It’s publication day for May Ziadeh’s Musings of a Young Woman, the second title in our ERASED NOT FORGOTTEN series, ed. Ibtihal Rida Mahmood. In honor of the release, we share scholar-translator Dana Al Shahbari’s introduction to the volume, which you can find in our store and in select bookshops worldwide.
“sometimes my soul is wild, / an egret flying far / beyond the ocean’s edge, // and sometimes I curl up, / tender as an anemone when touched, / as salty and as damp.”
“Are you related to *the* May Ziadeh?”
We asked ourselves (and each other) why we wanted to bring May Ziadeh’s Musings of a Young Woman into English. Why May? And why now?
On May 1st—yes, May in May—the English translation of Sawanih Fatat (Musings of a Young Woman) by May Ziadeh arrives as the second title in ArabLit’s ERASED, NOT FORGOTTEN series, following Out of Time: The Collected Short Stories of Samira Azzam (tr. Ranya Abdelrahman).
A letter from ArabLit editor Ibtihal Rida Mahmood to May Ziadeh (1886-1941).
May Ziadeh stands before the ruins of Baalbek in 1911 and reflects on the nature of impermanence and the colonial designs of Westerners.
Dana Al Shahbari introduces May Ziadeh’s “The Memory of Baalbek’s Temple,” noting that when Ziadeh (1886-1941) boarded a steam train from Beirut to Baalbek, she returned “not only with a memory, but with a vision.”
