The half-Palestinian, half-Egyptian Tamim al-Barghouthi, son of Palestinian poet Mourid al-Barghouthi has a long poem that he wrote after he was deported from Egypt in 2003 for taking part in an anti-Iraq war demo in which he talks about the conflicting feelings he has towards the country in which he grew up but that will always treat him as a foreigner (because his father is Palestinian, he cannot have Egyptian nationality, even though he was born there). I found to my surprise some of the things he said echoed what I felt - a kind of a love-hate relationship with this intense place, especially when he said while introducing the poem: when you are in it, you complain about it all the time, but when it is taken away from you, you suffer greatly. of course, his experience is a lot longer and more complicated, but I identified with this because can see myself appreciating certain things about this place that I complained about while I was in it all the time. He captures the conflicting feelings he has in simple but beautiful and articulate imagery.
The poem is called "They asked me: do you love Egypt, I replied I'm not sure". Enjoy it, its really nice.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
To Sum Up My Feelings on Egypt
Thursday, November 22, 2007
On Yom Al-Shakur, I Am Thankful For...
DAM!!!
Who knew a group of three Palestinian young men from Lid could renew my faith in hip hop, a faith that was being battered to the ground by the strong, yet ho-hum, winds of banality and redundancy? I certainly didn't. But at the end of last week's concert "From Brooklyn to Palestine" at the BK's very own Southpaw, as hyperbolic as it sounds, I was a born again hip hopper.
To rap in a language foreign to the ears of the crowd, to successfully teach a packed house of mostly Americans how to chant Egyptian theatre rhymes, to be masters in call and response, to use beats and arabic samples that inspire non-Arabs to haz tease-hom, is quite a feat, and a testament to the charisma that oozes out of these men like "petrodollars" seem to ooze from the pockets of "the Arabs of Apple Dubai."
As you can tell, I was thoroughly impressed!
Arabian reggae-they do it all folks!
And the group's most popular single, "Men Erhabe"
*BONUS: Here's a standout performance from the night-by NYC Urban word poestess Tahani Salah:
Monday, September 17, 2007
Just What We Need, Another Freaking Poet...
There is a new Palestinian poetry sensation taking the blaad by storm. Tamim Al-Barghouti is an eloquent, politically-saavy scholar and poet who shook up the competition on the "Prince of Poets," a TV show exhibiting competing wordsmiths.
Saifadean Ammous wrote about this on 3 Quarks Daily, a lovely blog dedicated to higher aesthetic and intellectual pursuits than KABOBfest is used to (I'm surprised it let my browser in, the way I'm dressed).
Sure, Al-Barghouti got last place among the five finalists... Many suspect he got the plug pulled because of his politics. Trashing the "scoundrels" in power in the Arab world is not going to go over well with management, especially those who would rather not sleep with the fishes. Why else, Ammous asks, would he and the other kick-ass poet, Rawda Al-Hajj, who "focused her poems on women’s empowerment," finished poorly -- they were the only one to rock the boat on the political tip.
It's a conspiracy theory, and of course I buy it. My Arab mind is only capable of conspiratorial thinking, as wiser and whiter men have proven.
Ammous writes so well about this partially because he knows the new Falastini mega-star personally, knows good poetry, and mostly because he can turn a good phrase (see his personalized essay on the right of return). And I can write about Ammous so well because I know him.
The most touching part of this is the way his new found popularity in Palestine -- with the ring-tones and posters -- can be seen as a positive development in the evolution of public voices speaking on behalf of the Palestinians. Sadly, for every Al-Barghouti, there is one Abbashole getting all the cameras.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
The Latest Mahmoud Darwish Commentary (English)
Did we have to fall from a tremendous height so as to see our blood on ourhands...to realize that we are no angels...as we thought?
Did we also have to expose our flaws before the world so that our truth would no longer stay virgin?
How much we lied when we said: we are the exception!
To believe oneself is worse than to lie to the other!
To be friendly with those who hate us and harsh on those who love us -- that is the lowness of the arrogant and the arrogance of the low!
O past: Do not change us whenever we stepped away from you!
O future: do not ask us: who are you? and what do you want from me? Because we too, do not know.
O present! Bear with us a little because we are nothing but insufferable passersby.
The identity is: what we bequeath and not what we inherit. What we invent and not what we remember. The identity is the corruption of the mirror that we must break whenever we liked the image!
He masked himself and pulled up his courage and killed his mother...because she was the easiest of prey...and because a female soldier stopped him and exposed her bosoms to him saying: Does your mother have ones like these?
Had it not been for shame and darkness, I would have visited Gaza without knowing the way to the home of the new Abu Sufian* or the name of the new prophet!
Had Muhammad not been the last of the prophets, every gang would have had a prophet and every apostle had a militia!
June astonished us in its fortieth anniversary: if we do not find someone to defeat us again, we defeat ourselves with our hands so as not to forget!
No matter how long you look in my eyes, you will not find my gaze there. It was kidnapped by a scandal!
My heart is not mine and not for anyone. It became independent of me without turning into a stone.
Does the one chanting on the body of his victim-brother: "Allahu Akbar" know that he is an infidel since he sees God in his image: smaller than any perfectlycreated human.The prisoner who seeks to inherit the prison hid the smile of victory from thecamera, but he could not succeed in curbing the happiness that cascaded from his eyes.
Perhaps because the fast-paced script was stronger than the actor.
What is our need for Narcissus so long as we are Palestinians.
As long as we do not know the difference between the mosque and the university because they are derived from the same linguistic root, what is our need for a state so long as it and the day are facing one fate?
A large sign on the door of a nightclub: we welcome the Palestinians returningfrom the battle. Entry is free! And our wine does not intoxicate!
I cannot defend my right to work; a shoe shiner on the pavement.Because my customers have the right to consider me a shoe thief - a university professor told me!
"The stranger and I are against my cousin. My cousin and I are against my brother...and my sheik and I are against myself." This is the first lesson in thenew national education in the dungeons of darkness.
Who enters paradise first? The one who died by the bullets of the enemy or the one who died by the bullets of the brother? Some theologians say: Many an enemy of yours that your mother gave birth to!
The fundamentalists do not exasperate me because they are believers in theirspecial way.
But, their secular supporters do and their atheist supporters, too, who only believe in one religion: their images on television!
He asked me: does a hungry guard defend a house whose owner traveled to spend his summer vacation at the French or the Italian Riviera...no difference?
I said: he does not defend!
He asked me: do I + I = two?
I said: you and you are less than one!
I am not ashamed of my identity because it is still in the process of being written. But I am ashamed of parts of the Prolegomenon of Ibn Khaldoun.
You, from now on, are not yourself!
* Abu Sufian was the leader of Mecca when the Muslims took over; Meccans who entered his home were given sanctuary.
[Tarboush tip: Emily]
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Pioneer Of Modern Arabic Poetry Nazik Almalaika Passes Away
Nazik Almalaika, the Iraqi poetess who pioneered the free-style form of Arabic poetry, Nathr, predominant in 20th century literature, passed away today at the age of 85.
To my delight, I just learned that Nazik was a fellow Badger her self, earning a masters in comparative literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1956. That was not Almalaika’s first trip to the US; in 1952, she won a scholarship to study at Princeton, where she became, by some accounts, the first female to attend that university.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
In the Wake of Israel's Killing Spree
The Washington Post reported that Israel killed 18 members of one extended family this morning. Eight of them were children. That is what happens when Israeli tanks shell residential neighborhoods -- an inevitable consequence of a barbarian military occupation.
Emily Jacir, a Palestinian artist, sent an e-mail about the ongoing massacre:
I woke up this morning at 8:50 a.m. and already we had 22 dead. 18 in Gaza and 4 in the West Bank.
And the toll is rising.
The Israeli tanks opened fire on several homes as the residents were sleeping.
You don't really expect a diary entry from me do you?
On Tuesday Israeli troops had completed their largest military operation in Gaza in a year on Tuesday after killing 60 Palestinians in a week-long incursion in the Beit Hanoun area.
We are now in three days of mourning this massacre this morning here in Palestine.
I am sending this out only because in my despair today, my friend Naeem told me that I should. That the world does care...and that I should send images....
Again I send you this poem which Mahmoud Darwish wrote in 2002
The siege is lying in wait.
It is lying in wait on a tilted stairway
in the midst of a storm.
We are alone. We are alone to the point
of drunkenness with our own aloneness,
with the occasional rainbow visiting.
We have brothers and sisters overseas..
kind sisters, who love us..
who look our way and weep.
And secretly they say
"I wish that siege was here, so that I couldŠ"
But they cannot finish the sentence.
Do not leave us alone. No.
Do not leave us alone.
Our losses are between two and eight a day.
And ten are wounded.
Twenty homes are gone.
Forty olive groves destroyed,
in addition to the structural damage
afflicting the veins of the poem, the play,
and the unfinished painting.
(Mahmud Darwish, A State of Siege, 2002, translated by Ramsis Amun)
