Arabic literature has plenty to offer the (classically) romantic-minded reader. But each year, Thoraya El-Rayyes and ArabLit pull together literature that’s not meant for greeting cards. This year, from Ahmad Taha’s Empire of Walls:
The wall of lost chances
By Ahmed Taha, translated from the Arabic by Thoraya El-Rayyes
Without a care
you push your black hair
behind you
and set my dreams free.
By what right do you
jail them by night beneath your bed
while you, awake,
await their death?
I’ve nothing to tell you
about
my past
to put you
to sleep
and unfurl your dreams.
All I remember is
I was born like this,
a wolf inept even at howling
yet always dreaming
of prey.
A General begging for victories
at the edges of cafes –
on his chest, medals jostling
like a flock of ants.
Perhaps I was
an august General
when I shot my bullets at your chest.
And perhaps
a professional burglar
when I thought of what was under your shorts.
But I want a bona fide medal,
formidable battles
that could go on for years,
enough to kill all the Generals
and raze all the cities
and defeat all the warriors
but me.
But that sagging house,
on whose walls hang
your underwear,
in whose corners lie
your thick-heeled shoes.
And then
my hands will knead this until it is
like a plug,
will pound it on an abandoned pavement,
until it is a medal.
And I will raise the sheet
that covers your bed
so it becomes a flag.
And then
put the medal on my chest,
the flag under my head,
and sleep.
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From Ahmad Taha’s poetry collection Empire of Walls, in which each poem forms one wall.
Ahmed Taha is an Egyptian poet who has published four collections of poetry. Since the 1970s, he has played an active role in Egyptian literary life having founded and co-founded several literary magazines and groups including Aswat (Voices), al-Kitaba al-Sawda’ (Black Writing) and al-Garad (Locusts). Despite this, he remains little known outside the Arab world. He lives in Cairo, Egypt.
Thoraya El-Rayyes is a Palestinian-Canadian literary translator who specializes in bringing Arabic literature from the Levant into English. Her translations have received accolades from the Modern Language Association and the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas. She lives in Amman, Jordan.
Previous anti-Valentine’s Day lit:
What a shame!
You honor Valentine! He is a Christian vicar who raped the daughter of the Roman Emperor in the third century A D .
You must honor the oppressed in Egypt , instead of your hatred of the great Islam which defends the freedom and dignity of the whole human kind, read the true history.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/26053/the-price-of-love_valentine%E2%80%99s-day-in-egypt-and-its