Stealing Sleep, Reclaiming Tomorrow
Every Alley, a Different Damascus
Fallible Men vs Safynaz Kazem
Fiction
Stealing Sleep, Reclaiming Tomorrow
‘By Candlelight’: Short Fiction by Latifa al-Zayyat
Part of our focus, this Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth), is on classic Arabic works by women, especially those at the margins of (or neglected entirely by) critical and readerly attention.
From Zainab Hifni’s ‘I Was Here Yesterday’
‘I Was Here Yesterday; is set between Saudi Arabia and the Florida coast and entangles grief and memory, centering on how the narrator grapples with her mother’s death and the truths about her mother’s life—and her own—that she uncovers.
Poetry
Poems of Whiskey and Regret by Rasha Omran
These poems, translated by Phoebe Carter, are from Rasha Omran’s sixth collection, “A Secret Wife of Absence.”
New Poetry in Translation: Sayed Abolela’s ‘Cinema’
This poem is from a forthcoming collection, مصمم معارك, to be published by the General Egyptian Book Organization.
Interviews
On the New Platform, ‘Palestine is Everywhere’
Editors of the anthology Palestine is Everywhere — Skye Arundhati Thomas, Edwin Nasr, and Gloria Habsburg — recently launched a new “Palestine is Everywhere” platform to host a series of monthly commissions, “creating an ongoing space to support and amplify the work of artists, writers, and practitioners from Palestine and the wider region.”
On the Choice to Write in Colloquial Arabic
“Some classical poets feel that the popularity of colloquial writers has nothing to do with the quality of their work, but rather because they have chosen the easier path.”
Translating Trauma, the Trauma of Translating
Here, Leri Price talks about the referred trauma (and guilt) of translating testimonies from a genocide, how she worked with translators bringing the book into other languages, and the particular challenges of translating this book.
In Focus
From the archives
Egyptian Novelist Shady Lewis on Coptic Identity, Church-State Relations, and Citizenship
“In Ways of the Lord, Christians are mistaken for being Jews and are accused of spying for Israel, which demonstrates the lack of recognition of Copts and their conflation with other minorities.”
A Talk with Poet Golan Haji: ‘Languages Never Draw Geographical Boundaries’
” Jaziri wrote poetry with one set of alphabets which at that time were used in four languages: Kurdish, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Arabic. Sometimes, he used the four languages in one couplet. His poems are still recited and sung by Kurds. That coexistence of languages was quite natural, the alluring music was convincing, although I sometimes understood almost nothing.”
‘Writing in Gaza’: by Yousef el-Qedra
