Salma Harland – ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY

January Translation Challenge: Kushajim

“Nothing could be more befitting than Kushājim’s epigrammatic riddles.”

From the FOLK Issue: ‘Death in Three Portraits’

Bakhit Al-Bashari lay in his sickbed, the same bed he once made with his bare hands from the stalks of palm fronds.

Launching the FOLK Issue: The Ordinary and Extraordinary That ‘Refuse to Be Erased’

“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.'”

Lit & Found

Lit & Found: Four Gastronomic Poems by Kushajim

“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.”

Poetry

Two Poems by Kamal Kheir Beik, tr. Salma Harland

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.”