Daily Nightmares
Ten Poems by Fadwa Tuqan
Translated
By
Yusra A. Salah
Introduction
The tragic plight of the Palestinian people is one of the burning issues in the
world. The Zionist dreams and ambitions were first materialized in the Balfour
Declaration in 1917, which, on the surface, promised the Jews a homeland in Palestine.
Ever since, there has been no peace in Palestine, since the Zionists' aim was and still is
the domination of the land, denying the indigenous people any right to the land of their
great–great–grandfathers.
The struggle between Arabs and Jews persisted over the following decades. All
the resolutions attempted by world bodies to solve the thorny problem were futile and
lacked the power of execution. It is needless to mention American and other Western
prejudices against the Palestinians.
Thus the Palestinians who stuck to their homes and remained on their land,
whether before or after 1967, are undergoing the worst atrocities and injustices. Yet in
spite of all the attempts by the Zionists to make the people lose heart and acquiesce, the
Palestinians have strong faith in the legitimacy of their cause and are determined that they
will one day attain their rights and establish their state on their land through whatever
means.
Poets in general are usually more sensitive to events and happenings than ordinary
people. Thus the Palestinian poets were able to portray the various forms of suffering and
oppression inflicted on their people in an unequalled manner. Among these poets soars
Fadwa Tuqan as a prominent female poet.
Touched by the way Ms. Tuqan expressed herself, I felt she is speaking on behalf
of all of us, and I thought of translating ten representative poems written after 1967, to
acquaint English readers with the suffering of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation
and with the inhuman treatment they meet at the time when the “Free World” speak
affectedly of human rights!
Not being a poet myself, I overlooked metre and other technicalities of poetry
writing in this attempt. But I tried to preserve as much as possible the content of the
original, encouraged by the fact that “what carries over most powerfully in translation is
the poetic image. In a translation which sets out to replicate metre and rhythm at all cost,
we are in danger of losing the exact nature of the image.”
So I hope I was able to preserve the “poetic image” of the poems within clear and
natural English.
I sincerely hope that through these translations, the reader will come close to
Fadwa's vision and feelings, which are shared by all Palestinians.
April 1984
Yusra A. Salah
2
My Afflicted Town
The Day of the Zionist Occupation
The day we beheld death and treachery
Tide retreated
And heaven's windows closed
And the town held its breath
The day the waves were defeated
And the ugly faces unveiled themselves to light
Hope turned to ashes.
And my town with plague was choked.
Children and songs disappeared
No shadow, no echo
And grief crept naked into my town
With stained footsteps
And silence in my town lay heavy
Like mountains
Like night mysterious,
Silence was grievous–burdened
With death and defeat
Ah! My silent afflicted town
Is it so that in harvest time
The produce bum and the fruit?
Oh, what an end!
3
To The Face That Was Lost In the Wilderness
1
Do not send me cards full of
Memory's fragrance and love's bouquets;
Between my heart and love's bliss lies a desert–
The burning cords of which
Coil and twine around me like serpents
Smothering flowers, hissing into them venom
And flames.
Do not say to me, “Remember me”
Do not say...
Love's memory's obscured,
And dream's images are dimmed and love is but a phantom
Lost, driven far and beyond by the Darkness of Wilderness
From my heart.
Darkness murdered the moon.
Oh, precious, pretty and molested!
If you gazed into the mirror of my heart
You would see no reflection
Save that of the face Darkness has molested
Covering my whole heart,
Her pretty and molested face,
Oh, precious, pretty and molested!
Oh, suffering that swells,
Swells everyday
Oh, wounds that groan.
4
2
How has this world revolved?
How were we?
Our love has just been born. Has it time to grow
In the midst of horror, in the depth of danger?
My country was over–flooded with waters of Darkness–
Her silent heart was in the eve of defeat
Distraught and grieved. Blood was on the walls
Bouquets of flowers.
I was raving!
“O Land of grandfathers, open your heart,
Open your maternal breast and embrace them. The offerings are so dear!
So dear.”
The Monster of the jungle was drinking
In the tavern of crime
And ominous winds were howling
In the four directions
That day we were together.
That day I was oblivious with terror
(or was I not oblivious) that tomorrow
Would rush him away and that
We will never meet again.
At moments we may have smiled
To deceive grief so as not to weep, and I rave:
“O My foreign love, why?
Why has my fatherland become a gate to hell?
And why have apple trees today turned
Bitter? Why
Are moonbeams no more
A swimming pool for gardens' flowers?
My countrymen used to plough the land–
They used to live and love life;
They ate bread and oil with appetite
And joy.
Fruit and flowers used in all seasons
To strew the land with rainbows.
Will the seasons again shower gifts
On my land and people?
Will they again give?”
I was raving and reeling as if slaughtered.
I would see the pit inviting me, but clinging to his arm
Gave me protection, and I recover to live
And to be strong.
5
Grievance pours. Jerusalem's night's still
And murky.
Curfew's bidden, nothing is heard
In the heart of the City
Save the heavy beats of bloody boots
Under which Jerusalem shrinks like
A captive maiden.
In the square a bird
Was pierced with an arrow in the forehead,
And on the ground was smoke and ruin.
On the porch two silhouettes were looking at
The City in the dark.
In the comer was a suitcase,
Habits and souvenirs from
The beloved land,
The blue of his eyes dilated
Into sad lakes
Whose brinks flooded out
Water and salt.
Jerusalem was his fancy
His bliss and his creed.
And I rave and rave:
“O Love, why
Has God forsaken my land? Why
Has He withheld light, and deserted my country
To oceans of Darkness?”
And I envisage the world a dragon
At my country's gates
And I cry, “Dear,
Who would solve the riddle, who would disclose
The secret of the words?!”
6
3
Ah, twenty moons
Have elapsed, twenty moons;
And my life goes on,
And your absence
Like my life persists.
Only one remembrance I keep: my country's,
Whose pretty countenance my heart enfolds.
My life goes on.
The winds engulf my days–
On the rough road
Along with my people; on its sides we're confronted
With rocks, thorns and crucifixion.
My life with my people persists.
And beyond the River forests of tanned spears–
Stir and multiply.
And the rumbling of the Storm
Solves the riddle and deciphers to the world,
The dragon, the secret of the words.
Blows and blasts,
Flames and sparks
Scorch the people on the rough road,
And the fallen, team after team,
In one embrace and fraternal end fall.
And Darkness–thick as it may be–goes on breeding.
Stars following stars
In the dark alleys abide.
And my country's like a pomegranate in which blood surges and murmurs
And my life goes on.
And my life goes on.
7
Nightmares of Day and Night
To my friend Rose Mary
1
In our street the Dead pass
Sheltering in the shade of the wall like ghosts and hollow skeletons
Not light, not heavy
O Sister, enshroud our Dead
O Shame, my sister is naked, so are the neighbors
And I, no garb wraps my body, nothing wraps the people in the neighborhood
Even the trees are naked
The beastly cyclones
Plucked even the birds
The knocks of soldiers bang at my door
And my sister flurries with panic:
The soldiers, the soldiers
Away, away
Hide anywhere
Woe unto me . . . and around myself I turn
I climb my eastern window
Shut is my eastern window!
I climb my western window
Shut is my western window
The soldiers, the soldiers ... I keep on turning and turning and turning
Antara el Absiyyu* calls from behind the wall,
“O Abla, you're wedded to strangers while I am the suitor.”
“Keep your voice down, O Antar, woe unto me, woe unto me!
“I am the cousin, your flesh and blood.”
(Woe unto me, Antara is concealed in my eyes, the soldiers will see him.)
“The soldiers hear you, the soldiers see you.”
“O Abla, let me feed upon the olive of your eyes, allow me.
Do not push me away from your olive, do not push me...”
“The soldiers knock at my door.”
“O Abla, lady of sorrow, take my heart's red flower,
preserve it, my maiden.”
“The soldiers are at my door, woe unto me!”
“Even God has forsaken me, even God.”
*
Antara el Absiyyu (about A.D. 525-615) was one of the greatest poets of the pre-Islamic period.
He was the son of an Ethiopian slave girl, so his father refused to recognize him. He fought
bravely in the tribal wars, and his victory won him recognition by his father and his tribe. He is
famous in Arabic literature for his ardent love for his cousin Abla, who inspired some of his
greatest poems.
8
“Silence, silence.”
“And my kindred of Abs* stabbed me in the back and betrayed me on a dark night.”
Open the door
Ourvez la porte
Iftahi hadelet
Iftahi al-bab
“The voices of the soldiers in all the tongues of the earth mingle at my door.”
“O Abla, I am...”
Woe unto me...
…
*
Abs was Antara's tribe.
9
2
I waken from oppressive dreams
I sip coffee to waken my tipsy head
I plunge in all dimensions of silence
Digging into my dumped sorrows
But I lose the way
“O God, O God”
Silence echoes.
Into the Jerusalem dailies I thrust my eyes
I read a piece of news like other news:
“Bethlehem–A group of Arab farmers
in
Beit Iskaria were surprised when a bunch of
bulldozers left Kfar Atsyoun settlement and
began to wipe out the plants in the land of that village”
I read a complaint submitted to the War Minister:
(Ibrahim Atallah from Beit Iskaria Village:
Bethlehem District
Subject: Confiscation of arable land which is my property.
I acquaint you that the land–which I own in
Beit Iskaria, is my source of living with
twenty–one other persons I support from
planting it–has been taken the night before
last when bulldozers destroyed the crops for
which I sweated the whole length of year.
In the name of my children, who will
starve, I entreat you to take all possible
measures to restore to me my land for which I
refuse any substitute or any compensation.)
The same news...
There is no novelty in the news.
Nothing exciting....
Bitter nausea overwhelms me
There is a leech inside me that raids my heart.
And goes on sucking the fluid of the heart.
What is this? What is this, O God!
And silence echoes.
I tune in my wireless and roam in the corners of the wide world
The blind legendary monster gobbles itself:
Death hovers in Belfast
Staggering in Terror's vaults
A golden head like a flower
Was reaped by a time bomb.
In Vietnam
10
Daily sorrows pollinate blossoms and fruit
And the soil is nourished with napalm fertilizer
Everywhere and anywhere the Death Bird
Clenches its bent claws and pierces the raw flesh.
The kisses of Death are gifts of terror
Spreading through the mail of the world. Who paved the world with terror?
Who roofed the world with terror?
O God, Why has love died?
Silence breaks;
A beast howls in the wood
And amid the thundering clouds rumbles
The laughter of God.
11
The Prophecy of the Soothsayer
1
When I became twenty years old
The aged fortune–teller told me:
“The winds while blowing say to me:
The evil spell that prevails here
Within your ragged and divided house
Will dwell, will not vanish
Till the sworn avowed knight arrives.
The winds while blowing unfold a tale
About a knight who will arrive
Neither weak nor slow,
That he will come from a road
Paved for him by thunder and lightning.
“Won't you ask the winds for me, O
Fortune–teller of the winds,
When will the sworn knight arrive?”
“When Rejection becomes a burning–place and a Golgotha,
The womb of the earth ejects him
A portion of its body.
But the winds in their blowing
Whisper, Beware
Your seven brothers!
Beware
Your seven brothers!”
Under my cracked and cleft ceiling
I stood near the ripped balcony
Dreaming of creation,
Waiting for that who will come,
Listening to the pulse of the entombed seed,
Shaking the womb of the earth,
Feeding the heart of the ear–com.
O Chemistry of life and death,
When will Rejection be converted
Into a burning–place and a Golgotha?!
12
2
His steps were when he arrived bells
Ringing in the vaults of darkness,
And the wind was when he arrived a horse
Galloping under him and shaking ruin away.
He mounted me behind him and said, “O my love,
Your love protects my bare back;
Cling to me, fear not the night and the wolves,
For love's never a coward.”
The day we rode the horse's back
Our songs began
To shine like unsheathed swords
On the banks of the night.
On the banks of the night
Our trees soared and grew
Flowers and fruit and stars,
And whenever one star sank
In the season of cyclones and simooms,
Our trees shook themselves and bloomed
A cluster of stars.
The day we rode the horse's back
Our foreheads became brilliant in the sun,
And banded with wreaths of pride.
We became visions the eyelids cuddled
We became flowers
On the lips of the plain
And the lowland, and the river
And the children's eyelashes became
Our flags
When their eyes were opened
By the flash of our songs.
“Inner Voice”:
(But the winds while blowing
Say, Beware
Your seven brothers!
Beware your seven brothers!)
If we only speak softly
And restrain this agitation
If we hideaway and walk slowly behind the fence
For I have, O Love, seven jealous brothers.
13
If the moon
Retreats to her cave in the mountains and draws the curtains,
I fear her light, O Love, might betray us,
For the hounds are on our path.
They'll be furious if the moon blades flash in the night
Your love protects my naked back;
Cling to me; love can never be, Sweet, a coward.
“Inner Voice”:
But the winds in their blowing
Whisper, Beware
Your seven brothers!
Beware your seven brothers!
Beware your seven brothers!
14
3
Bloody Cain is standing erect in every place;
Cain knocks on the doors, on the balconies, on the walls.
He climbs, leaps, creeps like a serpent and hisses in a thousand tongues
Cain carouses in the squares, twines, turns with the cyclones, and knocks thoroughfares
And opens wide gates for destruction and
Bears on his bloody hands fire coffins
Cain is a lunatic God; he is burning Rome
And death is huge and is growing
Into a crystal willow
Watered by the Devil dwelling in the palace
Thus it expands, expands, expands, expands
Expands and shoots more branches;
And on the horizons, on the thoroughfares, on the door–steps and on the walls
Leaves of flame are swayed by Satan's wind.
Death is huge and is growing everywhere,
Death and bloody Cain are everywhere.
To them I extended my hand
In grief and in sorrow I pleaded:
“O Brothers, do not kill my lover,
Do not cut that youthful throat.
In love, in kinship and in compassion I pray you
Kill him not, O Brothers,
Kill him not,
Ki–...”
15
4
When death relaxed
And round me the branches of silence trailed,
I bent over him burdened with grief,
Wiping his broken–ribbed breast,
Wiping it with love, sorrow and tears,
I gathered his limbs, which
With blood, smoke and pebbles were mixed.
I collected the forest of dark hair
And the tom lip that was like a flower
And the gems of his eyes–
(Woe unto me, the eyes that used to pierce
The wood of darkness The store of visions and the dwelling–place
of the dream.)
I collected him limb by limb
A bouquet of flowers
And to the winds I handed them
Saying, “O Winds,
These are his remnants, plant them
In the mountain tops and bottoms,
In the plains, in the lowlands, in the riverbeds
Take them and spread them all through the Land.
September pulls me
To the chinks of my tattered cleft house,
And the wind fortune–teller still
Knocks at my sad door whenever morning breathes
And says:
“When the seasons complete their round
The rain seasons bring him back;
March will bring him forth
In chariots of buds and flowers!”
16
Five Little Songs
Labour
The wind carries the pollen,
And our land is shaken at night by the pains of labour
And the hangman persuades himself
With the story of impotence, with the story of ruins and debris.
O Young future! Tell the hangman
What trembling is like at birth
Tell him how flowers are born
From the earth's pain and how the mom is born
From the blood–red rose in the wounds.
17
How the Song is Born
We take our songs
From your tortured and molten heart
And beneath the immenseness of darkness
We knead them with frankincense and light,
And love and vows,
We blow into them the power of Man and flint
Then we give them back to your pure heart, your crystal heart
O My striving and patient people
18
When Bad News Pours Down
The winds twine smoke in the deep valleys
And in the night's alleys and Khamsins*
Stones and rocks hurl down
Black with smoke
Then let the rocks hurl as they will
And let the stones hurl as they wish.
The River will go on flowing towards its mouth
And behind the alleys' slopes in
Time's spaciousness
Daylight awaits.
For our sakes Daylight awaits.
*
Khamsins are cyclones.
19
The Worshipper of His Own Death
The vision grabs me at the smile of mom
I behold him, my bird, flying
Deserting me before his due time
Slipping from my hands into a whirlwind
Spreading his wings in a final flutter.
Fighting the winds, then he falls
From strife's summits.
The rocks open their arms like silken rivulets
To receive my bird that flies
That deserts me before his due time
And the earth receives back her son
Receives him back into its living and ancient heart.
O Crimson trees! thy branches are roofing
The sides of the path
I adore my death in the seasons of sacrifice and offering
I adore my death under your blood–stained sunken shade.
20
It Suffices me to Abide in her Lap
It suffices me to die on its soil
And under its dust melt and decay
And on its soil shoot up turf
And burst forth a flower,
Playfully handled by the palms of a child raised in my land
It suffices me to abide in my country's lap,
Soil, turf and a flower.
21
Hamza
1
...Hamza was
One of the natives of my town, good, like the rest of them Ate his bread
From a striving hand like all my simple and good countrymen.
He said to me one day when we met
While I was groping in the wilderness of defeat:
“Stand fast, Cousin. Do not weaken.
This land which the fire of crime reaps
And which today shrinks with sorrow and silence
This land, the betrayed heart of which
Will not die and will ever live.”
This land is a woman
In the furrows and in the wombs the secret of fertility is one.
The power of the secret that grows the palm and the corn
Grows, too, the fighting people.
Days elapsed before I met my cousin again
Yet I knew
That the belly of the earth was rising and shaking
With labour and a new birth.
22
2
The five and sixty years
Were a solid rock that dwelt his back
When the governor of the town gave his order
“Demolish the house ... and chain his son in the torture cell.”
The governor of the town gave his order and went away
Singing the praises of love, security and prevailing peace.
The soldiers surrounded the house, and the snake coiled
And skillfully completed
The full circle.
And commanding knocks were heard: “Leave the house.”
And generously allowed . . . one hour or about.
Hamza opened the windows To the sun, and under the nose of the soldiers, hallowed
And cried: “O Palestine, rest assured.
Me and the house and my children are offerings to your salvation.
For you we live and die.”
A shiver crept in the nerve of the town
When Hamza's cry echoed.
Solemnity and calm enfolded the house.
Only one hour and the rooms of the martyr house rose then tumbled
And ruined rooms kneeled down.
Embracing the dreams and the warmth that were, and folded
Within the harvest of his age and the memory of years
Filled with strife, with persistence, with tears and with happy laughter.
Yesterday I saw my cousin on the way
Forcing his steps on the road with willpower and faith.
Hamza still maintained his upward brow.
23
The Dear Departed
An elegy to the martyrs of Verdun* in Beirut:
Muhammed Yousef Najjar, Kamal Nasser, and Kamal Udwan
The dark monster killed them–one eagle after another
He stole the sublime from the tops. Ah, fatherland
Greeting to you from the dear blood
Whose string was broken for your sake
Like coral beads, like pearl treasures.
Gone are those we've loved–
No sound of grief.
Behold! On my lips sorrow blossomed silence
And the letters sealed themselves
And the words like them fell disfigured corpses.
What should I tell them, I wonder
What should I say when their blood trickles from my eyes and from my heart?
Gone are those we've loved
They passed away before their boat lay anchor
And before the fallen saw the shores of the distant port
Ah, my sad fatherland! How often you sipped and we sipped with you
The bitter juice in the fairs of death and sorrow.
Neither your thirst was quenched, nor was ours.
We shall remain thirsty
Near the sad springs
Till they rise again with the dawn they cuddled in their eyelids
A vision to which their yearning will never end.
*
Verdun is the street in Beirut, Lebanon, on which the three Palestinian leaders Naijar, Nasser,
and Udwan lived, where they were attacked in their home and murdered in cold blood.
24
Ode to Transformation
1967-76
Dedicated to Yousuf Shruru, the Palestinian writer who writes about us all.
1
Some were children
Who had not grown up yet.
They were little squabs
With eyes still dazzled
Staring and gazing at things
At a shining moon, at a flame
At sprinkles strewn from a water–fountain
At a cat ready to jump, at a bird shaking its wet wings off
Turning round, startled, and grabbing its shadow
Fly to a palm–tree summit.
Some were boys
Professing mischief and musing with fireworks.
Flying into the west wind
Flights of rainbow colored kites–red, blue, and green
Taking under their arms all their naughtiness to the pavements and into the squares
Picking quarrels, jumping, whistling, racing under the vaults of damp houses
Pelting with casual jokes
With nutshells and with laughter
Fencing with stiffened branches
Drawing them for swords or spears
Playing mythical fighting heroes
Antara, the slave, in pursuit
Of his freedom in the path of death
Izzudin el Qassam* keeping ready in the hilly woods
Abdul Qader† in Al Qastal
Reliving and performing his adoration for the land.
Some were embryos
Still lying in the wombs.
*
Izzudin el Qassam was one of the early freedom fighters warring with the British in Palestine.
He was killed in November 1935, in Ya'bad near Jenin after fighting a fierce battle.
†
Abdul Qader el Husseini was the hero of the battle of AlQastal, near Jerusalem, against the
Jews. He was killed in suicidal defence of Bab el Wad, a commanding hill on the Jerusalem-Jaffe
road, in April 1948.
25
2
The face of June turned ashen
The black rains poured
And there on the horizon edge the curse fell and hung
When locusts of famine from the army's helmets rushed in torrents.
The earth shakes, shakes and falls, swallowed by the flood of darkness
The river of Time with awkward steps crosses over it Stumbles–retreats–or freezes
(The River beyond the horizon was a galloping horse
on whose banks the “Movement” hardens.)
26
3
They grew in the desolate wood of night, in the shade of bitter cacti
They grew beyond their years
They grew, and in a secret love word clung together
They bore its letters–a Bible, a Koran read in whispers
They grew with henna trees, and when veiled with the Kafiyya
They became the blossom of a sunflower.
They grew beyond their years
They became the deep–rooted trees rising towards the light facing the mad winds
They became the rejecting voice, they became
The dialectic of destruction and construction
27
4
They became the flaming rage on the blocked horizon edge
Sweeping their classrooms
Flooding streets and alleys
Centered in the heart of the “square”
And on the brutal tanks they hurl volleys of stones
And with naked rejection they shell the hangers of the dawn
And break into the night and its flood.
They grew and grew beyond their years
They became the worshipped and the worshipper
They became “Samhan,” “Afana”
They became “Abdullah,” “Muhammad”; they became “Lena,” “Ahmed”, “Mahmoud.”*
When their corpses united with the dough of the soil
They became the myth.
They grew and grew, they became the bridge
They grew, grew, grew and grew
They became greater than all poesy.
*
Samhan, Afana, Abdulla, Muhammad, Lena, Ahmad, and Mahmoud are symbolic names of
youths killed with Israeli bullets during demonstrations against the Israeli occupation.
28
The Seagull
Negating the Negative
It made its way past the horizon and it cracked the dark
Holding the forelock of the blue and darting along the wings of light
It whirled, it turned and kept on fluttering
It rapped at my darkened window and the bewildered stillness quivered
“Any tidings, little bird?”
And without a word, it revealed the secret
And flew out of sight.
O Seabird, O Mine
Now I knew that in days rough and still
All things move in the vaults of silence
The seed grows inside the heart of death
And the morn erupts from gloom
Now I knew
While hearing horses' gallop and the race of death on the shores,
That when the deluge comes
The earth is washed from grief
O Seabird coming from the depth of darkness
God bless you!
Now I knew:
Something has happened–The horizon broke open
And the light of morn flooded the room.
29
Bitan in The Steel Net
One morning a nursery child in Kibbuz Maoz Chaim asked, “For how long must we
safeguard our country?”
This is a terrifying question...
–Mordechai Abi Sha'oul
Under “the Tree” that ramifies, grows and grows
In monstrous rhythms
Under “the Star” that builds between his hands
The bloody walls of the Dream
And weaves with steel fibres the net
Which traps him in, robs him of motion
“Eitan,” the child, the human, opens his eyes
And asks in pitch darkness
About the meaning of the net and the walls,
And the leg–maimed khaki–clad time
And cruel death, smoke and sorrows
If only “the Star” tells the truth
But the Star ... Alas!
O Eitan, my child
You're drowned in the lie
And the port, O Eitan, is like you drowned in the lie
The swelling dragon–headed Dream and the thousand arms...
Drowned too.
Ah! Would that you remain the child, the human.
I am frightened and terrified
You'll ever grow within this net.
In this leg maimed khaki–clad time,
In cruel death, in fire and sorrows.
I am worried, dear child, that the human within you may be killed
And that the fall may reach it
And cause it to
Sink
Sink
And sink into the abyss.
30