Bassma Sheikho’s ‘Scream’

This poem, by award-winning author Bassma Sheikho, appears in our latest issue, SYRIA: Fall of Eternity, ed. Ghada Alatrash and Fadi Azzam.

Scream

By Bassma Sheikho

Translated by Maisaa Tanjour and Alice Holttum

2016

No electricity tonight.
Boredom is about to kill me.
Books are viscous, slipping from my hand.
The pens hate me—
I can feel it.
Everything in this house is screaming:
Get away from me!

My memories are worn out:
I’ve chewed them so long,
they’ve lost their taste.
And you—you’re a gray creature.
Your colors don’t excite me.
Neither your presence nor your absence tempts.

I amuse myself by counting the martyrs.
I start with the house,
the neighbourhood,
the city.
Damn these numbers—
I hate them:
they are too many.
Blood is pouring heavily from my mouth.

I stand before the mirror,
their faces jostling in front of me.
I reach out to shake their hands.
I’m ashamed of their blood on my face,
of my raw scowl
before the smile in their eyes.

I step quickly away
so that they cannot question me.
I am no good with answers,
nor am I a fan of speaking with the dead.

I climb to the roof.
A long breath—and I nearly swallow a few stars.

I scream:
Freedom

and tear through the maidenhead of the sky.
I tremble a little
then rise gracefully,
like a leaf in the mouth of the wind.
I feel that pleasure.

The walls of the buildings trap the echo,
let it throb between their ribs.

A light is born in the heart of a broken lamp,
like the call to fajr.
It smooths the wrinkles of the days,
awakens the city’s doves
to gift me a shawl of their white feathers.

And I enter my mirror,

radiant
like their bodies.

Artwork by Omran Younis.

Bassma Sheikho is a Syrian writer, poet, and visual artist, born in Damascus in 1986. She holds a Master’s degree in Interior Architecture from the Faculty of Fine Arts and previously taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Damascus University and at Arab International University. Her published works include the book Interior Design in Kindergartens and an upcoming book on the concept of beauty in visual art. She has also authored four poetry collections: Playing with Words (2013), A Gasp of Light (2015), The Last Inhabitants of Damascus (2016), and A Sea Afraid of Drowning (2018). Two additional poetry books are ready for publication. Many of Sheikho’s poems have been translated into English, French, Japanese, and German. In 2024, she published a short story collection for young readers titled The Man Who Vanished into the Sun, and she has a forthcoming short story collection for adults titled Typographical Error.

Maisaa Tanjour is a freelance translator, researcher, and interpreter with extensive experience working in diverse professional, humanitarian, and multicultural settings and organisations. Born in Syria in 1979, she now resides in the UK. Maisaa holds a BA in English Language and Literature and a Postgraduate Diploma in Literary Studies from the University of Homs. In 2005, she moved to the UK to pursue further postgraduate studies at the University of Leeds, where she earned an MA in Interpreting and Translation Studies (English-Arabic/Arabic-English) and a PhD in Translation Studies.

Alice Holttum is a part-time freelance translator and translation proofreader. She was born in Edinburgh in 1979 and currently resides there, working also as a furniture maker. She has a Joint Honours BA in Russian and Arabic (2004) and an MA in Applied Translation Studies (Arabic-English, 2006), both from the University of Leeds.