9.15.15

No weekend words, since I didn't write anything of note this weekend.

I have been thinking about the current refugee crisis, and hoping to learn a little more about the people involved, specifically the artists and writers. Not that the others are less important, but because words are powerful for me (powerful, period) and I was hoping to share some work.

Despite studying Arabic, I doubt I could bring you any of their untranslated work, since we'd not be able to enjoy it as well. So I thought I'd bring up some work in English to enjoy. First, a young lady who lives in Denver who is a Syrian-American slam poet named Amal Kassir. Since most of her work is slam, there are a ton of videos, but that's not my preferred medium.



BNV finals: Denver round four

I tried to keep my mouth shut
But my tongue did not have any more room
For scars
In the shape of my teeth

“Limbs of what was once my family lay in my arms
My throat was stolen
My blood screams
Seven generations tortured
Lord, send angel Israel to guard the souls
Let them know that they are still living
And let the living hear the anthem of something
I know my people are here
Even though I can not see my people
I can hear my people

We are speaking as one
The tyrant inside of me is ravenous
Forty-one year old rotting hands bedazzled
With rings of oil drums
And gems of blood
Grinding at my veins
I tried to keep my mouth shut
But my tongue did not have any more room
For scars
In the shape of my teeth

March 2011; we have been reborn
A social infant screaming,
‘Let us live!
We will speak until throats are raw!
Until all of Syria is in the news!’

The dates will read like obituaries
The dates are coming towards us
The dates are coming towards us
The dates
Mashaallah, where?
The dates
The dates
The dates keep coming
Then men are not moving!
Why are the men not moving?!
Why are you not moving?
Why are you not moving?
They are all lying

La ostata’ an taslem! [I can not give up]
Lan taslem! [Don’t give up]
You can shoot, blood, push, stab, rape, bomb, break me
I will not fall
Stalin, McCarthy, Hiroshima me
I will not fall
Lie, shackle, battle, sweatshop me
Refugee, water board, oppress me
Textbook-capture, Tutsi me
You will try to crack my rib shotgun
But the bending of my knees belongs to my Lord

Lord, allow Hades to light a fire in my chest
On days you didn’t ignite the Sun
When nails are torn from bloody hands
When mother is ripped from son
When the last Damascus rose
Is stripped of all her colour
When I am left clutching out for the last mirage of a broken land
I can not fall
I. Will. Not. Fall.

There will be a time when we can eat together
When we will build homes out of abandoned tanks
Peace is a rusted recoil
We will sip from the cups made of old grenades
And shades of green are only worn by nature
There will be a time when the fences choose to sit with us
Instead of standing between us

Ameen

This article highlights work inspired by the current conflict. Ghada Alatrash is a Canadian translator who is working with poets to get their words out, apparently at considerable danger to themselves as some poets have been imprisoned. (Check out Ghada's book of translations of Lebanese poems So that the Poem Remains three dollars on Google!) Here is a piece she has translated:

When I am Overcome By Weakness

by Najat Abdul Samad 

When I am overcome with weakness, I bandage my heart with a woman’s patience in adversity. I bandage it with the upright posture of a Syrian woman who is not bent by bereavement, poverty, or displacement as she rises from the banquets of death and carries on shepherding life’s rituals. She prepares for a creeping, ravenous winter and gathers the heavy firewood branches, stick by stick from the frigid wilderness. She does not cut a tree, does not steal, does not surrender her soul to weariness, does not ask anyone’s charity, does not fold with the load, and does not yield midway.

I bandage my heart with the determination of that boy they hit with an electric stick on his only kidney until he urinated blood. Yet he returned and walked in the next demonstration.

I bandage it with the steadiness of a child’s steps in the snow of a refugee camp, a child wearing a small black shoe on one foot and a large blue sandal on the other, wandering off and singing to butterflies flying in the sunny skies, butterflies and skies seen only by his eyes.

I bandage it with December’s frozen tree roots, trees that have sworn to blossom in March or April.

I bandage it with the voice of reason that was not affected by a proximate desolation.

I bandage it with veins whose warm blood has not yet been spilled on the surface of our sacred soil.

I bandage it with what was entrusted by our martyrs, with the conscience of the living, and with the image of a beautiful homeland envisioned by the eyes of the poor.

I bandage it with the outcry: “Death and not humiliation.”

The poetry of war is always a tough study, as it makes so painfully beautiful objects and images which are inherently ugly. I hope we can share some more work from the voices of this (and other) conflicts.