bows, elegant steeds carry their riders without fatigue, and raptors attack ruthlessly from the air. Montgomery’s imaginative translation brings to life hunting scenes alien to most modern readers’ experiences and skillfully renders the aesthetics of the original Arabic verse.

Below, we offer three of our favorite poems as excerpts from this collection. The bilingual Arabic-English edition and translation is now available from the Library of Arabic Literature. -Leonie Rau

In Battle Gear

A description of a goshawk and a horse:

Morning drove off the night

wrapped in its cloak of gloom,

as the Pleaides, sparked by a dawn burst,

blazed like torch fires and Gemini

died away in the sunrise,

fluttering on the horizon

like a flag in the wind.

I startled the oryx,

mounted on a well-drilled, speedy charger,

tufts of hair at his hooves, his back

and withers tightly welded,

wading through water that reached

no higher than his white pasterns,

as if a girl in a red jilbab had fastened

a bracelet on her wrist: his blaze

was white as the early sun; his ribs

like the frame of a camel’s litter,

fused to his spine whose vertebrae

were like the dense knot of a khaṭṭī spear;

his hooves, blue as turquoise and big

as boulders, peeled back the surface

of the ground; his feet, bold, lesion-free,

pounded the high roads with loud thuds,

like polo mallets, raising a dust storm

like a cloud of ʿarfaj smoke

or teased cotton tossed in the air.

Accompanied by a fine gos in battle gear,

her head dusty white, like a king

wearing a crown, her restless eyes,

keen and true, under white brows,

her eyelids like the cloth

of a litter-bearing camel,

her talons like thin, arched eyebrows,

her dappled feathers under black wings

patterned like a regal mantle.

We enjoyed a day of pleasure.

Some slaughtered the birds,

others kindled the fires,

some cooked the meat till it was done,

others, too impatient to wait,

swallowed it raw.

Black at Its Fringes

A description of the pellet bow:

The best way to hunt

is with a taut bowstring,

yellow, tightly twisted,

snorting when stroked

by the archer, its eye

weeping tears of clay

fashioned by a master fletcher

who with all his know-how

crafted them into balls

of identical shape, small pellets

more like pebbles than clay,

stored in navel-shaped pouches,

flying like sparks at hearts

and breasts.

Night was still black

at its fringes as we crossed

the dark to meet the dawn,

patiently taking up our position.

Light spread through the sky.

They came in droves, swimming,

on their way, with Fate’s leave,

to a new meadow or river,

anxious eyes alert to danger—

an archer hurriedly fastened

string to bow and acted

decisively. His shots scattered

the flock. He wore out the lath,

almost ruining it. Birds fell

from the sky, some screaming

in danger, others stranded

on broken wing. Hubris

took control of the archer,

who exulted in his triumph

though he needed to be prudent.

The shooting continued in earnest

and the birds cried, “Humans never fire

pellets like this—it must be raining

stones from the sky!”

The Wind’s Soft Hands

A description of a saker and dogs:

It was a day of pure bliss stolen

from Time, who paid us no heed

as we crossed the dark before sunrise

on haughty, long-necked horses,

through meadows awake with flowers

drenched in tears of rain—

as fragrant as musk pouches,

opened by the wind’s soft hands,

scattered across the leas.

It was time for the quarry to die—

lean salukis, drop-eared hunters,

like unfletched arrows—

were it not for their collars you’d think

a puff of wind might whisk them away.

Ground forces combined with aerial might—

working with sakers in yarak that tower,

then stoop from the sky, like buckets

dropped down a well by hasty hands

thirsty for water, our dogs snatched souls.

The hares’ eardrums were burst by thwacks

like the cracks of date-palm spathes

split open by croppers.

Demon dogs, with jaws of doom, came early

to Qurayyah’s jacks—running fast as the wind,

devouring the miles, rousing the wakeful quarry

all day.

A graceful gazelle of a boy

passed a Bābil wine around, his waist swaying

with the weight of his plump buttocks.

You’d never recover from one of his looks.

His guardian paid no heed, as the boy’s glance

glowed like a coal and my heart grew faint.

*

As the world’s eyes are once more on Palestine, we re-run this excerpt from Olivia Elias’ Your Name, Palestine (Ton nom de Palestine), just out in English as a chapbook from World Poetry Books in Sarah Riggs’ and Jérémy Victor Robert’s translation.

Olivia Elias was born in Haifa, then lived as a refugee in Beirut, where her family moved after being forced into exile. She attended university in Canada before moving to France in the early 1980s. Although Elias has been a writer for some time, it was only recently she decided to publish.

She is author of the following collections: Je suis de cette bande de sable (May 2013, out of print), L’espoir pour seule protection (introduction by Philippe Tancelin, éditions alfabarre, February 2015), Ton nom de Palestine (éditions al Manar, January 2017) and Chaos, Traversée (La feuille de thé éditeur, 2019). Translated into several languages, her poems appeared in many journals, including: Apulée, Alaraby UK, Inochi no Kago, The Barcelona Review, The Adirondack Review, Poetry London, Recours au poème, and Terre à Ciel.

Your Name, Palestine was just launched in English in Sarah Riggs’ & Jérémy Victor Robert’s co-translation. Chaos, Crossing, & Other Poems, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, will also be published in 2022 by World Poetry Books.

They write, to introduce the work:

Far from home, a voice remembers, however painfully, the country she had to leave. From the primordial enlightenments of childhood to the dreadful realizations of her teenage years, the poet sings an ode to the blazing beauty of Palestine. Olivia Elias draws from the “heart and the wind playing between high hills and deserts” the strength, and determination, to question the doom that came to her hometown. With the help of the musicians and instruments, she redefines the notion of nation, and the sense of belonging, be it to a country or a memory. In a precise, uncompromising tone, she commends a “people that knocks/relentlessly on the doors of the future/a country pushed into the margins of history.” Her mouth,” as Aimé Césaire once beautifully put it, is “the mouth of misfortunes that have no mouth,” her voice the voice of those who fight for their rightful place on earth.

*

*

*

*

*

*

Sarah Riggs is a writer and artist, born in New York, where she is now based, after having spent over a decade in Paris. She is the author of books of poetry in English, including The Nerve Epistle (Fall of 2021), Eavesdrop (Chax, 2020), Waterwork (Chax, 2007), Chain of Minuscule Decisions in the Form of a Feeling (Reality Street, 2007), Sixty Textos (Ugly Duckling, 2010), Autobiography of Envelopes (Burning Deck, 2012), Pomme & Granite (1913 Press, 2015) which won a 1913 Poetry Prize. She has translated six books of contemporary French poetry into English, including, most recently, Etel Adnan’s TIME, which won the Griffin International Poetry Prize and the Best Translated Book Award in 2020. She is the director of the international arts organization Tamaas (tamaas.org), which focuses on earth arts justice, film, and an annual poetry translation seminar. 

A translator of English and a poet, Jérémy Robert works and lives in Réunion Island. Recent translations include: Sarah Riggs’ Murmurations (Apic, “Poèmes du monde,” 2021), Donna Stonecipher’s Model City (joca seria, 2020), Michael Palmer’s Laughter of the Sphinx, and Etel Adnan’s Sea & Fog (L’Attente, 2015).

“Everything Knows You Will Rise” appeared on October 23, 2023, in al-Ayyaam. The art published with this poem is from the cover Zaqtan’s The Silence That Remains, tr. Fady Joudah.

Everything Knows You Will Rise

By Ghassan Zaqtan

Translated by Samuel Wilder

Now you are alone

says the wall that comes at night,

there will be no knocks at the door

no pats on the shoulder,

the roads that led to your dreams

lie shattered, splayed

like corpses on the arid ground.

The paths you once crossed

without fear

to meet siblings and neighbors

when seasons were rough,

when life was hard and dry,

are clogged by stone,

unfulfillment, and dark intent.

The bridges that shined

in the memories of your fathers

fell in wadis that dried long ago.

Expect no one from there now.

But everything knows you will rise.

The time is gone

when far off dust

signalled comings and goings,

siblings on the road,

or a letter from your family.

The dust you see now

is the destruction of your houses

and the homes of your family there.

The smoke past the hill

is not caravans

or people returning,

it is the torching

of your uncles’ fields

and the orchards you once exulted in.

No dreams can grow

in these vessels you gathered and kept.

But everything knows you will rise.

You have no siblings left,

only this desert you gained,

where you were thrown,

this desert fed by your endurance,

it advanced

in your silence.

The wall each time brings the past,

the wall in place of the road.

The wall seeps through rooms and windows,

enters bedrooms bearing the scream

that it throws on the lodgings and beds,

on the shrouds of boys and girls:

‘you have no siblings left’

‘now you are alone.’

But everything knows you will rise.

Born near Bethlehem, Palestinian poet, novelist and editor Ghassan Zaqtan has lived in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Tunisia. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, a novel and a play, The Narrow Sea, which was honoured at the 1994 Cairo Festival. His verse collection Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, translated by Fady Joudah, was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize for 2013, and he was nominated for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in both 2014 and 2016. His name appeared for the first time in 2013 among the favorites to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Zaqtan’s collection Strangers in Light Coats is forthcoming from Seagull Books, in Robin Moger’s translation, next month. His novel, An Old Carriage with Curtains, is also forthcoming from Seagull, in Samuel Wilder’s translation.

Samuel Wilder is a translator of Arabic literature, a writer, and a student of comparative poetics. He has translated three books by Zaqtan. The latest, An Old Carriage with Curtains, is forthcoming from Seagull next month.

This poem originally appeared in an-Nahar on October 25.

*

It No Longer Matters If Anyone Loves Us

By Samer Abu Hawwash

Translated by Huda Fakhreddine

It no longer matters

if anyone loves us.

The love of the great angel

in his bright white sky

is enough.

Our children see him standing in the distance,

holding his hands in the shape of a heart

and they smile.

Our women see him waving a sprig of white jasmine

and close their eyes once

and forever.

Our men see his blue wings

as clear as a sky.

Their hearts are seized,

and they set out toward him.

It no longer matters

if anyone loves us.

Bombs have liberated us from our ears,

with which we used to hear words of love.

Rockets have liberated us from our eyes,

with which we used to see loving glances.

Hate-filled words have liberated us from our hearts,

in which we used to cherish the enchantments of love.

It no longer matters

if anyone, in this world, loves us.

“It seems to have been an unreciprocated love, anyway,”

say our elders, now exhausted by the idea of land.

Our poet stands on the distant horizon and proclaims:

“Save us from your cruel love!”

He then whispers, apologizing for an earlier, childish optimism:

“On this Earth,

nothing deserves life.”

It no longer matters

if anyone loves us.

We are tired of words, the said and the unsaid,

tired of hands that reach out but do not touch,

of eyes that see but do not see.

We are tired of ourselves in this endless night,

and tired of our mothers clinging to what’s left of us,

tired of this rock we carry on our backs,

this eternal curse.

From abyss to abyss, we carry it,

from death to death,

and we never arrive.

It no longer matters, after this, if anyone loves us,

or if anyone walks in our funerals.

Here we go in silence, toward the final abyss.

We hold each other’s hands,

go forth alone in this desert of a world.

At some moment, one of us, a child, will look back,

will cast one last glance at the ruins, and

shedding a single tear, will say:

“It no longer matters that anyone love us.”

لم يعد مهمّاً أن يحبّنا أحد

*سامر أبو هواش

لم يعد مهمّاً

بعد اليوم

أن يحبّنا أحد

يكفي أن يحبّنا الملاك العظيم

في سمائه الناصعة

يراه أطفالنا واقفا في البعيد

ضامّا يديه في رسم قلب

فيبتسمون

تراه نساؤنا ملوحا بياسمينة بيضاء

فيغمضن عيونهن مرّة

وإلى الأبد

يرى رجالنا أجنحته الزرقاء

الصافية كسماء

فتنخطف قلوبهم

ويشدّون الرحال إليه

لم يعد مهما أن يحبّنا أحد

القذائف حرّرتنا من آذاننا

التي كنا نسمع بها كلمات الحبّ

والصواريخ حرّرتنا من عيوننا

التي كنا نرى بها نظرات الحبّ

والكلمات السود حرّرتنا من قلوبنا

التي كنا نرعى فيها تعاويذ الحبّ

لم يعد مهما أن يحبّنا أحد

في هذا العالم

“يبدو، على أية حال، أنه كان حبّا من طرف واحد”

يقول شيوخنا المتعبون من فكرة الأرض

ويقف شاعرنا في الأفق البعيد

،ويصرخ: “أنقذونا من هذا الحبّ القاسي”

ثم يهمس معتذرا

:عن تفاؤل صبيانيّ عابر

ليس على هذه الأرض

ما يستحق الحياة

لم يعد مهما أن يحبّنا أحد

تعبنا من كلمات تقال ولا تقال

ومن أيد تمتدّ ولا تمتدّ

ومن عيون ترى ولا ترى،

تعبنا من أنفسنا

في هذا الليل الطويل

وتعبنا من تشبّث أمهاتنا

بما بقي منّا

ومن صخرة نحملها على ظهورنا

لعنة أبدية

ونمضي بها من هاوية إلى هاوية

ومن موت إلى موت

ولا نصل

ليس مهما، بعد اليوم، أن يحبّنا أحد

ولا أن يرافقنا أحد في جنازة أنفسنا

ها نحن نمضي بصمت إلى تيه أخير

نمسك أيدي بعضنا بعضا

،ونتقدّم وحيدين في صحراء العالم

في لحظة ما

يلتفت طفل واحد منا إلى الوراء

يلقي نظرة أخيرة على الركام

:يقول وهو يذرف دمعة وحيدة

.لم يعد مهمّاً أن يحبّنا أحد

*شاعر من فلسطين

Samer Abu Hawash (@samerabuhawash) is a Palestinian writer and translator.

Huda Fakhreddine is a translator and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

By Adil Babakir

Sudanese poet Kamal Elgizouli, who passed away in the early hours of Monday, November 6 in Cairo, will be remembered in his country and abroad for his unequivocal stance for human rights. He devoted all his career as a lawyer and activist, and his fathomless creative talent as a poet and writer, to defending his people’s aspirations for justice and democracy.

Born in Omdurman, Sudan, in 1947, he obtained a Master’s of Law from the College of International Law and International Relations of the Kiev Governmental University in 1973. His return home coincided with a volatile era in Sudan’s history. Tension was still in the air following the 1971 bloody events, when the May dictatorship butchered many of the communist party’s senior leadership in the aftermath of their aborted coup against President Nimeiri.

Elgizouli was in and out of prison several times during the mid-1970s and early 80s, and later in the early 90s following the Islamists’ coup. Those eventful times have had their imprint on his poetry. Incarceration and persecution featured prominently across his critically acclaimed collection Omdurman Comes on the Eight O’clock Train. In the following piece, the poet describes his emotions in response to imminent threat as he remained locked in a security cell.

Whispers

It’s not murder that I dread.

Not even a tragic end.

Nor this door being blown down outright,

or them storming in at midnight,

their naked guns in full sight.

No.

Not festering wounds, streams of blood,

or the wall dotted with fragments of my skull.

What I fear the most, I have to say,

is fear per se:

that devious and elusive thing,

that in a twinkling

can sneak in,

whispering deluding excuses—temptingly fancy,

while stealthily injecting weakness and despondency

into the inner pores of my soul.

That elegant, eye-catching thing

luring me into watching its glaring blade.

And once, for a second or two,

I am dazzled by the glow,

it slips in,

splitting me into two:

A half up there—in its illusionary world,

dying twice.

And a half down here,

half dead.

You are destined to die—and so are they.

No one is exempt.

So voice your rejection right here!

Out there, your defiant voice will come out,

pretty strong and vocal.

Die here,

to live there!

 A good portion of Elgizouli’s poetry reflects genuine sympathy with the less privileged, downtrodden segments of the society. Here is one example:

Encounter

In the late hours of the night,

off the fence of the Grand Mosque,

a male leper, shabby and frail,

stealthily creeps onto the bosom of a fellow leper

just as shabby and frail-

And they embrace.

With palms as camel’s hoofs

and three timber-dry arms,

they embrace,

in the wee hours of the night,

off the fence of the Grand Mosque.

But the last passerby,

who airs his belly on the floor

and goes on his way,

is too drunk and drowsy to see

he has just blown off an intimate moment—bitterly fought for.

Besides his poetry collections, Elgizouli has six other books and hundreds of published articles and research papers on diverse topics ranging from culture and politics, literature and literary criticism, to issues of peace, democracy, civil war, and human rights. Some of his poetry and fiction was translated into English, Russian, and Ukrainian languages.

Elgizouli was a founding member of the Sudanese Writers’ Union and served as its secretary-general until 2007. He is Pen International laureate and honorary member of its London office.

Note: Both poems first appeared in the author’s book  Modern Sudanese Poetry: an Anthology, University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

Adil Babikir is a translator and an Arabic content manager at Mubadala Investment Company in Abu Dhabi. He has translated and edited several works, including Modern Sudanese Poetry: An Anthology (Nebraska, 2019) and Mansi: A Rare Man in His Own Way, by Tayeb Salih.

This list is a beginning. Please borrow and/or expand it. You can find more poems at this Word doc. There is also this beautiful PDF, which includes additional resources.

Rasha Abdulhadi

Incomplete List of Unauthorized Palestinians

a litany of refusals to become ghostly

Rasha Abdulhadi is calling on you, dear reader, to join them in refusing and resisting the genocide of the Palestinian people. Wherever you are, whatever sand you can throw on the gears of genocide, do it now. If it’s a handful, throw it. If it’s a fingernail full, scrape it out and throw. Get in the way however you can. The elimination of the Palestinian people is not inevitable. We can refuse with our every breath and action. We must. @‌rashaabdulhadi

Ahmad Almallah

A Poem for Gaza, a Poem for Palestine

More from Almallah’s Border Wisdom

Ahmad Almallah is a poet from Palestine. His first book of poems Bitter English is now available in the Phoenix Poets Series from the University of Chicago Press. His new book Border Wisdom is now available from Winter Editions.

Hala Alyan

Naturalized

Hala Alyan is the author of the novels  Salt Houses, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and The Arsonists’ City, a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, as well as four award-winning collections of poetry, most recently The Twenty-Ninth Year.

Samer Abu Hawash

It No Longer Matters If Anyone Loves Us, translated by Huda Fakhreddine

Samer Abu Hawash (@samerabuhawash) is a Palestinian writer and translator.

Huda Fakhreddine is Associate Professor of Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a writer, a translator, and the author of several scholarly books.

Hiba Abu Nada

I Grant You Refuge, translated by Huda Fakhreddine

Hiba Abu Nada was a novelist, poet, and educator. Her novel Oxygen is Not for the Dead won the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity in 2017. She wrote this poem on Oct. 10th, 2023. She died a martyr, killed in her home in south Gaza by an Israeli raid on Oct. 20th, 2023. She was 32 years old.

Huda Fakhreddine is Associate Professor of Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a writer, a translator, and the author of several scholarly books.

Mosab Abu Toha

Obit

Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet from Gaza. His début poetry book, “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear,” was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won an American Book Award.

Refaat al-Areer

Untitled (“If I must die”)

Refaat al-Areer is a writer and translator who can be found at @itranslate123.

Fady Joudah

[…]

A Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation

Fady Joudah is the author of five collections of poems, most recently, Tethered to Stars. He has translated several collections of poetry from Arabic and is the co-editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize.

Maya Murry

Mamma, I’m fine

Maya Murry is a Palestinian-American student at Cornell University.

Mandy Shunnarah

they stop torching our cities long enough to pray

only an american

Mandy Shunnarah (they/them) is an Alabama-born, Palestinian-American writer of essays, poetry, short stories, and journalism who now calls Columbus, Ohio, home. Their first book, Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland, is forthcoming from Belt Publishing.

Ghassan Zaqtan

Everything You Know Will Rise, translated by Samuel Wilder

Ghassan Zaqtan is a Palestinian poet, novelist and editor and has authored numerous collections of poetry, novels, and a play. His verse collection Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, translated by Fady Joudah, was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize for 2013, and he was nominated for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in both 2014 and 2016.

Samuel Wilder is a translator of Arabic literature, a writer, and a student of comparative poetics. He has translated three books by Zaqtan. The latest, An Old Carriage with Curtains, is forthcoming from Seagull next month.

Also read:

Good Morning Gaza, by Fady Joudah, with poetry by Mahmoud Darwish (tr. Joudah)

At the Threshold of Humanity, Karim Kattan

The Annotated Nightstand: What Ahmad Almallah is Reading Now and Next, on LitHub

In Spanish:

Muestra de poesía palestina

From Gaza, writer and poet Basman Aldirawi — one of the contributors to Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire — shares new work. You can get the ebook of Light in Gaza from publisher Haymarket Books for free.

This Bread Was Born, This Bread Was Killed

By Basman Aldirawi 

With clean hands,

he gently sifts the flour,

and adds a handful of yeast.

He pours the warm water

for the yeast particles to live,

then rolls and kneads and rolls

and kneads the dough.

He lets the soft mass rest.

With firm but gentle hands,

he rounds it into balls,

flattens them into shape,

and handles each one

delicately into the oven.

Soon, perhaps in half an hour,

the bread rolls are born fresh,

healthy and browned.

The newborn breads breathe,

yet dust chokes the air,

searing gases penetrate

their thin, fragile crusts.

On the day of their birth, a missile,

a bakery, a scattering

of zaatar, flesh, and blood.

On November 13, we shared a special section on Palestinian poet Olivia Elias, who writes in French, which included video readings by Elias and her translators; a conversation between Elias and her translators, Sarah Riggs and Jérémy Victor Robert; and an excerpt of Elias’s “Your Name, Palestine,” translated by Sarah Riggs and Jérémy Victor Robert, with a drawing by Basil King.

The next day, Nov. 14, Elias wrote this poem of reflection & response; it is translated here by Jérémy Victor Robert.

Day 38, Nov. 14, I Didn’t See the Fall This Year

By Olivia Elias

Translated by Jérémy Victor Robert

I didn’t see the fall this year

I didn’t see the acacia blaze

the cranes fly away

.

..

NO WATER    NO FOOD    NO FUEL & ELECTRICITY

.

for the people of the Ghetto

not even medicine    absolute Deprivation

so have decided the Conquerors with the unfailing

support of their powerful Allies

.

in the first place  the big Chief of America who

frantically shakes his veto-rattle

.

.

I didn’t see a single thing this fall

no blazing acacia   no flying cranes

only a deluge of bombs dropped on the

deadly mousetrap

& overflowing   in the middle of this madness

the big living river with multiple arms

of the children of Gaza

.

.

your small bodies     which didn’t get the time to grow up

your dreams    which didn’t get the time to blossom

your small bodies    flowers of blood

your dreams    blown away with the wind

.

.

I didn’t notice the fall this year

I didn’t say goodbye to the golden leaves

to the cranes

I must say goodbye      goodbye to every single thing

like they do over there   each night

before going to sleep    parents & children

hugging each other & saying goodbye

only bombs & more bombs on Gaza in ruins

perhaps we’ll be blessed to meet again

in another life   a life that won’t be

ghetto & bantustans    jails  bombs  & extinction

A poet of the Palestinian diaspora, Olivia Elias writes in French. Born in Haifa in 1944, she lived until the age of sixteen in Lebanon, where her family took refuge in 1948, then in Montreal, before moving to France. Her work, translated into English, Arabic, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese, has appeared in anthologies and numerous journals. In 2022, she published her first book in English translation, Chaos, Crossing (World Poetry), translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid.

Jérémy Victor Robert is a translator between English and French who works and lives in his native Réunion Island.

Cover photo JoLynne Martin.

Words, we believe, are the flesh & bone of human solidarity. They are mutual assistance; they build and reinforce our networks of shared understanding. When people swing an axe at those shared meanings, or muffle them by insisting that these words are their opposites (hate instead of hope), they are taking aim not just at the meanings of these words, but also at the networks of solidarity.

And so, in these times, we need the poets who more fiercely imagine our shared and just universe. We are grateful for the poets who build. – ArabLit.

Sunbird

By Fady Joudah

I flit
from gleaming river
to glistening sea,

from all that we
to all that me,

fresh east to salty west,
southern sweet,

and northern free
there is a lake

between us,
and aquifers
for cactus

and basins
of anemone
from the river
to the sea,

from womb
to breath and one
with oneness

I be,
from the river
to the sea.

Fady Joudah îs a poet for our times & all. He is the author of five collections; most recently, Tethered to Stars. He has translated several collections of poetry from Arabic and is the co-editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize.