A Map of Absence Read online

one young man refused

  almost casually,

  the soldier pulled up his rifle

  shot the man

  he fell, bleeding and dying

  his bride screamed and cried

  he fell to the earth

  they fell in despair to the earth

  the earth held them

  the earth soaked up their cries

  their cries sank into the soil

  filtered into underground streams

  fifty springs on

  their voices still rise from the earth

  fierce as the poppies

  that cry from the hills each spring

  in remembrance

  7.

  some stories are told in passing

  barely heard in the larger anguish

  among those forced out

  was a mother with two babies

  one named Yasmine

  and another

  whose name no one remembers

  her life so short

  even its echo

  is forgotten

  the nameless child died on the march

  it was a time of panic

  no one could save a small girl

  and so her face crumpled

  lost beneath the weight of earth

  I know only that she loved the moon

  that lying ill on her mother’s lap

  she cried inconsolably

  wanted to hold it in her hands

  a child

  she didn’t know Palestine

  would soon shine

  unreachable

  as the moon

  8.

  the river floods its banks

  littering the troubled landscape

  we pick our way amid shards

  heir to a generation

  that broke their teeth on the bread of exile

  that cracked their hearts on the stone of exile

  necks bent beneath iron keys to absent doors

  their lamentations

  an unhealed wound

  I was forced to leave my village

  but the village refused to abandon me

  my blood is there

  my soul is flying in the sky over the old streets

  fifty years on

  soul still seeks a sky

  9.

  the walls were torn down long ago

  homes demolished

  rebuilding forbidden

  but the stones remain

  someone dug them from the soil

  with bare hands

  carried them across the fields

  someone set the stones

  in place on the terraced slope

  someone planted trees,

  dug wells

  someone still waits in the fields all night

  humming the old songs quietly

  someone watches stars chip darkness

  into dawn

  someone remembers

  how stone holds dew through the summer night

  how stone

  waits for the thirsty birds

  ADANIA SHIBLI

  Out of Time

  My little watch is the first to sense the change going in to and out of Palestine. On the way there I notice it on my wrist, counting the time down to the second, waiting for the moment when the wheels of the plane touch the airport runway, and I set it to local time so it goes on counting it with an infinite familiarity. And as soon as I go out of Palestine it advances listlessly, taking its time parting with the local time there, which ends once the plane touches down in a foreign land.

  It may seem to some I’m slightly exaggerating in what I’m telling about my watch, especially as it is a very little watch. People often are amazed how it can tell me the time at all, being so small. I myself could have yet shared their doubts had I not found out about watches and their secret powers.

  It goes back to primary school, during one of the Arabic literature classes. The curriculum back then was, and it still is, subject to the approval of the Israeli Censorship Bureau, which embraced texts from various Arab countries, except for Palestine, fearing that these would contain references or even hints that could raise the pupils’ awareness of the Palestinian question. Hence, Palestinian literature was considered unlawful, if not a taboo, similar to pornography – except for one text, ‘Man and his Alarm Clock’, a short story by Samira Azzam, which the Censorship Bureau found ‘harmless’.

  The story, published in 1963, tells of a young man preparing himself before he turns in, the night ahead of his very first day of work. He sets his alarm clock for four o’clock in the morning so as to catch the train in time to go to work. No sooner had the alarm clock gone off the next morning than there came a knocking at his front door. When he opens it, he finds before him an old man. He has no clue who this man is and he does not get the chance to ask him, as the latter turns and walks away, disappearing into the darkness. The same is repeated day after day so that the young man no longer sets his alarm clock. It is only after several months that he discovers who that old man is, after a colleague tells him this man goes knocking on the doors of all the employees in the company. He wakes them up on time in order for them not to be late for their train and meet their destiny as his own son did, who had one morning arrived late at the station, while the train was leaving. He held on to its door, but his hand betrayed him and he slipped down, falling underneath its wheels.

  At first glance, the story may seem simple and ‘safe’, especially before the censor’s eyes. Yet it actually contributed towards shaping my consciousness regarding the question of Palestine as no other text I have ever read in my life has done. Were there one day Palestinian employees who commuted to work by train? Was there a train station? Was there a train honking? Was there one day a normal life in Palestine? And where is it now and why has it gone?

  The text, in turn, had engraved in my soul a deep sense of yearning for all that was – including the tragic – normal and banal, to a degree that I could no longer accept the marginalised, minor life to which we’ve been exiled since 1948, during which our existence turned into a ‘problem’.

  Against this story and the multiple modes of existence it revealed to me, stands my little watch. And my watch is more similar to that old man in Azzam’s story than it is to a Swiss watch whose primary concern is to count time with precision. Rather, just as that old man turned from a human being into a watch in order for life to become bearable, my watch decided to turn from a watch into a human being.

  In Palestine, it often stops moving. It suddenly enters into a coma, with which it becomes unable to count the time. On my last visit there, I set it as usual to local time the minute the plane touched down on the Lydd airport runway. It was ten to two in the afternoon. I headed to passport control. There weren’t many travellers and the line I stood in was proceeding quickly. I handed my passport over to the police officer, and she took her time looking at it. Then more time. Suddenly, two men and a woman appeared, who were a mix of police, security and secret service, and they took me out of the line, so as to begin a long process of interrogation and searches. Everything proceeded as usual in such situations – an exhaustive interrogation into the smallest details of my life and a thorough search of my belongings. Afterwards I was led into a room to run a body search on me. And while a woman walked away with my shoes and belt to examine them by X-ray, another stayed with my watch, which she held inside her palms and went on contemplating with intent and sincerity. A few minutes later she looked at her watch, then back at my watch. Then again at her watch, then at my watch. When the first lady came back with the rest of my belongings, she hurried over to her to tell her that there was something strange about my watch. It was not moving. Five minutes had passed according to her watch, whereas according to mine none had passed. They called the security chief and my heart beat started to bang violently on my chest.

  I didn’t know how much time had passed before my watch, and then I were cleared of all suspicions and let go. B
ut I discovered when I reached home that it was nine o‘clock in the evening, while my watch was still pointing to ten to two in the afternoon. Maybe my watch was only trying to comfort me by making me believe that all that search and delay had lasted zero minutes. As if nothing had happened. Or perhaps it simply refuses to count the time that is seized from my life, a time whose only purpose is to humiliate me and send me into despair. A kind of time suspension, so as to obscure the time of pain.

  Opposite to this malfunctioning in Palestine, my watch has not once stopped moving outside Palestine. It is never late to count every second of the other time. In fact, it many times moves slightly faster than it should, to a point where it seems to lose track of time. So fast it moves as if wanting to shake off this other time from it, one second after the other, so to catch up with the time in Palestine.

  Thus, had it been seven hours or zero that distance my little watch from Palestine, it remains the same for it, and only to comfort me; it leads me out of time, no matter where I am.

  ZUHEIR ABU SHAYEB

  Martyr

  they found him

  luminous, green, in the field.

  When they raise his hands

  the grasses under them had turned to hearts.

  It is said:

  wheat stalks bloomed beneath his sleeves.

  It is said:

  the birds carried his blood

  to his beloved cousins.

  He shall return

  Blossoming with volcanoes,

  and fill again his mother’s breasts.

  When they found him green as light

  they shrouded him with rose buds,

  they spread out the sky to lay him on

  and made the sun his pillow.

  Translated by May Jayyusi and Naomi Shihab Nye

  NAJWAN DARWISH

  Nothing More to Lose

  Lay your head on my chest and listen

  To the layers of ruins

  Behind the madrasah of saladin

  Hear the houses sliced open

  In the village of Lifta

  Hear the wrecked mill, the lessons of reading

  On the mosque’s ground floor

  Hear the balcony lights

  Go out for the very last time

  On the heights of Wadi Salib

  Hear the crowds drag their feet

  And hear them returning

  Hear the bodies as they’re thrown, listen

  To their breathing on the bed

  Of the Sea of Galilee

  Listen like a fish

  In a lake guarded by an angel

  Hear the tales of the villagers, embroidered

  Like kaffiyehs in the poems

  Hear the singers growing old

  Hear their ageless voices

  Hear the women of Nazareth

  As they cross the meadow

  Hear the camel driver

  Who never stops tormenting me

  Hear it

  And let us, together, remember

  Then let us, together, forget

  All that we have heard

  Lay your head on my chest:

  I’m listening to the dirt

  I’m listening to the grass

  As splits through my skin …

  We lost our heads in love

  And have nothing more to lose

  Translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

  MAYA ABU AL-HAYYAT

  Children

  Whenever a child’s hand comes out of a collapsed building

  I check the hands of my three children

  I count the digits of their hands and feet

  I check the number of teeth

  and the hairs of their eyebrows

  Whenever a child’s voice goes silent in Camp Al Yarmouk

  I turn up the volume on the TV

  and the songs on the radio

  I pinch my three children on their sides

  to keep them moving and feel they’re alive

  Whenever a heart is devoured by fear

  on Qalandia checkpoint

  I open my mouth and start to eat

  Comfort myself with salty treats

  Block out the sparks of the eyes that cry everywhere

  Translated by Graham Fulton

  I’m a Destitute Woman

  Who lives on a checkpoint

  Trivial things make me happy

  Such as if my day passes without seeing a single bored soldier

  I write my new novel there

  About the butcher who wanted to become a violinist

  Mad and evil

  But his hand failed him

  For a sharp, shiny knife

  You know how bleak it is

  To be alone and living on a checkpoint

  Cheering for simple things

  As if to transcend a chattering poet

  And exhausted labourers carrying bags

  Of bananas, guava and Tnuva milk

  I’m a solitary woman

  Who’s lived in a grave for years

  So far I haven’t seen any demons or angels

  But I definitely see a lot of bored soldiers

  Translated by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat and Naomi Foyle

  Return

  Are we human beings?

  The book with the yellow cover asks

  We live in the designs and dreams of others,

  In the way the wind has marked the trees thousands of years ago

  Over the remains of animals, humans and scorpions

  In the stomachs of whales, roots of trees and the echoes of nightly conversations conducted by the inhabitants of caves

  We wander in the streets of engineers and the ruins of sharp shovels

  in the plans of old municipalities and inside the mind of a reckless old man

  Our talk about the free soul, beliefs and the innocent land

  is part of the design

  One screw in the mind of a rocking chair

  Giving the universe an outburst of passion

  Return

  They have written thousands of letters

  Hung them on washing lines

  To dry their ink and blood,

  and when the wind came

  followed its usual habit

  digging and trimming

  transferring letters and limbs

  left traces of its own distorted load

  Thus every time they searched in their memories for a road

  An orange

  Or an olive

  Or a look from a window

  They did not find it

  That’s how myths were made

  Digging and trimming

  Drip by drip

  Bitterly dragging the memory

  You do not know

  How bitter it is

  to search in the map for a memory

  and find its corpse still fresh …

  Translated by Atef Alshaer

  REMI KANAZI

  Nakba

  she was scared

  seven months pregnant

  guns pointed at temples

  tears dropping

  stomach cusped

  back bent

  dirt pathways

  leading to

  dispossession

  rocking boats

  waves crashing

  people rushing

  falling over each other

  packing into small spaces

  like memories

  her home

  mandated

  occupied

  cleansed

  conquered

  terrorisers

  sat on hills

  sniping children

  neighbours fled

  on April 10

  word came

  of massacre

  didn’t fight

  didn’t leave

  shells and bombs

  bursting in air

  like anthems

  prayed for the dead

  with priests and imams

&nb
sp; prayed for the living

  looking over shoulders

  for the Irgun and Haganah

  a warrior

  raised life

  planted trees

  painted fruit

  cared for the road

  as if it was her garden

  orphaned twice

  after birth

  from Palestine

  whispered Yaffa

  till final breath

  never knew essence

  until she found

  emptiness

  48 ways to flee

  and she found Beirut

  bullet holes in buildings

  reminder of home

  but not home

  years later

  daughters sat

  on hills in the South

  dreaming of breaking

  water never touched

  thinking of their mother

  that warrior

  how battles still

  raged here and abroad

  orchards flourished

  propagandists called

  them barren

  land expropriated

  for Europeans

  thirsting for

  territory

  colonist

  non-native

  not from here

  plant flags, call it home

  rename cities and villages

  uprooting graveyards

  wiping/clearing/cleansing

  memory that this

  is not theirs

  passed away

  August 22, 2009

  frail hands shook

  lip trembled

  didn’t want to die

  but suffered decades

  she spoke in Arabic

  broken English

  wounded words

  and murmurs

  her eyes closed

  but every so often

  they blinked brilliance

  memories that could not

  be erased, uprooted

  or cleansed

  she had not forgotten

  we have not forgotten

  we will not forget

  veins like roots

  of olive trees

  we will return

  that is not a threat

  not a wish

  a hope

  or a dream

  but a promise

  A Poem for Gaza

  I never knew death

  until I saw the bombing

  of a refugee camp

  craters

  filled with

  dismembered legs

  and splattered torsos