Newly Translated Fiction: Emile Habibi’s ‘At Last the Almond Blossomed’
“Is this why you came to visit now?”
“Is this why you came to visit now?”
“Nothing could be more befitting than Kushājim’s epigrammatic riddles.”
Bakhit Al-Bashari lay in his sickbed, the same bed he once made with his bare hands from the stalks of palm fronds.
“This issue, our last of the year, is a celebration of stories and poetry that are oral, anti-professional, transgressive, strange, and fantastical. In it, the ordinary and extraordinary people at the margins, as Alaa Murad writes, ‘refuse to be erased.'”
“In his gastronomic poems, Kushājim not only details the preparation methods and ingredients needed for certain dishes but also the impact that their elegant presentation has on the banquet guests.”
A story circulated by his friends holds that a paper was found in his bloody shirt, which contained a last, unfinished, poem. It read: “By my horse / I laid dead on the pavement, homeland slipping away.”
“In translating Derek Walcott / Words stalk / Like egrets do / In his later poems / Where he wanted / To speak of regret”
“One of the trickiest, most mysterious secrets of the Arabic language is the root h-l-m.”
“They were not sieving, / But dancing to the rhythm.”