Women of the Fertile Crescent: An Anthology of Modern Poetry by Arab Women 0914478419

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Women of the Fertile

Crescent

Give her of the fruit of her hands; and her own works praise her in the

let

gates.

Proverbs

XXXI,

31

WOMEN OF THE FERTILE

CRESCENT An Anthology

of

Modern Poetry by Arab Women

Edited With Translations

By Kamal Boullata

Three Continents Press Washington, D.C.

First Edition

Copyright

©

1978 by

Kamal Boullata

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data: 77-3834 Boullata.

Women

Kamal

of

The

An Anthology

>i

o

(ed.)

1942

Fertile Crescent:

of

Modern Poetry by Arab Women.

\

Acknowledgments My

principal indebtedness goes to each poet included here for her cooperation

and personal

interest in

my work and for allowing me to publish her poetry; also

contributing translators without

to the

whom

this

volume would have been

impossible. Specifically,

I

wish

to thank:

Charles Doria for the translations of Dearest Love

-

I,

Dearest Love

-

II,

A

poems by Salma al-Khadra' al-Jayyusi: Storm in KabylLand,

Tale, In the Casbah,

Shudan, Scraping Limits, and The Sky the

Moon

Lost. All copyrighted in

English version by Charles Doria.

Samuel Hazo and Mirene Ghossein for their translations of Andree Chedid's Man Today, Movement, Imagine, Who Remains Standing?, What Elsewhere?, The Naked Face, What Are We Playing At?, and The Future and the Ancestors. Except for the first two poems, these works appeared in Mundus Artium, Vol. VII, No. 2 (1974). All translations are the copyright of Samuel Hazo and Mirene Ghossein. poems:

—

poems in translation: But You, Black from Great Thought, Inventory, Exile, I Think of the Land a?id the Wheat, Certainties in Huge Colors, It Is a Question of Enduring, The Ram Arrayed Like Death, You Depart Like a Winter Sky, I Write a Sun, The Stone Is No Harder than the Bird, Tonight, Nowhere is There a Land, I Build a Look. Elaine Gardiner for Nadia Tueni's

Pleasure,

The

first

Night

My

seven of these appeared in

Mundus Artium, Vol. VII, No. 2 (1974). The

copyright to the English translations I

also wish to thank Etel

Beirut

'Adnan

is

held by Elaine Gardiner.

for letting

me

use her

own

translations of

The

— Hell Express, and Jebu; copyrights for both translations are held by the

author.

Hanan all

Samar I

Mikha'il: for her Guerrilla, Encounter,

four

poems

are under the copyright of

'Attar: for

also thank Exile

her Visitor and

magazine

for

The

Economics and Demonstration;

Hanan

Mikha'il.

Bride.

permission to present the translation of Samar

of the Dead which appeared in Vol. holds the copyright to the translation. Attar's

The Return

1,

No.

1

(1972). Exile

I am grateful for the courtesy of the Near East Section at the Library of Congress and particularly to George N. 'Atiyyeh and George D. Selim who met my numerous inquiries with unfailing kindness; also to 'Aida 'Abbud of the Georgetown University Library.

many friends and colleagues; above all to Dierdre Lashgari, Fatima Mernissi and Suann Hecht; their earnest support and early guidance provided compelling inspiration; to Khalida al-Sa'id and Hephsibah Menuhin for their encouragement and assistance; to Andrea Wyatt and Beverley Silver Silberstein for their comments and advice concerning a number of the translations included here; to Ghada al-Samman, Amira al-Zein and Munira Zarkin for their enthusiasm and assistance; also to Veronica Prichard, 'Afaf Mahfuz; Gabrielle Simon Edgcomb and Rosalie Reichman; to Donald Herdeck Special thanks go to

for his untiring patience

editorial

I

comments and

with the manuscript and his critical

to Djelloul

Marbrook

for his

acumen.

also wish to thank Paula Goodrich, Nicola Bastian, Doreen Moses, Jean Nick,

Lynn Tietsworth, Lydia Debus, Diana Bieliauskas and Mary Lee Schneiders, each of whom helped in a unique way in the preparation of the manuscript; and last

VI

but not

least,

thanks to Lieve Joris for being

herself.

To Nadia Shammut born in prison July 1972, while her mother Zakiyya was serving her life sentence at Neve Tirzah

(Women's Branch

of

Ramleh

for acts of resistance

against the Israeli occupation in Palestine.

Prison)

Contents

Egypt

Andree Chedid

1

Biographical notes

3

Man — today

5

Movement

6

Imagine Who remains standing?

8

7

What elsewhere? The naked face What are we playing at? The future and the ancestor

9 10 11

12

Iraq

Nazik al-Mala'ika

13

Biographical notes

15

I

am

17

woman

18

off disgrace

20

Insignificant

My

silence

Washing

19

Jamila

22

Jordan

Mona

Sa'udi

23

Biographical notes

25 27

Blind City

Through

When

28

galaxies of stars

the loneliness of the

tomb

29

I

my home

left

30

to its walls

In her heart she planted a tree

The

How I

do

I

32

enter the silence of stones

33

shall sculpt for

And

let

you both two

35

am

36

I

Morning unleafed Out of the murky debris Darkness I

Why

34

her die

So drunk

And

31

dawn

beneath the

city trembles

is

erase the face

don't

I

38

39 40 41

write

42

Lebanon Etel

'Adnan

43

Biographical notes

45

Jebu

47

Five senses for one death

The

Beirut

— hell express

62 72

Love poems

84

Therese 'Awwad Biographical notes

89

My

91

loneliness

93

In tunnels of waiting

What I

does he bring undressed myself

I

revolve around

I

found one word

me

Nadia Tueni Biographical notes

94 95

96 97 98 99 101

But you, black from pleasure Night my great thought

103

Inventory

105

The

rain arrayed

Exile

104

106 107

think of the land and the wheat

I

108

It is

a

huge colors question of enduring

110

You

depart like a winter sky

Ill

Certainties in

I

109

write a sun

The

stone

is

112

no harder than

the bird

Tonight

Nowhere I

114 is

there a land

build a look

The man of A man died

115

116

the golden horse

117

118

Decay I

113

119

swear

120

Palestine

Salma al-Khadra' al-Jayyusi

121

Biographical notes

123

Dearest love

—

125

I

Dearest love— III

126

A

129

tale

In the

Casbah

Storm

in Kabyl land

130

Shudan Scraping limit

The

131

132

sky the

134

moon

lost

Hanan Mikha'il Biographical notes

136

137

139

Guerrilla

141

Encounter Economics

143

Demonstration

144

142

Fadwa Tuqan

145

Biographical notes

147

Labor pains

149

Hamza Gone are

150 those

we

love

152

XI

To My To

her sister and comrade in resistance

154

freedom Etan

155

156

Saudi Arabia Fawziyya Abu Khalid Biographical notes

To

157

159

man

a

161

Mother's inheritance

162

Would

164

I

betray you?

Tattoo writing

166

Syria

'Aisha Arna'out

169

Biographical notes

171

Silently

He

173

put on his shirt

troubles

It

The Out

175

turtle lifting its firm

A wing of

carried

my

174

me head

me

darkness

Ever in consciousness I arched my body Before the amputation

Out I

177

178 1

79

180 181

of the darkest nadir

182

searched for the wordless

183

They

Samar

will say

I

imitate the poets

'Attar

Biographical notes The return of the dead The visitor The bride xn

176

184

185 187 1

88

193

195

Saniyya Saleh Biographical notes

199 201

Exile

203

Blind boats Tears

204

Choking

206

Sources Bibliography Contributing translators Editor/ translator

205

209 221

251

253

Xlll

Egypt

Andree Chedid

^4 ii /

Love

is all of life. It is vain to pretend that other equilibriums exist. The one deprived of love everywhere draws circles whose center is zero.

Andree Chedid from Terre

Born of Lebanese parents

in Cairo,

twenty-one years old when she visits to her birthplace.

left

Egypt in

1921,

et

Poesie

Andree Chedid was

for Paris, only to return for short

Even though French has been Chedid's means of expression, her seem to be rooted in life between the Nile and the

writings

Mediterranean.

Andree Chedid has written an immense volume of works. Between 1949 and 1977, Julliard, Stock, Le Seuil, Flammarion and Seghers have released nineteen collections of her poetry, seven novels, five plays and other writings. Among her most recent volumes, Fraternite de la Parole (The Brotherhood of the Word) Flammarion, Paris, 1976, and Ceremonial de la Violence (Ritual of Violence), Flammarion, Paris, 1976. Only very recently, her novel Le Sixieme Jour (The Sixth Day) Julliard, Paris 1963, has been translated into Arabic.

Andree Chedid has been awarded a number of important prizes for literature; they include The Louis Lapier Award for poetry received in 1976, The Aigle D'Or for Poetry in 1972, The Royal Belgian Academy's Grand Prize for French Literature in 1975 and the Mallarme Award for poetry in 1976.

A

grandmother, she

lives

with her husband in Paris.

Andree Chedid

Man — today Man Man

exceeds

Man

detains the to-come.

is

shut in

Man The fire which gave Consumes him

retains the

bygone

birth to language

Edifies him.

Man breaks and traps himself Man assaults the universe Man is this man Man is all man. Man — Today

Andree Chedid

Movement Forge the contrary of

this

world

Where the soul loses rumors Where time dries us up

Man perishes from his own poison But rises in the light he sketches Give birth to yourself Cross over yourself Unite the movement

up that word Which does not turn away from men

Stir

But shapes

itself

towards them.

Andree Chedid

Imagine Imagine the ocean dry as lavender.

Imagine branches ceasing to be perches for the birds.

And

then on the horizon imagine death in

its

pallor of pallors

letting the live again.

dead

Andree Chedid

Who

remains standing?

First,

erase your

name,

unravel your years, destroy your surroundings,

uproot what you seem, and who remains standing? Then, rewrite your name, restore

your age,

rebuild your house,

pursue your path,

and then, endlessly, start over, all

over again.

Andr'ee Chedid

What

elsewhere?

Borrowing no sky Using no figure Dallying with no name

The Elsewhere Under I

still

time's arches

mumble

its

signs.

provokes

us!

Andree Chedid

The naked

face

Faces of the counted years,

but

still

faces

of such enigmas,

without rumors,

faces in expectancy, faces in constant birth, faces of so

many

faces that are as

and already

cells,

you are

are not.

Never shall pulses stop beneath your surfaces, nor shall my thirst to understand you you,

one

face beneath

naked.

10

them

all,

cease,

—

Andree Chedid

What What

else

are

we playing

at?

can we do

but garden our shadows

while

far

away

the universe burns

and vanishes?

can we do with time while nearby time times us to death?

What but

else

visit

What

else

can we do

but stop at the horizon

while far away and nearby the real collision.

11

Andree Chedid

The The is

future

and

the ancestor

dead's right grain

woven

in -our flesh

within the channels of the blood

Sometimes we bend beneath the fullness of ancestors

But the present that shatters walls, banishes boundaries

and invents

the road to come,

rings on.

Right in the center of our

lives

liberty shines,

begets our race and sows the salt of words. let

the

memory

of blood

be vigilant but never void the day.

Let us precede ourselves across

12

new

thresholds.

Iraq

Nazik al-Mala'ika

m

m&

t

A

basic fear of death, an innate freedom I lacked, wounds I suffered as a result of the woman's humiliating state in the Arab world, consecutive national setbacks

and

political defeats: these are the elements that have

painted

my

poetry with sorrow.

Nazik al-Mala'ika in

Born

in

Baghdad, Iraq

in 1923.

an interview with al-Vsbu' al-'Arabi Beirut, Aug. 19, 1974.

Her veiled mother, Salmaal-Kazimiyya,

known as Um Nizar, also a poet, was in the vanguard of early nationalists who fought against British colonial policies in Iraq. better

Nazik al-Mala'ika studied Arabic Literature at the Teachers' College in Baghdad. Later she spent time in the United States on private studies. She returned to teach at the University of Musol in Iraq. al-Mala'ika

is

acclaimed by

many

critics to the the first

away from the classical form of movement of Modern Arabic Verse.

the Arabic Qasida

Arab to break and lead the

The new

free form that was later to inspire poets all over the Arab world appeared in her first collection, 'Ashiqat al-Layl (The Woman Lover.of The Night), Baghdad, 1947; later to be followed by Shazaya wa Ramad (Splinters and Ashes), Baghdad, 1949; Qararat al-Mau>ja (The Bottom of the Wave), Beirut, 1957; and Shajarat al-Qamar (The Moontree), Beirut, 1968. Her most recent volume is entitled, Ma'sat al-Hayat wa Ughniya lil-Insan (The Tragedy of Being and A Song to Man), Beirut, 1970. Lit Salat wal Thawra (To Prayer and Revolution) is a new collection that will be published soon.

15

An

acclaimed

modern

critic in

criticism.

her

Her

own

critical

right, she has contributed

influential journals, including al-Adaab, Shi'r, al-Adib.

Qadaya Poetry),

al-Shi'r al-'Arabi al-Mu'aser (Issues of

Beirut,

1962,

was

immensely

to

number of Her volume,

writings appeared in a vast

a

controversial

Contemporary Arabic critical

work.

Many

to discussing her poetry

and

a professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Kuwait.

For

independent studies have been dedicated her poetic theories.

She

is

years she has been residing in

al-Barraq.

16

Kuwait with her husband and her son

Nazik al-Mala'ika

am

I

The

me who

night asks Its

am

I

impenetrable black,

its

unquiet

secret

I

am

Its lull rebellious. I

veil

myself with silence heart with doubt

Wrapping my Solemnly,

I

gaze

While ages ask me who I am.

The wind

me who

asks

I

am

bedevilled spirit

Its

I

am

Denied by Time, going nowhere I journey on and on Passing without a pause And when reaching an edge I think it may be the end

Of

suffering, but then:

the void.

Time

asks

A

me who

I

am

giant enfolding centuries

Later to give I

I

am

births

have created the dim past

From I

new

the bliss of

push

it

To make

unbound hope

back into a

new

its

grave

yesterday,

its

tomorrow

is ice.

The

self

asks

me who

Baffled,

I

I

am

stare into the

dark

Nothing brings me peace I ask, but the answer Remains hooded in mirage I

keep thinking it reaching it,

Upon

is

near

it

dissolves.

17

Nazik al-Mala'ika

Insignificant

woman

When she closed her eyes No face faded, no lips quivered Doors heard no retelling of her death

No No

curtain was lifted to air the

room

of grief

eyes followed her coffin

to the

Only

end of the road a

memory

of a lifeless form passing in some lane.

The word echoed

in alleyways

Hushed sounds, finding no

shelter,

Settled in a secluded den.

A moon mourned In silence.

Night, unconcerned, gave way to morning Daylight crept in with the milk cart

and a call to fasting meager cat mewing Amidst the shrill of vendor's

A

cries

Boys squabbling throwing stones.

Muddy

waters spilling

along the gutters As the wind carried foul smells

To

rooftops.

Oblivion.

18

Nazik al-Mala'ika

My You may

my

silence

reproachfully provoke

guilt.

Would Would

I

retreat?

the sharp icicle of your plaque

cut through

Would

I

my

flames?

yield,

and not go mad? No. should I scream I

revolt,

inside.

But were I to trespass darken the air with some bitter phrase perhaps a misplaced word You would be offended turn dry like sand Rise

and quietly disappear.

Don't ask me why am gagged. Here, I remain a bed of roses bent under your snow; a puzzle of unanswerable questions in some corner of your heart. I

It is

destiny's prescription:

Adam

is

Eve the

the ice fire.

19

Nazik al-Mala'ika

Washing

off disgrace

"Mother!" last gasp through her teeth and

A

The

vociferous

moan

tears.

of the night.

Blood gushed. Her body stabbed staggered. The waves of her hair swayed with crimson mud. "Mother!" Only heard by her man of blood. At dawn If her twenty years of forlorn hope should call the meadows and the roseate buds shall echo: She's gone washing off disgrace!

Neighborhood women would gossip her story. date palms would pass it on to the breeze. It would be heard in the squeaking of every

The

weather-beaten door,

and the cobbled stones would whisper: She's gone washing off disgrace!

Tomorrow wiping

his dagger before his pals

the butcher bellows,

"Disgrace?

A

mere

stain

on the forehead,

now washed," At the tavern turning to the barman, he

"More wine

20

yells,

and send me that lazy beauty of a nymphet you got, the one with the mouth of myrrh." One woman would pour wine to a jubilant

man

another paid

washing

Women women

off disgrace!

of the

neighborhood

of the village

we knead dough with our tears that they may be well-fed we loosen our braids that they may be pleased

We

peel the skin of our hands that they

No No No

may

washing

their clothes

be spotless white.

smile joy rest

for the glitter of a

dagger of a father

of a brother is all

eyes.

Tomorrow who kows what deserts may banish you washing

off disgrace!

21

Nazik al-Mala'ika

Jamila* Yonder you weep Your hair is loose, your hands

are

weak

Jamila But men sang extravagant songs

you they offered drowned Why weep? for

their best

Aren't you

in their praise?

We

melted with her smile her face and the dimple, her braids;

Our

passions wre kindled with her beauty in chains.

We

sighed: they

with

made

human

her quench her thirst

blood

and flames

We

were convinced they nailed a heroine to the cross and we sang to the glories of martyrdom.

We

will save her,

we gasped

and then drowned amidst our drunken words

We

shouted:

Long

live Jamila.

They have wounded her with knives we with words and the wounds afflicted by one's kin are deeper than those afflicted by the French

Shame on for the

us

doubled wounds of

Jamila.

•Jamila Buhaired

is

an Algerian

woman who was a fighter with the Front for the National

when she was wounded in a military confrontation with the French and later arrested. In prison she was subjected to torture Liberation of Algeria (FLN). She was twenty-two

and on July 15th, 1957 condemned to death. Georges Arnaud and Jacques two communist supporters of the Algerian Revolution, defended her before world opinion. Jamila's name became the symbol of Algeria's determination for freedom. In the mid-fifties every major Arab poet wrote on Jamila. al-Mala'ika's poem is a reaction. several times

Verges,

22

Jordan

Mona

Sa'udi

have not matured at the same level with my dreams. I find myself rootless and abandoned like a Without love, there is no meaning to life nor to stone. Why can't man love a woman without having to art. choke her, shut her up, controlling her mind, her dreams. how can we love in freedom, not in oppression, only the woman is capable of that!

At times .

.

I feel I

.

.

.

.

.

.

I refuse to fall.

.

For months now,

I

have been feeling

a tremendous longing for death, or rather to put an end to this continuity, but the lucid presence of the great

woman about

that it,

is

my mother forbids me

her love

is

action. I cannot cause her

capacity for love I

know I have

and for giving

lived over a

to

do anything

the only authority to judge

my

any sorrow, her immense is my guide for survival.

thousand years and I

am yet

to be

born.

Mona From

Sa'udi

a letter to the editor

dated, Sept. 6, 1975

Amman, Jordan on

Born

in

Paris

and has exhibited

Since the early

sixties,

October

1,

1945, she studied sculpture in

in Jordan, France,

and Lebanon.

her poetry and articles have appeared in a

number

of literary journals in the Arab World, including Shi'r and Mawaqef. Her drawings have illustrated the works of friends such as the late Palestinian novelist Ghassan Kanafani, and the poets Adonis and Rashed Hussein.

A collection of her poems and drawings, done in Paris between

1965 and appeared under the title Ru'ya I la (First Visions), Beirut, 1972. She also is the author of the bi-lingual book, Shihadat al-Atfalfi Zaman al-Harb (In Times of War Children Testify), Beirut, 1970, a collection of 1967,

1

'

25

drawings by and conversations with Palestinian children from the Baqa'a Refugee Camp.

Mona

member of the Board of Editors of Mawaqeef. She one-room house overlooking the courtyard where she

Sa'udi was a

lives in Beirut in a

executes most of her stone sculpture.

26

Mona

Sa'udi

Blind

city,

In

streets

its

my

visions multiply

In the chaos of objects In the labyrinths of insomnia I

hear voices of silence

The stillness of time and sea The death of night. I warm myelf with weeping pavements There,

Born

life

in a

glows in an instant puddle of light.

27

Mona

Sa'udi

Through I

galaxies of stars

and planets

sail

in vessels of salt

and

crystal

navigating across black bareness

and

deserts within. In

the harbor of

myself.

dreams

I

find

The world

is

reduced to the

A

blind singer begins with a song

size of a toy.

I

hover in the dark of the night

I

fall

in love

with All

now

blind.

Tonight, I am born Tonight, I die. Greetings to all the living

and

28

all

the dead.

Mono

Sa'udi

When

the loneliness of the

tomb went down

into the marketplace

dropped into nameless objects and ascended as funeral sounds I grew harder than tears tears

turned to stone

and stone was a passing friend I

I I

shatter in all

my

I

could not place

dimensions

multiply take on shapes like water.

29

Mona

Sa'udi

I left

my home

opened myself

The I I

light of

to to

my

its

walls

expanses of rebellion.

colors dies.

draw away change to something folding

And madness. Earth mute

Sky a desert Death,

30

when

shall

I

be?

the sea into soft prayer

Mono, Sa'udi

In her heart she planted a tree

and said

Come

to sorrow:

forth.

Together we shall cross a distance immeasurable but by the heartbeat; Stretching over a thread of light

we

shall penetrate desolation.

Overwhelm me she said to the

dream

may

be reborn without a road that

I

save the shivering of the heart.

31

Mona

Sa'udi

The

city trembles

beneath the

dawn

Approach, day of orphans, child borne in on wings of chaos The hours unfold among walled silences in the waking of days Welcome, dimensions

descend into

32

my

of the earth

dreams.

circles of sad

hours

Mona

Sa'udi

How

do

I

enter the silence of stones

evening enters the city, crush my being into forms of chaos, to a god- like shape? as

My

essence

is

a crystal procession in

weddings of death and despair I fashion a wedding for death and I am the bride. the

33

——

— Mona

I

Sa'udi

shall sculpt for

you both two

always two lovers,

female,

male mother

son

earth,

form embracing another flesh,

dialogue

— silence

For what

is

as

man

34

is

found in on earth,

the

dream

the seedling of his

own

dream.

Mona

Sa'udi

And let her die she who knew no way but that of the dream and the Let her die that

nothing

may

give birth.

Despair:

I

womb.

after

loosen

bury

me

Here

I

up my

hair

in rose petals;

weep

die in your

in your

arms

arms

Smelling the balm of the earth I

say farewell to the

dream

of pregnant stones:

they have killed you they have killed me.

The

children shall depart

with me. Water:

Remember

us.

35

Mona

Sa'udi

So drunk am I with the night, the air, and the trees So drunk, I enfold the seas of forgetful lness. When the shore appears, I bend away with my mast towards the endlessness of the waters the waves: wave by wave

Counting I

yell at the sea:

more

of your remoteness.

Fortitude

is futile,

frustration

go on and on around the

The And

and conversations

fireplace.

days have numbers, the faces have names the

masks mime according to the time recorded on the clock in the piazza of the city.

Selling

is

a god.

Buying is a god. And you, abandoned you. They

they have

let

you

fall

into oblivion, yes, you: the distant travelling of the

unknown

darkness: the drunkenness of the night and the

in the

air.

am I with the night, the air, and the trees have carried you, Sea, upon my forehead You that carry no name, the journey to the unseen through you and in you, the whole universe is reduced to the circles of the water: the tides of death and birth And the silence of the migrating birds Between the poles. So drunk I

36

You, migrating

Go

The

birds:

you are reaching to wash the cities masks that are numbered

the shores

tell

sea

is

To sweep

coming the

According to the rites of the marketplace (The bowing, the creeping, and the fear.) sea is coming with the verses of the pregnant stones: Action is the word and Refusal of the old.

The

The

sea

is

coming. Open up the way

for the procession of

May

There that

Sea.

The

Sea

no god but which is coming

is

Coming with

New

The

glory be to the god of

changes: illuminations

crystallizations procreations

and

through death

birth.

Coming

in the absent present

in the present absence

in a

sweeping sea of

circles.

37

Mono. Sa'udi

Morning unleafed and the city filled with fire, and trees were transformed to scarlet ships. Morning blazed, and the sun pierced through walls' eyes, through the leaves of autumn. Evening beamed, and poems burned in their houses of words which neither come nor go, reveal nor keep silent.

And

38

I

withdrew beyond the night.

Mono, Sa'udi

Out

of the

murky

debris

a pearl horse emerges

As slumber

is

a well

devoid of dreams

Alone advancing

in the

open blackness

of the night.

Galloping

as it were out of a picture without frame: Absolute obscurity, Boundless space between Questions that hover over the forehead of time.

Sanguineous spots splash a poster the

coming blood.

.

.

bursting

Spreading red over the horse's face and body Smearing even the night But the pearl horse remains firm

Advancing

as in a picture.

And the woman said: The time of wholeness

A

green branch has in the

A

has arrived

grown

womb,

bequeathed an apple. Her belly became round, There the globe sat, Heavens, God, the stars, and the rest of His creations And on the seventh day The moon was born She placed it on a platter And gave it to the universe. tree

39

Mona

Sa'udi

Darkness

A

is

field of past visions

Where

fire

of the primal creation

Binned.

Love and Dwell

Of

the heart of stone

in the

dream

transferring realities:

Our

First

Women

Water.

of the world:

Take over my dream Plant

it

in

your womb:

As you leave darkness behind Beware of becoming

The captives of daybreak Dwell in the page and erupt from the stone As on Earth, so

40

let it be.

Mona

Sa'udi

And

erase the face of your

I

immense

love

in this totality of nighttide as the place

That

I

may

is

overtaken by slumber

forget

and you may no more be

And

I

chain.

you movement.

shall love

in the water's I

my

shall flood into a sea

which does not flow in you. Inasmuch as I love you I erase your love. For you want

and

I

me

a reality

want you and want me

in vision, a child

of fire that

and was

danced

lost

in

whirling.

.

.

Don't stop.

41

Mona

Sa'udi

Why

don't I write in the language of air? master a new tongue with a different taste, a language that dances, that goes drunk through the streets, embraces trees, walks on water. that cries? a language that burns the world, and gathers autumn leaves? .

.

—

become a word will the sea consent? word to die, If I pile up the words of the ages past, present, and future, and say to the sun: Burn heaps of words and say to the earth: Bury the ashes of words and say to the ashes: Word-ashes If

I

tell

If I tell

the sea to the

bring forth a sorcerer's tongue to tell fire: Be word and word: Be a poem

without words, which can neither be read, nor seen, nor heard.

42

Lebanon

Etel 'Adrian

I \

for the women, there aren't any. They all consider themselves as being the other half of their men. .

.

.

As

With one exception. Etel 'Adrian from In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country

Lebanon, to a Muslim father and a 'Adnan grew up in a Turkish-, Greek- and Arabic-speaking home.

Born February

22, 1925 in Beirut,

mother,

Christian

Between 1950 and 1955 Etel Adnan lived in Paris where she studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. Later, she studied at Berkeley and Harvard before joining the faculty at Dominican College in San Rafael, Cal., where she taught philosophy between 1959 and 1972. In addition to being a poet, 'Adnan

is

a writer of short stories

and essays.

Independent writings of hers have been published in such periodicals in Lebanon, France, and the United States as Shi'r; Mawaqef; Jeune Afrique; S-B Gazette; and Quixote, among others.

She has published three collections of her poetry: Moonshots, San Francisco, 1966; Five Senses for One Death, New York, 1971 and Jebu, Paris, 1973. A collection of her short stories is scheduled to appear in ;

Paris soon.

Adnan

is

also noted as an abstract painter, her paintings having been

exhibited in Beirut, Paris, In 1972 she returned to

New York and San

Francisco.

Lebanon where she worked

as the literary editor

L'Orient le Jour. Since the outbreak of the she has been living in Paris. to the daily

civil

war

in 1976

45

Etel 'Adrian

Jebu

,

.

And

and his men went to Jerusalem unto the Jebusites, the inhabitants

the king

of the land

And David

on that day Whosoever getteth up to the gutter and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind, .

.

.

said

that are hated by David's soul,

he shall be chief and captain. II

Samuel

5: 6-8

The

ignoble heart suffering from cold has vomited our destiny on the asphalt of the foreign roads and filled the sky with the mud of our hatred Jebu awoke O tender eyes of Paris we have closed you

agony of the forgetting found again the merciless compassion of a faceless love which acts like an acid on the roots of our vertebrae in the

Jebu sleeping getting up (they took advantage of his slowness)

He came

to cry at the table of the

nations

him while he is young) he grew up under the shadow of the black palm

(they will destroy still

tree.

47

Jebu presides over a procession of angels breaks the geraniums which cover

tomb

his

a smell of the Levant

on

the world!

He

has the eyes of a falcon an airplane in the belly and sleeping snakes in his hair

(He

sleeping).

is

Helicopters covered with blood cover your face because the smell of the

Arab corpse

brings evil

Send us your tracts: Shalom and Napalm! Jebu shall return

to distribute the

land

to the land to

conquer the

moon

with no armor to pull the sun out of

its

orbit

and transform the of the

human

ecliptic

race

Crawl on your belly reach the well drink exhaust the

swim

in

underground petroleum and come back

BLACK

Jebu

shaman

son

archetype

inhabitant of the

palm

tree

of animal bedu

with a

thousand branches o dead

cities of the

XXIst century

Beirut and Tel Aviv!

Jebu crawls underground like spring in love with a woman Jebu in love with Arabia counts the wild roses which journey to Palmyra

48

Jebu:

your nocturnal sexual tenderness has the desert shall bloom! thunder of those who did not leave loyalty of the people of Canaan who were here before David who shall be here after Daniel

arisen

they chose tents filled with mud children covered with tumors women stricken by fire (there is no exile for a mother) the ocean

how

swift

those

is

warm

is

the sea under the feet of

who have

your children Canaan have remained.

fled

Jebu: lines of

prophets covered you with curses

but you live in their the

worm gnawing

You

are

memory and you

coming back Christ and

after the latest of the last

Mohammad-astronaut you

of our radios

own

are

bones

at their

shall

carried by the antennas

burn the walls of your

apparitions and there shall be a people

more fluid than water coming Hiroshimas

more

fiery

than the

ours.

Jebu: they let us rot near obscene

our

men and

women

castrated

pound of their flesh on London at a laughing price

sold the

the markets of

we burned

candles

when we needed

and sang ballads in our burning vineyards we felt fear a fight

the figs are covered with locusts the

enemy

eats

anything which moves

o thieves of prayers you came to plant the earth with fresh tombs and we shall burn your ancestors to purify the night.

49

Jebu

said:

for us

there

neither heaven nor hell

is

but planets which

move

He had

taken his armies on fields

of thorns today he takes

mined

fields

and

them on

the rain

is

made

of oil.

the surgery of the oil business requires it

to be

so that

taken from the belly of

we have

a

new

rain:

my mother

noctural birds

charred by the sun do not envy our men:

napalm made you I

came from a

my

land ancestors being born at the

brothers

vertical

start

of great rivers

we

are

conquered by

falsifiers of

History

thieves of

and we have in our own rottenness more dangerous

undergrounds councils a

than the sea serpents surrounding Sinbad.

There

is

a spring under the

ground

the resurrection not of the dead

but of the living they have sealed our virgins in jars to

of

make

a

widower

Malek Alloula

In the order of Jebu: wrinkles stretch into the sea at the sound of horses on a garden of bees the wind of Aleppo from Rabat announces and the children know the Babylonian a storm

machines stop hospitals give

Ecclesiastes at birth.

50

o big glass boat on the red ocean you missed the edge of the world and fell into the infinite

(He has a black brother the Prophet's first muezzin together they spell Revolution backwards o messengers of the message!)

each

man

has a double

shamans walk Red Sea and hunger

the Algerian to the

makes them

eat the toes

of their camel

o Palestine o shipwreck one hears at night the moaning of your valleys where even the dead have some

tears

you shall drink a big measure of blood and nauseated at heart you are resurrecting counting the inches of the land with your nails the land of is

Jebu

is

a guru

the village idiot

he

is

and

a black horse

a sword but also

the grenade

own

Canaan

a crown of thorns

which explodes

in his

belly

he is a trajectory which at night goes beyond the moon until Saturn who is crying

51

we

stars

shall invade

you for we can't go back to our towns Jebu

is

the father of the Cyclops.

shaman archetype son

of the animal bedu inhabitant of the tree crawl on your belly come to the well drink swim in the underground petroleum and emerge

BLACK Jebu

is

homecoming

the

telling matter

the land

tying the knots

Sun-God Ra o dead

distributing for all

is

reinvesting the

to the universe

cities of the

XXIst century

Beirut and Tel Aviv! these days

to count count the tortures

you should learn

in order to survive

of Sarafand in the geological cliffs of Western

Asia vultures thank the sky for the abundance of their food: more dead

Arabs than stones on

this desert!

We

had learned sorrow in Algiers lived a happy moment and now it

has to be started again.

Noises.

We

.

.

.

.

mountains so no more Revelations

shall atomize the

there shall be

truth will

emerge from

that

a well

Jebu commands the ghosts that are following

him

to

disappear in the gasoline of

our neighborhood drugstores the wind is coming. .

52

.

Sitting in

we have

humid movie houses slummy Christs bless

seen

electric screens

we have

loved.

We

now

have

.

.

to crucify

the Crucified his age-long treason has sickened us

Ra

Shamash

Marduk

the astronauts have invaded the

moon

so that in the grandeur of your loneliness

you come back alone

in your boats geometric monotheism announced by Jebu

Sun

of the Past

hunger

shame thirst

fear

sickness isolation

madness cargoes of solar boats in the free zone of Beirut harbor our ships are armored cars that our men lead on the roads of the sky the sky is an ocean where they drown doom is a jazz trumpet

howling on

On

the Place des

the return (the

in the

Jebu

Canons

Moon-Earth

trajectory)

cosmic railway

says:

have seen the earth magnetic ball burn at its edges radioactive primordial solar in a language atomic 1

electric

magnetic

53

she said:

am

I

a cosmic vessel

and my blood-brothers (the primordial bedu) on the mercurial altars where they are slaughtered will be born again they are

essence.

founder of Jerusalem

Jebu Canaanite tells

my

the Crucified:

you have suffered three days I

have suffered for three millenia

is a writing glued to the ground and pushing ahead wounded his saliva heals the open earth in his agony he

(the fedayi

sees a rain of

meteors

in death he forgets that they dried the cisterns so that

we

eat

worms and

consider happiness to be a funerary oration

but they is

do not know

a bird which

we have

that the

displaced the sky.

.

wind

flies)

Darkly our children were drowning the people in our peaceful rivers were in a swamp and we called for liberation

now do

I

announce:

napalm hunger the cunning of the enemy the slow flying airplanes

the dynamite

torture

and more corpses than

pond we are and

guilty of innocence

also:

the the

54

larvae in a rotten

backward movement of the dead guns carried by ghosts

,

plants growing only in winter

made

a tank

and

of jelly

which will break two thousand

the front

soldiers of the year

creative disorder is

our divine stubbornness. he will Fifth

mount an

Ocean

of his breath

on the Venus the investiture inhabit Uranus

come out

the people will

attack

give

of their ratty sewers

and discover the immensity of the world. Let a single piece of bread feed the tribe. will call his son: his brother.

.

The

father

.

Jebu has millions of roots innumerable heads a proliferation of bodies he is the whole and each one of us since the first break of Time he is the People on the space-time equation I

have seen the women-sounding villages of generation: Samua Kuneitra Kalkilya

my

a rapacious foreigners

drinkers of

bitumen you have in abundance but hatred and on roads where serpents can't feed you forced the women of Jericho to chew diamonds Arabs are but a mirage which persists. .

.

In the beginning Jebu had been killed

but his eyes are the Tigris and the Euphrates his belly his

is

Syria his penis

long leg

one foot

in

is

is

the Jordan

the Nile Valley

Marrakech

Mecca growing on the Sannine

his bleeding heart encased in

his hair

is still

The X-ray like a

of his being on the day of Hiroshima sweat appeared on the Jerusalem Wall.

55

I

know

moon

the total

the slow-motion sadness the poisoned rainbows

betrayed faces filling newstime screens

turned towards vultures as if there was any other messiah to wait for than the bomber the total exile. I

know walking to the mosque where roses are watered with

the coffins in a city

gasoline the foreign capitals

who

like

dying bees

secrete lies

and

The

claws on the

its

tribe.

torrid heat of the first

Jerusalem the

moon

the total

closing

moon he

craters

heat

king of

— astronaut coming back from that he inhabited left

is still

and on whose

his sacred writings

— the

glued upon the face of a

cosmic snow drinkers of blood

drinkers

newcomers to napalm nouveauxriches Gilgamesh shall plant his sword

of petroleum of torture

between your eyes the City covered by the

rays

is

trembling.

Palestine

.

wind

by tears

by ultraviolet

.

mother of nations

is

a glorified pestilence

with solar tumors on the face and repeated rapes in the belly

Jerusalem

and

its

is

a city founded by the Jebusites

children packed under tents launch

blasphemies which blacken the sick of cancer

56

air:

Palestine

is

thirteen brothers at the

UN

cowards castrated by

thirteen

the smell of oil

o planet vomited by the Pleiades o Palestine!

The

ignoble heart bleeding for having walked on barbed wires looking for food in bushes an exile which has no end but in the wearing

vomits the rape the usury is so good a business! mothers do not be ravens squatting on tombs but walk on the mines our homeland has an ancestral thirst of the people's cells

violent enemy:

race of usurers

and water has a

taste of

petroleum

breaking down shalomized irons and their racism broke open our roads.

raising-smelling childhood

on

stones.

They came with

is

their

.

.

stone rose in Hisham's Palace north

you are the radar of our haggard eye watching on the electric trace of the fedayeen your celestial double warms the bones of our dead of Jericho race

On

an underground river Jebu counts his and holding the Queen by the hand together they walk up to Jerusalem

boats

the bitchy racist

moon

laughs at

conquerors

age-old thieves the

poor you would

steal its light to

an

eye getting blind the poetry of Canaan is stolen by your kings Akhnaton's Revelation is falsified in your psalms Hammurabi's code is copied on your Tables

57

moon in her disasters has more compassion than your women-soldiers the

One burns

jungles and they grow back in the

conscience of an airplane and in the boots of

but at

a rotten corpse of a soldier perfect visibility so that

absolute and

home

prophesy deserved in

its

there

is

but

Arab suffering be full

sun

at night under his tents the Palestinian dreams that he is the Milky Way and Babylonian astronomers carry him into vertigoes: cosmic storms are familiar to him. He forgets his fatigue.

Jebu announces: torture

the revelation of the Spirit

is

links the

companions more than

torture

desire

torture

men into interpenetrable phantoms and those who have lost it a meaning to

transforms gives to

destiny

But how

to prophesy vengeance when the enemy prosperous and how to pray God when He is ambivalent and has neither remorse nor antenna and whom to punish when happiness is sinister and to whom speak of evil when people couldn't is

care.

.

When eat

.

the

and

when plots

when

have but grasshoppers

shall

the earth will

tell

worked out by the the tribe

and rape

when

enemy

the

will

women

when

a tree will

when

the

the dead about the live

wash

in the camel's urine

in the hot air of

the visions of the

numerous than

morning

June

will be

the ones of the afternoon

grow

in a single

more and

day

walking trip will link Azemmour to Sarafand and when no one will beg the Invisible nor the guardian dogs of this world.

58

to

the asphalt wells be dry

the ancestors will

The Arabs a

come out

of their mirror

go naked

will

new morning.

In the Algerian Resistance a people shook

its

slumber and the double visage of Jebu alone

appeared:

he

is all

cell

and

vulnerable

obscure prophet

of us since the prehistoric

the rivers that followed

perpetual Revolution

is

We came

and no one saw us and the opening of Paradise

the

in full light

mouth

there

is

of a

gun

a dry garden

is

perpetual Prophesy

and

rose

planted in a can the rotten bourgeoises

pour a perfume from France on the corpse of a child from Karameh in order to protect the erotic night

from the indiscreet breeze the heroic assault will liberate the garden there

is

in a

can

who is rotting and who came from Karameh a child

the erotic bourgeoises will

protect the night against the heroic assault so that the

garden and the rose die under their heels from the body of the child we shall make a garden there

is

a dry rose

in a garden as

narrow

as a can

the cadaveric bourgeoises pretend

they are crying for the dead child from Karameh so that their rachitic night protects their trepanned brain from any compassion

59

the dead child shall lie in death the heroic assault will liberate the garden in

our legends the sun had teeth

Jebu ambulatory sun tremblant in our scarce rains climbing double-roaded hills says:

nocturnal tenderness for those who eat thorns the eyes of the bedu-women are

tormented bottoms of

women

bodies

craters.

There are

pounded by an enemy who

former executioners. We could not do the same. Palestine is a land planted by eyes still

licking the boots of

its

refusing to be closed

Jerusalem Jerusalem

is

not the city of David

is

the city of Jebu.

is dust in the wheat and cemetery mornings!

There

after

an ordeal by lack of memory

the hair of the sun thirst that a clear

is bringing a water will satisfy.

.

.

o cosmic protuberances clean out our mountains of sand so that the men of tomorrow walk on pink granite drink the black fountain. this body pierced with holes burned by sulfur opened by manganese wounds

on

its

mouth and petroleum

for

kisses

refugee with

60

no refuge

its

is

I

bring the ancient gods

swimmers

of cosmic currents

stones where

I

bring the

made

moons

guardians

spirits

shall crawl

craftsmen

new gods

of flesh

the future

open poor

the resurrection of the

liberation I

(

am .

.

.

a

liberation

liberty

nomad from

and we have

the sun shall

a venerable cosmos

offered his death so that

move

.

.

.

)

in our lands of drought the rain for ever

is

made

of bullets.

61

Etel 'Adrian

Five senses for one death i

one eye

upon

the tree

reading Russian novels in

American trains I met an Indian holding your body against his mare one eye waiting for the impossible

mutation

night climbing

on

up evil

evil

night coming

up on the

on mountain clouds

and

the dead

body sailing

in

a coffin

water cried for your absence but you kept recurring as insects in my blood

62

we

the

are

mountain and I

eating your flesh exorcised by the Indian it

has a taste of volcanoes

marinated in lemons I

forget

it

but

all

my

teeth

remember a

newspaper ink halo on a tree

like a sweet-sour skin

the smell of death makes no writing on one's body the distance between

my

ear

and my hands is

a

where hope

I

highway no

race with

of ever reaching its

end.

You

are

II

A

door opens on an eye the eye looks

on

a line of

automobiles gone with the sun

behind the

mountain

shut in by the noise

63

big eyes looking into a coffin eye written on a moving line

you carried the body to the river

and into a vision an eye sleeps

in a tidepool

enclosed by a shadow

upon

bent

because

I

swam

in

a train

water

its

do not want

I

this

silence

searching for a bubble of quietness

landed on the Milky Way.

I

it

when they drill my memory pick

I

two

.

a hole in

the street breaks

when

.

was a highway of noise

up

down

the pieces

cars

explode at the intersection of

my

my

brain and

neighbor's stereo

subways roar at each other one engine chats with the heater it is

by her steps that

knew your death and every Chevy calls

don't

tell

me

me

I

am

you I

64

my name

by

a

see

dog when me eat a poppy

sniff gasoline in

band-aids

I

pour chocolate with garlic

on my bread a forest of

daphne hides

the

squad what?

narcotics

we have

a sergeant

who

smells

slum gave him a penny he like a

I

gave

me

his sweat

and we both spat on

we

the road

under cactus roots next to an Indian no incense is burning on the land shall lie

but a

man

you cut your tongue on a watermelon there

is

blood in the water taste the blood your friend left on the scissors

you

mountaintop drank the rain became a rose and my mouth I

licked the

a third eye

washed by

the pain

onion skins painted by Bedouins

you in order to

eat

prophesy

the return of the stain

made on

the past

65

when my hands

made

are

of

wheels to hold?

what do you want me

we were by

bottom of

the

an ocean under flashlights

skin

upon

skin

dancing unto death

harpoon into open made a song

a

flesh

death III

You

are

and

there

I

am

you were in

not

was a heavy curtain on your eye

it I

in a

room

killed

your brother they took the body to the Sierras

washed it in the snow I wanted this death to be everyone's and your own

2 Indians

a smell of burnt metal

made

its

way

in

your

future I

saw you in galaxies put to sleep by flowers

66

only

at

night can people

see a bullet hole

my

in

within

it

there

breast

is

a radar station

measuring your dying let

to the

us distribute a

smile shoeshine boys I stand on 8th

street

by

movie house and the policeman says: your friend is underground baby the

let's

get

it

over.

on a motorcycle Marilyn Monroe

a ghost riding carries

to her horses

there

is

an eye in your smile inch by inch some pentothal

moving through your

is

cells

moving moaning five children carry a

dead

fly

to its sanctuary

through the spinal cord of the cactus I

tree

begged America not to

dry moistened lips

and got Beirut

Paris

New York

a busy line.

Berkeley

.

.

Los Angeles

the stations of your cross

hands moving over one by one testing roads

cities

67

you were Rimbaud and Kathy Hepburn and we wrote Koranic verses on your bones.

.

.

IV 1.

Pisces-born

I

am

two

fish

pulling apart the slow heavens hidden in your brain

an eye made its way into the mountain and met the Indian the ebbing tide

autumn

amid

the

rose

called the

hour

of your

voyage

we

wax around you

sealed

you

in order to look straight at the

we saw

sun

Holy

a black veil on the

5 fingers

for

Circle

5 candles

5 senses

one death

not to see anymore but inward not to know but

your

own

self

sealed sealed

o sea

with no

68

tide

the Indian licked the eye

2.

and we became a boat lost on the plains I

watched cactuses grow among your eyelashes: I

3.

gave the postman your name he wrote it on his soles

I

his feet

go bare on strange stones

black tamarisk

4.

took a train

is

digging

its

way

up your mouth into the fog-full

chamber of

your second coming spell the incense of

so

5.

many

fish

your

own

death

swim

in cold rivers

so

many

suns are sunken in water towers

your sign

is

Cancer

V 1.

your eyes are sinking into the Pacific I am cutting through them they carried your body over the shrubs of

Mount

Shasta

and dumped mine

in a reservoir

bearing your

name

on Mount Tamalpais and drowned mine by Stinson

they carried your body

Beach

69

on Mount Moctezuma

they carried your body

buried mine in a hole

under the floor of an ocean it

took 5

trees to

make

a coffin until

summer

rains

washed out

the

bedsheets a light

on Tepic pressed itself through your flesh and walked along the branches of your

five

nerves

body on a rock next Indian god knees worshipped both

in wrote your

my

we smelled each rock bush and to track

to

an

root

down your

flesh

and bones scattered from Alaska to the Andes but California was the place they

tell

me

but

I

there are four seasons live in a fifth

which

one

your space and your time is

opened in your flesh no no volcano but boat coming down your arms and bursting into fingers that

a volcano

a solar

carry their flame

along spine

70

my

as eyes

and moving on

caught in

sounds go by as

fire

their

own

silently

we ignore

as planets

the Indians lead the train

they carried the body

on

trunks of palm

five

for five nights

over five mountain peaks

drumbeats never stop

drum

drum

drum

your body lying

on

its

death

a table

in the very white hospital

you

left

by night

knocked

at

my

window scared to scare I

me

while

was drawing your eyes

on you wanted happiness

the wall in heroic

proportions

and

I

went through you like a

only

my

ghost

meeting yours on ocean rocks feet

which work on them like razor blades.

71

Etel 'Adrian

The

Beirut

— hell express .

.

.

but there are different

treatise.

always taken again as a heritage in which, like tired continents grea figures closed into their insanity haxx

sunk.

.

Malek Alloul; "Villes," Algiers '68

The human

race

is

going

to the

cemetery

in great upheavals

two horses reciting

my

MAO

uneasiness

to be heroic

bread and roses flowers and flames

Gamal Abdel

Nasser's death

is

lived in the universe of

JAZZ Mingus's

bass

shocks with no return

what to do with wonder if not some pain in the head one California night the road and black trees against which are rubbing their faces two men in waiting? .

.

.

taxi drivers urinate standing

on

the

Damascus-Beirut-Damascus

road inglorious itinerary I

inhabit the tiniest country

in I

an expanding universe

love the

like

72

my

women who

aunt used

are veiled

to be

and those who go naked at the American crossroads where drugs are growing: they are crabs lying on the back of star-fish in the sea I

love the

men who

cover their

head and show but one eye not the blind one but the one which looks inside. From two thousand years of History keep but JAZZ because it is Black.

I

I

banished

and dried up the here you only eat sand.

colors

sea .

.

we

all

are torturers

one shadowless morning one morning! Don't you

know

that

I

live

In San Rafael with San Quentin for neighbor a nightmare

on which

the sun

sets in tears

the the

Bay at moon.

its feet .

it's

.

and always she

rising above the hair

of a

woman

four times suicidal

and an island

a single one Angel Island uninhabited

and in the Prison George Jackson and Sirhan Sirhan a cold nail enters the skin

20,000 dead in

Amman

20,000 shining nails around the head of the

King

20,000 ghosts the air

heavy weights stinking crime the autumn of the criminal.

73

The

prophecy

flag of

floats

on

the ships Fire!

let

the hurricane enter

and like a boiling river away the angels stricken with on the summits of the Sannine! move on people full of slime the holes

carry

fear

your lemonades go to the sea your casino crumble let your race horses carry their owners to those undergrounds where Babylon used to cook its poisons let let

liberation like a spring

still

under the ground is growing what seems to be hands open at the level of the soil

there

is

no

grass

on

this earth.

My father was Ouranos and my mother Queen Zenobia I

am

the initial Fish

rejected

on

the beach

but determined to

live.

Do you know imbeciles that Rimbaud was among us a century ago from Beirut to Aden-Arabia and that Fouad Gabriel Naffah the poet I repeat Fouad Gabriel Naffah is

among

us

crucified by your thickness

burned with nitrogen yes people of Beirut go on snoring let nitrate burn these pine-tree forests where you throw your garbage your paper towels the country is the dumpsite for the foreign merchandise that everyone refuses

74

Tammouz's country

is

an

open sore his degenerate descendants

have their shoes shined by the hands of a herd of beggars

you borrowed your masks from the pigs and the cows there have been three earthquakes in the Third century destroying three times Beirut

and a fourth one the

world

is

coming!

being born

is

coming coming

the people are the people are

the eagle has carried the message to the tribe

the camel has carried the message to the tribe

the shark has carried the message to the tribe

from everywhere in the world they are coming. Revolution is coming. The .

In

New York

In

Moscow

in

Rabat

I

I

I

.

say the hell with

America

say the hell with Stalin

say the hell with

Hassan

II

hello the beggar hello to the fedai hello to

Mohammad

the visionary

hello to the prisoner

In the evening

when darkness moves

as slow as I

mud

watch the prostitutes it is

forbidden that

women

think

75

I

watch our servants forbidden that

it is

women go

to sleep I

watch our brides going to bed alone forbidden that

it is

lie

on

On

women

as gazelles

the infinite fields of the Arabian plains the fields

on on on

the Arabian plains the face of the desert the streets of our

bitch-in-heat cities there are only

the

maimed and governments with no end crime barks higher than

hyenas

BABYLON BABYLON I

We

shall

to the

go from the Resistance

psychic conquest

and then and from the divine

to

prophecy

the prophecy to the divine is

the people-who-suffer

Comrade Dostoevsky is

in Beirut

at the

he stays

Orient-Prince Hotel, he

eats at the Horse- Shoe cafe

he swims

—

you're not kidding

—

George he yawns imagine that! at the A.U.B. and for his redemption he counts at the St.

—

—

the typographical errors of the

daily al-Nahar

76

announce your resurrections and your death.

Comrade Dostoevsky enjoys but the Koran

understands but compassion

Comrade Dostoevsky is

arrested by the Security Service

and he laughts laughs and his laughter is broadcast on the radios of the whole world I caught it on channel 14 in California

how I would like to break the sky and provoke the lightning bring down the deluge on this town!

Calmly we have prostituted even the plants

Vulture-faced

sorrow is crying while the boat refuses

to leave

In the middle of History In the heart of the at the leverage

hexagon

point of the

building

meeting spot honor

at the

of

lives

and

dies

Gamal Abdel Nasser and

his grave witnessed

first

miracle

its

1 am going to talk to you about the moslem saints: and the naked girls lying by our dead. .

Amman

It is

in Jabal

that

you should look

it

is

that

in the

.

for resurrection

Wahdat Camp

you should look

for spring

77

on the bones of Abou Sliman you should write koranic

it is

that

verses

more unreal than the wind although pregnant with the sins of the world it is in your belly that foreigners exercise the alchemy of treason City

I

love the October breeze

which coming wars

the red skies

the

foretell

above the sea acetylene lamps light the fishermen and the boats.

Hamra

.

.

our nerves shrink at this name blood becomes white the pedestrian becomes a ghost the Lebanese pound exudes a stench

Street:

and

I

fall

on my knees

we sell some night

in front of the children for the pleasure of

for the afternoon pleasure or

the four in the

morning one

sadism

costs so little in Beirut

City!

much what

how many

crimes in your bars

a monetary orgy in the call of the

muezzin! city

more famous than

passenger of eldest

all

hell

passages

daughter of

all

trade

object of our nocturnal love

you have intoxicated us with your irremediable purity.

78

how

alcohol in the fountains of the old houses

The

come

tempest has

the trumpet has sounded JAZZ is manifested delirium has advanced the hour the hour has stopped we the hour are naked destiny is there in front

Gilgamesh has eaten

covered with numbers

people of Beirut

swimming with

evil

his secret plant

in butter

numbed

thoughts

remember September

the 18th!

a motorized angel had crossed the sky

break your mirrors look toward

Mount Sannine

look at the sun which

is

emerging

new bring out your swords open the Arabian gut

cut

from side to side let freedom explode! I

have spontaneous funerary orations

for the metals:

or manganese

no sulfur but potassium

chloride in the water for the donkeys

and mortuary chalk on the houses traitors the painters: they

plunge

in buckets of acid traitors the poets: they

when

speak of roses the city

is

an

asphalt garden traitors the officials: they

have as umbilical

cords the telephone lines that link them to Washington and Vladivostok

79

traitors the priests: there

a business shuttle

is

and consciences

in the schools

covered with vermin let

liberation liberate!

City!

you are

at the foot of the

pink mountain and each one of us is

One what

out of two

bums

on

a velvet

a legend is

covered with

his tender skin

lice

a live

hair young men coming out of the Empire Cinema with swollen lips masturbation in the dark

atavistic

woman to cover

know

installed in

the big desert of love

them

they only I

hunger

the smell of the film

the belly

becoming going

is

made

in the grave already

know how

to love their

mother.

.

.

where the police

streets

rape anything going on two

feet

the sons of the rich

go by them

in speedy cars

cold

glassy eyed

stone I

would

announce

like to

the fabulous

and the dynamics of catastrophe: sons of Canaanites you are dying for the very last time acceleration of the planets

Take for

a train,

my

friend, the train

Amman "it is the only place on earth which proposes to us an occult life and proposes it at the surface

of life" it is

Our

Antonin Artaud who fate

of the

80

is

Red

the

is

saying

one

Indian:

the oiliferous

it

hordes are going to destroy the very

banks they built

as

numerous

as

chimneys

we have mornings with no memories I

wave

predict a tidal

dried

up

is

well a southern wart

anthill

gnawing

land formerly sad

at the

of the Ancestor

We

have perspired at noon an we have seen thieves. met on the sidewalk an astronaut wearing a wig our house-wives have skins which nitroglycerine bags put in the are burned frontal lobe of their lovers explode under icy sweat

the fatuous laughter of the

Beirut

is

enemy

a witch-city

which acts on the world as an ill omen.

What

to

a parade

do with innocence if not like a face tumor

one night with a strange light the road and the beach in California the black trees against which Ahmad-the-Violence and Khalil-Debauchery rub their phallus because they are

scared train

scared

which

double

is

scared

carrying

at fast

of the Express

away

their

speed

a speed

of death in the dry

ravines of the city

which is burned with American phosphorous

81

It

has been a million years

since the Hashemites

Mecca

left

in the belly of the first

dinosaur

to finish

up

in this

massacre!

has been a million years

It

since

Amman-Ugliness condemned on

has been

the throne

of the Apocalypse of the Oil.

took a long walk on Beirut's Corniche with Al-Ghazali as a companion I

took olive oil in the Greek churches and annointed him Prince of the City I

Comrade al-Ghazali Metropol Barmaki's chats with his Lebanese friends of the

stays at the eats at

Wimpy's

theatre at

and

receives

his mail care of Interpol

His

own

by

letters are sent

a traveling

whale

they play the flute in the

popular quarters of the

down

in order to quiet of the citizens.

The god Shamash

has

.

city

the anger

.

come back

in Irbid in

Zarka

in

Ur and

in

Basrah the dead are coming back in order to fight again because the living are cowards!

people of Beirut in bikinis

82

in slips

covered with feathers

if

need be take the

first

Express

(take your vertebrae

and squeeze out

colonialism like pus) so that there be air

so that there be

water so that there be earth

so that there be fire

Hell Express

take the Beirut take the Express it is

more than too

the train

is

the Beirut

late

whistling stamping spitting Hell Express.

83

Etel 'Adnan

Love poems i

I had a gypsy with Indian silver all over her body

She had

a

navel like the

and two like the

morning

star

eyes

meadows

of the sierras

She was a deer and a trail leading to an archetypal lake

One day

the sun shone on her hair and the forest caught fire

only the car broke by the curve of the road

And we

slept

on

down

a hospital bed

to rise

again like the Indian Rainbow. II

The sun came in The pain went out a window on the lone mountain

84

I

became a tree decrucified

rendered to

roots.

its

2000 years of suffering redeemed in a woman's two days flight

from paradise to paradise we went with no mule nor train but with our hands and our eyes III

I

went

to the drugstore

my

to sell I

on I

pain

got a penny and bought an Indian rug the grey

wool

read the footstep of a ship

on the black

line

followed a

I

trail

and we arrived

at a

when only water

meadow talked

to us

we spoke

of rain and and the three of us

fire

slept together

because

we became

the

morning dew.

IV

No

one asked you

to

be an angel of

fear

or even of death

85

We

only wanted your skin to be

smooth

as

as the sea

an October afternoon in Beirut,

between two

Lebanon civil wars.

You came with a handful of pain

and a smile which broke the ground under my earthquake does when two people

as the

meet.

V You

are a white cloud

coming down my spine fire moves its fingers along

my

pain

but two black eyes remain resolved in tears

and becomes

the cloud I

a

song

heard in the fog

and over the

city

while you were counting the

money

for yesterday's hospital

bed.

We

are not playing a

of sorrow

we

are trying to

wings and fly.

86

grow

game

feet

VI

You

are under

my hands

a piece of fire

which doesn't burn

itself

out,

ever

You

cry with the rain

and laugh every morning at the I

advent of the sun

see

you

with your cousins the deer chase shadows under the oak trees of the ranch

You

refused a

voyage to the

moon

in order to

stay

a

moment more in bed.

VII

White

as the unfolded tree

of a winter in

advance

on the sun's decisions you draw my naked body on the city's invisible walls

and a million tiny roads go to a single point. White as Ophelia's pallor you make haggard statements so that

madness and reason be reconciled for ever

87

and

warmth

the

of your

passion takes

on

the colors of frost

white as a permanent spring. VIII

My hand

on your hand both in the hollow of a tree

one sky chasing another sky

both devouring atoms

and going to the moon. Green

is

the color of space.

Two

lips tasting

mushrooms

and the Colorado River haunting the village

from the persistent Mediterranean to the persistent

Pacific,

we

cut roads with our feet

share baggage and

food

running always one second ahead of the running of

Time we

are travelling at

some

infinite speed

we

are not scared. California, Winter 1975

Therese 'Awwad

*

f

V

Born for

in Beirut,

Young

Lebanon

in 1933,

'Awwad

studied in the French Lycee

Girls in Beirut. Later she went to Paris for private studies

while working for the French Radio.

Her poems appeared periodically in Shi'r and in the literary supplement of al-Nahar newspaper. Her only collection of poems appeared under the title Buyut al-'Ankabut (Cobwebs), Beirut, 1967. More recently, she has been interested in writing for the stage. Her poetic play al-Bakara (The Pulley), Beirut, 1973, dealing with the unmasking of man-woman relationships, created an uproar in Beiruti literary circles. She is writing a play on the madness of a housewife. She

lives

in

Rashana,

a

transformed into a living brothers.

She shares her

life

Lebanese

museum

mountain

village

that

was

of sculpture by the three Basbous

with Michele, the oldest of the brothers, and

her only son Anachar. 91

Therese 'Awioad

My

loneliness

ages like wine. I

arrest

it

between parentheses bridle

it

together with the tumult paste doubt to

it,

question marks.

.

.

Meanwhile, leaning against the pulsing surge of the rain I

make

to that

love

hunger

deep within.

93

Therese

'

Awwad

In tunnels of waiting seek

I

touching seeming walls

My arms are stretched This is how I crucified my body Locked Beyond You.

94

There.se

'Awwad

does he bring me, my assailant night? swallow the road and do not move I have unveiled it at the threshold

What I

and

will not

stand for

My Head

its

silence

seems severed from

my

body,

Abandoning me and ascending I

feel

my husk

The husk

shredded to pieces

for the others.

For him, myself

My

naked

self.

95

Therese

I

'Awwad

undressed myself

of

my

crust

And wore you: A nightgown of Love I buried my eyes Under

the marble of your reign

Split a crevice to the light

A

96

road into your

flesh.

Therese Avow ad '

I

revolve around

a nail

its

head head

my

In

is

my

my

my

around

self

circuit

eyes roll

in a

wheel

of lights that

shroud

me

97

Therese 'Aw wad

I

found one word

secluded myself

But

my hand I

hung

froze.

it

from the ceiling and hugged the heat of the sun.

An

umbrella floated between two gods.

My

body

alone

it

Over

my

my

witness

feels the

sequences.

skin

the echoes of famine persist.

98

Nadia Tueni

^

*;»*^

Born in Beirut, Lebanon on July 8, 1935, Nadia Tueni attended the French Lycee for Young Girls, the French Academy of Athens, and St. Joseph's University in Beirut where she graduated with a degree in law. Nadia Tueni expresses herself in French, and is the author of Les Textes Blonds (Blond Texts), Seghers, Paris, 1966, for which she received the Sa'id 'Aql Prize in 1966; Juin et les Mecreantes (June and The Unbelievers), Seghers, Paris, 1968, a poetic statement on the June War of 1967; Poernes pour uneHistoire (Poems for a Chronicle), Seghers, Paris, 1972; L'Age d'Ecume (The Age of Foam), Seghers, Paris, 1974; and Le Reveur de Terre (The Dreamer of the Earth), Seghers, Paris, 1977. In 1973

Nadia Tueni was awarded the

prize of the French

Academy.

Since 1954, Nadia Tueni has been married to Ghassan Tueni, the She lives with her

editor-in-chief of Beirut's al-Nahar daily newspaper.

husband and two

sons,

Gaby and Makram,

in Beit-Mery outside Beirut.

101

Nadia Tueni

But you, black from pleasure, shining with the body of the temple of midnight, a heavy wind dethrones you when your eyes open on a kingdom. We were going sad through words; each gesture is guilty of smashing a childhood; the other landscape is love.

We

were going,

you have given me time like the prisoner's

warm

to

make

a face

bread;

and it is of you that I speak you who are fire and water, like life, a marvelous queen.

103

Nadia Tueni

Night my great thought, how I love to feel your reptile embrace on my temples. My eyes cling to the storm; wind drives sails of sky, and I fear the warm blood thrown back on our shores by the sea.

The

land requires the multiple presence of the sun, while in my nostrils lingers an odor of life and destroyed

Let everything begin again from the first gull to the message left by chance in one mouth. The shadow is absurd since there is no history without image, no image without memory, and no memory without light.

Whatever we do, the word falls like venom and yet so gentle.

like a sputtered

There was a country of ancient

color,

judgment,

more ancient

than a youthful love.

This country oversteps my threshold the evening when my heart is fire quenched by holy water.

104

cities

Nadia Tueni

Inventory From garden child

We

I

on

which

all

earth

I

accept the message.

From

that

which

is

A smell of the future settles down upsetting a

his way.

make suns behind

will

moons and If

death

and

cruel.

From

is

acccept the force.

in

is

that

the wall, within your eyes of painted

your cool-running hands.

perfect beauty, each life inherits a

which

is

day

I

morning of

birds, gentle

will conceive the night (say nothing,

it is

done). In your steps a white foreboding love.

This evening, between me and the first arrival, a word arches on the Because from a cry I will build my life.

sky.

105

Nadia Tueni

The

rain arrayed like death,

exposed

like love,

the rain

timid as morning, distant as a body;

the rain loyal to the

wind

draws a horizon on the night, and lashes the sea with its childhood dreams

The

rain

hand erasing memory from your mind. So the rain will come regal and nomadic because our sobs share the same borders, because our arms like madmen close on nothing. a

And

the rain

shafts of a star, is

106

honed

like a

dagger and plunges like

fate.

Nadia Tueni

Exile And

here are countries slashed in colors by the wind: this living

bluer than a sun at its zenith. I enter the geography of stones, and with a stroke I discover the perfection of evil. In that place where one eye perceives another, tell yourself that the desert begins. The opened chest of the mountains captures the rain. Suddenly an alp more radiant than a pyre erupts from the sea.

nature

New

is

land leading from childhood to childhood, land that our fingers

movement of love. Land of bone, hard lover, with beaches of madness, yet a breath traverses you from head to life, a breath dripping with all our tears. limit with a

And

here are towns sculpted by storms, ringed with birds. Black plays

sweet music on the

windowpanes of day. The sea is a memory of old age.

The moon

lost time.

is

only

Tomorrow my

sky at a gallop will crush

your thoughts, and from their ruins will ascend,

soft as

morning,

exile.

107

Nadia Tueni

I

think of the land and the wheat

richer after the battle,

of this flower of irreplaceable blood.

Man with a prisoner's profile contemporary of all times, mute

like a tree of winter,

listen.

Under

the tent

the child sleeps

and

the

dew on

What more

A

road,

wind carries the birds, dreaming of a red sea eyelids.

does war need?

someone

a river of sacred

living,

someone dead,

mud,

and the devouring heat of June. clock, a wall, an old sabre,

A

a head forgotten at the top of the stairway, a bedouin white against the

and

108

the

double noise of

fear.

background of sand,

Nadia Tueni

Certainties in

huge colors

like landscapes;

sun without shadows nothing softer than death. At night the eye pierces deeper

and the wind brings back the morning shivering from full moon

And

yet the earth: a vast miracle!

109

Madia Tueni

enduring I create you each raindrop imprisons a sun and the corrugated sky projects your face on the white It is

a question of

for in

naming you

of the earth. It is

a question of staying

the blue eye of each stone argues that that

I

am

I

love you

vulnerable

subject to the

wind

choose the sea in spite of shipwrecks that our clashing hands will yield pure space. I want to be in need of everything that hurts of the leaf falling through silence I mean to say that I control your death that

mv

110

I

love

whom

I

evoke.

Nadia Tueni

You

depart like a winter sky your eyes blue with cold; take care, the night walks, moons hollow our faces in search of sleeping water,

blue like madness.

The autumn thus kites

bird has flown

fly

over gardens and dreams

Who

has resolved to leave

when and

sleep

is

warm

the season

with childhood

wounds deeper than

a sword?

The

girl with her medal look with her tongue of look with her tongue of sun, has grown twenty years in the shade of trees. Remember the country where evenings have no age,

where the earth opens like a window, where first love is a white town.

Who You

has resolved to leave? depart in sadness like a sage.

Ill

Nadia Tueni

I

write a sun

and

I

grow one sky older with each

love

night changes where border lines join with memory, never to regain the geranium of colors. I

write a child of earth lovely as cypress

and

ocean in the season of fountains. again your name the memory of evening is blind my passion lives between the tree and its shadow.

Tell

I

I

cry the

me

write a path without sighs

and

the birds forget.

And

always, because of death,

your body

112

is

the only continent.

Nadia Tueni

The

stone

is

no harder than

the bird

but remains always the impenetrable secret of things replaced by a smile.

On

low ground

this dry voice of the

waves

all else

as far as

we can

see.

Infinite color infinite silence

a single love unless you see as a

life

naked body

113

Nadia Tueni

Tonight

my protector moon is an image

the dark

the

is

lost in the

town

Tonight a

memory

persistent as a nettle

as daily bread is

again a bird of passage on the walls

Tonight makes way colored boats line it

rains

for all the

up

in

my

moves

eyes

on a resonant universe

your rainbow body arrives before the dawn my voice rotates around death

Tonight a passion walks the desert led by a wise

your arms are sweet water the dark my protector embraces you!

114

man

Nadia Tueni

Nowhere

is

there a land

like a tree in like a

your eyes

sob too

Maybe

late.

a long silence of

memory

and again your hand reaches for love. Between the flower and its double there

is

room

for the sea.

Since night under blue eyebrows loses the idea of I

go toward

this

blood

summer

like the rain.

115

Nadia Tueni

I

build a look

in tribute to all the faces

because death is definitive even if the eye refuses witness, I endure when the world ends. Love treasured as the night what bloodless lunacies the sun has committed.

You who maintain absence is

116

a face

enough

in secret

to build a look?

Vadia Tueni

The man Pity to the

He Open

man

crosses a

of the golden horse

summer

Like the heart of sun

He

of the golden horse

at

midday

returns over the footsteps of time

Learning It is

to eat color

not easy to

make an intimate

scene

When the horizon and the sea divide To penetrate the world as a boat

life

Shears the harbor's hard waters. Pity to the

man

that burns

Not by heat but by simple thoughts

He

is not in need of a soul In the face of the world's threat for recognition

before

Those

which

the flowers are sensitive

flowers that take part in

what

is

Death.

117

Nadia Tueni

A man

died

No

matter where a man died having picked up a star breathed the dust of music marked the earth with laughter for

setting free florid beasts at the

entrances to the It

city.

doesn't matter where

Under

the left cheek of the

In the empty

world

hand

In your eyes that divide the sky In prayers In scenes of dance

And It

circles

blued from love

doesn't matter where

Under

the voice that repeats time

In the thick south of the burning face

because he removed the mask of the sun

Flooded by others. It

doesn't matter

having

118

where a man died

slid over light.

Nadia Tueni

Decay Can

the desert be restrained

naked

from going with your body

as a prayer

sumptuous decay Every day a resurrection

With

And

the all

compliancy of the earth whom the sun does not concern

those

break a fluid voice

And

the nights

Here and there carry in the eyes the flying of a bird

And I weep the time He that deprived me

of a star; of

my

death.

119

Nadia Tueni

I

I

swear

swear

Having

And

received the blessings of the sun

the color

When

is

young

world walks its first steps In the second day of the night The air is a portion of the same love

The

the

earth that beats in

my bosom

has the

form of a desert. There is water outside the walls

That

notices the solitude in the precise

of return. I

swear

By By By By I

the

wind

that

the kiss of an

glued

to

musk

an army

open sky

the traditions that exclude

me

swear

Having willed

120

is

the sands that rise like

this

moment

I

retain.

moment

Palestine

Salma al-Khadra' al-Jayyusi

.

.

.

The marriage was

dying, and

we were growing

older in different ways. I protected our relationship

decided to stay away. They all said that we separated because I was a poet and poets are not reliable. They might have giggled too as they said that. They can never understand that one does not necessarily leave for hate, one may leave to save one's dream.

when

I

In all my life, I never submitted or accepted a master, or took orders from the mighty breed of men. Our women melt their minds and hearts in those of their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons and call it goodness and piety. Until they realize their responsibility to the nation, this nation will never be. .

.

.

Salma al-Khadra' al-Jayyusi From

a letter to the editor

dated September 26, 1976.

Born in Salt, East Jordan, April 16, 1928, of a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother, al-Jayyusi grew up in Acre, later in Jerusalem where she attended Schmidt's Girls' College. After graduating from the American University of Beirut she left for England. By 1969, a mother of three, Usama, Lina and Mai, she had earned her doctorate degree in Arabic literature from the University of London.

Her

which seems

one of perpetual

travel, has broadened the enriching Palestinian poetry with a sharpened vision of the ghurba (diaspora). Spain, Italy, Germany, England, Iraq, Algeria, Lebanon, Sudan were among the countries she life,

perspective

of

to be

her writings,

has lived in during the past fifteen years. al-Jayyusi's poetry, critical writings

and

translations appeared in the

leading literary journals in the Arab world including Shir'r; Hiwar;

al-Adaab and Mawaqej. al-'Awda

The Dreamy Fountain

min al-Nab' al-Halem (Return from

— Beirut, 1960) was her

first

collection of poems.

123

'Arraf al-Rih (Soothsayer of The Wind), a second volume scheduled appear in the summer of 1967, has never been published. The June w; of that year made her suspend its publication, and since then she hi published very little. t

Among her translations from English to Arabic is Louise Bogan Achievements in American Poetry and Archibald MacLeish's Poeti and Experience; and Lawrence Durrell's Justine and Balthazar. Her thesis, Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry, comprehensive critical history in two volumes, was published in 197 by Brill, Leiden, Holland. and Baghdad, at the University c Khartoum, the University of Algiers and the University of Constantin*

al-Jayyusi has taught in Jerusalem

In 1976 she came to the U.S.A. where she has been a visiting professor c Arabic Literature at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City and then c the University of

Washington

scholar at the Horace

Michigan 124

in

Ann

in Seattle. Presently, she

Rackham graduate

Arbor.

is

a visitin

school at the University

c

Salma al-Khadra' al-Jayyusi

Dearest love

—

I

Dearest love, listen:

where death's artillery blazed in the mind, where bullets are fields, houses, chimneys the dead heaped like frozen waves, when at flood tide the Bedouin wind raged through the camps, their deadly steeds galloping to triumph after the cave

after terror, after

my

after the

heart

was torn

out,

knock-out,

we woke up

to live again.

Forgive one who came back from who saw what he saw, who saved himself in time.

the dead,

From the black cloud I saved myself when new life came my way,

but I

walked proudly

in the dusty graveyards of

But ah, love of

you weren't I

married

my

there,

my

our dead.

life,

and

so

cousin after

all.

September 1970

125

Salma

al-Kliadra' al-Jayyusi

Dearest love

—

III

To Kamal Dearest love, listen: that first time

I

saw you

one!" neck like a doe's,

said, "she's the

I

Dreamy

eyes,

fine waist

breasts of

wanted

I

to crush,

pomegranate,

your hair twisted, turned Dearest love,

he made you

How how the

how kind my own.

like sea-swell.

love

is

—

sweet his honey, perfect,

how

right

consummation

of our love!

And I didn't even know who you were, who you That came

really were.

love tempts

later. First

then puts out our eyes.

Don't say you weren't warned: "Sweetheart,

I

want a tender

one that bends a

to

my

demure voice, a girl obey and please me

to

who

will

make

tree,

will,

alone,

her thoughts mine,

my name, my shadow, pray to God as if she were ready to die in my place." who'll speak in live in

There:

126

I

told

you

so.

me,

But what did you do?

You

got serious, you said,

"We're just the same a I

man and

a

after all:

woman.

don't need Guarding,

there

is

difference between us,

no

you and

I,

man and woman

just a

together in love."

Can

grass

and

still

grow

tall like

a

palm

be called grass?

I warned you listen: wouldn't but you air, the you rode seeking wild unconquered places, clambered up sheer pines, saddled Pegasus and flew away,

Dearest love,

opened veins

in the earth,

looking for gold without me, you spoke and wrote in your name, not mine, can that be? Dearest love, your madness drove

God mad.

dim, lightning blanches, wind faints at your feats of derring-do,

His

stars

no woman among us do what you do like a man!*

lady, there's

who wants and

talks

Who am beyond

I?

my

to

You opened

doors

reach, rushed out

furious into the world

(and to think just yesterday

you peeped out through the cracks in the harem wall).

*Who am the

I?

your wasp-waisted sweetheart?

mere possession of your hands?

127

was caught in a whirlpool and almost drowned; I saw your beauteous face calling me from all the cities of the world, Dearest love,

when

but

I

I

turned to follow

was shouted down by voices booming from my father's grave in the courtyard where their spirit love

unquietly buried;

lies

You

never stopped calling;

the screams

from the past never let up. of choice had come.

The moment I

took a second wife

my hands

for to

make

their

to handle,

own,

who hears and obeys without who knows how to put

a

murmur,

the muttering grave to sleep.

Dear, the lovely music

she and

I

we make,

together!

My

thought rules her, one flesh: one body and one mind.

we

are truly

And you

dearest love, I sowed in the wind, your blood in infinite distance, crippled your flesh from afar (and see my hand's as white scattered

—

—

was like driven snow). drove the loud, lovely words back down your throat and smothered them, I held you longingly, sweet picture of innocence, as

it

ever

I

in

my

arms: no speaking, thinking,

feeling, choosing, acting:

no coming or going. No, there is nothing you can do, dearest love.

128

Salma al-Khadra' al-Jayyusi

A My

tale

father-in-law goes to bed,

sleeps with his wife, gets up,

and prays God

takes a bath

for Paradise.

That's God's law and the Prophet's:

an unquenchable river of kisses, houri dreams like a snake wriggling between his thighs, a neatly drained putz his idea of fun in bed,

plowing

woman

to harvest children.

My husband

worships the randy found stuffing dinars into wrappers to buy a second wife.

flea too,

he's usually to be

As

for

me

I

wear a scar

on my buccaneer's brow while I sail the wind everywhichwhere, wife to exile,

my people dead or dying, my children lamps in the windows of my storm-moved house. My country? My country! sliver moon of sorrow, my mother's dead body wandering in the hills, wind stands frozen by her grave.

129

Salma al-Khadra' al-Jayyusi

In the Casbah I

thought the

here

we

died,

War was Mai and I, .

.

.

flattened by armored wheels while you were fooling around in the I

found

my

Casbah

.

.

.

children's broken bodies

and picked them up, head in nightmare, then they yanked off my skin, lying in the streets

I

swam

hung

it

over

my

over flame to dry

almost drowned dream. flew, crawled, hid heard the wind crying:

and once more

I

in their

I I

—

Salma "Salma bought and sold you" thousand snakes a blazing coil around my heart. And you were fooling around .

.

.

they've

in the Casbah,

weren't you,

when our

nation became

war's killing ground?

October 1967

130

Saima al-Khadra' al-Jayyusi

Storm in Kabyl land Tree limbs thrown by wind to the wind block the highway: the road's door is shut tight, storm bulls uproot everything between heaven and earth. "Driver, have we been cut off? Is there no going back?"

Around us

cliffs swirl

while night beckons, an endless path yawning towards eternity.

And

so

we plunge ahead

storm-flogged between time

and

the rocks' sheer

careening

down

fall,

the road

from Tizi Oozu: what's Salma doing here, this red-rimmed eyester from Canaan?

how I wish were in your arms again in front of a leaping fire back in the home that would've been ours if only you'd lived! Love, I

A Igeria

131

Salma al-Khadra' al-Jayyusi

Shudan blood stains his eyes and hair, thousand ebony burnishing his trembling, half-opened lips with light approaching passion's intensest flame. Black

lily's

on

his cheeks India's sun burns a

He

entered

my

kisses,

world, a stranger taking no part,

my house of memory, honored place among my loves,

never stealing into

winning

the

for like silk

wind he but

briefly caressed

my

flower.

He will go away and I won't lose any sleep over it, he will not learn to drink regret from my sighs or kiss away those tears I never shed for him, plucking putative roses from my passionate cheeks. will not be numbered among my heart's cares won't waste my days in aimless hours on account of him

He I

or squeeze to

my

wrap him

He

will

heart to give

it rest,

mad

tight in the sweetness of oblivion.

go away and not mar the

sleeping secrets in

my

still life I've

wake

chosen,

madness, he cannot further terrorize a heart already quelled by grief. Shudan came and went, we never spoke a word.

Was lit

it

all for

nothing he passed

a beauty within that troubles

132

this

me

to

way and by beauty still,

easing

need for an instant so that I desire hurl myself at all that's pure and perfect in the world?

love's deathless to

eyes will not

nothing Shudan stopped before my temple gate psalm I raise within, honoring his passing. He made me laugh for joy while I burned incense to his name, without offering in return one taste of nectar from my lips?

Was

it

all for

and heard

the

it is good while we search for the unknown and fall, gambling with perilous joys that rend body and soul, lusting for the touch of hands that inflame, weary flesh, to win from life a brief and timeless truce that cheats the grave.

All in all

was good he paused before me,

this sudden storm of light dead hope, clear spark of beauty uncut by pain. These times give meaning to my life and make me whole: my cup has many cracks yet the wine always kissed the brim. It

stirring

133

Salma al-Khadra'

al-Jayyiisi

Scraping limit Did

I

do

it

step over the line? yes,

do my

lovers

how

I

know prayed I

God would

stretching

beyond sky to shatter wall after wall

in

my

way?

Scraping limit I

where

crossed to a world

lovers never sleep

they are so far gone into each other

leaping fences

abandoned my sleepy fountain where I loved and drowsed I

completely quiet and content.

I

found

fire's

and entered watching the innocence in

seed

my dreams

die

hypocritic standing guard

eager to become

134

my

tyrant.

High noon sun I

blaze

pass the impassable desire

ending

my

journey

deserting the twilit world herded

gulled by the shadows even moss casts

hem me

on

the walls that

I

can't get out of

Spotlight

in.

won't strip for you reveal myself love dark comers with their wrap-around night I

I

I

love staying

with one

home I

nights

love

to be strange

the stranger at the crowd's heart.

no Salma

no turning back harden now your tired heart and push on you completely the creature of the noon day sun. there's

Where you were before is a chasm now column of salt body nailed to

the gibbet

going bare discloses loving heart's courage.

Eyes ahead go on the

humble

way you came

road's steepest

walk up the

When at

stairs of hell

you're there

your

feet a

spring

gushes

free of the rock.

135

Salma al-Khadra' al-Jayyusi

The

sky the

moon

lost

To Mai

Sickle

Moon, you

It trails

How

in

lost your blood. drops across heaven's scarf.

looked for your black virgin hair the night of faces in London, shouting in the squares, across chimneys: I

among "Stop,

my

little

moon, won't you

please?

stop this running away."

I

asked glass eyes what they'd seen:

"She's gone, seeking refuge in the wind.

You won't

set eyes

on her again."

What

does this moonlet of pain really want? does she sulk through alleys and back ways, squandering the candid glamours of her youth?

Why

Her face is the East Rising where searching out her own kind, she loses herself to the sky. Sickle

Moon,

Those

little

are really

please stop for me.

caves of sand in the desert

hollow graves gaping

for you.

Moon, won't you please hold still? Stop running around and rest, sickle moons are dancing on the hills, Sickle Moon, O Lost Crescent, what's happened to the sky? Sickle

Hanan

Mikha'il

Born

on October 8, 1946, Hanan Mikha'il was Ramallah, where she attended the Friends Girls' School.

in Nablus, Palestine

raised in

She studied English literature at the American University of Beirut, where she completed her B.A. and M.A., and later received her doctorate in medieval English Literature from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville.

Hanan

Mikha'il writes in English and has edited and translated poems from Arabic. Since 1973, she has headed the English departmental Bir Zeit College, a Palestinian educational institution on the West Bank.

She lives in Ramallah with her husband, Emile Ashrawi and daughter Amal.

their

139

ft

Hanan Mikhail

Guerrilla Dark, motionless, he stood Eyes fixed on barbed wire

Swimming

in distant lights.

Demanding, possessive, jealous, Your love knows no mercy, Your deserts, hot and barren, Sear our flesh.

Our

feet

Sink in the Jordan's muddy trap. Your fields, green and tender, drink Our blood. Your craggy mountains

Scoop the

skies,

Stab innocent clouds, and

mock

the yearning of ancient trees.

Valleys

echo our footsteps, embrace Faceless, changing, ageless, You take your terrible toll.

He

lost bones.

turned, placed his

Kalashnikov on moist earth,

Nodded

to fighters telling tales of

glory

Ham mad

's

eyes

sought his with a question "As legend I could never love her." He answered "She lives."

141

Hanan Mikha'il

Encounter Words that find no respite rest

on your brow but in

my

—

heart

your yearning silence,

and

in

your palm

the pulse of time,

and

in

our

flesh

nails

woman man

of all all

for all time

sink to live

my

love.

Skin between us knows no

We

are.

cells

Hanan Mikhail

Economics My name

is

Kamel

Last week

I

bought

A

television

Next week

A

fridge

and,

set.

I'll

—

buy

who knows,

Maybe next month I'll make enough to buy a

washing machine

(fully automatic).

There's no end to

Perhaps

I

my

ambition.

should have signed

that petition the

camp had

sent

the military governor

hundredth time begging for electricity. Still I was too busy hauling gravel for that superhighway connecting East Jerusalem with Tel Aviv. Besides, I would have been fired. for the

Ahmad

signed

—

and he was. He never bought a

television set.

143

Hunan Mikhail

Demonstration The One

tire

burns in an empty square.

child, pockets filled with

Carefully collected stones, Stares at the

army

At his funeral

patrol.

we chanted

"Mother of

the martyr rejoice, All youths are your children."

Ramallah 1976

144

Fadwa Tuqan

Born

in Nablus, Palestine in 1917,

of Arabic poetry at

home under

Fadwa Tuqan

studied the tradition

her older brother, Ibrahim,

who was

a

celebrated Palestinian nationalist poet.

Fadwa Tuqan's poems appeared in various literary journals all over the Arab World, including al-Adib, al-Adaab, and Shi'r. Wahdi ma' al-Ayyam (Alone With The Days), Beirut, 1955, was her first volume of poems. It was followed by Wajadtuha (I Found It) Beirut, 1962; and A'tina

By

Hubban

(Give

the mid-sixties,

Us

Love), Beirut, 1965.

Fadwa Tuqan's poetry became more

blatantly

involved with the political sturggle for the self-determination of the Palestinian people. Her collections of love poems were followed by

Amam

al-Bab al-Mughlaq (Before the Closed Door), Beirut, 1967.

wa al-Ard (The Freedom Fighter and the Land), Beirut, 1968; alwa al-Fursan (Night and the Knights), Beirut, 1969; Ala Qimmat

Fida'i

Lail

al-Dunya Wahidan (Alone, on Top of the World), Beirut, 1973; and al-Lail wa al-Nahar (Nightmare in Daylight), 1974.

Kabus She

lives in

her hometown.

147

U

Fadwa Tuqan

Labor pains Through ruins of fields and dwellings the wind blows the pollen at night Earth quivers with love with travails improvidently the conqueror makes believe tales

of impotence of interminable surrender.

Arab Aurora Tell the occupiers:

Childbirth is a trance throbbing; out of the agonies of mother land a wound brings forth

life

for

dawn's twilight cracks cusp where the rose of blood meets the she-wound. at the

149

Fadwa Tuqan

Hamza Like others in

my hometown

the salt of the earth

who toil with Hamza was a simple

their

hands

for their bread

man.

When we met

that day land had been a harvest of flames in a windless hush it had sunk in a cloak of barren grief. I had been swept by the daze of defeat. this

Hamza

said,

"This land,

my

sister,

has a

fertile

heart

throbs, doesn't wither, endures

it

for the secret of hills

and wombs

one

is

this earth that sprouts

the

is

same

This land, he

with spikes and palms

that gives birth to a warrior.

my

sister, is

a

woman,"

said.

Days passed

I

did not see

Hamza however,

I

could

feel

that the belly of the land

in travail.

Hamza was a

sixty-five

burden deaf

like a rock

saddled on his back.

"Demolish a

his

house" ordained

command was

"and

tie

his son in a cell"

was heaving

town later explained and order name of love and peace.

the military ruler of our the need for law in the

Armed

soldiers

rounded the courtyard of

his

home

a serpent coiled in full circle

banging

the

at the

door reverberated

the order "evacuate"

and generous they were with time "in an hour or so."

Hamza opened

the

window

looking the sun in the eye he howled,

my

"this house,

and

children

I

shall live

and die

for Palestine."

Hamza

The echo

of

A solemn

silence

propelled a tremor in the nerve of town

fell.

In an hour the house burst apart its

rooms blew up

to pieces in the sky

burying that is no more dreams and warmth past a memories of a lifetime

collapsed in a pile of stones

of labor, of tears, of

happy

some

day.

Yesterday

I

saw

Hamza he was walking

down

as ever simple he

a street in town was and assured

as ever dignified.

151

Fadwa Tuqan

Gone

are those

To Kamal

we

Naser, Yusej Najjar and

One

eagle after another vanished into darkness. One by one they were slain for having towered above the clouds. Motherland for your sake their blood was spilled like rosary

Gone

beads of rubies

are those

Sorrow had no Sorrow flowers and words

we

slip.

love.

voice,

behold

silence to

my

lips

fall

much

the

same

as their bodies

fell

corpses distorted,

what their

my

else

blood

is

could I say? smearing

vision.

Gone

are those

we

love

love.

Before their vessel ever anchored before their eyes ever caught sight of the distant port.

m

Kamal

'A divan*

Palestine in the seasons of your irremediable mourning you drank cups of absinthe we drank your thirst was unquenched

ours eternal. Waterless

we shall remain mouth of this fountain

here at the

till the day of their return with the ocean of dawns that they embraced:

A A

vision that

knows no no end.

death.

love that has

•Kamal Naser,

a Palestinian poet, together with Yusef Najjar

and Kamal Adwan, were

high-ranking members of The Movement for the Liberation of Palestine. In an Israeli raid into Beirut during the night of April 10, 1973, agents clandestinely made their way into their private homes and murdered the three leaders. This poem was published the following month.

153

Fadwa Tuqan

To At

last,

I

her sister and comrade in resistance

conceded

wanted under the savagery of the investigation

as the beast

Sister,

my

beloved

forgive me. I

said "yes"

Not because I could not bear the gnawing pain Neither because one of the barbarians kept banging my bleeding head against the wall,

me

then tossing

numb like a

that

If

My

morsel between his jaws.

were

all

determination, patience and pride

and unwavering

faith

could have sustained me I could have endured. But one of them

wanted

to

—

Sister

Spare I

am

me

the

words

choking

every time that racking scene passes through I

my memory

shudder.

Now

ten years of

my

life

will here be spent

an atonement of

54

my

for the

surrender.

moment

Fa diva Tuqan

My

freedom

Freedom

My freedom words I re-echo through a mouth thickened with rage under the rain of bullets amidst the fire's flame despite the weight of my chains and the night I

persist

over the ebbs of wrath.

Freedom

My I

freedom.

shall carve the

words

in the earth

chisel their

sounds

over every door in the Levant in the Virgin's

Temple

upon her holy

altar

into the furrows of the fields above the hillside below the slope at every street corner inside the prison within the torture chamber. I shall engrave the words into the wood of my gallows despite my handcuffs the blasting of our homes. I

repeat:

Freedom

My let

freedom words be a spark outspreading

the

covering every inch in

my homeland even the graves that

I

may

see

Red Freedom knocking at every door and lightning in this darkness razing the shafts of fog. 155

Fadioa

Tuqan

To

Etan: An

Israeli child

from

He

falls

under the star that branches a wild tree in his hands a web woven with the threads of walls of blood around The Dream.

He

the Kibbutz

steel stretching

caught.

is

Opening

his eyes

Etan, the child, asks,

"How And

long do we have

to

watch over

this land?"

time deformed

dragged in khaki, bypasses him through flames and smoke sorrows and death. only the Star could

If

Etan,

my

child

Like the harbor that I can see you drown through the lie

The I

am

foretell the truth.

bloated dream afraid for you,

is

is

drowning

a sinking load.

my

child

have to grow up in this web of things to be gradually stripped of your human heart and face you could fall again, my child to

and

fall

and

fall

fading into a fathomless end.

Ma'oz Hayim

Saudi Arabia

Fawziyya

Abu Khalid

Before the ghost of the veil started haunting my life The June War broke out. ., June 1967 was the blade over which I .

walked barefoot from childhood into womanhood. Since then I was realizing at every step that the chains of my people are heavier .

than the chastity

.

belt.

Fawziyya Abu Khalid From an undated

letter to the editor

received July 10, 1976

Born

August 17, 1955 to a traditional Beduin Her earliest poems appeared in a local newspaper while she was

in Riad, Saudi Arabia,

family. still

in her early teens.

Her

first

collection Ila

Mata Yakhtatifunaki Lailat

al-Urs?

(Up

Till

When Will They Go on Raping You on Your Wedding Night?), Beirut, 1973, included

poems she wrote before her eighteenth birthday. The critics in Lebanon and it was banned entry into

book was attacked by Saudi Arabia.

Fawziyya was a student of sociology at the American University of Beirut. She is at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, continuing her education. 159

Fawziyya Abu Khalid

To I thought you could be a an Arabian horse unsaddled a forerunner to some god

a

man

faithful

dog

that tastes unlike the dried dates of the tribe.

For myself have torn up all heir's contract with the past uprooting my clan's trees embracing the freedom of outlaws. I

Alas,

I

discovered

your backbone was but a pillar of fog frozen in the Levantine mirror of Narcissus;

and you: nothing more than a Sultan's herald another

pimp

hailing the virtues of the fruits of the Fertile Crescent.

161

Fawziyya

Abu Khalid

Mother's inheritance Mother, You did not leave

me an

necklaces for a

inheritance of

wedding

but a neck that towers above the guillotine

Not an embroidered

my

veil for

face

but the eyes of a falcon that glitter like the daggers in the belts of our

Not

men.

a piece of land large

enough palm

to plant a single date

but the primal fruit of

The

Fertile Crescent:

My Womb. You

me

let

sleep with all the children

neighborhood agony may give birth

of our that

my to

new

rebels

In the bundle of your will I

thought

I

could find

a seed from that

I

may

The Garden

plant in

my

of

Eden

heart

forsaken by the seasons Instead

You

left

me

the

name

with a sheathless sword of an obscure child carved on

Every pore in

me

every crack

opened up:

A

162

sheath.

its

blade

my

I

plunged the sword into

I

but the wall could not contain thrust it into my lungs

I

dipped

window could

but the

It

it

into

my

heart

not box

it

it

waist

but the house was too small for lengthened into the streets

it

defoliating the decorations of offical holidays

Tilling asphalt

Announcing

the season of

The Coming

Feast.

Mother, Today, they came to confiscate the inheritance you left me. They could not decipher the children's fingerprints They could not walk the road that stretches between the arteries of my heart and the cord that feeds the babe in every mother's

They

womb.

seized the children of the

neighborhood

for interrogation

They could not convict the innocence They searched my pockets

in their eyes.

my clothes my skin

took off peeled

But they failed

to reach

the glistening silk that nestles the twin doves in

my

breast.

163

Abu Kahlid

Fawziyya

Would It

I

betray you?

was midday.

Roosters were crowing.

Children were playing in the alleys

The

and on the rooftops. ploughing

bulls were

while fathers were making love to their female slaves.

Would It

betray you?

I

was midday.

The mare was neighing in my bosom. The Sultan's flagellator was training it round was stumbling

for the second

While

I

in the anklets

limping maiden

of a

driven to a slave-market.

Would

Now

betray you?

I

that

your child

is

in

There's no more space for both your child and at the

round

my womb

me

table

me to my name.

they took to sign

Labor pains are in the

in

way

my

back

of signing the manifesto

on which signatures

Would

164

I

betray you?

are being collected.

A woman An

men summoned for my

that freely mingles with

outside marriage

is

case.

illegitimate child defends me.

Simone de Beauvoir the guillotine

And

is

the children are

cites

my

case,

remote still

the height of the sword.

embraced

If I

my

flagellator

Forgive me, for his

mother was a

slave

My

blood runs in his veins shedding the chains that blued his blood with poison If I

chopped

off

the broker's tongue

between Forgive

my me

teeth

but his father was a blind man selling veils in our quarter not knowing that the

woman

he loved

was the Sultan's daughter.

Would It

I

betray you?

was midday

The The

children were playing with matches fathers were sleeping the siesta

next to their female slaves

While I was being raped in the courtyard of the house with no salvation

except for the children's flames.

165

Abu Khalid

Fawziyya

v

Tattoo writing Not with your

tribe's spears I write

for they are dull

but with

my

Words without

nails

walls.

Sister,

T°

For you I have inscribed Love-songs

^01

l

^ ei

weaving the sun's rays to your latticed window.

To

me you

tell

The is

accept

Tribe's traditions

and prescriptions

a concession

to

being buried alive. inch or two

The noble

of tattoo

over your skin Shall carve a bottomless night into

m

your

M

It

flesh.

pains

to see

in

in

me

The Tribe

dwell

you sprawling your college seat not unlike

your grandmother who thought she was

won

a lottery ticket at

A woman

home.

in her twenties

sitting before

some

tent

shrouded with robes and

veils

carrying the spindle

but does not spin.

To

hear you talk

about a cloak

men bought

the clan's for you;

to hear your boast about blue-blood

the heirs

and chip

off the old

oak

tree.

The

Sheikh's voice in your voice cancels you.

Sister

My kingdom

does not claim doweries of cows and cattle thus The Tribe rejects me

you are their legitimate child the one disavowed You belong to lords of virgin for I

am

I

to seasons bleeding flames.

lands

Should The Tribe's drums and barking dogs Shut off your hearing the rippling

of

women's

blood

167

It

doesn't

mean

you are without a wound as being captive of your tent doesn't remove the sky above.

You may

cross deserts

on camel back It

won't hinder a satellite from reaching the moon.

Sister If you wish to reject me now Say "no" with your own nails I only tried

to

comb

nocturnal grief out of your crownless hair.

Syria

'Aisha Arna'out

I write, I am in a total state of unconsciousness. In the past many prominent periodicals rejected my work giving all kinds of excuses; at times claiming it is 'too romantic,' other times calling it 'incomprehensible!' Some years ago whenever my

When .

.

writing happened to be accepted by some pioneering journal, I was sadly surprised to see the publication either censored by the authorities or simply banned from the market or it would simply go out of business before I could see

my work

in print.

'Aisha Arna'out From

a letter to the editor

dated June

3,

1975

Damascus, Syria on October 13, 1946, Aisha Arna'out is a writer and poetry. Her works appeared in al-Thaqafa, Aqlam, al-Adaab, al Ma'rifa and Mawaqef.

Born

in

of short stories

For a number of years, she worked as an elementary school teacher. More recently, she has been active in day-care centers. She has also been involved in a national project for creative talents among children that includes collective poetry writing and painting by children.

She is studying French literature at the University of Damascus while working in the children's program at Syrian National T.V. She is married to Sakher Farzat, a Syrian painter. 171

'A is ha

A ma' out

Silently

She lived Silently

She died useless cunt

they said, after they

knew

I

fell

my

knees before her corpse

to

Stripped her of the shroud

with my nails wrote on her tombstone Something.

173

:

i*a.

A is ha A ma' out

He

put on his

shirt, carried his

umbrella

Uttered no word Neither did I. After he I

left

stood in front of the mirror

Slit

open

my

to see

if

tongue any words were caught there

Alas I

only saw the muscles and the veins.

I

mended

the tongue

Burst out laughing laughter is not a word

—

Then

I

—

smashed the mirror.

Since then 1

have been breaking mirrors

In vain

Searching for one

That would

No

reflect

more; a mirror That would break me.

174

lisha

It

Arna'out

troubles

that water

me is

colorless

air is tasteless

the is

hymen

without

The

tears.

tenderness of thorns their perpetual renewal

Wounds me: The neighing The

I

lay

of extinct beasts

my

blood scream of demons dead under the trees of remote shores. in

my rough palms over a man's foot a passing stranger

And

bless

my

coming

children

forth with the

wind

Penetrating through time.

175

'^

'Aisha Arna'out

The

turtle lifting its firm

spat.

head

The man

as a turtle:

an imperfect

definition.

And I laugh exhaling smoke and

beasts.

Because am abolished

I

before the chasms of desire, I

joke

I

yawn

before the mirrors.

Because I want to be More challenging

more penetrating than X-ray more slippery than hot mercury: I

176

dissolve.

'Aisha Arna'out

A wing carried me A claw broke me A beak pecked Eyes closed for

me.

me

denude me But ultra-violet rays of a heart will not decompose me. I am a storm in motion and spring in death. Like ore and dust I

penetrate the heat

and

yet

My flesh is a curse A curse that reduces me to

glue

and

ash.

177

'Aisha Arna'out

of my darkness gathered blossoms of starlight

Out I

Arranged them in his shoe

He

said:

I am undeserving He had been overcome

by defeat

Burning biting his regrets. I went back to my room Seeing death in every crevice I

lay in the rain rising

from the ground; Stretched

Plunged

my feet my teeth,

in the torn dream,

Waited for the explosion of the crack:

The Second Coming

A is ha Arna'out

Ever in consciousness I

am and am

not

not always, in the dream I

either

am

or

am

not.

Behind curtains I see him. There, waiting for the piece of I

bread

own

but refuse to give

him.

Each one of us standing on a bank. Some sleeping god seeking revenge stirred

carried

up

me

over

absent waves

and

like a fish

placed

me

in his

mouth.

179

'A is ha

Arna'out

I arched my body Like a porcupine before the barking of a dog

The

silk of

stroke

my

migrating wings

curves

transcend the touch of skin piercing the pores I

thought

Tomorrow

A

I

become

bird

Tomorrow and was

my metamorphosis here.

I saw myself behind hopped forward like a frog, kept hopping

all

As I, at last, was glued to the ground I wondered what happened my wings tomorrow I will fix them I thought and fell asleep.

to

my dream saw myself a porcupine

In I

a frog a roach.

He was

180

night long

a bird without wings.

A is ha Arna'out

Before the amputation of the bewitched limb I

shall call the

woman

an ant

man

as

was

called

a tortoise.

However

vast

the difference

may

for

as

both have been watching each other

untamed

tempests.

Today Opening my I

be

has been accepted

It

am

eyes

thunderstruck.

After all this time After all time

Everything is white Entirely white even my papers.

181

'A

ha Arna'out

is

Out

of the darkest nadir

where I

I

was

ruthlessly crushed

screamed,

—

Go.

.

.

Leave

me

alone!

He was beyond hearing me he advanced penetrating through stone. He held my hand;

a wall

me

without me Outside the walls together we were. Suddenly he disappeared. led

seeing him.

Then and there and for the I saw him.

first

time,

This time, I called Come Back He kept going

—

didn't even turn.

Left alone outside the wall I

leaned over stones

for protection.

182

'Aisha Arna'out

I

searched for the wordless

your presence found it but found in

no name I

for

it.

pretended your absence

in order to find

The

its

name.

name is wind name is love my name is me wind's

love's

this feeling

but.

One

.

had substance

.

night

I

got

him drunk

searched his pockets

found a piece of paper.

To

read

it

turned on the light it

burned.

183

Aisha Arna'out

They

will say

I

imitate the poets

As a matter of fact, nothing of the no preconceived intentions. For

I I

sort,

have read books that remained closed have slept through daylight hours

in reception halls. I

scribbled stuff with the

mere

Their judgment was passed It

erased everything

To

rectify

They

it

later said,

She imitated Xo one She did not write At all.

184

tip of a pencil

Samar

'Attar

Born

in

Damascus,

English literature

Syria, in 1945, at

Samar

and and Dalhousie

'Attar studied Arabic

the University of Damascus,

and earned her doctorate degree in comparative from the University of New York at Binghamton.

University, Halifax, literature

Her writings have appeared in a number of literary journals, among them al-Adaab, Exile, and Contemporary Literature in Translation. Translated poems of hers appeared in

Volvox: Poetry from the Languages of Canada, edited by J. Michael Yates (Port Clements, 1972) and in the anthology The Armies of the Moon, edited and translated by Gwendolyn MacEwen (Toronto: Macmillan, 1972). Unofficial

Her English translation of Salah abd al-Sabur's anthology A Journey at Night appeared in Cairo in 1970. Recently, she has been writing a novel on a girl's coming of age in Syria during the '50's and '60's, soon to be published in Arabic. Since 1971

Samar

they have lived

'Attar has been married to

and

Gerhard

travelled in the U.S.A., Algeria,

Together and Germany. At

Fischer.

present, they reside in Sidney, Australia.

187

Samar

'Attar

The

return of the dead

And you came back One summer morning Like a dreadful dream Your shroud was loose Your eyes were glassy We stood and watched Our marbles fell and broke

On

the cobble road

You waved,

then you strolled.

No sparrows, no crows In the city of shining brass "Where did

they go?"

You asked "did they

all

die?"

die die

And we heard your echo

Old man And we saw your rotten teeth

Your gouged And we ran. I

was a

eyes

little girl

when I watched you go From our home. Big, sturdy men Carried your coffin

On

their heads.

how

the procession went on and on And I saw the shopkeepers

Ah,

Close their shops On a cold winter day

And walk Behind the weeping crowd I heard a man Singing of the Lord Women wailed like demons

And

And we

children stood and watched.

The sun was

cold

long train of chocolate heads Trotted along the narrow lanes And when it passed that distant curb

saw you swaying right and Bareheaded men.

I

Do Do I

spare the dead

hold his shroud

said,

And

Ah

We We We But

we

said

all the

children wept.

dead launched our sails stored our food sang our hymns

city of the

is it

true

That over

No

left.

there

tree will bear?

No grass will bloom From garden to garden From bay to bay

We Up

journeyed

and down

189

Night and day Searching for a spectre

And all the sailors that we met Talked of nothing But hooded heads. Father, where should we go? Is

there a city for the dead?

We

were young and weary No drop to drink

No

bite to eat

"Must we not sail for home What say you brothers? Mother must be there By the water's edge Wearing a velvet dress And waving to a sunken ship." But lo

Where was

the lighthouse top

the

chimney smoke

we saw? "Beware!" soldier with studded Climbed the deck

A

And

stars

in the light

Bathed his vengeful face. "Was he the Devil?" I said

"He

Ah

was," they said. shining brass

city of

Are we

bereft of

and

home

friends?

Here we walked broken column Across the mountains

A

And And

the plains lo behold!

where was my shadow and yours?

190

on

his

arm

These groans. Hark! "Did you see the broken bones?" "Soldier! where did your people go?"

we were huddled and told Mother was dead

In a tent

or rather killed

nobody knew

And we were

captives

in the city

of our father

where the wind incessantly blew.

We

silently prayed For your return Father We were young and weakly

Our home became a prison Our streets had different names

Why

didn't you deliver us

spare us a grave just a little

obscure grave?

Today and by

the river

We

saw your ugly Or did you have a

You

mouth

face

face

scurried like a rainy storm

and waved.

Do I

not say an old

am

man

What can an

old

man

say?

Theories of history And argumentation

And we little fools How we prayed And blessed This human habitation.

191

But now you can go Back to the grave

Your peace is Hell Your presence humiliation.

"Who

will deliver

you,

"I,

"And "Let

we"

the

me?"

I

said

they said

Lord?"

Him

be stoned

Your damn Lord" "let

Him

be stoned," they said.

Our Mother Take off your veil For we have come

To

cleanse

Your copper plates Your weedy lawns Don't you see Your sons are Almost men?

192

Samar

'Attar

The

Visitor

And if he knocked again, The man with the frosty smile And hooded cloak, Where should we go And how could we pretend

We

heard no sound?

You

don't seem to care But he was there

By the

gate.

Was

the

it

Why Or

can't

isn't

owl that shrieked? you speak?

he there?

To know my place To say what I haven't said To put the lilacs in a bowl To comb my hair Now that the porter Is

over there.

have heard his key Turn in the door I have seen His forehead bare. I

The ferry he Yawned

sat in

Like an open grave.

How can't you Those dreadful Fool

me

not,

see sails?

my

friend!

Half-past two Is it

so late?

193

And

the dog wags its tail? Could it have dug out Still

All our friends

With

its

dirty nails?

Fetch me a mirror. (But thy eternal summer shall not fade.) Beguile me not. I I

was never born and never dead. took no sides

No Nor from

the Devil fled.

Naked, naked

And

in

my

soul

November fog

No crowd to see? No sorrow to bear? Knock, knock, knock

Who

is

there?

Porter wait!

My

shoes at the door

Let the curtains

And

194

I

fall

shall descend.

Samar

'Attar

The Why, what an That

I,

ass

am

Bride I!

This

is

most brave,

the son of a dear father murdered,

to my revenge by heaven and hell, whore, unpack my heart with words.

Prompted Must,

like a

Hamlet Disfigured

my

love?

And your apple-blossom

Hung

like a

And on your

No

willow

breasts

tree?

grave

pansies grow

But twenty thousand dead?

Must you be raped?

And

will the world Be then content?

Through the winding You came.

lanes

Black your shroud As the polluted lakes. Ah, how I was ashamed! But you only stood there, Gazing out to sea;

Your bare

Long

To

legs

as a crane's.

die, to sleep?

But words are only words.

Could

I

ever refrain?

Weary, weary

And

No No

in

my

bride?

November

rain

apple yields, orange ripens?

195

— What gang raided your gardens, Fought on your shaggy rocks? And what will your children see But broken windows and burning crops? that I knew Where He could be found. Not to plead my cause

before His court,

Not

to

fill

my mouth

Before His seat

with foolish words 1 am no pious Job!

"Run and Hide But

I

if

You

like.

will strike

Through Your mask. You've knocked

me down

Once and twice. But up again I

stand."

Come, come, my weary

bride.

Let the wind

Blow your dusty hair. Let the world Behind us drown. I have seen them dancing on the mountains, And the snow powdered in their hair.

And

Why

they care not should we care?

Pale,

my

if

love

As dirty snow? Old and withered?

Where have

196

youi daisies gone? your children scattered?

all

O

cursed world

That

I

was born

To strike the mask To mend the screen To drown the cries Of hidden ghosts. And what will I see But scattered limbs

And

rotten bones?

Why

can't

you come again,

my

love

Withered as you are? The footman waits at the stairs And the carriage has almost gone.

197

Saniyya Saleh

/

'

/

i

The

personality of

my mother

played a very significant role in my life. Her early death propelled a whole chain of events; while the living around me were falling one after the other, in her death my mother was ever more glowing, and her presence all the

more

real.

Saniyya Saleh From

a letter to the editor

dated June

Born

in Misyaf, Syria in 1935,

number

of magazines

in

1

,

1976

Saniyya Saleh has published poems in a

Syria

and Lebanon, among them

Shi'r,

al-Adaab, and Mawaqef.

Her first collection, al-Zaman al-Dayyeq (Pressed Time), Beirut, 1964, was dedicated to her sister, Khalida al-Sa'id, a leading literary critic in the Arab world. Her second volume Hibr al-I'dam (The Ink of Execution), Damascus, 1970, received the first prize for women's poetry from al-Has?ia', a woman's magazine.

Working

in a tobacco factory in Damascus, Saniyya Saleh two children. Sham and Sulafa. She is married to al-Maghut, a Syrian poet and playwright.

of

is

the

mother

Muhammad

201

Saniyya Saleh

Exile For grief he wore those colorful

mask of joy. He bound his

bells,

a

stories

to his tongue's tip

so they

would not

at the crucial

betray

him

moment.

And he walked lightly

in jewel-studded shoes

—

alone as the night with no stars waiting but

my

eyes.

Bird, hovering over the horizon

remember bullets are everywhere

—

Remember

me the perpetual traveler

All

my

—

life

I have willed to go forward and have not advanced beyond

the borders of

my

grave.

203

Saniyya Saleh

Blind boats Because desolate rooms are beds for the poetry that kills I

sob,

I

dry

up

The days

like trees. still

as the rocks

send the calls of blind boats.

Sharpshooter

aim your gun Whisper your In vain

I

at

my

heart

bullets like a lover into

raise

my

anguish to the skies

Let their roads be empty except for

My My

204

voice

echo.

and

my

ear

Saniyya Saleh

Tears There

a scream that binds

is

my

heart to

the throat of the Earth

And

that

foam

is

my

lost voice.

My My

robe illusion necklace of counterfeit stone

All that

is

the

world may be

deceit

but

my

tears.

I

am

I

come and go behind

the

woman

bleeding the sharpened years

Tall windows.

woman in veils about to My childhood smashed by

a

flee

this

nightmare.

205

Saniyya Saleh

Choking Everytime

My

am bound

I

towards you

roads turn into dust

One And

step

they vanish.

Mother Cry out! There is no sky But

Our

throats.

Come

back

to

me:

Bitter wilderness of

childhood

more vast than a where terror was concealed. As you search

child's fantasy

for their graves

Declare to the world:

only the winds blowing without mercy could silence them for the night caution sealing their lips guards before barred cells.

—

Do you remember who went To meet the winds?

out at night

Only we children Only we restless ashes.

Go

back to your death Mythic woman.

206

..

Sources Andree Chedid

Man — Today "L'homme aujourd'hui" from her forthcoming collection Fraternite de la parole to be published soon in Paris by Flammarion. Translated from French by Samuel Hazo and Mirene Ghossein.

Movement "Mouvement" from her forthcoming

collection Fraternite de parole to be published soon in Paris by Flammarion. Translated from French by Samuel Hazo and Mirene Ghossein. la

Imagine "Imagine"

from Contre-chant (Flammarion, Paris, 1968), Translated from French by Samuel Hazo and Mirene Ghossein. This translation first appeared in Mundus Artium, p. 58.

Vol. VII, No.

Who Remains "Qui

2, 1974, p. 27.

Standing?

debout?" from Contre-chant (Flammarion, Paris, from French by Samuel Hazo and Mirene Ghossein. This translation first appeared in Mundus Artium, Vol. VII, No. 2, 1974, p. 27. reste

1968), p. 52. Translated

What Elsewhere? "Quel Ailleurs?" from her forthcoming collection Fraternite la parole to be published soon in Paris by Flammarion.

de

Translated from French by Samuel Hazo and Mirene Ghossein. This translation first appeared in Mundus Artium, Vol. VII, No. 2, 1974, p. 31.

The Naked Face "Visage Intarissable" from Contre-chant, p. 94. Translated from French by Samuel Hazo and Mirene Ghossein. This translation first appeared in Mundus Artium, Vol. VII, No. 2, 1974, p. 29.

209

What Are We Playing At? "A quoi joue-t-on?" from Contre- chant, p. 9. Translated from French by Samuel Hazo and Mirene Ghossein. This translation first appeared in Mundus Artium, Vol. VII, No. 2, 1974, p. 29.

The Future and

the Ancestor

"L'ancetre

et

le

futur"

from her forthcoming collection

Fraternite de la parole to be published soon in Paris by Flam-

marion. Translated from French by Samuel Hazo and Mirene Ghossein. This translation first appeared in Mundus Artium, Vol. VII, No.

2, 1974, p. 31.

Nazik al-Mala'ika /

am "Ana" from Shazaya wa Ramad (Baghdad, 1949), pp. 97-100. Translated by Kamal Boullata.

Insignificant

Woman

"Imra'a La Quimat Laha" from Qararat al-Mawja (Beirut, 1957), pp. 62-63. Translated by Kamal Boullata.

My

Silence "Thalj

wa

nar"

from Shajarat al-Qamar

pp. 145-148. Translated by

Washing

Kamal

(Beirut,

1968),

(Beirut,

1957),

Boullata.

off Disgrace "Ghaslan

lil

'Ar"

from Qararat al-Mawja

pp. 158-160. Translated by

Kamal

Boullata.

J ami la "Nahnu wa Jamila" from pp. 109-112. Translated by

210

Shajarat al-Qamar (Beirut, 1968),

Kamal

Boullata.

Mona

Sa'udi

Blind City Mawaqef, No.

Atadaffa' bi al-Arsifat al-Bakiya-I," 1969), p. 134. Translated by

Through Galaxies "Fi

of Stars

Kamal

and Planets

Madarat al-Nujum Usafer,"

1972), pp. 18-21. Translated by

When

5 (Beirut,

Boullata.

from Ru'ya Ula (Beirut,

Kamal

Boullata.

Tomb

the Loneliness of the

"Haythu Nazalat wihshat al-Qubur," from Ru'ya Ula 1972), p. 18. Translated by Kamal Boullata. / Left

My Home

to Its

(Beirut,

Walls

"Tarakt Baiti fi Jidraneh," from Ru'ya Ula (Beirut, Translated by Kamal Boullata.

1972),

p. 18.

In

Her Heart She Planted

a Tree

Hulumeh— V," Mawaqef,

"Wal-Insan Nabat

Kamal

1974), p. 62. Translated by

The

City Trembles Beneath the "Atadaffa'

al-Arsifat

bi

Dawn

al-Bakiya— VI,"

(Beirut, 1969), p. 140. Translated by

How Do

I

"Atadaffa'

Shall Sculpt for

bi

al-Arsifat

No.

5

No.

5

Boullata.

al-Bakiya— V,"

Mawaqef,

Kamal

Boullata.

You Both

"Wal-Insan Nabat

Hulumeh— II," Mawaqef,

1974), p. 60. Translated by

And

Mawaqef,

Kamal

Enter the Silence of Stones (Beirut, 1969), p. 139. Translated by

/

No. 28 (Beirut,

Boullata.

Kamal

No. 28

(Beirut,

Boullata.

Let Her Die "Wal-Insan

Nabat

Hulumeh— XIX," Mawaqef,

(Beirut, 1974), p. 62. Translated by

Kamal

No.

28

Boullata.

211

Am I

So Drunk

With The Night

"Salaman Ayyatuha al-Tuyur al-Musafira," (Beirut, 1968), pp. 43-44. Translated by

Kamal

Shi'r,

No. 40

Boullata.

Morning Un leafed "Wa

kana

An Awraqa

al-Sabah," from Ru'ya Ula (Beirut,

1972), p. 30. Translated by

Out

of the

Kamal

Boullata.

Murky Debris Hulumeh— III,"

Nabat

"Wal-Insan

(Beirut), 1974), pp. 60-61. Translated by

Darkness

Hulumeh— XII," Mawaqef,

1974), p. 65. Translated by

I

Erase

The Face

of

Kamal

No. 28

(Beirut,

No. 28

(Beirut,

Boullata.

Your Immense Love

"Wal-Insan Nabat Hulumeh 1974), p. 62. Translated by

Why

28

Is "Wal-Insan Nabat

And

Mawaqef, No. Kamal Boullata.

— VII," Mawaqef,

Kamal

Boullata.

Don't I Write in the Language of Air? "Limadha La Aktub

bi

Lughat al-Hawa' " from Ru'ya Ula Kamal Boullata.

(Beirut, 1972), p. 37. Translated by

Etel 'Adrian

Jebu appeared in The Arab World, Vol. XVI, Nos. 5-6 (New York, May-June 1970), pp. 13-23. Translated from French by First

the author.

Five Senses for

One Death

from Five Senses for One Death (New York,

1971). Originally

written in English.

The

Beirut

— Hell Express from L'express Beyrouth-Enfer

(Paris,

1973). Translated to

English by the author.

Love Poems Unpublished

212

before. Originally written in English.

Therese 'Awwad

My

Loneliness "Salam al-Samt" from Buyut al-'Ankabut

Extract:

1967), p. 47. Translated by

Kamal

(Beirut,

Boullata.

In Tunnels of Waiting 'T Sar" from Buyut al-'Ankabut Kamal Boullata.

Extract:

(Beirut,

1967),

pp. 104-105. Translated by

What Does

It

Bring Me, "Sahat

Extract:

My

Assailant Night?

Forstenbergh"

from

(Beirut, 1967), pp. 55-56. Translated by

/

Buyut

Kamal

al-'Ankabut

Boullata.

Undressed Myself "Liqa' " from Buyut al-'Ankabut (Beirut, Translated by Kamal Boullata.

Extract: p. 71.

/

Revolve Around "Buyut

Extract:

al-'Ankabut"

(Beirut, 1967), p. 71. Translated by

/

1967),

from

Buyut

Kamal

al-'Ankabut

Boullata.

Found One Word "al-Madina"

Extract:

Buyut

from

1967), pp. 67-68. Translated by

Kamal

al-'Ankabut

(Beirut,

Boullata.

Nadia Tueni But You, Black from Pleasure "Mais

toi,

noire

from French by appeared in Mundus

de plaisir." Translated

Elaine Gardiner. This translation

first

Artium, Vol. VII, No. 2 (1974), pp. 74-75.

Night

My

Great Thought ma

grande pensee" from Le reveur de terre (Seghers, from French by Elaine Gardiner, This translation first appeared in Mundus Artium, Vol. VII, No. 2 (1974), pp. 74-75.

"Nuit

Paris, 1975), p. 47. Translated

213

Inventory Poemes pour une

"Inventaire" from

histoire (Seghers, Paris,

from French by Elaine Gardiner. This appeared in Mundus Artium, Vol. VII, No. 2

1972), p. 33. Translated

translation

first

(1974), pp. 72-73.

The Rain Arrayed Like Death "La

comme

pluie paree

la

mort" from Poemes pour une from French

histoire (Seghers, Paris, 1972), p. 73. Translated

by Elaine Gardiner.

Exile from Poemes pour une histoire (Seghers, Paris, from French by Elaine Gardiner. This translation first appeared in Mundus Artium, Vol. VII, No. 2

"Exile"

1972), p. 33. Translated

(1974), pp. 70-71.

/

Think of

the

Land and

Wheat

the

au ble" from Le Reveur de terre Translated from French by Elaine Gardiner. This translation first appeared in Mundus Artium, Vol. VII, No. 2 (1974), pp. 72-73. "Je pense a

la

terre

et

(Seghers, Paris, 1975), p.

Certainties in

Huge

3.

Colors

"Ce sont des verites aux enormes couleurs" from Poemes pour une histoire (Seghers, Paris, 1972), p. 6. Translated from French by Elaine Gardiner. This translation first appeared in It Is

a Question of "II s'agit

Mundus Artium,

Enduring de durer" from Poemes pour une histoire (Seghers,

Paris, 1972), p. 60. Translated

You Depart Like "Tu

Vol. VII, No. 2 (1974), p. 70-71.

a Winter

t'en vas"

from French by Elaine Gardiner.

Sky

from Poemes pour une histoire (Seghers, Paris, from French by Elaine Gardiner.

1972), p. 67. Translated

/

Write a

Sun "J'ecris

un

soleil"

from Poemes pour une histoire (Seghers, from French by Elaine Gardiner.

Paris, 1972), p. 68. Translated

214

The Stone

Is

No

"La

Harder Than the Bird

pierre

pas

n'est

plus dure"

from Poemes pour une from French

histoire (Seghers, Paris, 1972), p. 43. Translated

by Elaine Gardiner.

Tonight "Ce Soir" from Poemes pour une 1972),

Nowhere

Is

p.

6.

histoire (Seghers, Paris,

Translated from French by Elaine Gardiner.

There a Land

"Nulle part ne

se

trouve

un pays" from Poemes pour une

histoire (Seghers, Paris, 1972), p. 41. Translated

from French

by Elaine Gardiner.

/

Build a Look "Je construis (Seghers,

un regard" from Poemes pour une

Paris,

1972),

p.

78.

histoire

Translated from French by

Elaine Gardiner.

The Man

of the

Golden Horse

"L'homme au

cheval

d'or"

from Juin

les

et

(Seghers, Paris, 1968), p. 50. Translated by

mecreantes

Kamal

Boullata.

A Man Died "N'importe ou" from Juin et les mecreantes (Seghers, 1968), p. 66. Translated by Kamal Boullata.

Paris,

Decay "O Somptueuse

pourriture"

from Juin

et

(Seghers, Paris, 1968), p. 39. Translated by

I

les

mecreantes

Kamal

Boullata.

Swear "Je jure" from Juin et les mecreantes (Seghers, Paris, 1972), Translated by Kamal Boullata.

p. 17.

215

—

/

Salma al-Khadra' al-Jayyusi Dearest Love

— —

"Habibat Qalbi I" from a Unpublished before.

title.

Dearest Love

series of

poems carrying

Translated

by

the

Charles

same

Doria.

—///

"Habibat Qalbi III" from a series of poems carrying the same title. Unpublished before. Translated by Charles Doria.

A

Tale "Hikaya" Shu'un p. 110.

Filastiniyya,

No.

1

(Beirut,

March

1971),

Translated by Charles Doria.

In the Casbah "Fi

al-Qasba" Shu'un Filastiniyya, No. by Charles Doria.

1

March

(Beirut,

1971), p. 108. Translated

Storm

in

Kabyl Land " 'Asifa 'ala

Bilad al-Qaba'el." Unpublished before. Translated

by Charles Doria.

Shudan "Shudan"

Shi'r,

No. 5

(Beirut, 1958), pp. 22-24. Translated by

Charles Doria.

Scraping Limits "Ma Wara' al-Hudud." Unpublished

before. Translated by

Charles Doria.

The Sky

the

Moon

"al-Sama'

March

Lost al-Da'i'a"

Shu'un

Filastiniyya,

No.

1

(Beirut,

1971), pp. 110-111. Translated by Charles Doria.

Hanan

Mikha'il

Guerrilla Appeared

in

John

K. Cooley's

(Frank Cass, London, English.

216

1973),

Green March, Black September p.

55.

Originally written in

Encounter Unpublished

before. Originally written in English.

Unpublished

before. Originally written in English.

Economics

Demonstration Unpublished

before. Originally written in English.

Fadwa Tuqan Labor Pains "Makhad" from

al-Lail wal-Fursan (Beirut, 1969), pp. 94-95.

Translated by Kamal Boullata.

Hamza "Hamza" from

al-Lail wal-Fursan (Beirut, 1969), pp. 88-93.

Translated by Kamal Boullata.

Gone Are Those We Love "Dhahaba

al-Ladhin

Nuhibbuhom"

(Beirut, 1973), p. 5. Translated by

To Her

Sister "Ila

and Comrade Shaqiqatiha

ahAdaab, No.

wa

al-Adaab,

Kamal

Nos.

5-6

Boullata.

in the Resistance Sharikatiha

a'mal

fi

10 (Beirut, 1969), p.

7.

al-Muqawama"

Translated by Kamal

Boullata.

My

Freedom "Hurriyati" from al-Lail wal-Fursan (Beirut, 1969), pp. 104107. Translated by Kamal Boullata.

To Etan: An Israeli Child from "Eitan

fi

1973), p.

the Kibbutz Me 'ozHayim

ai-Shabaka al-Fuladhiyya" al-Adaab, No. 8 (Beirut, 13. Translated by Kamal Boullata.

217

Fawziyya Abu Khalid

To

a

Man Tarwada"

"Hisan

from

lla

Mata

Yakhtatifunaki

al-'Urs (Beirut, 1973), pp. 23-24. Translated by

Kamal

Lailat

Boullata.

Mother's Inheritance "Man Yuqasimuni

Irth

Ummi"

from

lla

Mata Yakhtati-

funaki Lailat al-'Urs (Beirut, 1973), pp. 74-77. Translated by

Kamal

Boullata.

Will I Betray You? "Fi

al-Mu'tamarat al-Tanakkuriyya"

Takhtatifunaki

Lailat

al-'Urs

(Beirut,

Mata

from

lla

1973),

pp.

9-13.

Translated by Kamal Boullata.

Tattoo Writing "al-Kitaba

bi

al-Washm"

from

lla

Mata Yakhtatifunaki Kamal

Lailat al-'Urs (Beirut, 1973), pp. 23-24. Translated by Boullata.

'Aisha Arna'out Silently "Hadhayanat

Shakhsiyya

Jiddan

(Beirut, 1974), p. 66. Translated by

He Put On His

"Hadhayanat Shakhsiyya Jiddan

Troubles

Boullata.

No.

28

— IV," Kamal

Mawaqef,

No.

28

Boullata.

Me

"Hadhayanat Shakhsiyya Jiddan (Beirut, 1974), p. 70. Translated by

The Turtle Lifting

Its

—

XX," Mawaqef, No. 28 Kamal Boullata.

Firm Head

"Hadhayanat Shakhsiyya Jiddan

— XVIII,"

(Beirut, 1974), p. 69. Translated by

218

Mawaqef,

Kamal

Shirt

(Beirut, 1974), p. 70. Translated by

It

— II"

Kamal

Mawaqef, No. 28

Boullata.

A Wing

Carried

Me

"Hadhayanat Shakhsiyya Jiddan

— XIX," Kamal

(Beirut, 1974), p. 70. Translated by

Out

of

My

Mawaqef, No. 28 Boullata.

Darkness "Hadhayanat Shakhsiyya Jiddan

— VII,"

(Beirut, 1974), p. 67. Translated by

Mawaqef, No. 28

Kamal

Boullata.

— X,"

Mawaqef,

Kamal

Boullata.

Ever in Consciousness "Hadhayanat

Shakhsiyya

Jiddan

(Beirut, 1974), p. 68. Translated by

/

Arched

No.

28

My Body "Hadhayanat Shakhsiyya Jiddan (Beirut, 1974), p. 66. Translated by

— III," Kamal

Mawaqef,

No. 28

Boullata.

Before the Amputation "Hadhayanat Shakhsiyya Jiddan XXII," Mawaqef, No. 28 Kamal Boullata.

(Beirut, 1974), p. 70. Translated by

Out

of the Darkest Nadir "Hadhayanat Shakhsiyya Jiddan

— VIII,"

(Beirut, 1974), p. 67. Translated by

/

Kamal

Mawaqef, No. 28 Boullata.

Searched for the Wordless "Hadhayanat Shakhsiyya Jiddan— XIII," Mawaqef, No. 28 Kamal Boullata.

(Beirut, 1974), pp. 68-69. Translated by

They Will Say

I

Imitate Poets

"Hadhayanat Shakhsiyya Jiddan (Beirut, 1974), p. 67. Translated by

— VI," Kamal

Mawaqef, No. 28 Boullata.

219

Samar

The Return

of the

'Attar

Dead

"

'Awdat al-Mawta" Exile, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Toronto, pp. 43-47. Translated from Arabic by the author.

The

1972),

Visitor Unpublished

before. Translated

from Arabic by the author.

Unpublished

before. Translated

from Arabic by the author.

The Bride

Saniyya Saleh Exile "al-Buhaira" from Hibr al-I'dam (Damascus, 1970), pp. 40-41. Translated by Kamal Boullata. This translation appeared in the anthology The Other Voice (W.W. Norton, N.Y., 1976), p. 158.

Blind Boats "al-Bawakher al-'Amia'

"

from Hibr al-I'dam (Damascus,

1970), pp. 67-68. Translated by

Kamal

Boullata.

Tears "Dumu' al-Amira" from Hibr al-I'dam (Damascus, Kamal Boullata.

1970),

pp. 80-81. Translated by

Choking "al-Ikhtinaq" from Hibr al-I'dam (Damascus, 1970), pp. 56Translated by Kamal Boullata.

58.

220

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This bibliography on Arab women, their literature and poetry is only a first guide to a selection of works published mainly in English; some noteworthy writings in Arabic are listed along with a limited number of references in French.

does not claim to include

It

all

the available

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Lover of the Night). Baghda

1947.

Shazaya wa

Ramad

(Splinters

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1941

Qararat al-Mawja (The Quietness of the Wave). Beirut, 1957 Shajarat al-Qamar (The Moontree). Beirut, 1968.

Ma'sat al-Hayat wa Ughniya HI Insan of Being and a Song to Man). Beirut, 1970.

(The

Tragedy

Malek 'Arabi, Kalthum Musharradah (Uprooted Woman). Baghdad,

1956.

Ajras al-Samt (Bells of Silence). Baghdad, 1959.

al-Napalm Ja'al

Qamh

al-Quds Murran (Napalm and Jeru-

salem's Bitter Wheat). Beirut, 1974.

al-Na'eb, Fatina

Lahib al-Ruh (Soul's Flame). Baghdad,

Ranin al-Quyud (The

Clatter

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of Chains).

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Jordan

*Sa'udi,

Mona Ru'ya Ula

(First Vision). Beirut, 1972.

243

Kuwait

al-Mubarak, Suad A.

Min 'Umri (A

Part of

My

Life). Beirut, 1972.

Lebanon

Adib,

Hoda Demi-pause. Beirut, 1970. Parenthese. Beirut, 1970.

Trois Cubes. Beirut, 1971.

*' Adrian,

al Share'

al-Madina al-Raqam (The

Number).

Beirut, 1972.

Street,

The

City,

The

Etel

Moonshots. San Francisco, 1966. Five Senses for

One

Death.

New

York, 1971.

Jebu. Paris, 1973.

al-A'war Mi'dad, Insaf

Allah

Hiya

wa al-Hub al-Ula,

al-Yabes

(God and Dry Love).

Huwa al-Awwal (She Is

First,

He

1971.

*'Awwad, Therese Buyut al-'Ankabut (Cobwebs).

Beirut, 1967.

Baidun, Nadia

Rida Sanabel al-'Ata' (Wheat-Giving). Beirut, 1971.

244

Beirut, 1969.

Is First). Beirut,

al-Dalati, 'Alia' 'Alia'. Beirut, 1968.

Gebeyli, Claire Poe'sie Latente. Beirut, 1971.

Memorial

d'Exile. Paris, 1975.

Ghazi, Christianne Poetique

3. Beirut, 1962.

Goraieb, Carole

comme Memoire.

Des Chemins

Beirut, 1973.

Goraieb, Laure

Noir

les

Bleus. Beirut, 1960.

Khoury, Venus Visages inacheves. Beirut, 1965. Terres Stagnantes. Paris, 1967.

Au

sud du Silence.

Paris, 1975.

Nassar, Nadia

Wajh Ta al-Rihani,

'arra

(Denuded

Face). Beirut, 1969.

Mai Hafr

'ala

Ismi:

al-Ayyam (Carvings over the Days).

Siivai

(My Name

Is

My

Otherness).

Beirut, Beirut,

1969. 1974.

Salameh, Hind

Luma'

(Flashes). Beirut, 1961.

Amwaj

(Waves). Beirut, 1963.

Fi Ma'badi (In

My

Temple). Beirut, 1964.

245

Salameh, Nihad L'echo des Souffles. Beirut, 1968.

Shaybub, Idvique

Shawq (Longing).

Beirut, 1962.

Toutounji, Samia Multiples Presences. Beirut, 1968. Textes, Beirut, 1961.

*Tueni, Nadia Les Textes Blonds. Beirut: Dar al-Nahar, 1963. L'age d'Ecume. Paris: Seghers, 1966.

Juin

et les

Mecreantes. Paris: Seghers, 1968.

Poem.es pour une histoire. Paris: Seghers, 1972.

Le Reveur de

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Morocco N'ait Attik, Mririda

Les Chants de

la

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Casablanca, 1972.

Palestine 'Allush, Laila

Awal al-Mawal, Ah (The Song

Starts

Out With Ah).

Jeru-

salem, 1975.

Badawi, Wafa'

Lao Tanbut al-Amaal min Zawaya al Wafa' (The Branches Off Faith). Jerusalem, 1977.

>46

Hope

that

*al-Jayyusi,

Salma

K.

Al-'Awda min al-Nab' al-Halem (Return From the Dreamy Fountain). Beirut, 1960.

al-Khatib, Samira al-Qarya al-Zaniya (The Village of Sin). Jerusalem,

1971.

Malhas, Thurayya Prisoners of Time. Beirut, 1957.

Qurban

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al-Nashid al-Ta'eh (Lost Hymn). Beirut, 1959. Nufus Qaliqa (Disturbed Souls). Beirut, 1960.

Sayegh, Mai Iklil

al-Shawk (The Crown of Thorns). Beirut, 1955.

Qasa'ed

Name).

al-Sharbati,

Hub

li

Ism Mutarad (Love Poems

to

a

Hunted

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Samira Qasa'ed Bahth 'An Rafiq Musafer (Poems in Search of a Fellow Traveller). Jerusalem, 1976.

Sururi, Nadira

Female Contractions. Amman,

1975.

*Tuqan, Fadwa Wahdi ma' al-Ayyam (Alone With Wajadtuha A'tina

(I

Found

Hubban

Amam

It).

the Days). Beirut, 1955.

Beirut, 1962.

(Give Us Love). Beirut, 1965.

al-Bab al-Mughlaq (Before the Closed Door). Beirut,

1968.

al-Lail 'Ala

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On Top

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Kabus

al-Lail

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1974.

247

Saudi Arabia *Abu Khalid, Fawziyya mata yakhtatifunaki Lailat al-Urs? (Up Till When Will They Go On Raping You On Your Wedding Night?). Beirut, lla

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Syria Harun, Hind Sariqat al-Ma'bad (The Temple's Thief). Beirut, 1977.

Jirah,

Amal Imra'a Dimashqiyya ila Fida'i Filistini (Letters from a Damascus Woman to a Palestine Freedom Fighter).

Rasa'el

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Kabbani, Rana

The Road

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You. Damascus, 1974.

Khoury, Colette Vingt Ans. Damascus, 1957.

Na'amani,

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Nuwailati,

Hiyam Washm

'Ala

al-Hawa'

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Over

Air).

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1974.

al-Mi'bar al-Khater (Dangerous Entry). Beirut, 1975.

*Saleh, Saniyya

al-Zaman al-Dayyeq (Pressed Time). Beirut, 1964.

Hibr al-I'dam

(The

Ink

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Execution).

Damascus,

1970.

Shalaq, Qadriyya

Lao Yanbut Kalward Rose). Beirut, undated.

248

al-Insan

(If

Only Man Grows Like

A

Tunisia al-Shabi, Fadila

Rawaeh al-Ard wa al-Ghadab (Anger and

the Smell of Soil).

Beirut, 1973.

Arab

Women

Poets

Who

Published in Prominent & 1975

Literary Periodicals Between 1950 Algeria Leila Djabali

Anna Greki Egypt 'Azizah Kato Ni'mat Rashwan Wafa' Wajdi

Iraq

Malika al-'Asimi Sulafa Hijjawi 'Aika al-Khazargi

Mamduh

'Alia

Mai Muzaffar 'Adhra' al-Salman

Lebanon Raghida Dergham Mona Jabbur Amira al-Zein Palestine Laila Lili

Jammal

Karnik

Hanan Mikhail Wafa' Munir al-Rayyes Samira al-Sharabati

249

Syria 'Aisha Arna'out

Samar

Maha

'Attar

Beiraqdar

Mai al-Dimashqi Aziza Harun Hala Midani Hoda Na'amani Tal'at al-Rifa'i

Tuni sia Zubeida Bashir

250

Contributing Translators

Charles Doria was

the co-editor of Audit/ Poetry (63-66)

and

since 1973 he has been a contributing editor to

Alcheringa: Ethnopoetics (Boston Univ.).

A

own poems was published under Austin Pleasures (Swallow Press, 1977).

collection of his

the

title

His critical writings and translations have appeared in East West Journal, Io and other academic periodicals. He also contributed to a number of volumes; among them, Homer: The Odyssey (Norton, 1972) and Realms of The Goddess (Doubleday, 1977).

With Harris Lenowitz he edited and translated Origins: Creation Texts from the Ancient Mediterranean (Doubleday, 1976). Currently, he

Roman and at the

is

a visiting lecturer in Greco-

Semitic poetry and mythography

University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Elaine Gardiner has been translating poetry from French and Spanish. Her translations appeared in Mundus

Artium among other journals. She is currently working on an anthology of women poets from French and Spanish-speaking countries. She holds a teaching position at of Topeka, Kansas.

Washburn

University

251

Mirene Ghossein was

the co-founder

and

associate editor of

Les Cahiers de L'Oronte (63-66) in Beirut. Her translations from Arabic and French and her critical articles have appeared in several periodicals including Mundus Artium, Books Abroad and As-Safa literary supplement. Presently, she

is

co-editing a book

on

the

life

and works of the late Palestinian poet Rashed Hussein. She lives and works in

New

Rochelle,

N.Y.

Samuel Hazo an American poet of Arab descent, has published a number of poetry books including, Blood Rights (Univ. of Pitts. Press, 1968), Once for the Last Bandit (Univ. of Pitts. Press, 1973), Quartered (Univ. of Pitts. Press, 1974), Seascript, A Mediterranean Logbook (Univ. of Pitts. Press, 1975)

and

Inscripts:

A

(Univ. of

Ohio

Hazo has

also published a critical

Trilogy

Press, 1975).

book on Hart

Crane's poetry and an anthology of contemporary religious poetry.

Among

his translations

from Arabic, The Blood of Adonis (Univ. of Pitts. Press, 1971).

While holding a teaching position University, he

is

at

Duquesne

a contributing editor to

Mundus Artium and

the director of

national Poetry Forum.

The

Inter-

Editor and Translator

Kamal Boullata A Palestinian artist and writer born May 28, 1942 Jerusalem. A graduate of The Academy of Rome,

in his

paintings have been exhibited in collective and one-

man shows in and Canada.

the

Middle

East,

Europe, the ELS. A.

His writings on art, poetry and the social order have appeared in a number of literary journals, among them Shi'r, Freedomways, The Muslim World, Shu'un Filastiniyya, Mundus Artium, and Mawaqej on which he also serves on the editorial board.

A show fall

of his art works,

opening in Tokyo

in the

of 1978 will be touring the far East through the

Spring of 1979. Presently, he is coediting a book on the life and works of the late Palestinian poet

Rashed Hussein. 253

Doreen Moses

Top Row Middle

(r

to

(r

to

I):

Andree Chedid, Nazik al-Mala'ika, Mcna

Salma al-Khadra'

I):

al-Jayyusi,

Sa'udi. Etel 'Adrian, Nadia Tueni

Hanan Mikhail, Fadwa Tuqan, Fawziyya Abu

Khalid,

Aisha Arna'out

Bottom

(r

to

Samar

I):

This volume

poets

who

the

Saniyya Saleh, Therese,

first

The focus

Awwad, Kamal

collection in English of

are carrying on the Arab

old tradition

Iraq,

is

'Attar,

woman's

Boullata (editor)

poems by

living

hundred year of self-expression within the male dominated culture. *

is

thirteen

"

the period 1948-1978. Thirteen poets from Egypt^

Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and Syria speak of

what poets have always spokeh

of

— war and pain and love,

the rarely heard perspectives of womejj.....

Kamal

^ ^r".

but*

from

*' -****

**

'

writer, was Horn in Jerusalem. Now a have been exhibited in the Middle East. A. and Canada. His writings on art. poetry, and the social order

Boullata. a Palestinian artist

and

citizen of the United States, his paintings

Europe, the U.

S.

have appeared

in

study of the

life

many

literary

and works of

and

cultural journals.

He

is

presently co-editing a

the late Palestinian poet Flashed Hussein.

An Original By three Continent's Press Washington,

D.

C.