Poetry in Translation by Fadwa Suleiman
This poem originally appeared in our Spring 2019 issue, “The Strange.”
LAUREL
By Fadwa Suleiman
Translated by Marilyn Hacker
I’m sitting alone in my room
my clothes scattered around me,
and the suitcase that took to the road with me when I fled
I keep telling it about our return, soon
When we go back, you’ll carry my clothes that crossed the border inside you
We’ll pass through the cities, walk on their streets once more
We’ll write in the dust with our own ink
and our ink to us will be attar and laurel
Fadwa Suleiman was born in Aleppo in 1970. Educated at the Higher Institute for Dramatic Arts in Damascus, she was a well-known actor in theatre, film and television in Syria until she joined the uprising for citizens’ rights and regime change in 2011. As a public figure, a member of an Alawite family, and a moving speaker for the revolution, she became too well known to remain in Syria. She came to France as a political refugee in 2012. Her first book of poems, As the Moon Rises, was published in Arabic in 2013, and translated into French by Nabil al-Azan. A second collection, In The Dazzling Darkness, was published in a bilingual Arabic-French edition in 2017. Fadwa Suleiman died of cancer in Paris in 2017.
Marilyn Hacker is the author of more than a dozen books. Her translations of French and Francophone poets include books by Vénus Khoury-Ghata, Habib Tengour and Rachida Madani. Her translations from Arabic (of Zakaria Tamer, Golan Haji, Fadwa Suleiman and Yasser Khanjer) have appeared in PN Review, Agni, Prairie Schooner Modern Poetry in Translation, The Paris Review, Words Without Borders, POEM, Critical Muslim, ArabLit Quarterly, and A Public Space. Her awards include the National Book Award, the 2009 American PEN award for poetry in translation, and the international Argana Prize for Poetry from the Beit as-Sh’ir/ House of Poetry in Morocco in 2011. She lives in Paris.
Also read:
Three poems from Souleiman’s 2014 collection, À la pleine lune, appeared in Marilyn Hacker’s translation in Modern Poetry in Translation in 2017.
Hacker’s translation of Suleiman’s “Genesis” ran in A Public Space
Hacker’s translation of Suleiman’s “The Laurel” appeared in ArabLit Quarterly’s “The Strange” issue in the Spring 2019. It’s available in: Print * PDF * EPub.