A Map of Absence Read online

  AHMAD DAHBOUR

  The Prison

  To Abu Faris … who has been there

  Prison teaches that the heart is a desert,

  That light is a desert.

  It curses the fire and the land of the commandos.

  Prison teaches that water is a chameleon,

  That the landscape is a snake,

  That echo is treacherous, and the wind an enemy.

  Prison teaches that the guide’s sight grows dim,

  And that the homeland departs.

  Prison is a black kingdom in the sand;

  Prison is a sword guarding the eyelids;

  Prison … not the homeland!

  So how, my beloved homeland, will the beloved ones survive?

  Here we are, no complaints and no regrets,

  We never say: an aimless wandering!

  Blood gushes forth from the depths of our love.

  Prison assaults but does not hit the mark;

  Our wounds hit back,

  Reaching out like water … like the wilderness,

  Promising the light with a new light.

  From deep within us, signalling twice!

  Our cub child,

  And the fire of salvation.

  We see it, yes we do.

  We are not dreaming,

  We almost step into his joyous landscape

  We almost do.

  This is the moment of travail in our difficult labour,

  We hug the new-born –

  He who springs from our very ecstasy,

  Whose kicks we feel in our guts,

  Who teaches the hungry what he knows

  And declares in words well understood:

  Revolution, revolution … till life.

  The inmate has not lost his features in the sand,

  Prison did not turn him into a desert.

  From his hunger, water and vegetation sprang.

  When silence wounds him,

  He can break it with a sigh,

  But he endures.

  His testimony:

  Near death, there were exhaustion and fatigue,

  His executioner pressing him to promise

  A word … a groan, or to divulge his secret,

  But all in vain.

  His countenance was radiating in the sand

  Like an oasis,

  For prison had not turned him into a desert.

  New Suggestions

  Out of what lair did the earthly tyrants escape?

  Nero burned Rome twice, then composed a discordant tune

  he went on playing till the city sang with him.

  Hulaku who inherited that melody

  set fire

  to the world’s library, the river ran

  with ink, and from the ashes was born

  the language of the locusts which rose

  to thank the madman.

  After the salutations to madness, Hitler came

  (...) but unable to be appeased,

  had to include the sea

  in his vital destruction,

  and war at sea, turmoil on land,

  combined in their angry conflagration.

  I too have seen a tyrant –

  whose power diminished the other three.

  he has committed every atrocity,

  and yet: in his day,

  there were five poets,

  who took to silence.

  Both translated by A.M. Elmessiri

  MAY SAYIGH

  Departure

  In this moment of departure,

  point your red arrows,

  disarm the lightning, and open wide

  the gate to my exile.

  Close the sky’s open face, and ride away.

  I long so deeply that the shores unfold their seas

  and horses bolt!

  Now I’ll carry the roads and palm trees in my suitcase,

  I’ll lock my tears in the evening’s copybooks

  and seal the seasons.

  Let’s begin our song: here is Beirut wearing you

  like her own clothes.

  You must sit well on the surface of her glory

  abandoning tears

  In her blue froth

  She contains you like eternity

  like the sense of beginning that comes with certainty.

  How can you be dead, yet so absolutely present?

  Let the rivers abandon their skies,

  and the seas dry out!

  Everything in the universe has an end

  except my spilt blood ...

  Each time I think of it

  You remain as large as your death.

  The war planes choose you, discover you, plant

  their blackness in you.

  From all those clouded last visions,

  how will you begin the story of harvest?

  We planes select you,

  at the start of your sleep,

  at the end of your sleep.

  How often did the sky explode over you

  with hatred?

  How often were you taken aside?

  How many massacres did you survive?

  Now you collect all the wounds, taking refuge with

  death,

  wearing dreams as wings.

  Translated by Lena Jayyusi and Naomi Shihab Nye

  IZZUDDIN MANASRA

  Dawn Visitors

  At the entries to capital cities I met him,

  distracted and sad,

  a man with worry lines

  that weighed him down

  like a cypress tree, drooping and silent,

  despite the winds that ruffled him

  whispering in the evenings –

  but he would not answer the wind.

  At the gates of capital cities – I cannot name them

  but I sing their Arabic names when troubles reign –

  I call on the capitals when shells are slaughtering my people’s

  children. I call on them, I scream, but no one

  answers.

  They’ve all travelled west, and north. I wish

  They’d gone east, I wish

  They’d become stars in exile, servants to strangers.

  At harvest time they sang under the pine trees

  but none of the harvests was theirs.

  it is for those hard-hearted men

  who owns the land of exile

  Don’t bury me in any Arab capital, they’ve all tortured me

  for so long,

  giving me nothing but death and suffering and poverty

  and the martyred neighbours of my grave,

  those new kinsmen, for every stranger is kinsman to the stranger.

  No, don’t bury me in any Arab capital

  at the mercy of this ordeal!

  At the gate of the capitals I met him

  his head forever bent,

  immortal as the earth of Hebron,

  proud as the mountains of Safad.

  He was soft like old wine when it steeps inside the body.

  I would have tempted the stars

  to accompany his beautiful departure,

  a star to guard him, and one lovely maiden

  to tend him forever.

  Translated by Atef Alshaer

  SAHAR KHALIFEH

  Excerpt from Wild Thorns

  Um Sabir was shouting, ‘Hey, Itaf! Ask Um Badawi if she’s got any spare flour.’

  As the child made her way across the roof, an Israeli solider shouted, ‘Get down! Get Down! You can’t go up there.’

  Um Sabir beat her breast in distress. ‘What a wretched life! How can I feed my children? It’s enough to break your heart, this life! What’ll we do if the curfew goes on for another two days?’

  All over the old part of town, the women gathered at their windows trying to borrow whatever they could from each other. The situation was desperate. Most of those who lived in the old neighbourhood were labourers, greengrocers, butchers, or sellers of falafel and tam’iyya; they
were generally poor and kept nothing in store. The children were cooped up inside the small houses, driving their mothers mad. One child was under a bed, another on top of a cupboard, a baby was screaming, husbands were venting their anger on their innocent wives.

  Abu Sabir murmured, ‘Forgive us, Oh Lord, deliver us!’ Zuhdi cursed the day he’d been spared the sandstorms of Kuwait. ‘I’ll go crazy if I ever taste lentils again,’ he said, and threw his slipper at one of the children; this brought a chorus of wails from all sides. ‘God curse whoever fathered you, you curs!’ he shouted. His wife Saadiyya suddenly opened the door, letting the children run free. ‘Out!’ she yelled. ‘Get out! Go and pester the Jews instead of getting on my nerves!’ Um Sabir did the same and her husband exploded: ‘ You’re crazy, woman! The streets are full of Jewish soldiers!’

  But children were now emerging from all the houses, at first lurking in dark corners like mice, staring out at the soldiers and laughing and winking at one another. The soldiers wore helmets and carried machine-guns. A little boy ran from one house to the next, and a soldier yelled and swore at him. The children’s laughter echoed down the street as they imitated the soldier’s oaths. Another boy tied a tomato can to a cat’s tail and sent the animal running. A soldier swung and pointed his gun at the boy. But the children, delighted at the game, laughed even louder. The soldiers began to chase the boys, who scampered home, slamming the doors behind them. Then out they came slamming the doors behind them. Then out they came again. A soldier caught one of them and started to beat him, and the mothers let loose a stream of curses on all who’d had a hand in the creation of the state. Their husbands blinked in surprise at the volleys of oaths.

  A tank passed, all four sides bristling with guns; the weight of its metal tracks crushed the old paving stones. The children shrank deeper into the shadowy corners of the houses till the tank had gone, then ran out after it, chanting: ‘Fatah! … PLO … Fatah! … PLO …’ The soldiers shouted curses and aimed their weapons at the children, sending them dashing for cover again. But a little boy of six stood his ground, unzipped his faded trousers and pointed his penis at the soldiers, as though affirming the principle of self-defence. The streets exploded in an uproar of shouts as the boys seemed suddenly filled with insane bravado. A soldier seized two of them by the scruffs of the neck and dangled them like a pair of plucked pigeons. After thrashing them soundly, he pushed them both into a patrol car. The girls began to beat out a rhythm on empty margarine cans. And the boys went on screaming out the PLO slogan: ‘Revolution! Revolution until victory! Revolution! Revolution until victory!’

  Um Sabir leaned half-way out of the window and yelled at the soldier who was mistreating the children: ‘May God break your arm! May seventy evil eyes get you! May your children die young! May God destroy you, by the glory of the Prophet Muhammad!’

  The children chanting and clapping rang through the empty streets, a crescendo of rhyming slogans about God, Palestine, Arab unity, the Popular Front, The Democratic Front, freedom, dedication, self-sacrifice and Yasser Arafat.

  But throughout the din, engineers of the so-called Israeli Defence Forces went on measuring the height and width of an old house at the end of the street. People ran out of the doomed house, the men with beds and mattresses from their neighbours’ houses. And then everything went quiet. People hid in the corners of their homes, their windows open but their ears tightly shut. Then came the explosion.

  The walls of the old house crumbled. In one massive piece, the roof caved in and settled on the rubble. The old man whose house it had been stood on a neighbouring roof and called out the Adhan, his voice breaking: ‘Allahu Akbar, God is most great!’

  ‘God is most great!’ repeated the neighbours in unison. Gathered at the windows, the women raised their voices in loud ululations, while the girls continued to beat out a rhythm on the empty tin cans. A single piercing girlish voice began the song of solidarity once again. The boys took up the melody until the whole street was filled with the cry, ‘Palestine! Palestine!’

  Usama, watching from a window, found he had tears in his eyes. So all was well, in fact. He saw Basil standing in a corner alternately chanting: ‘We’re all men of Yasser Arafat’ and ‘Revolution! Revolution until victory!’

  Two soldiers grabbed Basil, who offered little resistance. They covered his head a sackcloth of hood and shoved him into a petrol car, while his sister Nuwar stared dumbfounded from a window. ‘Whatever God wills, so be it,’ his father could be heard shouting. ‘But what came over the boy? Does he think he can free Palestine all by himself?’ The boy’s mother burst into tears. Nuwar looked coldly at her father’s frozen face, then turned back to the window as though to reassure herself that the children had not been cowed, but were still energetically beating their drums and chanting:

  ‘Kalashnikovs will destroy the tanks!

  RPGs will bring down the warplanes!’

  Translated by Trevor LeGassick and Elizabeth Fernea

  SALMA KHADRA JAYYUSI

  Excerpt from Without Roots

  I

  The ringing burst loud and frightening

  Then that voice persistent and sad:

  ‘Send your aid eastwards

  All your uncles have become refugees.’

  I heaved a deep sigh and grieved sorely over them

  Then I sent my uncles clothes

  Which I had piled up for beggars

  Raisins which I had but we would not eat

  Sticky piasters with no bright sheen or ringing jingle

  And tears and tears and tears and a groan.

  Since that day I gave my piasters to no beggar

  For my cousins had become refugees.

  II

  My uncle hungered and lamented his hunger

  Then we fed him for a month as a guest

  And rested from the pangs of conscience

  We then gave him up to the great wide world

  And got absorbed in our own worlds.

  ‘Many a dove calling in the forenoon’s stirred our sadness

  And we remembered him and plunged in tears

  And rest from the pangs of conscience.

  Who frightened away the white-legged horses from their hills?

  Who toppled down their riders? Who feeds them in their nakedness?

  Who knows the green summits?

  A strong noble people was living there then … went astray …

  III

  Pale lips do not approach prayer at dawn

  Pale lips do not know the purity of kisses

  They do not kiss today except their lust

  And though their feverish passion bears fruit

  Pale lips do not kiss naked children

  Born without roots, without a marrow,

  From a passion that has no love.

  O sons of the dead, are you dead like them

  Or are you orphans? Or the scar of a wound in a sad people?

  We are all that …

  A word of a hoarse discordant tone united us

  ‘refugees’

  Translated by Issa J. Boullata

  SALMAN ABU SITTA

  Mapping My Return

  News started to trickle down from the north, particularly Jaffa and Tel Aviv. Those who had work or relatives in the north started to return home. They said that Jews were attacking more and more villages, blowing up buses, burning houses, and expelling people.

  Who were these people? They were not our neighbours and certainly not our friends. People said they were a motley assortment of Jews imported from across the sea. They called them ‘vagabonds of the world’. What did they look like? Those who had seen them close up said they wore a variety of odd uniforms, quite unlike those in the British army. They did not all look the same: some were blond, some swarthy, some dark, and some looked Inglizi. They spoke a babble of languages – English, French, Russian, Hungarian, Romanian, and Spanish, to name but a few. Sometimes they used what was thought of as a secret language, like a co
de or cipher; it was ibrani, or Hebrew. Those who came from the north said these people were not Awlad Arab, or Arab Jews, who spoke Arabic like us. They were ruthless, unruly and vicious, and they hated the Arabs. They did not know the country, but they always carried with them detailed maps, no doubt obtained from the British.

  ***

  Finally the Jewish attacks reached us in the south.

  The Jews wanted to test our defences. They attacked our land in al-Ma‘in on 8, 10 and 12 May 1948. About a dozen fighters with rifles, one machine gun, and one Boys anti-tank rifle, held them off; meanwhile the Zionists burned piles of harvested wheat and killed cattle. Their main target was to cut off the railway line at Deir al-Balah Station, which was located near the Kfar Darom colony. The planned date was 15 May 1948: the end of the British Mandate and day that the Egyptian forces were expected to enter Palestine. And of course we did not know it at the time, but the day before, on the afternoon of 14 May, had come the unilateral declaration of Israel’s statehood.

  Meanwhile, the planned attack on the railway would not only cause major disruption to the Egyptian forces, but it would have been a huge embarrassment to King Farouk who was about to visit his forces. To cut off the railway, the Jews had to conquer al-Ma‘in first. They were well prepared and knew that al-Ma‘in was a Palestinian stronghold. In the late hours of 14 May, Hamed, [my cousin returning from university to fight] in his observation post, saw row upon row of headlights advancing toward us. Surprised, he fired one shot from his flare gun to warn us. A green light rose on the horizon: the wrong signal. He corrected himself by sending two red ones into the air. Hamed’s contraptions delayed the Jewish troops for some hours, but in the end they detonated his mines and crossed over his ditches on planks.

  On the ridge, facing us four kilometres away, lay the shrine of Sheikh Nuran, a venerated weli, a revered saint. Wadi Shallalah, where Hamed was stationed, was beyond Sheikh Nuran’s shrine on low-lying land. When Jewish troops had passed the temporary obstacle of Hamed’s mines and trenches, they ascended the Nuran ridge and came into full view.

  ‘Oh my sons, the Jews are coming to take you. The Jews are coming,’ cried Abdullah’s mother. An old woman and a light sleeper, she was overwhelmed by the sight of a long line of lights probing the darkness. There, on the near horizon, we saw the headlights of twenty-four armoured vehicles approaching us. A monster with forty-eight eyes faced us, with the ominous roar of its engines.