This poem was commissioned by Voiced: The Festival for Endangered Languages, which highlights global and local endangered languages through creativity; author Hanan Issa also talks here about her relationship with the poetry of Nazik al Malaika. Image from an artwork by artist Sam Winston, Exhibition in the Barbican Conservatory.
What Colour Are You?١
After Nazik al Malaika
By Hanan Issa
It’s that shiny ripe summer now.
Bushes bow down to hand us
a spoiling raspberry or blackberries
come too soon and I’m thinking about death again.
About how flamingo chicks are born grey,
it’s eating that brings their brightness.
Nan told me her face was a map of dried rivers.
At the corners of her eyes I saw
some of the old ways of water.
Why do we call it blue?
That made up colour,
نعم ويغيّر الوانَهُ ٢
I liked it better when it was wine dark,
a sinful sea. Still, the autumn tide launches
towards me and my creaking knees.
I’m too ashamed to ask if the chick has eaten enough
to pink itself since I can only handle
the chunky reds, yellows, and blues of Arabic.
I don’t know how to answer when someone asks,
“What colour are you?”
I google how to say ‘the leaves are akhdar’ ٣
but can we talk about the bleeding olive trees?
How we are all screaming at the sun
as more and more sand gets bottled up.
I love green, I do, but there is a rhyming
between the juice of a watermelon and blood.
Shlawnich٤ Nan? Do you remember
those trickles of Arabic we taught you?
I’m thinking about memory again.
How others race ahead at learning languages
while I am left eating roadkill. Going grey.
How will I hold onto the word for summer
or sea or genocide if I inherit Nan’s forgetting?
Maybe I should find a dagga٥ to tattoo
the word for sea on my chin. I might forget
but at least we will have the sea.
Why do we call it blue? That made up colour,
نعم ويغيّر الوانَهُ ٦
Yes, at least we have the sea. And it sprawls, filling my mouth.
Poet’s afterword
Nazik al Malaika was a pioneer of free verse in Arabic poetry, and her writing often eludes those seeking to categorize it. A recurring theme in her work that spoke to me was how much she sought to center the experiences of women—both those she knew and anonymous women she encountered on the streets of Baghdad. She was very much a “before her time” type thinker, since she vehemently decentered her interpretations of feminism from what the West said about women’s rights. She sought instead to understand what equity looks like as an Arab woman for other Arab women.
As someone who finds it hard to neatly define myself as a person, as a writer, her rejection of pigeonholes appealed, as did her progressive exploration of women’s roles and rights. It remains radical to explore feminism without needing to orbit Western ideas of equity.
She was someone who respected the complex constructions and rules of Arabic poetic traditions but did not allow this to hamper her curiosity and sense of play and reinvention. Last year, as National Poet of Wales, I embarked on a project titled “Cerdd Tafod Arall / Music of Another Tongue” that aimed to explore cynghanedd, a complex Welsh language poetic meter that inspired poets like Gerard Manley Hopkins and Dylan Thomas with its almost scientific approach to infusing language with harmony through the use of syllabic repetitions and rhyme. As a first-language English speaker who reverently dabbles in the world of cynghanedd, I found myself returning to Nazik Al Malaika’s work and her words for motivation. I often imagine sitting with her, having discussions about the socio-cultural levelling power of free verse and its evolved daughter: spoken word. How permitting a playful approach to form and tradition holds open doors that were previously kept shut by those hiding behind the guise of preservation and craft.
I am, for many reasons, not blessed with an affinity for either of my heritage languages (Welsh and Arabic) and yet Nazik Al Malaika’s legacy reminds me to be curious, giving me permission to play as a writer with the poetic gifts of my heritage languages and weave them into my work.
This poem honors her influence on my own writing—she is at the center, as is my beloved nan who struggles to communicate as she lives with dementia and the ensuing loss of language.
Notes:
١ – In Iraqi Arabic, the literal translation of the way we ask ‘how are you?’ is ‘what color are you?’
٢ – ‘Yes it changes color’ – from Nazik Al Malaika’s “And We Still Have The Sea,” tr. Emily Drumsta
٣ – Green
٤ – Transliteration of ‘how are you?’ in Iraqi Arabic
٥ – Traditionally women tattooists of Iraq
٦ – ‘Yes it changes color’
Hanan Issa is a Welsh-Iraqi writer, filmmaker, and artist. Her publications include her poetry collection My Body Can House Two Hearts, Welsh Plural: Essays on the Future of Wales and her children’s poetry anthology And I Hear Dragons. Her winning monologue With Her Back Straight was performed at the Bush Theatre as part of the Hijabi Monologues. She is part of the writers room for Channel 4’s award-winning series We Are Lady Parts. Her work has been featured on Radio 3 and Radio 4. Her short film The Golden Apple – a Ffilm Cymru/ BBC Wales commission is available on iPlayer. She was the 2023 Hay International Fellow and is the current National Poet of Wales until 2027.