Days With Nizar Kabbani

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Days With Them Series A collection of dramatic stories, each of which tells about a certain poet with a modern style. The main character is a young woman who conjures up her heroes and has conversations with them. She sympathizes with her heroes and gets to know their life through events they narrate and poems they read.

2012 © Exclusive rights by Alnokhba for composition translation and publication No part of this publication may be translated, reproduced, distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without the prior written premission of the publisher.

ISBN 978-9953-518-33-6 Translated by: Fatima Shamdeen Poetry translated by: Mariam Antar

Introduction It may well be that Nizar Kabbani, just like Al Mutanabbi, will be the talk of the people through the generations, that he will continue to arouse storms of controversy and collect as many allies as enemies. It is, further, not true, and I can be quite sure, what one critic, Dr. Maher Shafik Farid, claimed in the Literary page in the Evening Newspaper, which is supervised by Mr. Mohammed Jibril that Nizar is one big lie, since he, as Dr. Farid claimed, has written one or two poems.

Two poems, at the most? What would you make, then, of this great number of masterpieces that this nice young, somewhat trouble- making lady has made us hear? She has invaded Nizar’s intimate world, roaming in the roads of his creativity and his rounds to bring with this flow of luxury and tenderness. She was able with her intelligence to extract the sweetest, brightest, and most artistic pearls of Nizar.

It is of utmost importance that we prepare ourselves in advance to understand the ambience that Maya’s, or rather Gharid El cheikh, reader will direct himself into. It is undoubtedly far from being academic or epistemological, and it doesn’t fall under any of those complex terms and the obscure dark passageways since the primary direction of the author is to draw for the common reader the features of the art and the personality. Being aware of what she wants, she has borrowed a narrative framework combined with a simple, original, loving style that she brushed with a warm, 5

smart sense of reality. She has already tried this style in an agreeable, fine book on Jarir and was quite successful at it, so why not use the same approach with Nizar Kabbani, and even others as well?

What I would like to draw attention to is the idea that the simple style that overwhelms the book is actually elusive; it is really simple in its topic, authorship and general approach.

However, it is clear that it is the simplicity that is based on extensive reading and intelligent awareness of Nizar and his poetry.

It is the simplicity of the rose that emerges to the world like that: spontaneous, fresh and unpretentious. Its aroma sneaks into the soul and dwells at the bottom of the heart. This is how Gharid Al Sheik’s book comes as a beautiful piece of music that carries the romance of the dream and the flavor of the reality that the poetry and life of Nizar Kabbani has.

Mohammed Zakaria Anani 7/12/1999

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The Characters Nizar Kabbani: The great Syrian poet (1923-1997) Maya: A young lady of about thirty. A brunette with long black hair, preparing for her PhD and studying collections of poems. She writes stories about poets with whom she deals romantically and lovingly.

Nabil: Maya’s fiancée. A young man of about forty who works as an architect and cares for literature and poetry.

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At Home in Damascus Maya walks through the narrow alleys of Damascus. She gets to Al Bazourieh market, Damascus’ most impressive markets that touch both the nose and the soul at the same time. The aroma of the pepper, the cinnamon, the roses, the saffron and dozens of other colorful and aromatic herbs fills the air. She approaches one of the shops and buys a box of Damask delights that he likes and carries it with the fondness of a mother who’s getting her child a special gift.

She approaches the small wooden gate, and before she knocks it, it opens indicating that someone was awaiting her visit. A symphony of light, shadow and marble welcomes her.

Here’s the bitter orange tree embracing its fruits, just as he described it. And the grapevine is pregnant. The jasmine tree, however, has given birth to a thousand white moons and hung them on the window bars.

She approaches the pool made of black marble in the middle of the house. It was still filling its mouth with water and blowing it out. Red local roses, a lilac brushing her hair and a dozen Damask roses of different colors and smells surprise her in one corner or another.

Maya sits on a chair in the middle of the house and places her papers on the table.

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A few pigeons come down to the yard and wander about peacefully and serenely.

She hears him coughing softly from behind one of the doors, as if announcing his arrival.

Maya moves towards him: “Hello, Sir.” Nizar: “Hello.”

Maya looks admiringly around her and says: “Finally I get to see the Damask house that I’ve always read about in your prose and poetry.”

He looks around him with absolute pleasure as he proudly says: In Damascus I was born Among the Arabian jasmine Green geraniums Daffodils And azaleas In my language there still is Something of cinnamon, cumin and pepper “Yes, it is within this green belt that I was born and I crawled and said my first words. Imagine that a man should run into beauty on a daily basis.

As a child, when I stumbled, I used to stumble into a pigeon’s wing, and if I fell, I would fall into the lap of a rose.”

She interrupted him: “The most beautiful of falls.”

He asks her suddenly: “Do you reckon there is a perfume in 9

the whole world that is sweeter than our home’s?”

She nods her head in agreement as she inhales the aromatic smells that emanate of every corner. She looks at a fat cat stretching on one of the marble stairs and at the pigeons swaying fearlessly.

He says: “Everybody who lives in this house enjoys an absolute freedom; the pigeons migrate and return as they wish without being asked about what they’re doing, and the red fish swim freely without being questioned about their destination.”

She interrupts him: “And the tin of Arabian jasmine?”

He smiles and says: “Twenty tins of Arabian jasmine make my mother’s wealth. Every rose matches one of her children.

As kids we were very naughty and we used to go behind her back and steal one of them, she would cry and complain about us to God. Can you imagine that?”

Maya: “It’s the whole world.”

Nizar: “Our home is my oasis. It’s the place where I spend my summers and winters. It’s my all-time friend.”

Maya: “The sunshade and moisture as you call it?”

Nizar: “Exactly. This house-umbrella has left its clear prints on my hair, just as Granada, Cordoba and Seville left their prints on the Andalusian poetry.”

Maya: “What about the outside world? How has it affected you?”

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Nizar: “To me home was the limit of the world. Our beautiful home preoccupied all my feelings and made me lose my appetite for the outside world.”

Maya: “So your home is the key to understanding your poetry.”

Nizar: “Yes, I learned the Damask language that pervades the joints of my words at my home-umbrella. My childhood was filled with moisture, my notebooks were filled with moisture, and my alphabet was filled with moisture.”

Maya: “Your poems are gardens of colors, fragrance and whispers.”

Nizar: “That is because thousands of Damask plants, those that you see in front of you, still climb my fingers every time I want to write. I’ve carried Damascus with me to all the hotels of the world that I entered and I slept with her on one bed.”

My place of birth is Damascus Where houses are but naked women On the white of her chest Rivers live their adolescence, It is a miracle to be born in a city Which on one’s shoulders In summer throws thousands of moons Maya takes out the box of Damask delights and offers it to him: “I’m sorry. In the presence of the surrounding beauty I’ve forgotten to offer you this candy that you like.”

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Nizar: “It’s a nice gift.”

He opens the box and offers her a piece. He picks one himself and gobbles it like a small child.

Nizar: “Would you like some coffee?”

She nods her head in agreement.

He says: “Alright. You can go into this room and have a look at the books while I make coffee for both of us.”

She walks toward the opposite room. She enters it and gets surprised by the huge library which contains lots and lots of old and new literature books.

She looks at the photos hung on the wall and approaches the picture of Nizar Kabbani’s mother. She looks closely at it as she says to herself: “You’ve got the secret of this special person…”

His voice comes from behind her: “My mother was a fountain of emotion that gave endlessly. I grew up but in her eyes I remained that small frail baby. She breastfed me until I was seven and spoon fed me until I was thirteen. I travelled to all continents of the earth and she was preoccupied with my food, drink and the cleanness of my bed.

Maya, smiling: “This is why she kept sending you the boxes of Damask foods to the embassies where you worked?”

He smiles and closes his eyes as if conjuring her image from his memory: “She considered me her favorite child. Of all my siblings, she used to give me all the goodies and answer 12

all my childish requests without complaining.”

She interrupts: “And on the intellectual level?”

He smiles and says: “No, no. My mother and I did not have any common points. She used to be preoccupied with her religious rituals like her prayers and fasting. She used to visit the cemeteries during their season, give offerings to holy people, cook grains in Ashoura and hang the turquoise stones in the neck of every one of us to stop people from envying us.”

Maya: “Your letters to your mother are so nostalgic and speak of complaining about foreign countries and the women there because they don’t know how to brush your fair hair or hold your hand when you stumble down the road.”

Nizar: “I’ll read you the poem I wrote her after I travelled.”

Good morning …. Beautiful…

Good morning my beautiful saint …

Two years have gone by, mother Since the boy Sailed on his legendary voyage In his suitcases he hid His homeland’s green mornings Its stars, rivers, and all its poppies In his clothes he hid Sprigs of mint and thyme And a Damascene lilac.

Alone My cigarette smoke bored 13

Of me, my seat is bored My sorrows birds still looking for a mill, I’ve known European women Cement and wooden emotions, I’ve known the culture of tiredness I’ve been to India and farther Been through the Asian world But never found A woman who my fair hair combs Sugar sandwiches in her bag carries for me, Clothes me when naked, Picks me up if I trip Mother, I am the boy who sailed And in his mind lives on the sugar sandwich So how come mother I’ve become a father when a young boy still?

Maya interrupts him: “You demand of every woman to treat you like your mother did. Do you believe that the failure of your first marriage and your long bachelorship before your second marriage woke up the child deep within you, so you felt the need for the mother who’s capable of protecting you from danger and hurt?”

Nizar shakes his head and says: “I don’t know the reason, but my constant yearning to my mom, to our beautiful home, and to all my old life was overwhelming.”

Good morning from Madrid What news of the “Arabian Jasmine”?

I entrust it to you, mother, 14

That babyish baby It was father’s closest love He spoiled her like his own child Offered her his coffee He watered her, nourished her, He lavished her with his affection Father passed away…

But on she lives, dreaming of his comeback Seeking him around his room, Asking after his *3abaya, His newspaper, The Turquoise of his eyes when it is summer To sow golden coins Upon his hands…

Greetings ……. greetings To a home that doused us love, mercy To your white flowers The joy of the “Nejmeh Square” To my bed, my books The kids of the neighborhood To walls we filled with chaotic scribble To idle cats, Napping on our cushions, To a creeping Lilac on the neighbor’s casement.

Two years have gone by, mother And the face of Damascus A bird scratching at our wings Biting at our shades Gently pecking our fingers; Two years have gone by mother 15

And the nights of Damascus Its Arabian Jasmine, its homes Dwell in our thoughts Its minarets light our sailing boats As if the Umayyad minarets are etched inside of us As if apple orchards scent our conscience As if light and stone All came here with us September is here mother Sadness came laden with gifts Leaving by my window Its tear jars and grievances September is here, where is Damascus?

Where’s father and his eyes?

Where’s the silk of his look and the aroma of his coffee?

May he rest in peace…

Where is our spacious big home…. Where’s its bounty?

Where is the childhood I lived in Dragging its cat’s tail Eating off its vines Damascus….. Damascus Poetry We wrote in our eyes A beautiful child Crucified by his braids To whom we knelt In his love we melt Till in our love slain…

Maya: “Spectacular. Spectacular.”

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Nizar: “My mother was the Queen and we were the most precious of her subjects.”

Maya moves her eyes to the father’s picture and says: “You look very much like him.”

He says: “The resemblance is not just physical but also internal.”

Maya: “You were influenced by him?”

Nizar: “He’s a great example of the man who refuses to take things for granted and the man who thinks for himself. My father was my knight and my hero, and from him I learned how to steal fire.”

Maya asks: “How to steal fire?”

Nizar smiles modestly and whispers: “Don’t you remember the ancient Greek myth about Prometheus who challenged the fate of Gods and threw people a firebrand, enduring suffering and hardship for that cause?”

Maya: “So fire is a symbol.”

Nizar murmers: “Undoubtedly. Just like Prometheus was a symbol of the thinker in every time and place. He worked hard and suffered for the sake of others, even if he had to get burned delivering his message.”

Maya: “So your father is your role model, in content and form.”

Nizar smiles and remembers his father’s image: “His blue eyes were pure as the waters of a Swiss lake, and he used to stand 17

tall like a Romanian arrow. His heart was a crystal vessel that was big enough to hold the whole world.”

Maya: “They say that you belong to the bourgeoisie class and the blue blooded races.”

He looks at her with determination and then around him before saying: “Of course not. Our family is a middle class Damask family. My father was not rich and he never made any wealth. And if wanted to categorize my father, I would certainly put him among the hard workers because he spent fifty years of his life breathing mine coal and laying his head on sugar bags and wooden boxes. He used to come to us every night under the winter rain almost looking like a perforated ship.”

“I can recall my father’s face smeared with coal and his clothes stained and burned every time I read the words of those who accuse me of being a bourgeoisie and belonging to the rich classes.”

Maya: “Despite the great influence your father has had on you, you’ve announced on more than one occasion your rebellion on the patriarchal power and what it represents of old-fashioned values. You say: My father’s trunk I open, and rip the will, I draw my sword and angrily cut off sick heads and joints, I open my father’s days … and see what’s not to be seen, Prayers … medicinal herbs, And potions for sexual potency After some deep thought, Nizar says: “I don’t know if the 18

suicide of my sister Wisal for the sake of love is behind my inner revolution against my father and the patriarchal society.

Her image is engraved in my flesh; I can still remember her angelic face and her features full of light, and I can still remember her beautiful smile as she died.

As I walked in her funeral when I was fifteen, love was walking next to me in the funeral, holding my arm and crying.

Maybe her death for the sake of love is one of the factors that made me dedicate all my energy for the love poetry and give it the most beautiful of my words.

And were my writings on love a kind of compensation for what my sister was denied, and revenge from a society that rejects love and chases it with axes and guns? I don’t know.

All I know is that the death of my sister, the lover, broke something inside me and left on the surface of my childhood lake more than a circle and more than a question mark.”

She tries to change the subject: “So you’re saying that the heart has always been the reason behind your family’s sensitivity.”

He says: “Yes, all of us are weak in front of beautiful objects.

My father would shake as a bird and break as glass if a beautiful woman passed by him. He was so powerful in front of big events, but he turned into a heap of ashes before a beautiful face.”

Maya goes toward the library and looks at the books of Arabic poetry and at a collection of books written by Moliere, Racine and Hugo.

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He says: “I’ve read those writers in their original languages, and I’ve tasted French Literature right from its fountain.”

Maya: “And Arabic Literature?”

He looks at a collection of poetry books bearing the name of the poet Khalil Mardam Beik and says: “Thanks to my first master in literature Khakil Mardam Beik, who prepared me to make my poetic cells and tissues, the flower of poetry was implanted under my skin. You know, this teacher guided us to shady roads and oases in the Arabic Literature, which made us forget about the hardships of the trip with his feelings and his right choice.”

Maya: “So you had a big pool of poetry?”

Nizar: “This man connected me to poetry right away. He used to pick us ten new flowers of the tree of poetry in every class of his until our poetic memory was an orchard swaying with yellow, green and red at the end of the school year.”

Maya looks at her watch and says: “Oh, time has flown so fast, and I’ve taken so much of your time.”

Nizar: “I’m enjoying my freedom in talking to you, and you are a good listener.”

Maya: “Well, I’m leaving for Beirut tomorrow.”

Nizar: “I could come with you since I have an evening to read poetry in two days there.”

Maya: “Alright. I’ll pass by you tomorrow at seven in the morning.”

Nizar: “See you tomorrow, then.”

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Damascus (Sham)!

The following day Nizar rides the car with Maya and ask’s her to take the old road to Beirut which passes through Dummar and Al Hama.

On the way he takes out a small piece of paper and starts to read some poetry: We composed and sent letters We cried, shed tears and sobbed Tell those who dwell in Sham Your slain by love is still slain Sham the world’s (beauty spot) and flower Whose beauty pains a carver’s chisels I wish in you I were planted a minaret Or on your doors hung a lantern Town of seven rivers… my Home A shirt with plum blossom woven A stallion his saddle discarded Galloping into the known and unknown Barada.. your infatuation like a blade in me resides Matters of love I just can’t revise What became of the once our beloved (Damascene) Who can’t now remember the taste of our first kiss When in Dummar we were… my lips On her braids …. a perfect fit To the river’s most enchanting melodies 21

And the fir tree on its shin wears an anklet You who on the willow writes me Poetry… and carves me in earth a September You who brings back my notebooks… my school Wheat, almonds and mantras blue Damascus(Sham)! If I mask what I suffer The loveliest of love is love not expressed…”

Maya: “Oh, goodness. This poetry is just as marvelous as Damascus and its orchards and nature.”

Nizar: “I adore nature, especially the nature of Damascus which moved with me everywhere I went. But nature as a separate world did not play in my poetry an important role, for, to me, people are more important and more present.”

Maya: “But you’ve written about the stars, the seas and the woods?”

Nizar: “Right. But I’ve always tied them to a human relation of some sort, and to put it in a clearer way, I’ve placed all these beautiful things in the service of the woman I love.”

Feiruz’ voice sounds off a tape that Maya pushes into the tape recorder.

He closes his eyes and listens to the angelic voice: Don’t ask me about my beloved’s name I fear for you of overwhelming perfume By god! If I utter a letter Lilacs would fall thick on footpaths Don’t look for him.. Here in my chest 22

I left him running with the sunset; You see him in the laughter of streams In the sea, in the breathing of the prairies In the song of every skylark In teardrops of rain when it weeps In the gifts of the pouring sky Don’t ask me about his lips..

Have you seen the elegance of the twilight?

His eyes, shores of purity His waist, a cane swaying Looks not in books Nor claimed by a writer’s pen His chest?! His neck?!…Enough I won’t tell my beloved’s name.

Nizar: “I become very happy when I listen to my poetry coming out of a special throat and with wonderful tunes. It’s an act of immortalization for the poem and fast circulation for it.”

The car overlooks the first of the Lebanese land.

Maya looks at him and asks him: “Do you love it?”

Without hesitation and with warmth he says: “How can I not love it, when Lebanon is the vessel that contained my poetry and given it shape, color and fragrance?

In its land I planted the seeds of my first poems, and it embraced them, fed them and watered them until they turned into a wood with lots of trees and shades.”

He looks around lovingly and looks at the distances around 23

as if he wanted to hold them all in a moment of great love: “My voice is scattered all over the Lebanese soil. There is not a village hanging on the top of a mountain or lying on the arm of the sea that hasn’t engraved on its rocks some of my letters…From Beirut to Jounieh and Tripoli, from Sidon to Nabatieh…I used to move around like the tropador poets carrying my violin and my papers.”

Nizar: “I’ve always felt that I belong to the Lebanese family of poetry.”

Maya: “You’ve frequently mentioned that your Lebanese reading in the forties is one of the most important influences on your poetic education…”

Nizar: “Yes, by moving from the rustic agenda of Amin Nakhle to the orchards of Bshara El Khouri and Elias Abu Shabaki and Said Akl I learned to get out of the poetic land that is immobile into the big wide sea with all of its possibilities and unknowns.”

They get to the entrance of Beirut where some buildings are still bearing the residues of war. He shakes his head in sorrow and says: Where’s Beirut strolling in the blue hat like a queen?

Where is Beirut that was on our paper Dancing like a fish!

They slaughtered her….

They slaughtered her….

As she welcomed dawn like a jasmine; Who wins by killing a city?

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They lost Beirut my lady, They lost themselves when they lost her; It fell like a magic ring in water and they didn’t pick it up; They chased her as like spring bird till they killed her Maya tries to change the tragic atmosphere that has overwhelmed the poet. She says: “But she’s back today to wear a beautiful dress. Her sons have recognized they couldn’t do without her. Look, here she is starting to wear a new outfit…she’ll be back…she’ll be back.”

Nizar: “Even if she’s back Ma’am, will the people we lost in its blind war be back? Will Balkees and Souad and Mohammed and Issa be back?”

What news do you want of my poetry and me, They took Beirut my lady, from you and me, They stole the “kournish” .. and the seashells The sand that covered our bodies They stole the time for poetry from us my pearl The writings that fall like red cherries Through fingers They stole the aroma of the coffee Dreams of coffee houses…. and lanterns of the streets Maya: “Despite all that’s gone and all who’s gone, Beirut, the kind heart, has forgiven her ungrateful children and everybody who loved her selfishly.”

Nizar: I still love you …. crazy Beirut The river of blood and jewels 25

I still love you good hearted Beirut The Beirut of chaos Beirut of confounded hunger…..confounded fullness.

Maya: “As we all love her. We’re here already. We should get some rest after all this tiring trip. I’ll be back in the evening so we could take a walk on the beach.”

Nizar: “Alright…See you in the evening.”

Maya passes by in the evening and finds him waiting for her.

He sits next to her in the car, and Kathem Assaher’s voice goes off with Beirut’s song of love and rain. Nizar closes his eyes and recalls the moments when he wrote that poem: You pick the place…

Any café like a sword protruding into the sea, Pick any place I surrender to the sea swans in your eyes Drawing closer from the ends of time…

When it rains in Beirut I need someone kind… 









I have no specific decision in mind So take me wherever you like Drop me wherever you wish Buy me the day’s paper, pencils Cigarettes and wine ….

Here are all the keys ……you drive …

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Drive toward the wind and chance ….

Pass through nameless alleys Love me a little …

Break the traffic rules a little…

A little leave me your right hand …

Your arms are my land … 









There are no maps for love in Beirut, No.. nor maps for passion in my heart….

You decide where to ….

For Love in Beirut, like God, is everywhere.”

The song ends. He opens his eyes and looks at the sea. He embraces it and asks her if they could walk a little.

He breathes in the air of the sea, and with the joy of a child who’s found his mother and the woman he loves he says: Beirut, of all the millions of women, my female An orange departure on roses … Prunes and water …

My ambition when my poetry I compose to draw the sky closer Maya: “What about tomorrow’s evening?”

Nizar: “I’ve prepared some poems that I’m going to read.

You know I find great difficulty remembering and reciting my own poetry, and I feel real jealous of the poets who start reciting their poems with the accuracy of a recorded tape once they push one of their memory buttons.”

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Maya: “Don’t you think that the poetic memory is a basic condition in the game of poetry?”

Nizar: “I imagine that writing a poem is something and reciting it or conjuring it up is something else. Writing is an ageless lightening, and recalling is an acquired ability and a sport like all the sports that need practice to be complete.”

Maya: “In today’s age of technology and world of numbers and calculations we think that poetry is lost and is gone forever. But when we attend an evening where you or some other poets read and recite their poetry, we feel that we’re still under the spell of the world of poetry and poets.”

He smiles: “Poetry, my dear, does not come to an end unless life itself ends on this rotating planet, unless the seas dry out and the stars’ lights go out.

But as long as there are seas weaving blue and stars running away from their tents to lie on my pillow, as long as there are walks never taken and rendezvous never given, as long as there are winds raging and suns rotating and stars made into grapes of light…

As long as Man, the question, is still standing on the face of this earth, loving and hating, laughing and crying…

As long as there is still one necklace in the drawers of my beloved, the bead color of which I haven’t discovered yet, as long as there is one gown in her closet that my curiosity hasn’t seen yet, there would be no escape from poetry and no setting ourselves loose of its magical fingers.

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The stones, my dear, in the land of Hijaz would have remained stone if the Arabic poetry hadn’t touched them with its fresh fingers to break a mantilla of yearning and water every grain of sand with the redness of a wound from the veins of a rendezvous.”

Maya: “And the audience. Where are they from the poetic creation of the poet?”

Nizar: “Poetry is a secretion of beauty, a bleeding of letters and stars being born in a feather’s split. And after that its God’s face painted on the white of a sheet, engraved in the consciousness of a sheet. It is the fate of a poem to be said and heard; April is not ashamed of its green and red, April does not protest under the earth.

In its different forms art is the bridge that connects us to the others. It’s the silk stairs that we climb to hug the others.”

Maya: “I think that your silk stairs have always been able to tie you creatively to your audience.”

Nizar: “Thank you for the compliment.” He looks at his watch and says: “It’s nine. You can go now and I’ll stay her and finish my walk.”

Maya, smiling: “You must be having some poetic inspiration right now. Alright, I’ll leave you, but I’ll hand you some papers from the car before I do.”

He sits on stone seat and looks at the sea as she leaves some papers for him and goes quietly.

The following day the hall is crowded with an audience of 29

all ages and classes and a bunch of young girls meeting with their boys friends in the front seats. The poet enters and greets the audience, and before he goes upstage, the young girls approach him, take out their little colorful notebooks and ask him to sign their autographs. He does that, smiling at the young girls and boys and promising them to recite them some special poetry.

The evening starts. Everybody goes silent waiting for their beloved poet. Maya is sitting between the rows, looking at him lovingly and in her hands she holds a collection of papers and a small tape recorder to record the evening.

The poet begins: You old lovers of Beirut Have you found an alternative to Beirut yet?

Beirut is the female Offers fertility, and tenders seasons If Lebanon were to die, you die with it For a universe without Lebanon Is void or impossible All that Lebanon asks of you Is to love him……love him a little A loud applause in the hall is followed by silence while waiting for what was to come next.

He says: “I’ll offer one of my old poems to my young ladies who decorate this evening.”

The young ladies and gentlemen applaud.

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The poet starts: “The Poem of Lolita.”

Lolita I am now fifteen A thousand times prettier My love for you is bigger A thousand times Maybe two years ago You didn’t care much for my round face My beauty was so … so And my dresses knee length I used to come to you in my uniform And crimson ribbon It was enough that you gave me A doll … a piece of candy I didn’t want more ….

Everything after that Changed I sidn’t settle for a candy anymore Nor dolls you toss in my hands The game has become more dangerous A thousand times You became my biggest toy The nicest toy in my hands I am fifteen.

I am fifteen.

Everything inside of me enriched and blossomed Everything turned green My lips plums and broken rubies And in my chest smiled the emerald dome 31

Springs … sun …and pine Now if the mirror were to touch my breasts would go numb And what was flat two yours ago is now round So imagine …

Yesterday’s child who at your door played And on your lap fell asleep when tired Has become a gem Priceless!

I am fifteen.

I am prettier.

You’ll ask me for a dance and I’ll accept I’ll wear a sequenced shawl And look like a princess in an Arabian court …

You won’t be shy …

I have grown taller. ..

Oh! How I prayed to grow taller An inch … or two A year or two How I resented my round face My acne and my school uniform And love … fatherly love Don’t treat me like a father I am now fifteen…

The hall goes off in wild applause, and nothing stops the audience, especially the young ladies and gentlemen, except for waiting for the next poem.

Nizar: “And finally I’ll read some lines from the “Wild Poem.”

He smiles and continues: “But it’s not wild; it’s rather a 32

request of the love that we in deed are always in need of.”

Applaud. He starts to read: Love me Love me with no predicaments Get lost in the lines on my hands Love me …. for a week….for days…for hours Am not the one to care for time with no end I am October…..the month of wind Rain ….. hail stones I am October, break Like lightning on my body Love me and wonder not why Love me and don’t stammer nor be shy Love me with no complaints Would a cloak complain of a dagger?

Be the sea and port Be Home and exile Be the calm and the hurricane Be tenderness and brutality Love me in thousand, thousand ways Don’t repeat yourself like the summer I hate the summer Love me and say it I refuse to be loved in silence I refuse to bury my love In a tomb of silence.

The evening was over and a group from the audience went to shake the poet’s hand and praise the poetry that was recited.

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Scent of a Home Country The car swallows the distances very fast, for the road to the liberated Monaitra is easy and beautiful. Maya drives the car while he talks to her about old memories.

He says: “For years I’ve carried my country in my heart, I’ve hidden it in the eyelids of every letter I’ve written, in every drop of ink I’ve shed on paper.”

Maya: “There are a lot of people out there asking where the home country is in Nizar Kabbani’s poetry, the poet of women, love and flirtation?”

He responds to her enthusiastically: “The home country is painted in every comma, in every splash of ink a poet leaves on paper.

The scent of our home country is the scent of our ink and its beaches, in its mountains, moons and stars and in the eyes of its women. It’s some of our alphabets.

Our country is a group of beautiful words.

A word you say, a word I say, a straw you carry, a straw I carry…this is how spring is made. It makes me very happy to be a small plant in this spring, to be a line among the lines of this big painting that the fingers of the talented draw in my country.”

Maya: “Despite your big love for your country, you poured 34

all your anger on this country that you love after the setback of June 1967, and you were being sadistic as if you were dancing on its wounds?”

Nizar, with pain: My sad homeland You turned me in a second From a poet of love and nostalgia To a poet who writes with a knife “I’ve written, my dear, “Margins on the Notebook of the Setback” in a climate of sickness, hallucinations and lack of control over my fingers, so this is why it came out in the form of intermittent charges and successive electrical shocks that resemble the shocks of the high tension of electricity.”

Maya interrupts him: “So you wrote that while you were at the top of your anger, tension and agitation, and you are well aware that agitation is the ultimate enemy of poetry?!”

Nizar: “I know that, but did I have to, in harmony with my artistic logic, to wait for the ebb of the flood in order to write about the flood, and consequently, did the Arabic literature, poetry, novel and theatre have to freeze themselves until the storm was gone and the grey clouds moved away, until the burnt trees grew new leaves? This logic is correct from the theoretical perspective, were the nerves of the artist made of cotton, or the open wound in the flesh of our pride would be satisfied with waiting.”

It pains me to hear the news in the morning In pains me to hear the barking.

35

Jews didn’t walk into our country But Like ants they crept through our flaws Maya shakes her head sadly and says: “Yes, June has sabotaged all our beautiful dreams, so the hopes we had created over many years collapsed in a few moments, actually in a few seconds.”

Nizar: We need an angry generation We need a generation that ploughs the horizons Uproots its history Digs the intellect from the depths We need a generation with different features That doesn’t forgive nor exonerates Doesn’t bow ….. doesn’t know hypocrisy We need a generation pioneer ….. a giant Children From the ocean to the bay you are the hope You are the generation that’s going to break the shackles Kill the opium in our heads And slay the illusion Children ….. you are still good Pure like the dew and snow… pure Don’t read about our defeated generation We are a failure We, like watermelon skin, worthless We’re hollow, slaughtered like soles Don’t read our news 36

Don’t retrace our footsteps Don’t accept our ideas We the generation of vomit, syphilis and cough We are a pretentious swindling generation You children Spring showers, seedlings of hope You are the seeds of fertility in our sterile life You are the generation that’ll defeat defeat.

Maya: “When the poem was published the reactions came in the form of kisses from here and curses from there, roses from here and thorns from there.”

He shakes his head bitterly and remembers: “When the poem was published in Al Adab Magazine, the magazine was confiscated and its issues were burned in more than one Arab city.”

Maya: “But it bred and grew and every student, employee and soldier made a copy of this poem and read it.”

Nizar: “That is because the forbidden writings circulate a lot more than they are supposed to if they weren’t stopped and censored.”

Maya: “And what’s the relationship of Abdul Nasser with this poem? And what’s with the disagreement between the two of you?”

Nizar: “My case with Abdul Nasser is not something personal. It’s the relationship between the writer and the ruler, the intellect and the authority.”

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Maya: “But you were massively attacked in Egypt after the poem was published, and you were accused of working on destroying the spirit of your people with the likes of this poem.”

Nizar: “That’s right. It was an intense attack and I was forbidden from entering Egypt after publishing that poem, and so was my poem.

But the late President Jamal Abdul Nasser took a stand that only the great, the witty and the talented who are endowed with insight and vision dare to take, so they went high with their leadership and actions to the highest of human class and spiritual sublimity.”

Maya: “Yes, President Abdul Nasser stood by your side when it was storming and thundering on your poem, and he broke the official siege that tried to isolate you from Egypt and its people. But how did Abdul Nasser know about your being barred, and how did he interfere personally with this poem?”

Nizar: “When I felt that the campaign had gone out of the scope of criticism and cultural conversation and gone into the range of defamation and slander, I decided to head directly to President Jamal Abdul Nasser to send him this letter.”

He takes out a letter from his pocket, opens it carefully and starts reading: Your Excellency Mr. President Jamal Abdul Nasser In these days when our nerves have turned into ashes, and sadness has engulfed us from every direction, an Arab poet is writing to you, a poet who is subjected today to persecution 38

by the official authorities in the United Arab Republic in a way unprecedented in the history of injustice.

To tell you the details of the story, after the relapse of June 5, I published a poem entitled “Margins on the Notebook of the Relapse”, in which I entrusted the essence of my pain and rupture and through which I uncovered in the areas of pain in the body of my Arab nation, for I had the conviction that what we have reached cannot be treated by hiding and escaping, but by complete facing of our flaws and weaknesses. And if my cry were sharp and offensive, it’s because cries come in the size of the stab and because the bleeding comes in the size of the wound.

And which one of us, your Excellency, did not cry after June 5?

Who did not scratch the sky with his nails?

Who did not hate himself, his clothes and his shadow on the ground?

My poem has been an attempt at reevaluating ourselves as we are, away from bravado, exaggeration and excitement.

Consequently, it was an attempt at building a new Arab intellect that differs in its features and constitution from the intellect of the time before June 5.

I haven’t said more than others have. I haven’t been angrier than others have.

All I did was create in a poetic style what others had created in a political or journalistic style.

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And please allow me, Your Excellency, to be clearer and franker. I’ve said that in my poem I have not crossed the boundaries of your ideas in self-criticism the day you stood after the relapse to settle with decency and honesty the account of the battle and to give Caesar what was Caesar’s and what was God’s to God. I haven’t invented anything, for the psychological, behavioral and political mistakes of the Arabs are as clear as an open book.

What would be the value of the writer the day he shies away from facing life with its white and black sides at the same time? Who would be the poet when he turns into a clown and a hypocrite?

So it hurt me, Mr. President, that my poem should be banned from entering Egypt, and that an official siege would be forced on my name and poetry in the radio of the United Republic and its press.

And the cause is not a mere cause of confiscating a poem or a poet; it is much deeper than this.

The case is to determine our stand from the Arabic intellect.

How do we want it? Free or half free? Bold or cowardly? A prophet or a clown?

And the cause, finally, is to know if the date of June 5 will be a date for us to be reborn anew with new skins, new ideas, and a new logic.

My poem is here before you Mr. President. I hope you read 40

it with all the open mindedness and far sightedness that we know about you. And you shall be convinced, in spite of the saltiness and bitterness of the words, that I was conveying the reality honestly and faithfully and that I was creating an exact copy of our pale and exhausted faces.

I couldn’t stand before the sick body of my nation and treat it with prayers and lucky charms, for he who loves his nation, Your Excellency, would disinfect its wounds with alcohol and cauterize, if necessary, the affected areas with fire.

Mr. President…

I am complaining about the offensive stand that the official authorities in Egypt are taking against me, affected by some mercenaries who take writing as a trade. And all I demand is for my voice to be heard, for the simplest rules of justice is to allow the writer to explain what he had written, and to allow the crucified to ask for the reason he was crucified for.

I only demand, Mr. President, to be granted the freedom of dialogue, for I curse in Egypt, and nobody knows why I do, and my patriotism and dignity are being questioned because I’ve written a poem when nobody has read a letter of this poem.

My poem has entered every Arab city and has aroused a big controversy among the educated Arabs in a negative and positive way. So, why should I be denied this right in Egypt alone? And since when did Egypt start to be fed up with the word and close its doors in its face?

Mr. President…

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I refuse to believe that the likes of you would punish the bleeding for his bleeding and the wounded for his wounds, and would allow for the persecution of an Arab poet who wished to be honest, decent and courageous in facing himself and his nation. ..

Mr. President…

I don’t believe this is happening in your time…

Nizar Kabbani Beirut, the 30th of October, 1967

Nizar: “You know what? Abdul Nasser did not keep silent for long, and his big problems and troubles that transcended those of all people did not stop him from taking care of my letter. He was quick to add some remarks to the letter in addition to strict instructions to revoke all the measures that were wrongly taken against me and against my writings, and he asked the Ministry of Information to allow for the circulation of the poem.”

Maya, joyfully: “And you returned to Egypt under the protection of Abdul Nasser.”

Nizar: “I went back to find Egypt’s sun brighter, its Nile wider and its stars more numerous.

President Abdul Nasser broke the wall of fear between art and authority, between creativity and revolution with his great stand, and he was able to discover, with his intuition and comprehensive vision, that art and revolution are a bound Siamese twin, and that every attempt at separating 42

them will break the carriage and kill the two horses.”

The trip to Al Konaitra, the bride of the South, came to an end with them wandering about in its streets and eating in one of the restaurants that were opened after the October war of Liberation.

The way back to Damascus, however, is quiet, and the radio goes off with songs composed by Nizar and sung once by Kathem Assaher and another by Najat or Majida Al Roumy.

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Say I Love You In the garden of the Damask home they sit next to the pool, with the fragrance of the Arabian Jasmine engulfing them, while the radio goes off with some songs composed by the poet.

Maya wakes up from her preoccupation with the songs to ask him abruptly with a smile: “Haven’t you noticed that in your poems, and even when you are head over heels in love, you consider yourself the origin of life and beauty, for you say: Let me poetry and a chest to build of you Let me color your eyes.

“And you also repeat that it is your love for the woman that makes her the most important of all women.”

After some thinking, he answers her: “You’re right. I do feel that I create beauty and that if it were not for me, it wouldn’t have lived on and become immortal.”

Outside my chest you are lost Outside my poetry you are anonymous Buried under the frost of years With me a queen you’ve always been After me? You are others’?

Maya: “And you also say: 44

Because I loved you You became one of the most important women…..

You founded a new era New religion In poetry books you’re stowed In the books of prophets Nizar: “Hasn’t my love and description of her turned into immortal literature?!”

If you ever my violet this book Like no other book browsed Be blessed by my letters Every syllable I wrote about you has become literature I wrote with light about your eyes Did anybody but I write of your eyes with light?

You were unknown till I arrived Throwing comets and shooting stars I … I with my impulses and imagination The earth of your breasts to gold I transformed Maya: “And doesn’t this outlook suggest some kind of superiority?!”

Nizar, proudly: I destroy the world with a straying couplet And with a straying couplet I restore With my hand I made the beauty of every beauty And thrilled every breast Maya: “So, what’s the role of the woman, then?”

Nizar: “The woman to me is an inspiration, when I fall in 45

love, the grass grows on my notebooks and my life changes: Why … why …since you became my lover My ink lit up and my notebooks bore grass Things changed since you in love fell with me I became like children …..playing with the sun I am not a messenger Yet A prophet I become when I write about you Maya smiles and says: “But every time you start anew as if love has never knocked your door.”

Twenty thousand women I’ve loved Twenty thousand women I tried And when I fell in love with you I felt like I’ve just begun Nizar: “That’s because every woman is a new experience for me: To God I surrender my case …

To God I surrender my case…

How could you, how, encapsulate Every women there is in the world Maya, laughing: “And you’re unhappy to condense all women in one? If this woman has gone under your skin, she will not allow another woman to exist.

How could you seep into the pores of my skin Like a droplet of dew … seeps Getting used to your absence is hard And harder still is getting used to your presence How… How do I love Even I of me wonder…

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He smiles and says: “I don’t mind having one lover, but I must have a lover in my life so that I can be more beautiful and my fingers can glow, for it is with love that I can become a King crowned on the throne of poems and poetry: Say ‘I love you’ so I become better looking, Without your love I am not handsome Say you love me so my fingers would turn to gold And my forehead a lantern Say it now Say it now and don’t falter Some love is not to be put off I’ll change Time if you love me I’ll cancel seasons and add seasons Old epoch I’ll end And women metropolis instead I’ll found A king I’ll be if my beloved you are to be I’ll invade suns by boats and on horseback Don’t be reticent of me This is my chance to be among lovers a messenger Maya: “You love her and you are well aware that you become more handsome if she confesses her love to you, but then you always try to persuade her that you are superior to all people with all your unique abilities with which you beat all kings, leaders and fighters.

I dare all your lovers my lady, Kings, icons and great leaders, Had they of ostrich feathers lay you a bed?

Your breasts, my lady, did they feed Basra dates or Damascene berries 47

I dare them all To write you love letters like mine Or to bring you, many that they are, Letters like my letters and words like my words I dare ...

Those, my lady, who to your eyes have beaten me Carry the sun in their palms, and jasmine garlands, I dare all you have known, Fools, kids, and lost in seas of wistfulness To love you my way, my fool heartedness, my sadness He goes on with the poem: I dare them all To have discovered How thousands of birds run between your lashes To have accepted that Your breasts like the sun revolve I dare Love declarations of all times The inscriptions on the walls of Sidon and Tyre Read the oldest love scriptures You’ll find me there … Between the lines In love I reside.

There isn’t one kiss Given or taken That wasn’t graced by my presence I defy the bravest of knights, my lady The tribe’s rifles I defy those who loved you and those you loved Since your birth till like an Iraqi palm you grew tall 48

I defy them to be a droplet in my sea…

Or to have extinguished their lifetime In your eyes like I have extinguished mine I defy you to find A lover like me A golden age like mine Leave wherever you want ... leave Laugh Weep Starve I know you won’t find Woods to sleep in Like my chest Maya: “You take pride in your uniqueness; that is, you as a poet are ahead of all other people of all other sorts. And you address the woman and want her to know how good you are at showing her beauty. You want her to know that you are the one who immortalizes this beauty and gives it the right to stay and survive.

But when she loves you as a poet you reject that and you demand that she understand you and love you as a man!!”

He says: “That is because I am a man before being a poet: You loved a poet whose poems scatter Try for once to understand the man Try for once to understand my boredom A God in heaven may be bored I have my desires like people have theirs I am no mythical god nor a herol 49

Maya: “That’s right. But, Sir, we are people who live under the spell of poetry and the word, and when a woman likes a man like you, the first thing that attracts her about him is that he is a poet, until the man emerges with all of the characteristics of manhood , so she loves him or does not love him.”

Nizar: “Yes, and this is why true love relationships in my life have been very few: My heart is like an ash tray …

Dig into it … You burn My poetry is my heart He who doesn’t see my heart on paper Doesn’t do me justice Maya goes to prepare coffee while Nizar flips through the cassettes and picks one. Assaher’s voice goes loud with the song “I Admit”. Maya comes back, pours the coffee and serves it.

She says: “your childhood instinct has been refreshed by your growing older instead of becoming weaker or less intense.

You still talk about the woman who loves you as if she were your mom who collects your toys, who puts up with your follies and is patient with your fits.”

He smiles and raises the volume of the tape recorder: I admit … no woman has mastered the game but you Nor born my foolishness for ten years like you did Nor tolerated my madness like you did Nor clipped my nails, stacked my notebooks, Or took me to kindergarten but you 50

Maya: “And for the woman you love to be your mom, is it Oedipus complex?”

Nizar: “I don’t mean that the tendency of love takes me instinctively toward my mother. That’s out of question, inconceivable. What I’m saying is that I live a constant condition of childhood in my behavior, acts and writings.

Childhood is the key to my personality and my literature, and every attempt at understanding me outside of the circle of childhood is doomed to fail. I always need care and protection and attention.”

You misunderstood me my friend, I suffer no complex Nor am I Oedipus in my desires and dreams But every woman I loved I wanted to me to be My lover and my mother…

With all my heart I desire That you be my mother…

Maya: “This why you repeat in your poems the words ‘baby’ and ‘sweety’ that your lover addresses you with. And it is also repeated that the beloved tries to alleviate your depression and soothe you, so she wipes your tired forehead with her delicate fingers, just like a mom does: On my arm lay your head and have mercy my youth on your nerves

Companion of

Pull your head up and look at me baby me with your depression

you depressed

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She wiped my forehead with her fingers my tangled hair.

and loosened

Nizar: “The woman I love has to look like me, has to be my mom, and my art has to be a part of her age as it is a part of mine.”

Maya: “And how can she look like you?”

Nizar: “To look like me means that there is common ground where we can both stand and that the rhythm of our souls and ideas is homogeneous.

It means to shake together for thousands of little things, to have thousands of common interests and to invent together thousands of pleasant things.

The nicest thing about our relationship Is that poetry is our mutual friend It takes coffee with us Drinks wine with us And naps with us And the most wonderful thing about you Is that you think of it as your baby You bathe it every morning Seat it on your knees And feed it with your own hands You shell for her almonds and peanuts And you tell it Cinderella’s tale At bedtime 

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The most important thing about your education Is that you belong to the party of poetry The nicest thing about your language is that it is derived from that of birds’ The lines of Mozart The inspirations of Mouhyidin Bin Arabi…

You are my love as you are my poems’ love You welcome her cheerfully Serve her sweets and orange juice You leave her in my office And lock us in 

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My little saint: Your gifts are plenty and your marvels abound How prophetic your predictions When you discovered the magic bond Between a woman’s and a poem’s femininity How true a woman you were When you picked up my poems And threaded them in silk And round your neck you wore them A jasmine garland Maya: “You’re right. The most beautiful thing in life is to find the other who understands our dreams and likes what we like. But you, sir, and after the long years of love and the many women in your life, you finally confess that you’ve 53

left the school of love empty handed?”

Nizar: Don’t take note of my speech, my lady I have no lessons to give In love Nor in love making Half what I say is flights of fancy I play with fire And burn my fingers like most kids 

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Mind not What I write my lady I, a man who sows wheat in the wind And writes poetry on water And makes love Of the music of the sea The smell of grass And breath of the woods 

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Madam, Be a rational woman I am not a prophet of love I don’t remember 54

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Presenting an admirer my verse I myself Don’t believe my verse… 

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Do not be anxious madam I know what love does to you And kisses to your mouth I know what poetry does to me How the smell of ink numbs me And the sword of words cuts through me 

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Madam, Don’t expect me to rebel I feel you are the last of my rebellions Maya: “Men usually speak of their conquers in love and don’t mention their defeats!”

He interrupts her: “It’s because their pride won’t allow them to admit that a woman crushed them or sold them, but if I look into my old love records or accounts, I’d find that in most of my love experiences I was the victim not the killer, and the slaughtered not the butcher: Twenty years on the road of love I’ve been once a slayer 55

Often times the slain Twenty years… writers of love And I still am on the first page Maya: “And between the many love stories, in some of which you were the killer and in some other the victim, you were accused of being a Don Juan?”

Nizar: “Of course I am not a Don Juan; Don Juan is a professional acrobat who is not concerned with the idea of love and doesn’t deal with it at all in the first place.

He’s a traveler without ports or stations; I am a traveler of another sort, a traveler who doesn’t reject all the ports, but who has in mind an image of a certain port that he doesn’t know where it is and when he’s going to arrive at it. Being a Don Juan is not in my nature or my constitution, nor is slavery my trade.”

Maya: “What about the contradiction in your attitude toward love?”

After some thinking, Nizar: “The poetry of love that I’ve written covers the span of thirty years in which my ships anchored in a thousand ports and I bumped into thousands of women. With every step of the way my taste and my logic changed, and so did the color of my ink and the number of my fingers. Every woman was a book written in a new language and a new style, and I had to discover all the continents and read all the books.

Love isn’t an eastern tale At the end of which the protagonists get married 56

It’s sailing with no boat With no safe shore in sight It’s a permanent trembling of fingers Questions on closed lips It’s a stream of misery that runs deep Vineyards growing on its banks and crops It’s to rebel for the silliest of things It’s our desperation … Our deadly doubt Maya: “And what about your title as the poet of women?”

Nizar: “Of course I would not refuse such a blessing, for ‘what cat would escape a wedding” as they say in Damascus, but I would object to this title if it were meant to restrict me and to place me in closed circle.

In the past this title used to entertain me, and then it stopped to be meaningful to me. In the end it turned from a blessing to an accusation, and from a rose into an arrow planted in my side.”

Maya: “Maybe it’s because of the many women in your life?”

Nizar: “My life is nothing different from that of other men. I knew a lot of women, I won and I got defeated, I burned and I got burned…

And if the aroma of my love spreads more intensely and sharply than the aroma of the other lovers, it’s because I’m a man who takes writing as a job and writes his life with all of its details on paper.”

Maya: “And who is the Woman-Poetry to you?”

57

Nizar: “I’ve learned from my experiences that the Woman – Poetry is the one who causes a refraction and a concussion to the scruff of my skull, she’s the one who changes the rhythm of my days and the order of things around me. She is the one who annuls time and ties me to her own time: Because I love you I feel liberated from everything I ripped my old portrait Canceled my old name And scattered my identity papers in the wind Because I love you I realized dimensions to my freedom I realized the secret of a relationship Between discovering eyes And discovering space 

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Because I love you …I’m content with my contentment Convinced your love the greatest party I’ve ever belonged to The kindest chest I take refuge in The nicest sense of belonging What’s in hopping between rings of all colors And the finest of all human races What good is roaming east… and west?

The scent of cultures condensed in you You an abbreviation of all women Maya: “And are the Women-Poetry in your life numerous?”

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Nizar: “The women who broke the glass of my life do not exceed the number of fingers of one hand; all the rest only left small scratches on the surface of my skin.”

Maya: “Despite your reputation as a poet of love?!”

Nizar, shrugging: “Despite my reputation as a poet of love, I rarely fell in love, five times maybe, in thirty years, and I have to admit that not every affair with a woman aroused my appetite for writing.

A lot of women left my life just as they came into it and did not leave behind a letter or a comma.”

Maya: “But you say: Every time I break up with someone I naively say This is the last woman The last time Then I fall in love a thousand times And die a thousand times And still I say, This is the last time Nizar smiles and says: “I’ve already told you that love has passed in my life just as it does in other men’s life.”

Maya: “And what has the teacher learned from the women he knew?”

Nizar: “From every woman I’ve learned a word of the book of love. I’ve learned docility and subdue from the Damask, pride and clarity from the Iraqi, experience from the French 59

and wisdom from the Chinese. From the British I’ve learned depth, and from the Lebanese I’ve learned the experience of the Phoenicians in changing ships and ports.”

Maya: “And when you fall in love?”

Nizar: “Love doesn’t make me lose my vision or my balance, for I fall in love with open eyes and I can still see the woman I love in real proportions. Love is not based on stupidity or faking stupidity.

For in order to love one woman out of ten thousand women, I have to be in a state of consciousness and mental clarity that allows me to discover what makes her special.”

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Here is Damascus (Sham) Nizar and Maya are taking a walk in ‘Abu Rummana’ street.

The breeze is embracing the trees which dance happily, and the jasmine hanging from the gardens welcomes the pedestrians and offers them the most beautiful of fragrances.

Nizar stops and contemplates the stretching street while the memories take him years back to 1973.

He says: “With its destroyed buildings, fallen balconies, burned flower pots and trees reaped by rockets, this street has become the most important in the world because pride and heroism became one its citizens.

I’ve known all kinds of love, but love in the times of war is something else…something else.

I’ve travelled to all capitals of love and I’ve roamed all the streets of love, but ‘Abu Rummana’ has become the most beautiful and most important.”

Maya: “The most beautiful after being ripped off by war?!”

Nizar: “He who saw the face of Damascus covered with the dust of heroism felt that war gave Damascus a new kind of beauty she didn’t know since the day of Salah Eddine.

And he who saw the eyes of Egypt as she watched tens of thousands of her sons jump like thunder into the other bank of the canal was sure that the eyes of Egypt hadn’t been so 61

wide or deep since the days of Amro Ibn Al As. This Damask and Egyptian beauty is the prettiest of all roses that have grown in the garden of the Arab world since five hundred years.”

Maya: “It is a wild fierce barbarian beauty?!”

Nizar: “Who said that the pigeon is more beautiful than the tropical Leopard? Before the sixth of October we used to belong to the family of the carrier and wood pigeons. The world was not convinced of our beauty, and nobody wrote us a single love letter. But when we joined the fighters’ club, wore the khaki suits and jumped to get our rights just like tropical leopards , when we forced the world to stand in line to fill in the gas tank, the European lovers came to our doors carrying bunches of roses and love letters.

Europe today is fascinated by our beauty after the Arab beauty was accused of being Bedouin and barbarian and after it was cast away from all beauty contests.”

Maya: “The petrol of the Arabs played an important role at that time.”

Nizar: “The petrol of the Arabs and their bank accounts were able to shake the world out of its roots and turn the foreign currencies into papers in the windward. The Arab capital has undoubtedly played an excellent and brave role in changing the way the world looked at us. It also pushed the Palestinian cause to the front lines to be among the world problems and gave it priority in the international circles. It brought this cause to the spotlight after it had stayed 30 years in the circle 62

of darkness.”

Maya: “All the Arabs shared in this war wonderfully.”

His eyes sparkle and he says with enthusiasm: “Myths… myths fill Damascus…I picked them from the lips of people.

The Iraqi and Moroccan soldiers who fought in defense of the virginity of Damascus became a poem on the lips of Damascus.

The Iraqis on the front lines refused to use their vacations even for a few hours because the sword, in their opinion, doesn’t take vacations like all other employees. And the wounded Moroccans in the Syrian hospitals refused to send their parents letters of reassurance because they had come to Syria to die a real death, not half death.”

They head toward one of the restaurants in ‘Abu Rummana’ street. They take a seat while the poet is still remembering and remembering…

Here’s Damascus after ages of absence

Seven rivers and angelic beauties Granada’s sun bathed us

After desperation and Maysaloon chanted Rip to pieces, Damascus, the map of shame

And tell Time to be and it will be Ride the sun, Damascus, a stallion

Allah be your protector and safeguard He closes his eyes and says as if in a dream: 63

“The war has placed us in an exceptional poetic state, giving us national hair- raising moments that happen very rarely in the life of nations, so it burst all of our internal springs and lit all the extinguished lamps in the inside of the Arab self . It has also wiped out all the dust that had accumulated on our faces and clothes and eye retina since the ages of degeneration.”

Maya: “And after the liberation war Kissinger came to Damascus to hold negotiations with President Hafez Al Asad.”

With the smile of a conqueror Nizar says: “It seems to me that because of his multiple diplomatic and female conquers, Kissinger hated hearing the word ‘No’ regardless of its source because he considered it a challenge to his manhood and a discrediting of his knighthood.”

Maya: “And his bad luck brought him to Damascus.”

Nizar: “For his bad luck, he wrote the name of Damascus and her address and phone number in his scented agenda that is full of names of a thousand beloved. He had an image of a romantic meeting in the lap of Damask roses, poplar, willow and moonlight.”

Maya: “Only to suddenly find himself before President Hafaz Al Asad.”

Nizar: “Yes, the mythical lover opened his bag and took out the jazz and rock CDs and the bottle of brandy. He asked his assistant Sisco to follow him with the plate of pistachio and give him the love poem that he wrote on the plane to soften 64

the atmosphere and break the ice of silence.”

He goes on joyfully as if the scene was right before him now: “President Asad, however, had a poker face, like the face of a sword just out of the battle dust. His features remained calm like the engraved symbols on the stones of Tadmur, and his voice came deep as if from the caves of time and the depths of the sea.

Kissinger was thinking of the bottle of brandy, and Hafez Al Asad was thinking of the bottle that was full of the blood of the Syrian martyrs who had fallen in the war of October.”

She says with attention: “And what happened after that?”

Nizar: “President Asad placed the case files on the table. He put one bag with the dirt of Golan in it, a second bag with the dirt of Palestine in it, a third bag that had the ashes of the Aqsa Mosque, a fourth with the wounds of Christ, a fifth bag that had the fate of the Arab nation, and a sixth bag that had the names of the Israeli captured soldiers that Syria was hold.”

Maya: “And of course, Kissinger reached out for the last bag and left all the others.”

Nizar: “And of course the Syrians pulled that bag away, so the bottle of Brandy fell to the floor and the CD was broken, so the party was spoilt.”

Maya: “It is said that Kissinger is very smart and that he’s one of a kind.”

Nizar laughs and says: “But this great lover had forgotten 65

before coming to Syria to study the Syrian dictionary and alphabet of love.

He missed reading the ideas of Kassion and Maysaloon and the Ummide Mosque and the engraved writings on Salah Eddine’s grave.

Damascus is not against love; she’s against rape. She’s not against occupation and not against marriage, but she also doesn’t oppose pleasure.”

Maya: “Kissinger has announced on more than one occasion that he doesn’t love Syrians and that he doesn’t have any feelings of cordiality or friendliness for them.”

Nizar, laughing, as if sending a direct message to Kissinger: “You Kissinger, after what had happened, are free to love my country or not to love it, for Damascus is the rose of the Arab world and its pearl and sword, and she would only care less if she’s not your beloved.”

Maya: “The stand that President Asad took was awesome and heroic.”

Nizar: “My dear, President Hafez Al Asad is not the type of republican presidents who stay all their term in Madam Tousseau’s museum drawing a smile of wax on their lips and speaking a wax language, and if they went out they spilled half a liter of alcohol on their hands for fear of contracting mass eczema.

President Al Asad is the friend of the tree, the cloud, the wheat and the fields. He is the friend of children, the woods, 66

the streams and birds. He is the friend of the poets, Feirouz and Assi Al Rahbani.

And if a single bird fell down, if one cloud wept or a wheat spike was broken, Hafez Al Asad would have carried the serum to it and stood by its bed until it got better.

The image of the president of the republic is the image engraved in the hearts and consciousness of people, not his official photo hung in the public bureaus and painted on the post stamps.”

Maya takes out a sheet of paper and reads a poem: Every Arab city is my mother Damascus, Beirut, Cairo, Baghdad, Khartoum Addar ElBaidaa, Benghazi, Tunisia, Amman, Riyadh Kuwait, Algeria, Abu Dhabi and its sisters This is my family tree All these cities bore me from their womb And nursed me from their breast And filled my pockets, grapes, figs and prunes …

They all shook their palms and I fed Their skies they opened for me ... a blue notebook So I wrote …

Not an Arab city I enter That doesn’t call me “Son” Not an Arab city whose door I knock In which I don’t find my cradle waiting for me Not one Arab city bleeds that I don’t bleed with He shakes his head: “Yes, all the Arab cities are a mother to 67

me. I love them and they love me.”

Maya: “But you still attack the Arabs and Arabism with rejected poems like you called them, and you attack a whole people who are your people, who offered you of love what no other people have offered to any poet.”

Nizar, painfully: “I carry a skewer of fire with which I burn the body of the Arab nation, and because of my abundant love for my country I couldn’t stand silent before this great coma that the Arab people have sunk into. What agitates me more than anything else is this daily death, as if man has only got left this loaf of bread that he fights for. Life is more than just a loaf of bread.”

Maya: “One critic accused you of ‘Shou’bia’ and not revolution.”

Nizar: “And I answered him then and I published my responses in Al Hawadeth. I told him: the democrat is one who fakes the truth, who stands before the ruler and fakes the truths for him, and there are lots of Arab poets and authors now who have become part of the authority. Facing up to authority is no ‘Shou’bia’ at all.”

I write…

To blow things up, writing is an explosion I write…

So light beats darkness A poem is victory I write so wheat spikes would read me And trees would read me 68

I write So the rose, star and bird understand me The cat, fish, shells and oysters understand me I write To save the word from inspection courts From the sniffing of dogs The noose of censorship …

Nothing protects us from death Except women … and writing…

Maya: “But the critics accused you of shouting in the face of the nation instead of shouting in the face of injustice.”

Nizar: “I see that we must shed light on what wounds we are suffering. People want to shout, but shouting is not accessible to all, I shout for them.

Friends of poetry, I am the trees of fire, the priest of longing The official spokesman for fifty million lovers On my arm sleep folks of love and nostalgia Once I make them doves Another jasmine tree Friends …

I am the wound that always rejects The power of the knife My wonderful friends I am the lips for those who have none The eyes of those who have no eyes I am the book of sea, of those who do not read I am the lines carved by tears in prison cells 69

I am like this Age, beloved Face madness with madness And break things in childhood, In my blood, the smell of revolution and oranges I am as you’ve always known me My hobby is to break the law I am as you’ve always known me I either am in poetry … or I don’t want to be After a melancholy silence, Nizar says: “Why do people reject the truth?!...Is our current Arab situation comfortable and enjoyable?! Tell me, can you move around freely in the parts of the one Arab nation as they call it without a visa and a permit?”

Maya surrenders: “’Of course not, for in order for us to move from one country to another we have to stop at the borders for hours at length. But it’s not even possible for the Arabs to visit the oil countries, the Arab Islamic countries that we have belonged to since a very long time, without bail or public relationships.”

He says painfully: No… This isn’t my big homeland No… This isn’t the checkered board home Crouched like an ant at the bottom of the map It is what our history teacher taught us when we were young To be our big Homeland, No … this isn’t the home of twenty cantons 70

Twenty shops Twenty money exchangers Barbers Policemen Drummers ….and dancers Called my big Homeland Nizar: “Is it not possible for us to be angry with ourselves?!”

Maya takes out a paper and says: “Listen to what the Egyptian critic Rajaa Al Nakkash wrote in response to the attack that was launched on your poems: ‘The Arabic and World literature is full of angry poems; actually, angry poems are the most prominent kinds of world literature and the most related to the sentiments and consciousness of the nations, for its poetry that represents a powerful motive of mobility, life, development and facing the great difficulties that stand in the way of all peoples.

And Nizar’s angry poetry is only a type of poetry that moves the conscience and wakes the spirit and the soul and urges the Arab man and incites him not to fall into satisfaction and relaxation and giving in to reality.

And let everybody know that angry poetry doesn’t scare live nations; it pushes them to rise and be powerful and wakes their conscience and ability to confront tough situations.”

Nizar, bitterly: “But what’s the use of my angry poetry when the borders and demarcations are there to stay in my big country which has turned into a lot of countries that I have nothing to do with.”

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Maya: “And another critic claims that you have announced your resignation from the women’s club and your wish to join the club of the cause with a sudden strategic step?”

Nizar smiles sadly and says: “Everyone who has read my poetry since its beginnings knows that this is not true, for I have written on all the Arab causes and from my beginnings, and I’ve warned of all what we have reached to now…”

Maya: “Yes, yes, and the poem of Jerusalem is the most beautiful of your poetry that we have read and memorized: Jerusalem, light house of edict Pretty child with burnt fingers Your eyes are sad you city of the virgin Shady oasis the messenger passed through Sad are the stones of streets Miserable are the minarets of mosques Jerusalem, beauty shrouded in black Who tolls the bells in the church of resurrection On Sunday mornings?!

Who bears gifts for children on Christmas Eve… Jerusalem… city of sadness Big tear wandering in eyelids Who stops the aggression Against you, pearl of religions?!!! 

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Jerusalem ...my city Jerusalem … my beloved Tomorrow… tomorrow orange will blossom 72

Green wheat spikes and olive will rejoice, Eyes will smile Migrating birds will come back To virtuous roofs, Children will play again Parents will meet children On your blossoming hills, My country The country of peace and olives Nizar: “In the beginning I dreamt like a lot of people of our generation did of return and reclaiming the lost land, but time passed and every day there seems to be a new calamity.

We used to dream of the comeback of Palestine; now we only want that Israel not occupy the rest of our land.

Who reproaches the slain for his blood And bleeding veins? How easy it is to chide, He who tried cauterization, can’t forget its pain He who has seen poison doesn’t suffer like that who drinks it The rope of the catastrophe wrapped round my neck, Who reproaches a hung man if he quivers Poetry is not doves we fly Toward the sky. ..neither a flute …nor a breeze of youth But fury with long claws What coward poetry would be if not to ride anger Maya shakes her head and reads in a paper: “Listen to what Rajaa Al Nakkash, the Egyptian critic, said about you again: ‘Nizar Kabbani has changed because of his decency and his feelings of being defeated and hurt, so he left everything 73

behind him to express in his political poetry what he sees with his heart and feelings in the calamity of the Arab man in this age.

This transformation of Nizar, whatever its value or the artistic opinion about it, is what motivated Nizar to write his angry poems.

Nizar Kabbani has lived inside the tragedy, for the tragedy reached his home and killed his wife Balkees. He lived in Beirut with the bullet shots, the assassinations and the trapped cars, and then the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and its capital..”

His eyes shine and he says: “Isn’t real poetry a revolutionary operation that is planned and executed by an angry person who aims at changing the image of the universe?”

Maya: “Yes, yes, it’s as you say setting fire in the hearts of people and in their clothes, and it’s igniting a matchstick to the trees of the dead trees of the wood.”

He says: “Because the wood becomes more beautiful when it’s burning, when everyone of its branches turns into a chandelier.”

Maya: “And you’ve set fire to the woods living in the hearts of your readers since ages. When you wrote your angry poems you put your finger directly on the wound to open it.

Every one of us stands on the borders between one country and another that hurts and suffers. How does colonization go away and leaves its prints immortal to shatter us at every 74

moment?”

Nizar: “When I wrote about the visa, I didn’t mean myself, for I as a poet and a diplomat can move around wherever I want and the halls of honor may be opened to me in the countries that I visit. I am actually talking in the name of my people, the people of my big Arab country who dream, and they are entitled to dream, that one could hold the dirt of every part of this nation without a visa or humiliation…”

Maya: “The Arabic Dream…”

Nizar, painfully: “How would the Arabic dream come true when we’re still making new barriers every single day?”

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Bread, Grass and a Moon As always, there are heaps of books on the table and heaps under it, on the bed and everywhere. And she dives into the scattered papers, but the paper she wants is not there. Oh, how difficult it is to look for it now. She takes on the pen from the table, ties her hair with it and starts looking again, all this with Nizar standing at the door looking at her with a smile and admiring this lovely chaos. She finally notices him.

He says: “for the first time I find a girl, a researcher, who works this seriously. When one sees your books and researches, he thinks you’re over sixty.”

She laughs: “I have to, there’s no escape from work, work, and work…”

He responds: “But you always repeat that you love it.”

She says: “Of course I love it, especially if my guest is the great poet Nizar Kabbani.”

He sits on one of the chairs, reaches out for a paper from the floor and reads: “Bread, Grass and a Moon.”

She cries: “Oh, I’ve been looking for it for some time!”

He laughs: “And what do you want to do with it?”

She takes it and reads it before saying: “This poem, sir, is 76

the most powerful of your angry poems due to the analysis and handling of different angles and negatives in the Arab society, and it sheds light at that early time on the social diseases of the East.”

After some thinking, he says: “I wrote this poem for the sake of a better and more beautiful east, an east that throws its incense and spells and the gurgles of its hubble bubbles to the devil and stands tall like a giant in the procession of a fast-going culture that does not wait for dreamers.

Maya: “Its letters are made of hot clay, and this is what made Damascus then throw you with stones and tomatoes and spoilt eggs.”

She hands him the paper and says: “Would you read me the poem, please?”

Nizar, smiling: “And do you think I’d refuse to read a poem for a woman I am absolutely aware that she’s the best listener to and reader of my poetry?

When the moon from the East is born White roofs sleep under thick piles of blossom People leave small shops and walk in packs To meet the moon, Carrying bread, a radio to the top of the mountain, And numbing substances Buying and selling fantasies, Images; They die if the moon lives What does a disc of light do?

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To my land … land of prophets Land of the simple The tobacco chewers and drug dealers What does the moon do to us?

We lose pride, We live pleading to heaven What does heaven have For weak idles?

Who become dead when the moon dies And rock saint’s tombs May it give them rice and children … tombs of saints They spread carpets with pretty patterns Entertained by opium called destiny And fate In my land… The land of the simple, 

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What weakness and degeneration Hits us if light pours down Carpets, thousands of baskets, Tea cups and children at hill foots, In my land where the naïve cry And live on the unseen light In my land where people live with no eyes Where the naïve cry Pray, fornicate … and on god knows what rely, They call out to the crescent …oh crescent Spring raining diamonds, 78

Grass and lethargy Hanging marble god, Incredible thing May you live on for the east… a bunch of diamonds For the millions whose senses stopped working 

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In the east when the moon is full The east is stripped of its dignity And struggle, The millions who run barefoot, Who believe in four wives and the Day of Judgment The millions who see bread only in their mind’s eye Who reside in homes of cough, Never seen how medicine looks like Lie down, corpses in the light, In my land where the naive cry Cry themselves to death Every time they see the moon And sob even more When touched by an undignified “Oud”1 and “Layali”2 That death we call “Layali”3 in the east And singing In my land the land of the simple Where we chew long “Mawaweel”4 1. An Eastern string musical instrument 2. A very popular refrain in Arabic singing 3. A feature in Arab singing 4. A feature in Arab singing 79

That tuberculosis that gnaws the east … long “Mawaweel” Our east chewing history and idle dreams And past legends Our east that seeks heroism in “Abi Zeid El Hilali” 5

5. A legendary hero 80

At Al Hamraa Palace The one who enters the wood of Al Hamraa in Granada is like somebody sinking in one of the imaginative myths that carry him to the world of magic and charming princesses.

The feelings of awe and apprehension overwhelm Nizar and Maya as they walk in the surrounding wood of Al Hamra Palace. The density of the branches doesn’t leave a chance for the sun rays to penetrate, and the refreshing breeze shakes the trees gently and moisturizes the burned faces. The water flows among the rocks, but the birds of different shapes and colors sing loudly with the most beautiful of tunes.

And during some moments of contemplation of the palace and the wonderful ruins, the memories of eight centuries past start gushing, memories of this place that constituted an original culture with Arabian features, this place that was built by the arms of the Arab Muslims. They look at the carvings and the decorations that repeat the expression: ‘There’s no conqueror but God’ and at a lot of sayings and poems engraved in Arabic handwritings.”

Maya says: “Everything about the palace tells the story of a painful struggle that ended with the loss of Andalusia.”

Nizar, painfully: “Talking about Spain is brings back sad memories. Spain to the Arabs is a historical unbearable pain, for under every one of its stones sleeps a Khalifa, behind 81

every wooden door there are black eyes, and in the gurgle of every home fountain in Kordoba there is a picture of woman weeping the knight who never returned.”

Maya: “Eight centuries were the best theatre where our glories shined. The genius of the Arab intellect was apparent in Andalusia in sciences, arts, literature, music, painting and math. This genius was clear in the art of architecture, so the cities, castles, fortresses and mosques were built. The Arab genius even proved its skill in the art of ruling and politics.”

Nizar: “And let’s not forget that the Arabs were skillful in agriculture and watering, for in the Arab age the plains and wildernesses turned green in Andalusia, and the orchards and hills flowered.”

Maya, interrupting: “That is because our grandfathers transported to it trees from the east like olive, lemon and clementine trees, in addition to the saffron plants and flowers like jasmine, basil and lavender.”

She turns to him and says: “You’ve given shape to pain that surprises all of us when we come to this place and see the ruins of our grandparents who went away and left nothing to remember but pain.”

Nizar: “yes.”

He reads the poem “Granada”.

At the entrance of Al Hamra we met, How sweet a chance meeting is; Black eyes 82

Dimensions beget dimensions “Are you Spanish?” I asked “Born in Granada,” she said Granada?! Seven centuries came to pass After long slumber in those eyes, Omayyad’s banner high Steeds chained to steeds Weird is history how it chanced me To meet a tanned granddaughter of mine A Damascene face I saw in her Balkis’s eyelids and Souad’s neck, I saw our old home… and its chambers In which mother used to lay out my pillows, And the jasmine studded with its stars And the golden chanting pond “Damascus? Where is that?” I said, “you see it In your cascading black river of hair In your Arabian face, your mouth In which you store my land’s suns In the sweetness of the “Jannat El Areef” and its waters In the Arabian Jasmine, in Laurel She strolled with me with her hair panting like Wheat spikes left unreaped Long earring dangling down her neck Like a Christmas Eve candle I followed my guide like a child History behind a pile of ashes Intricacies I could hear pulsating Details on the ceiling calling She said: 83

This is the Al Hamra … our ancestors’ pride Read my glory on its walls.”

“Glory?!” And I wiped a bleeding wound And another in my heart I wish my pretty successor knew Those she meant are MY ancestors I embraced in her when I bid her farewell A man called “Tareq Bin Ziad Maya: “This how all of us feel, but wasn’t the Islamic conquest at that time an invasion or occupation of the Andalusian land!?”

His eyes spark as he says: “All conquerors planted death, terror and destruction wherever they passed, except for the Arab conquers who carried with them the palm plants, the Arab Jasmine trees and poetry. The Arab conquest is the first in the world to have time for writing poetry.”

Maya: “Yes, the Spanish declare that the Islamic conquest in their land was a title of tolerance and civilization, and that it was a spring of a common Andalusia and Arab culture that left them with an artistic and literary heritage as well as immortal ruins.”

Nizar: “The Arabs entered Andalusia lovingly and they left it with love, leaving their tears in the water fountains in the gardens of Jannat Al Areef in Granada, in addition to their yearning engraved with gold on the walls of Al Hamra Castle and its ceilings and mythical arches.

The eight hundred years that the Arab spent in Spain can 84

only be explained by the term love.”

Maya: “Are you aware that everything around us in Spain reminds us of Damascus? The fragrance of jasmine and dahlia, the Arab jasmine and the local roses?”

He looks at the white cats stretching lazily and says with a smile: “Even the mewing of the cats in the Areef gardens is very much Damask. Every time I came to Granada and stayed at Al Hamra Hotel, Damascus would sleep on my Andalusian pillow.”

Maya: “Spain has had a lot of impact on your poetry in the period you were here, and this is pretty clear in your collection Painting with Words.

Nizar: “Spain has penetrated into my pores, letters and commas, and the beat of the castanuelas in the fingers of the flamenco dancers a part of my pulse and the pulse of my words.”

The narrow alleys in old Cordoba simulate those in old Damascus with the mallow vines hanging out of the house balconies. The poet stands in front of one of the houses, closes his eyes and says: In the narrow alleys of Cordoba I put my hand in my pocket More than once looking For my the keys to my Damascene home Lilacs Chrysanthemums The middle courtyard 85

The blue center of the house, Creeping jasmine On our sleeping places On our shoulders; The chanting golden fountain The spoilt child of the house That never goes silent, Shady courts Earthenware and its hiding places All this scented world I find here …

So madam, Leaning on her wooden casement, Don’t mind If I washed my hands in your little pond, Picked one of your jasmine flowers Then climbed the stairs … to a small room An eastern room … adorned with ceramics Whose windows the sun climbs… carefree Its drapes the lilac climbs carefree An eastern room In which my mother used to put up my bed Maya: “The houses look like our houses in Damascus to this extent.”

They enter one of the Arab style homes which has been transformed into a restaurant that tourists visit. It is a spacious home made up of two floors, in the center of which there is a big pool of water, an internal heaven that smells of the fragrance of Arab jasmine and jasmine, and where the 86

gargling of water in its dishes flirts with the birds nesting in their branches.

The Spanish music plays loud all over the place, and they listen to the singing known as Flamenco, which is closely related to the Oriental music and the Arab style of singing…

They sit at one of the tables. Everything in the air smells of the home country and of an old love story.

As if in a trance, Nizar says: Flamenco…

Flamenco …

And the drowsy pubs awaken To the chuckle of wooden Cajon And the deep warm voice Flowing as if a golden fountain, I sit in a corner Gathering my tears Gathering the traces of the Arabs Maya: “Finally, this is Spain that is in our dreams and where our grandparents lived and established that great civilization, the remains of which still exist today.”

Nizar, contemplating it: “Its remains are there even in the features of its sons and daughters. Look more closely at the girls who have the same features you have, the original Arab features: the sparkling black eyes, the curly black hair and dark skin. They’re the features of my country.”

Maya: “And the most beautiful of all remains are the 87

immortal Andalusian terza rima till this very day.”

Nizar: “Right, right. Spain is our old love notebook that we wish to open but are afraid to.

It’s a red shawl that urges us to die of love.

Every Arab that doesn’t visit Spain gives me the impression that he has failed the Arabic language course and that he’s kicked out of the history course.”

Maya: “And even though our grandparents failed in the history course and withdrew from the most beautiful places on earth, we hope at least to succeed in keeping the memories that they had left. We hope that we learn from their defeat to hold to our land and not lose it like we lost Andalusia.”

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Between the Old and the New Maya is sitting in her bedroom with heaps of books on the table in front of her and on the chairs. The poet grabs one of the books and flips through it…The Arab Love Poetry.

She says: “The talk of the heart and the love stories have occupied a big part in the life of the Arabs who left with us a lot of love poetry. But in all this the poet was talking about himself, drawing his emotions and whims, his wishes and desires and talking about his beloved the way a person who desires and craves to heal his body and quench the thirst of his heart would talk. He is not concerned with her state of mind or with the ideas behind her beauty, nor does he care about what she might carry of concerns or ideals.”

Nizar: “This way of looking at women is caused by the mobile kind of life that the Arab used to live because of invasions and conquests, so they weren’t able to fathom women and discover them spiritually.

The intellectual abstraction is a cultural harvest which man can’t reach except in the presence of reassuring relationships, and the relationships of the Arab with the other sex were fast, panting and uneasy.”

Maya: “This is why we notice that the old poet does not soar in painting the emotions of the woman and her desires and wishes, and that he just hovers around himself and turns her 89

into his ideal…and you?”

After some thinking, Nizar: “I’ve been loyal to the heritage of the tribe, for in my first poems I would go around the outer limits of the woman.”

Maya: “So your poetry expressed love and lust and was characterized by tension and uneasiness.”

Nizar: “Love in those days was prohibited, defeated and stolen from the keyholes of the doors. Sex, on the other hand, was a taboo, a commodity you would only buy from the black market or in the whore houses.

And when man steals love and a women turns into a steak that we eat with our fingernails, the cultural face of love disappears, any human formula of love falls off and flirting becomes a barbarian dance around a dead animal’s body.”

Maya: “Despite all the repression you talk about, the poetic image in your early poetry, in spite of being empty of emotion and knowledge of the other, is characterized by being lively and elegant, just as being emotional doesn’t carry within it except a slow excitement that tends to be quiet and contemplating more than lustful or desiring.”

Nizar: “It’s because to me the woman is an artistic subject, a painting, a poem, or a statue more than a sensual subject that arouses lust or desire.”

Maya: “And this way of looking depends on the stand of the taster, for you are a poet who is concerned with beauty, and not a certain beautiful woman.”

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Maya takes out some papers and offers him the poem “To a leg” and says: “This poem is wonderful artistic painting of the woman’s body, despite that the physical description is overwhelming.”

Nizar, smiling: “Don’t forget, dear, that this poem and its likes are a logical beginning for a young rebellious man who wanted to break the chains and break free to express his own vision.”

He reads: Interwoven marble, my hunger hungers At the delicate pulled garment “A leg is passing …” the Arabian Jasmine shivered Strings on a fertile path, It’s a sky blue eyed child In her mouth still traces of milk Her leg stirred …a stream of elegance And luster flowed in a tube Sit my little bud, settle In my veins, in my tired lid, What two blond sins you spread!

Add to my sins inventory At the knees …. my lust barks At an awesome tanned fold Seductive crucifix … the pink of My lips to wipe this crucifix, Paths of silk, my space perished And said: I am tired… my paths, Leave… move, conceal The luxury of the leg … you the source of my paleness 91

Put it back in its hole … every vein in me Yells: where’s my share?

Maya: “Your sublimation in the direction of beauty worshipping and contemplating and clarifying the points of seduction and temptation is clear.”

Nizar: “The expression of love in this period is the flirtation of teenagers and playfulness of the breathless.”

Maya: “Well, since the beginning you have leaned on a big problem in the Arab society, which is the problem of women.

And you’ve played on the string of sexual hunger, so you attracted the young and the old, those who are teenagers and those who are not.”

Nizar:”If the artist doesn’t lean on a certain cause, what would he lean on then? On air or imagination and abstraction?

My goods are all local, and the dirt with which I puddle my models is dirt from Damascus, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and the gulf. My poems that discuss women are not pornographic films; they are indictment documents that carry the signatures of seventy million Arab women.”

Maya: You’ve carried the banner of women’s liberation, but you started from the outside, from women’s body, and you know that there are a lot of steps women have to learn about before getting their physical freedom.”

Nizar: “I confess that my first poems cared about women’s body and all what relates to it like dress, color and scent, the intimate world of women which was kept a secret from us at that time.”

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Maya: “Anyway, it’s been very courageous of you to jump above the fences and break through women’s world and enter their chambers to discover their own world and uncover them to the public.”

He smiles: “I entered their chambers and discovered their magic world that we’d always dreamt of seeing it, even from a distance.”

Maya: “And after the first rushes of the early teenage years, your poetry advanced so steadily, so you started dealing with women like a spirit and an emotion and you moved from the female body into the female soul.”

Nizar: “Because I got to know them closely. And I got to know that women are loving creatures, so my attention went to the inside, and I felt compelled to express what went inside of them and to defend their freedom: Rebel, I like you to rebel Rebel against the east of white slavery, divans and incense Don’t fear anyone … the sun is the graveyard of eagles Rebel against an east that sees you a feast on bed sheets Maya: “In the poem of sadness, you carry to us the experience of sadness and solitude in the state of love in a very touching and expressive way. It takes us to far limits, to a world of wishes and dreams; it’s a style of playing with sleeping white memories that wake up the sleeping baby within us.”

Nizar: “Analyzing the poem is something beautiful, despite all the spiritual and realistic displacement in the cities of sadness and rain.”

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He turns to the tape recorder, picks a Kathem Assaher recording, inserts it and prepares himself to listen to the song.

Maya leaves her table, rests on one of the seats and closes her eyes moving to the world of music, awesome words and wonderful voice.

Your love has taught me to be sad For ages I’ve needed a woman to make me sad A woman on whose arms to weep Like a bird A woman to pick up my pieces Like crystal shards Your love my lady taught me the worst of habits It taught me to read my cup One thousand times a night And try herbalists’ medicine To knock at the doors of fortune tellers It taught me to go out Combing pavements Chasing your face In the rain In lights of cars Your love has taught me How to wander for hours Looking for gypsy hair Envied by all gypsies, Looking for a face…for a voice That is all faces … all voices Your love my lady led me To the cities of melancholy 94

I who never before entered cities of melancholy I have never known Tears are Man Man without sadness is A memory of a man, Your love has taught me To behave like boys To draw your face with chalk On walls, Your love has taught me … how love Changes the map of Times It taught me that when I love Earth stops going round, Your love has taught me things I have never considered So I read children’s stories Entered palaces of jinn And dreamt to marry the sultan’s daughter She whose eyes are Clearer than bays She whose lips are Sweeter than pomegranate blossom And dreamt of sweeping her off her feet like knights I dreamt of giving her necklaces of coral and pearls, Your love my lady has taught me illusions It taught me how a life time passes And the Sultan’s daughter never comes…

Maya: “Love in your later poetry is not just fondness; it’s a conquest, a revelation, breaking of the fences, an adventure to liberate the other from darkness.”

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Nizar: “Because women to me are not slaves or a shame that has to be hidden away, they are my other complimenting half, the half that my humanity is not whole without.”

Maya: “This is why you entered her chambers and took her out to the light.”

Nizar: “I loved her, so I sang for her. I sang her attractions; I spoke for her and revealed her right to be free.”

Maya: “So in your poetry appeared the varied topics that show the reality of the woman in the third world, the woman who was obliged to be weak and to surrender in accordance with the concept of feminism.”

Nizar: “Like the poems “Pregnant, and the Vessels of Pus”, “To an Employee”, and “Love and Petroleum”. They are poems of slander and protest against the law of monopoly and selfishness that control the Arab society in its emotional and sexual relationships.”

Maya: “This is why they called you the poet of slander?”

Nizar: “Because I’m a key witness to all the public crimes that men commit and from which the bodies of women suffers.

Take the poem Love and Poetry. It’s an image of emotional feudalism and of the immoral relationships that take place between a man who owns a check book and a woman who is owned by her golden locks and young breasts.

I have conveyed the Arab reality in the way it deals with women and did not invent it myself.”

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Maya collects the papers and the books, putting them back in no particular order on the library shelves. She carries some cassettes and tells him: “We’re going to enjoy a beautiful trip on the beach. We’ll go for a walk and then I’ll drive you to the hotel.”

Nizar, smiling: Your chaos is fantastic Stay like you are I love you in your mystery In your clarity In your appearance Disappearance In your elegance In your unique culture

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A Journey with Death Everything at the Damask home carries the touches of the people who were here and went away, leaving at the bottom of the child-poet an unforgettable pain and a loss that has transformed into songs of loyalty and love.

A photo of Nizar’s father is still hung on the wall, in addition to a poem he wrote when his father passed away. Nizar takes the poem and reads it: Has your father died?”

Nonsense! My father doesn’t die In the house is a scent Of a god and a memory of a prophet This is his place… those are his things Ripping open to a thousand young branches His paper…his tobacco … his leaning place As if father hasn’t gone yet The ash tray … His cup As it is, hasn’t been drunk And his glasses….would glass forsake Eyes more transparent than the sunset?

Traces of him in spacious rooms Traces of eagles on a playground, I look in corners for him, wherever I pass … I pass by a lawn I hold his hands tight … I lean on him 98

I pray on his tired chest Father is still among us and the talk?

A talk of glasses at the bar He talks to us … the pregnant vines From his sweet mouth … are born My father was news from heaven My father’s eyes?! A haven for stars Does the east remember my father’s eyes?

In the summer’s memory of my father Vineyards… planet’s memory My father… dear father… a history of sweetness Behind you marches, don’t reproach In your name we go on, from goodness, Delicious reaping to better In the clear of my eyes I carry you, so much so To people, I seem to be my father I bear you even in the sound my voice How is it that you’re gone, and you are still in me?

If the Arabian Jasmine bears flowers In the house a thousand golden mouths To July we open wide our doors For in summer, my father would sure come Maya: “This feeling of someone’s presence who has left a long time ago is beautiful. Maybe this feeling of his presence is caused by the great resemblance between you and him in everything. People even believe that you are him because of the way you look and talk…”

Nizar: “I can’t be at this home and not feel that he would enter sometime later, that he’ll wander around in the rooms and sit 99

in his chair while the jasmine moon fall on his newspaper.”

He closes his eyes and says: “He’s here, he’s never left, his voice is everywhere, and his loving chest is still ready to welcome us.”

Maya: “But your journey with death did not end, for death kidnapped your young son Tawfeeq.”

A cloud of tears covered Nizar’s eyes as he said: “Oh, Tawfeeq, the handsome prince of Damascus…

The death of children is like the death of stars and white flamencos. It’s like the death of colored fish in their glass vases. It tears off the soul and puts out the sun.”

Maya: “When Tawfeeq passed away, your heart went on strike, so it objected and stopped beating.”

Nizar: “But I triumphed over death, and the artist triumphs when he captures the fas- moving moments and mummifies their contents, thus preventing them from being destroyed.”

Maya: “And you came back with Tawfeeq from London to Damascus, to the Arab world.”

Nizar: “How sweet death is between the Arabs and with the Arabs. Oh, how wonderful it is to belong to the tribe. The death of Tawfeeq has returned me a Bedouin sinking in his hedonism, and brought me back to Bani Hashem, Taghleb, Makhzoum and Tameem, and to all the cousins who share your life and death with you.”

Maya: “And Damascus received him with open arms and 100

embraced him so he could sleep peacefully.”

He closes his eyes and remembers: Wish you’d seen Tawfeeq’s wedding in Damascus All Damascene minarets stretched their necks to see Tawfeeq Doves of the Umayyad mosque spread their wings beneath his head Rose trees of Damascus *“Ghota” left their orchards and ran Barefoot to embrace him, All birds of Tawfeeq’s age That were born with him, grew up with him And went to school with him, watched his plane descend, descend Like a tear down Damascus’ cheek Maya, sadly: “And all the Arabs shared you your sadness on Tawfeeq, The Damascene Prince.”

Nizar: You who made the death of my son an Arabian death, all of you Who yelled with me, wept with me, and sailed with me to ports of grief You who planted palm on my child’s grave I beseech you take care of this Damascene prince who was tall like a giraffe Whose head was high like masts on a ship Maya: “I would have to congratulate you on this patience after the precious lost one.”

Nizar: “I was really relieved when I complained to the 101

greatest legal authority which man can refer to, God. Ever since I let everything for him I started to feel relieved.

I was sure that Tawfeeq resides in heaven, and that since he left us last year, he’s been playing in the Gardens of God, sleeping in the Orchards of God and stay in at God’s place.”

Maya: “Death…it’s the wound that opens every time we remember it.”

Nizar: “Only Wounds have a powerful memory; joy has no memory.”

Maya: “And your mother’s death?”

Nizar: “My feelings upon losing her were overwhelming.

And I really felt that I was left naked and lonely, very lonely, so I wrote then: ‘with the death of my mother the last shirt of wool falls off my body, the last shirt of tenderness, the last umbrella. And next winter you’ll find me wandering in the streets naked.

Oh, my beloved, the winner, tell the angels you asked to guard me fifty years not to leave me, because I am scared of sleeping alone.”

Maya: “And with every psychological crises that you go through you feel distracted, so you resort to reconstructing yourself by going back to memories and childhood.”

After some thinking, Nizar: “That’s because to me childhood in the lifebuoy that I hold to every time the wind blows and life trembles.

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And I see myself in an orchard in Damascus surrounded by birds made of gold, a sky made of gold and fountains chattering with a voice of gold.”

Maya: “It’s the new birth and going back to childhood with all of its security and serenity.

Here come Damascus rivers, waters and honey springs Here I am among my mother, companions and homework Nizar: “Poetry my dear is the salvation from tragedies and the consolation that puts me back together like the standing tree.”

Maya: “With poetry alone you were able to face the harsh destinies that would have broken any person, for when you wrote Balkees after her death in the Iraqi embassy bombing, you were able to blow all the pain and revolution inside you and turn it into poetry so that no Arab house did not weep Balkees with you or was hurt for you pain.”

Nizar: “I wrote “Balkees” poem with the ink of the heart and the big tears of sadness, so the poem came charged with love, grief, revolution and anger, and when I lost her the loss of the mother came back to me: You left us – the three of us- lost like a feather in the rain It’s I who needs your love just like Zeinab and Omar Maya reads: Thank you Thank you My beloved is slain…now you can 103

Drink on the grave of the martyr My poem assassinated Is there a nation on earth Except us … assassinates a poem?

Sadly, he goes on: Balkees…

The most beautiful of queens in the history of Babylon Balkees Who was the tallest of palms in the land of the Arabs Balkees … my pain …

The pain of a poem touched by fingers, Will, I wonder after your hair, will wheat stalks grow tall?

Here we are Balkees Once again we enter the age of “Jahiliah” Here we enter brutality Backwardness …ugliness…meanness Enter once more… the barbaric ages Where writing is a journey Between a shell shrapnel and another Where assassinating a butterfly in its field Becomes a cause, Balkees …

A fragrance in my memory They assassinated you in Beirut like any deer After they killed words, Balkees This isn’t an ode But ..

Farewell to Arabs …

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Balkees How did you seize my days … and dreams And cancelled gardens and seasons My wife …

My beloved … my poem … the light of my eyes You were my beautiful bird …

How did you Balkees run away from me?

Balkees …

Grief digs a hole inside of me Beirut who killed you …is not aware of its crime Beirut which loved you Doesn’t know it killed its lover And extinguished the moon, What can poetry say, Balkees, In this day and age What can poetry say?

In the Peoples’ age Majoosi The coward …

The Arab world Smashed and oppressed Tongue clipped We are crime at its best So what’s “Al Ekd El Fareed” and what is “Al Aghani”?

They took my love out of my hands The poem from my mouth …

They took reading and writing …

Childhood and wishes …

Balkees, Balkees …

Tears dripping over a violin’s eyelids 105

I taught your killers the secrets of love But they… before the end of the lap Killed my horse A cloud of silent tears covers the poet’s eyes, he goes silent.

Maya goes on: Balkees…

Our Arabic fate is to be killed by Arabs.. .

Cannibalized by Arabs …

Disemboweled by Arabs …

And our graves desecrated by Arabs ...

How can we escape this fate?

The Arab dagger doesn’t recognize Men’s throats From women’s …

The poet goes on: Balkees …

If they blew you up … to us All funeral processions start at Karbala…

And end in Karbala …

I won’t read history after today My fingers are alight …

My clothes blood stained Here we enter the Stone Age Every day we move A thousand years back; The sea in Beirut, After your eyes’ passing away, resigned…

Poetry… asks about its poem 106

Which words hadn’t finished …

And no one has an answer, Grief, Balkees, Squashes my heart like an orange Now… I know words’ dilemma I … who invented messages I don’t know how to start my message …

The blade stabs me deep in the side And the side of expression All culture is you, Balkees, the female is culture; Balkees The nicest homeland One doesn’t know how to live in this homeland One doesn’t know how to die in this homeland…

I still am paying my blood The highest find, How do I make people happy… heaven Willed that I be alone …

Like winter leaves …

Are poets born of the womb of misery?

Is verse a stab In the heart … with no cure?

Or is it just me whose Eyes summarize the history of tears?

Maya: “It is from the heart of this tragedy that the greatest of all poems came out.”

Nizar: What can poetry say, Balkees, In this day and age 107

What can poetry say?

In the Peoples’ age Majoosi The coward …

The Arab world Smashed and oppressed Tongue clipped We are crime at its best So what’s “Al Ekd El Fareed” and what is “Al Aghani”?

They took my love out of my hands The poem from my mouth …

They took reading and writing …

Childhood and wishes …

Balkees, Balkees …

Tears dripping over a violin’s eyelids I taught your killers the secrets of love But they…before the end of the lapse Killed my horse

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Forbidden You Are The car moves, carrying them on Bludan road, while Kathem’s voice, with all its sensation and sad tune, goes with the poem “Forbidden you are”.

Maya, smiling: “You’re always objecting, even when you’re sick?”

Nizar: “And should I let them confiscate the most beautiful thing in my life: the pen and the paper, the book and the pretty face?”

Maya: “But it’s the heart attack, sir, and you had to rest a little and get away from everything that can irritate or excite you or cause you heart pain…”

Nizar: “You said heart attack. You know what? Just sensing it’s a female, I started to deal with her lovingly, and started to be attached to her as I get attached to a moody woman who messes around with her dates.

I have a feeling that the heart attack is a woman.

A woman who is hard to get hold of and is unpredictable, the type that you never know when she hates you and when she craves you.

A voluptuous mad woman who chases the men she picks and rapes them in public wherever she finds them: in the coffee shop, in the office, in the elevator, in the car, even in their 109

marriage bed.”

Maya, laughing: “And just because she is a woman, you’ve forgiven her for invading you?!”

Nizar: “I’m sure it’s a woman…for as you know, she never comes close to women, nor does she make love to them or suffer any sexual deviation.

Men are the only object of her interest and love.”

Maya: “And since the heart attack is a woman, she hates to be shared with the man she chooses, so she gives instructions to doctors with a list of forbidden things.”

Nizar: “the list is rather long with this barbarian lover.

The tools of thinking are forbidden, so you can’t have a pen, a paper or a newspaper. The heart patient is required to cancel his memory and forget all the names, nouns, verbs, interrogation marks and female pronouns because they augment the heart pain and cause the patient a romantic crisis that is not called for.”

Maya: “Despite this entire list, dear, you managed to survive your sickness with a magical ability and you regained your poetical giving in a way that arouses awe and surprise at the same time.”

Nizar: “yes. I survived my ordeal like I always do. Oh, listen how beautiful the song is and how much expression there is in the voice. Please rewind the tape.”

Maya rewinds the tape and they listen to Kathem Assaher: 110

Forbidden you are From coming into my room, my love Forbidden From sitting, whispering or leaving your hand in mine Forbidden from bringing me a doll I love Or reading me Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs You’re forbidden 









My sheets are white And time, hours and days All are white Could you, darling, put a little lipstick on the smooth lip, I ask for pens, but pens they do not give me I ask for my days that have no days I ask them for a capsule to put me into the world of dreams Even sleeping pills, like me are used to Staying up, they don’t sleep.

If you come visiting, Try to wear necklaces and rings With exotic stones, Try to wear forests And trees What does who longs my darling In this solitary confinement With doors and guards between us And martial laws What does one who longs for love, And for playing on ivory fingers do?

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With the heart still under house arrest?

Oh!... don’t feel guilty my little one For every woman I’ve loved has given me A myocardial infraction Forbidden you are.

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Al Qayrawan and the Garden of Poets In a poetic sitting where the sea washes the feet of Al Raouche Rock with its soft waves, and the sun puts on its red gown as she gets ready to leave, Nizar is thinking of this charming city, but Maya wants to hear more from him even if she thought that it was the time of contemplation and love of the sea.

She asks him: “There are cities which captivate us since the very first moment that we see them, just like people do.

So, which of the cities you felt is the most captivating for a poet?”

Nizar, after some deep thought: “I haven’t known in my life a city that gets drunk, totters and loses its mind before poets like Al Qayrawan.

I haven’t known a city that eats poetry, drinks poetry, breathes poetry, and breastfeeds its children the milk of poetry like Al Qayrawan.

I even haven’t known a city that believes that poetry is the prophet, the saint, the intercessor and the awaited Mahdi except for Al Qayrawan.”

Maya: “Al Qayrawan is a city that opens its doors to all the poets, loves them and offers them a lot. Isn’t it the city that engraved poems written by the Arab poets on a blue ceramic mural in the heart of the city?”

Nizar, as if in a beautiful dream: “Yes, there was Al Mutanabbi, 113

Ibn Al Mu’taz, Ibn Rashiq Al Qayrawani, Ashabi, Adonis and Nizar Kabbani.

The geographical, language, and territorial boundaries fell off and the Arab Poetry Convention conquered the Arab Countries Convention. The great leader Aqaba bin Nafe’ came out of his mosque to greet us one by one and congratulate us on our great solitary achievements. Oh! Wonderful Qayrawan, few are the cities that beautify themselves with poetry, apply it as an eye shadow, wash themselves with its music and wear it as a cloud of cotton on their body.

Few are the cities that consider poetry a fate painted on their forehead and a part of their pulse and blood circulation.

Few are the cities that don’t know of languages except the language of poetry.”

Maya: “It’s wonderful cultural news that a garden in Al Qayrawan is called “the garden of poets.”

Nizar: “Yes, it’s wonderful news that is almost like the theatre of the impossible, telling us that the Arab poets now own in Al Qayrawan a garden that has palm trees, pomegranate and beautiful ladies in heaven.

Who would have believed that after 50 years of taking up this tuned death called poetry, I’d find a small nest in which I’d hide the eggs of my poems before the foxes, the snakes and the police of cultural security eat it?”

Ragahd: “Al Qayrawan is a small city in green Tunisia. It is a cradle for poets, poetry and people who practice the love 114

of poetry in public.”

Nizar: “Yes, imagine that in one the poetical evenings in a public garden in Tunisia the garden was full to the maximum limit until you couldn’t step in anymore, so the audience started penetrating to the trees like finches.”

Maya: “I wish all the Arab countries would follow the example of wonderful Al Qayrawan and go back to its days of Jahilia when poems used to be written in gold water and posted on the walls of the Kaaba.”

Nizar: “Poetry is the book of the Arabs and the resume of the Arab nation. In all times and places it represents an advanced strategic point of all resistance points.”

Maya: “And what about old poetry and modern poetry?”

Nizar: “I’ve always been on the side of the revolution, on the condition that this revolution add something to my existence and not annul this existence, and on the condition that it give me a new land on which to stand and not to take away my land and cut off the family tree to which I belong.”

Maya: “But the supporters of modern poetry see that old poetry has become old and outdated.”

Nizar: “Arabic poetry has a cultural depth to it that stretches across two thousand years, and it is an essential part of the great Arabic heritage. Our loyalty to old Arabic poetry is not an unconditional loyalty, for we are well aware of the areas of its beauty and ugliness as well as its weaknesses and strengths.

But we do not allow ourselves or others to execute all the 115

book of the Arabic poetry on the pretext of revolution and progressiveness.”

Maya: “And the revolution against old poetry?”

Nizar: “The first condition of the revolution is to have a cause right behind it. And the most important characteristic of the revolutionary is that he carries a clear vision of the future, in the absence of which attacking the heritage in a free and barbarian way becomes an act of sabotage.”

Maya: “So, in your opinion, we must directly provide an alternative what we are revolting against.”

Nizar: “Right. Because destroying things only in order to be revengeful, sadistic or aggressive against history just because it’s history is a crime to which all the descriptions of the public crime apply.”

Maya: “And the Nizarian Language.”

Nizar, smiling: “This relativism is beautiful.”

Maya: “It is said that if Nizar Kabbani drops a slip of paper with some writing on it in a bus, the first passenger will pick it and return it to him.”

He answers with a smile: “I’ll consider these words as a precious document and an important testimony. It’s wonderful to own a special language that has stuck to me and become so much like me; it’s very much like a passport that people would give back to me if I lost it.”

Maya: “So you’re claiming that you’ve invented a new 116

language?”

Nizar: “No, I wouldn’t claim that. Language is not a rabbit that pops out of some magician’s hat, but I do allow myself to say that I’ve put into circulation a language that has been on the lips of people, a language they had been scared to use before.

All I did was convince poetry to give up its aristocracy, put on summer Hawaiian shirts and go down to the streets to play with the kids, laugh with them and cry with them.”

Maya: “And you’ve been successful at this because the poet is the one who develops the language and gives it the identity of the age.”

Nizar: “Revolution is inevitable, for act of creativity is an adventure, and the poet who is not involved on a daily basis in a new adventure with the language he writes is confining himself to a circle of chalk that closes on him day after day until it kills him.”

Maya: “And despite your being affected by the Damask alphabet, the vocabulary of your poetical dictionary does not seem to belong to a certain land or country?”

Nizar: “This is surely due to my diplomatic life and my moving from one country to the other. I carry in my poetry all the nationalities of the world, and I belong to one country which is the country of the Man. Coming in contact with the world, with cities, languages and cultures has made my memory made much like the memory 117

of a camera which doesn’t forget or leave off anything.”

Maya: “It’s a huge storage of lines, colors and voices.”

Nizar: “And from travelling inside the human being and inside books this poetical dictionary has been made.”

Maya: “What’s important is that your poetic language is a street language that all people can understand and use without any difficulty.”

Nizar: “It’s because when I write my poems, I write them for the people in my country, regardless of their level, and I don’t address a certain high level. And this Arab audience is my fate; it is a fate that I love and I’m proud of.”

Maya: “They also love you and take pride in your existence.”

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Damascus is with me Maya is working hard on her accumulated papers while Nizar is looking at the photo album of Damascus.

She says: “Damascus is with us inside of us wherever we go.”

Nizar: “Oh, beautiful Damascus.”

Maya: “It’s Damascus that you describe by saying: God has it doomed that it is with you Damascus With you the universe starts and ends It’s not a choice for the sea to be free Or for the goldflinch to choose his voice?

Nizar: “Yes…it’s her…”

Peace be upon the Jasmine of Damascus Sometimes climbing up my shoulders Sometimes up the balconies of the clouds And makes me an Ummide king And a fountain in the houses of Damascus Maya collects the big number of papers on which she wrote what the poet had said and recited.

He asks her: “And why do you bother about collecting all this information when my work is available for everyone?”

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Maya: “Because I frankly would like to collect the best of what you have written and said in one book.

What I regret the most is hearing these words about you: Nizar is the poet of women, the sensual poet or the poet of slander and sex.

And I feel even sorrier that the new generation is not aware of this big amount of poetry on the nation and its causes.”

Nizar: “You’re right, for most of what hurts a poet is to be placed under a certain category and one title.”

Maya: “The great Nizar Kabbani has implanted in us orchards, roses and gardens of Arabian Jasmine, the poet who expressed through his poems our feelings of love, desire and longing, the poet who expressed our pains toward our big country, and the one with whom we wept our defeats.

Everybody should know about this poet, thanks to whom the Arabic poetry is still read and listened to on a wide scale.

Do you understand now why I am collecting, writing, taking notes and documenting?”

Nizar: I’ve left a light…a lot have come and gone As if not ever been born Today a few roses to be followed By others and every year the leaves grow Maya: “Engraving memories is the work of poets who defeat time and face mortality with immortality, and you have 120

engraved in the memory of this nation immortal poems. You gave back to poetry its real value and great message.”

Nizar: “So you like me.”

Maya: “Yes, I do, because I know you, and I’d like others to do the same. I want them to love you not because of a love poem you wrote but I’d like them to know you and be aware of your important role in Arabic poetry.”

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A Farewell Maya is in her room, sitting on one of the comfortable chairs with the picture of Nizar Kabbani that the painter sent her today in her hands while a collection of books scattered here and there, and the book My Story with Poetry open in front of her…

Najat Assaghira’s voice goes off singing “Does he Think?” on the radio while her fiancée Nabil sits contemplating her with a smile. The song comes to an end and the photo slips out of her hand, so she wakes up from her nap.

She looks at Nabil and finds him smiling. She says: “You’re here?”

Nabil: “Who else would come into your room at this time and surprise you while dreaming?”

Maya: “Oh, I’ve woke up from the dream.”

The ghost of Nizar’s poems roam around me as the incense, musk and ambergris diffuse out of it. Bells, hums and hidden calls mixed with a wave of overwhelming sadness…”

Nabil takes the painting, looks at it and says: “You must have been at his home in Damascus.”

Maya: “I was with him on a long, long trip: at his home, in Beirut, in Damascus and Spain, and oh, it was a wonderful trip.”

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Then she says with sadness: “But we have to face the reality that poets, just as all other people, die. Nizar Kabbani died after a long struggle with pain, glory and immortal poetry.”

Nabil: “What’s constant my dear is that man is mortal, but what he leaves behind stays around. It’s pretty sure that Nizar Kabbani’s poetry will remain fragrant, resounding, intoxicating and entertaining across the years.”

Nabil looks at his watch and says: “You must have forgotten about our date and the play that we are going to watch today.

Come on, come on.”

Maya looks at him imploringly and says: “Please dear, can’t we put off the play just one more day? I have to write down what I lived in my dream.”

Nabil fakes impatience: “Alright sweetie. The only thing I’d allow to take you from me is writing, especially if you are writing about the poet of love, beauty and freedom. Isn’t he the one who said on the tongue of every one of us: If I silent stood before your beauty Silence in the presence of beauty is beauty Our words in love kill our love Letters die when they’re said It’s enough for you and me to stay forever A secret that tears me apart, a secret untold Maya moves towards him and hugs him joyfully: “Do you know why I love you so much?”

Surprised, he asks her: “Are there any reasons I don’t know of yet?”

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Maya: “Yes, it’s because you love my work and you don’t stand between the two of us. You even sacrifice a lot of times just to leave me with my papers and books.”

Nabil laughs: “Alright, I’ll go before you change your mind and take back the words of love that you have engulfed me with.”

Gharid El Cheikh The end 06/06/1999

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CV Gharid El Cheikh Mohamad Name: Gharid El-Cheikh Mohamad.

Masters degree in Arabic Language and Literature Specialized in Manuscript Editing and Verification, Member of the Lebanese Writers’ Association.

Owner of Al Nokhba House for Composition, Translation and Publication, Beirut, Lebanon.

She is the first Arab woman to produce a dictionary: The Dictionary of Language, Grammar, Scientific, Philosophic, Legal and Modern Termsk.

Literary Works 1- Editing and verifying Al Kharai’ty’s Manuscript: Sickness of the Hearts (327 Hijri), Dar Al Kotob Al-Ilmiyah: Beirut, 2000.

2- The Dictionary of Love Poems from Arabian Heritage books, Kanadeel Publishing House: Beirut, 2007.

3- The Dictionary of Mass Media, Al Nokhba Publishing House: Beirut, 2007.

4- The Dictionary of Synonyms, Dar Al Rateb Al Jamiyah: Beirut, 2005.

5- The Grammar Dictionary For students, , Dar Al Rateb Al Jamiyah: Beirut, 2005.

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6- The Dictionary of Letters and Circumstances, Dar Al Rateb Al Jamiyah: Beirut, 2005.

7- The Dictionary of nouns and pronouns, Dar Al Rateb Al Jamiyah: Beirut, 2005.

8- The Dictionary of Nouns and Verb Conjugation, Dar Al Rateb Al Jamiyah: Beirut, 2005.

9- The Dictionary of Plural Nouns (Al Jomou3 wa Al Mothanna), Dar Al Rateb Al Jamiyah: Beirut, 2005.

10- The Science of Al Eloquence, Dar Al Rateb Al Jamiyah: Beirut, 2006.

11- Meanings and literary methods, Dar Al Rateb Al Jamiyah: Beirut, 2006.

12- The “Master” (A collection of Arabic Language Lessons and its Grammar), Dar Al Rateb Al Jamiyah: Beirut, 2005.

13- The “ Master” in rhetoric and Arud. Dar Al Rateb Al Jamiyah: Beirut, 2005.

14- The “Master” in Simplifying Arabic Language for Elementary Students, Dar Al Rateb Al Jamiyah: Beirut, 2006.

15- The Practical Master in Simplifying Arabic Dictation for Elementary Students, Dar Al Rateb Al Jamiyah: Beirut, 2006.

16- The Practical Master in Simpifying Grammar for the Elementary Students, Dar Al Rateb Al Jamiyah: Beirut, 2006.

17- The Practical Master in Reciting Poetry, Dar Al Rateb Al Jamiyah: Beirut, 2006.

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18-“Days With Them” Series: * Jarir, Al Nokhba House for Composition, Translation and Publication, Beirut, 2009. * Nizar Kabbani, Al Nokhba House for Composition, Translation and Publication Beirut, 2009 * Mohammad Al Feitoury,Al Nokhba House for Composition, Translation and Publication, Beirut, 2009. * Abdul Aziz Khoja, Al Nokhba House for Composition, Translation and Publication, Beirut, 2009. * Huda Mikati, Al Nokhba House for Composition, Translation and Publication, Beirut, 2009 19- Fadwa Toukan: A Literary Study, Scientific Books Publishing House: Beirut, 1994.

20- May Ziyada: The Author of Longing and Yearning, Scientific Books Publishing House: Beirut, 1994.

21- Kassem Amin: Between the Cause and Literature, Scientific Books Publishing House: Beirut, 1994.

22-The Encyclopedia of Love, Beauty and ghazal. Dar Al Fikr Al Loubnany, Beirut, 1999.

23- Techniques of Expression in Abdul Aziz Khoja poetry, Kanadeel Publishing House: Beirut, 2003.

24- The Poetry of Abdulla Bashrahil: Artistic and Humanitarian indications. Kanadeel Publishing House: Beirut, 2003.

25- A Collection of five senses Stories for children, Oun Publishing 127

House: Beirut.

26- How to Tell A Children’s Story, Kanadeel Publishing House: Beirut, 2002.

27- Education and learning Through Play, Al Hadi Publishing House: Beirut, 2005.

28- Hammour’s Diary, A Children’s Story, Al Nokhba House for Composition, Translation and Publication.

29- The Best Beauty Quotes, Arabic Book Publishing House: Beirut, 2005.

30- The Best Wisdom Quotes: Arabic Book Publishing House: Beirut, 2005.

31- Editing “Pleasing and Keeping Company” book, Arabic Book Publishing House: Beirut, 2005.

32- Explaining Jarir’s Poetry Book, Annour Foundation for Published Material, Beirut, 1999.

33- Explaining Abi Al Kassem Ashabi Poetry Book, Annour Foundation for Published Material, Beirut, 1999.

34- Explaining Hafeth Ibrahim’s Poetry Book, Annour Foundation for Published Material, Beirut, 2001.

35- Explaining Omrou’Al Qay s Poetry Book, Annour Foundation for Published Material, Beirut, 2000.

36- My Picture Dictionary: English-Arabic-French, Al Nokhba House for Composition, Translation and Publication, Beirut, 2010.

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