GRIEF Preview: Nasser Rabah’s ‘A Swarm of Ants’
The Spring 2025 GRIEF issue of ArabLit Quarterly is coming in three days — on April 30, 2025. Today, a poem from the issue in Wiam El-Tamami’s translation.
A Swarm of Ants
By Nasser Rabah
Translated by Wiam El-Tamami
Who gives a damn about a mirror in the dark,
other than the darkness itself?
Who gives a damn about a dead country,
other than the dead?
A swarm of ants crawling
over the anguish of a heart.
The shadow of a home,
its spirit broken.
A funeral overflowing
into the corridors.
Every conversation
in every cafe
unfinished.
Meaningless dialects,
uproar in Babylon.
Obscene slogans, a place
desecrated.
Trees uprooted, a calendar
in ruins.
A stone flock sleepwalking
through decimated words.
Dear God, this living dream
is a tightly sealed nightmare.
A machine gun that never runs out of bullets.
Wake me up, dear God, wake me.
Next time, let me be born a bouquet
of flowers, gathered in the hands of lovers,
or perhaps the flag of a dull and quiet state,
or whatever you wish—
laughter tossed
between the clouds
سرب النمل..
من يهتم بمرآة في العتمة غير العتمة؟
من يهتم ببلد ميت غير الموتى؟
بسرب النمل المتسلق وجع القلب؟
مكسور الخاطر ظل البيت،
عزاء فائض مزدحم في الطرقات،
ولا يكتمل حوار في المقهى بين اثنين،
لكنات ميتة وضجيج في شارع بابل،
شعارات فاحشة وازدراء مكان،
قطيع حجارة يمشي في الغيبوبة،
مسرنمين بلهاء
منهدمين بين الكلمات المهدومة،
شجر مخلوع، وحطام تواريخ.
يا ربي.. حلم اليقظة هذا كابوس محكم،
رشاش لا تنفد منه الطلقات وتطرق رأسي،
أيقظني يا رب.. أيقظني.
اصنعني هذي المرة باقة ورد بين حبيبين.
إجعلني علمَ بلاد هادئة ومملة.
أو ما شئت؛ مزاحاً بين الغيم.
Nasser Rabah is Palestinian poet and novelist. He has published five poetry collections and two novels. Some of his works have been translated into French, English, and Spanish. He is active in the literary field in Gaza, where he currently lives.
Wiam El-Tamami is an Egyptian writer, translator, editor, and wanderer. She has spent the last twenty years moving between different cultures and communities across the Middle East, Europe, Southeast Asia, and North America. Her writing and translation work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Granta, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Freeman’s, AGNI, Literary Hub, CRAFT, ArabLit, The Markaz Review, The Massachusetts Review, Jadaliyya, and The Common, as well as several anthologies. She won the 2011 Harvill Secker Translation Prize, was a finalist for the 2023 Disquiet International Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2023 CRAFT Nonfiction Award and the 2024 First Pages Prize. Her work also received a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2024. She is currently based in Berlin.
With thanks to Katharine Halls and Chitra Kalyani for their help with the first and last lines of this translation.
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April 27, 2025 @ 1:58 pm
Outstanding work! Many thanks to writer, translator, and editor. Language in the original Arabic and in translation rises to the intensity of the Palestinian nightmare. One particularly touching feature in this work is maintaining the continuity of that Palestinian nightmare in word choice, imagery, and tone. I’ll make just two points: بابل will better translates into Babel–the Biblical context is what the poem references, not a place. وجع القلب is heartache–a word loaded with the overwhelming pain–physical, psychological, mental the speaker in the poem is struggling with.