Friday Finds: Ines Abassi’s ‘The Key’
“The last key I carried /dangles alone on the key rack / like a corpse at the gallows”
Poetry
Monday Poem: ‘Even Those Who — Temporarily — Survived’
“and they wished away the rest of her generation, tomorrow / and, after tomorrow, all those who thought / —just thought— / of praying for her”
Islam Nawwar’s ‘Don’t Say that My Son Is Walking in Heaven’
“And I’m still surprised by the highly specific classification of my identity / On my ID card, where they wrote: / Male, Muslim, single.”
New in Translation: ‘Song of Myself’ by Ghareeb Iskander
“There are silent voices inside me. / I will free them now / I will free also / The letters of love words / Suffocated in my mouth.”
Mehmet Hakki Suçin on Translating Mahmoud Darwish into Turkish
“For instance, the Palestinian society is more familiar with references to Christianity than the Turkish society. … So while translating Darwish’s works, I brought the references to verses from the Bible or the Torah to the attention of Turkish readers.”
Summer of Lock-in Lit: Poems from ‘Sparrows Are Not a Breed of Wind’
“Winter yields a Spring / Spring’s dreams are ruined by / Summer. / Summer, without farewell / cedes authority / to Autumn”
Lock-in Summer of Lit: Ghareeb Iskander’s ‘A Letter to Adil’
“What can I do?/ Except stay deadly silent/ In this desert/ which dwells in a dark room.”
Lock-in Literature: 4 Poems by Jan Dost
“I am the star up there that lurks shy and restless in the sky,/ silently chewing on his pale light.”
Lock-in Literature: ‘A Primitive Prayer for Uruk’
“Give her back her earrings, God / Return to her clay oven the fire / And the rain to her farms / And take away death which harvests her children.”