An Excerpt from: Ahlam Bsharat’s ‘I Saw, Father, What You Saw’

Ahlam Bsharat is a poet, educator, and the author of many books for young readers. She has written numerous poems in the last six weeks. This excerpt comes from “يا أبي، لقد رأيتُ ما رأيت“, which appeared in Arab48 on November 8, 2023.

From ‘I Saw, Father, What You Saw’

By Ahlam Bsharat

Translated by Nora Parr

I saw a picture, O Father, of a man carrying his four children in the war.

It magnified your resilience in Palestine: the land of war and survival.

You carried eight, O Father,

without a groan.

…

Whenever I saw the life line

An etch across the palm of my hand

I said with a laugh:

We are a people who live long.

Yes, my father lived a hundred years.

…

My friend said:

It suits you to be the daughter of a man who lived a hundred years.

…

I don’t know, O Father,

what to say to the child who died before living only one week in this world.

They recorded his name on the death certificate

before they recorded his name on the birth certificate.

I know that your departure was hastened

a hundred years are not enough for the Palestinian.

But what do I say to this child?

If you were here,

I would ask you to share your life with him,

and you would agree,

for you were generous.

The morsel in your mouth is not for you,

so you gave him thirty years, and kept seventy for yourself.

Or you shared your life with him equally;

fifty for him. Fifty for you!

…

Perhaps he was my father,

and you were the infant who they recorded his name on the death certificate

before they recorded his name on the birth certificate,

a child born in 1948, who died before living.

Ahlam Bsharat is a Palestinian novelist, poet, and children’s author, as well as a teacher of creative writing.

Nora Parr is a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham and at the Center for Lebanese Studies and is the author of Novel Palestine: Nation through the Works of Ibrahim Nasrallah. She coedits Middle Eastern Literatures.