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Fiction
As Though She Were Sleeping
![[The cover of the Arabic original of As Though She were Sleeping. Image from Elias Khoury]](/content_images/3/sm_kaannaha.jpg "[The cover of the Arabic original of As Though She were Sleeping. Image from Elias Khoury]")
[This excerpt is from Elias Khoury’s As Though She Were Sleeping (Ka’annaha Na’ima) which was translated by Marilyn Booth and published by Archipelago Books this month. Marilyn Booth holds the Iraq Chair in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Her publications include Harem Histories: Envisioning Places and Living Spaces and May Her Likes Be Multiplied: Biography and Gender Politics in Egypt. She has translated over a dozen works of Arabic fiction.] Milia’s eyelashes drew apart over eyes still curtained in drowsiness. She would just close them again, she decided; she ...
Keep Reading »في أحوال الذئاب
![[ المصدر فليكر.تصوير بوريدانس إيسيل ]](/content_images/3/sm_wolf.jpg "[ المصدر فليكر.تصوير بوريدانس إيسيل ]")
رويَ: أنه في يوم القيامة ستهبُّ رياحٌ قوية، ستقلع الأشجار وتهزُّ أركان الجبال. لن يبقى إنسان ولا حيوان ولا نبات. ستزول الحياة وتندثر، إلا الذئب سيبقى متشبثاً بالأرض، غارساً مخالبه في التربة، مقاوماً، معانداً، حتى تسلخ قوة الرياح جلده من ذيله إلى فروة رأسه! *** سألوا الذئب: لماذا تغافل الرعاة وتنقضُّ على قطعانهم دون رحمةٍ؟ تعجَّب الذئب من السؤال مجيباً: الذنب ليس ذنبي، بل هو ذنب مخالبي القوية، وأسناني الحادَّة، وبطني الجائع. قَصُّوا له مخالبه القوية وكسروا أسنانه الحادَّة وملأوا بطنه الجائع. قال يائساً: لم يعد لي نفعٌ، اقتلووووووني. *** رويَ: أنَّ الذئب يبقى ذئباً، لا يغيِّر من جلده وطبائعه كما يغير البشر من جلودهم وطبائعهم. مرةً أخذ رجلٌ جروَ ...
Keep Reading »The Sleep Thief
![[The cover of Ibtisam Azem's Sariq al-Nawm (The Sleep Thief). Image by Dar al-Jamal]](/content_images/3/sm_217438_10150177202899713_673444712_6960585_8337134_n.jpg "[The cover of Ibtisam Azem's Sariq al-Nawm (The Sleep Thief). Image by Dar al-Jamal]")
The Sleep Thief I will never forget that the interrogator called me “The Sleep Thief.” The name stuck in my mind whenever I used to steal a few seconds of sleep, to hold it together before them, even if for a moment. But this name never left me. I even started to dream about it. I had the same dream every night and would wake up drenched in sweat not knowing what to do. I cry every night until my eyes are puffy. My eyes become bigger than my face and cover it. Every night the gods descend tirelessly to wipe away my tears and console me. But nothing works. I cry so much that my eyelids cover my eyes, and I can barely see. I ask them to give me back my yesterday. They ...
Keep Reading »Two Sheikhs
![Mahmoud Abdel Aziz in the role of Sheikh Hosni, from the film Kit Kat [image from Lenos.ch]](/content_images/3/sm_sheikhhosni.jpg "Mahmoud Abdel Aziz in the role of Sheikh Hosni, from the film Kit Kat [image from Lenos.ch]")
[The following is an excerpt from Ibrahim Aslan's ground-breaking novel of the 1977 Bread Intifada, The Heron. Those who knew Aslan, who passed away on January 7, cannot help but to think of him every time they encounter the infamous blind and long-winded conman of his novel, Sheikh Hosni. We miss you. ] ---- Sheikh Hosni felt for the edge of the boat, bared his arm, leaned over a bit, and began to play with the water. As he splashed about, he announced, “Sheikh Genid, the water’s really cold!” Happily, he dried his hand and lit a cigarette. He thought to himself, what form of transportation hadn’t he mastered? He had ridden a bike. He had driven a ...
Keep Reading »A Prayer
Friday, January 28, 2011, Day of Gathering Giza Square, despite its vastness, feels tight and constricted. No wonder. First, they corralled up all the sidewalks with four-foot iron rails that seemed sinister and repugnant in our eyes. Then they painted the crumbling facades of the old buildings “Sahara yellow.” No wonder the sight of it made people’s chests tighten and constrict. But now the square now boasts a new underpass with brightly-lit stairs and a smooth marble floor. Its small, green island makes the square look elegant, and at its center there is a billboard with a life-size picture of the president smiling from behind dark glasses and standing in front of ...
Keep Reading »Plucking Out the Heart of Power: Al-Qawqa`a
![[The cover of Mustafa Khalifa's Al-Qawqa`a. Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_qawqa`acover.jpg "[The cover of Mustafa Khalifa's Al-Qawqa`a. Image from unknown archive]")
“I looked at the people. I examined their faces – that apathy…I wondered, how many of them know what happened and is happening in the desert prison? I wondered, how many of them care? Is this “the people” the politicians talk about so much?...Is it possible that this great people don’t know what’s happening in their own country? If they don’t, it’s a catastrophe. If they know but do nothing to change it, that’s an even bigger catastrophe…” When Mustafa Khalifa is transferred from Tadmur prison to a state security branch in Damascus after over a decade of imprisonment, he watches the people hurrying about their daily business on the street. Do they know ...
Keep Reading »The Levant [Gone to Palestine: 10]
![[Image from author]](/content_images/3/sm_Levant-3.jpg "[Image from author]")
On the way back from Kafr Qasim, we turned off the highway in Ran’ana where, we were told we’d find the best Moroccan food in the country. We went into the first gas station we saw when we came into the town, and the Iraqi attendant there told us where our restaurant was. It’d been weeks since we’d had anything but local food, and as delicious as that could be, we were getting sick of the humous and tomatoes and thyme and parsley and eggplant and rice and flat bread. What we craved was bitter lemons, dried fruits, hot red pepper paste and couscous—anything that diverged from the seasonal norms of the Eastern Mediterranean. We crossed our fingers and went into the place ...
Keep Reading »The Keys to Birweh [Gone to Palestine: 9]
We went to visit Shatila camp where our friend Lula was teaching English. We knew the camp was important. We knew that it was a center of the struggle for many reasons. We knew that this was the place where hundreds of women, children and men were massacred over a few days in September 1982. We knew who the murderers were. We knew who trained them. We knew who supplied the weapons. We knew who promised to provide security for the camp when the PLO evacuated. We knew that the camp was leveled in 1985 to punish the people for allowing the men to come back. We knew all this because we’d read these facts in books, we’d seen the pictures, and we’d listened to eye-witnesses. ...
Keep Reading »Cannes ya ma Cannes Ramallah [Gone to Palestine: 7]
We’d been invited to the Franco-German cultural center to see a film by a leftist Israeli filmmaker. The advance notice had said that “this was perhaps the most important film on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict ever made.” It was endorsed by a couple well-known intellectuals from abroad, and all its screenings at the Jerusalem Film Festival were sold out well in advance. I’d never seen his first film, which apparently was a autobiographical work that was “sort of interesting.” My friends said the director was a good guy, even if his films weren’t so great. “In any case, this was his first attempt at making a feature film. It’s based on a book of fiction he published.” ...
Keep Reading »Culture XVI
This is our sixteenth weekly section. We have five posts; Amal Hanano continues her diary from Aleppo. Gaelle Raphael translates a poem by the great Syrian poet Saniyya Salih. Youssef Rakha examines the cultural discourse in Egypt. Nezar Andary reviews May Odeh's Diaries. Sinan Antoon translates a text by Ahmad Saadawi about Iraqi dogs. We will be taking a summer break and will return in the fall with more energy and lots of culture. Enjoy! It's Not Him, It's Them by Amal Hanano The Trial by Saniyya Saleh translated by Gaelle Raphael The Body Cannot Live Without the Mind: Egyptian Cultural Discourse in the Wake of the Revolution by Youssef ...
Keep Reading »Vénus Khoury-Ghata: The House of Nettles
Tireless mother, worthy descendant of a line of peasant women working as long as daylight lasted, as long as night permitted them to tell a lentil from a pebble. Only sleep could still the hands that washed, sewed, cut, peeled, kneaded, cradled. Sleep vertiginous as a stone hurled into a well. Hands that resisted winter, pain, even snakebites from the serpents they trod upon barefoot. Peasant women and ladies at once, taking control of everything, except their fear of the bus, a devilish ...
Keep Reading »The City of Images by Luay Hamza Abbas
[Madinat al-Suwar (The City of Images, Amman: Dar Azmina, 2011) is the latest novel by Iraqi author Luay Hamza Abbas (b. 1965). It is narrated in flashback by a boy growing up in Basra through the seventies and eighties before and during the rule of Saddam Hussein with memories of his childhood and the people he grew up with. The political developments that he lived through and their impact on those around him are blended in with the travails of adolescence and memories of everyday events, both amusing ...
Keep Reading »Morbid Symptoms: The Omar Yussef Mystery Series
The Bethlehem Murders by Matt Rees Atlantic Books, 264 pp, 2006, ISBN 978 1 84354 603 0 The Saladin Murders by Matt Rees Atlantic Books, 340 pp, 2008, ISBN 978 1 84354 648 1 The Samaritan’s Secret by Matt Rees Atlantic Books, 324 pp, 2009, ISBN 978 1 84354 650 4 The Fourth Assassin by Matt Rees Atlantic Books, 264 pp, 2010, ISBN 978 1 84887 203 5 Frequently written off as an inferior literary form by traditional academic literary critics, for whom it is often seen as no more than ...
Keep Reading »Dog Hunting
Many years ago on a day like today, a hard-faced young man sits reading the newspaper in a café in some small alley. He opens the page and a small headline catches his eye: Campaign to Round Up 15,000 Strays in Capital. The young man smiles and reads on: As part of a plan to improve the quality of life for residents of the capital city, and to bolster Tunis’ image as a premiere tourist destination, the City Council has embarked on a campaign to catch fifteen thousand stray dogs. Headed by the Mayor, the ...
Keep Reading »The Palm House
It was Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice. I had been staying in the village of Wad al-Kababish, the one closest to where Wad al-Nar used to be, but separated from it by a vast desert. Exactly forty days had passed since the funeral I described. Quivering, I made my way through the crowds that stood in the shade like palm trees leaning over a riverbank in the morning. They were standing all in a row, as if they were waiting for God’s mercy to bring a ram down from heaven for them. But that didn’t ...
Keep Reading »Love
Tahrir Square—at the corner of Qasr al-Nil Street. In front of the Tourism and Travel Company, Tahrir Koshary restaurant, and the little store that sells tamarind blossoms. Between the sidewalk and the thick iron guardrail designed to block the flow of pedestrians across the square. Where the sidewalk meets the street—the red, green and black curbstones. The sidewalk tiles come in different shapes and sizes—wide, medium, and large. In front of the flower shop, in the shape of hearts with red roses on ...
Keep Reading »حِنّة
نهض في السادسة والنصف كعادته منذ سنين طويلة، بلا منبّه، منذ أصبحت مثانته أفضل مُنَبّه طبيعي يجبره على الاستيقاظ وزيارة الحمام أكثر من مرة. وقف أمام المرآة في الحمّام الذي يحاذي غرفته. غسّل وجهه وحلق ذقنه. أخرج طقم أسنانه من القدح المليء بالماء وأعاده إلى فمّه وثبّته فيه. أعاد نظاراته إلى وجهه. وفي طريقه من الحمام نحو المطبخ كي يعدّ الشاي، وقف أمام التقويم المعلق على جدار الممر كما كان يفعل كل صباح. وهي عادة قديمة لم يقلع عنها حتى بعد أن تقاعد وخلت أيامه من المواعيد وقلّت مشاغله وواجباته. فقد اعتاد ...
Keep Reading »Walls [Gone to Palestine: 8]
We went to visit our friend who was participating in the summer program for foreigners at Aida camp in Bethlehem. We were surprised that it took only ten minutes from the center of Jerusalem to get to the checkpoint at Rachel’s Tomb. There we started to take pictures. We walked through the spotless new terminal and thought of our tax dollars. On the Bethlehem side, we took pictures of a huge sign that the Israeli Board of Tourism had put up on the wall. It said “Go in Peace” in Hebrew, English and ...
Keep Reading »Our Solidarity [Gone to Palestine: 6]
A group of us activists went to Qalqilya, a town so far west that it sits not in the dry hills, but on the humid coastal plane. Though the uprising had been effectively suppressed, we felt that our trip, in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, was important. After all, the violence and dispossession of the occupation had not ceased even though the resistance had been decimated. Our solidarity group was warmly received by local activists who were quite used to seeing similar delegations from ...
Keep Reading »Dogs
[This text, translated from the Arabic by Sinan Antoon, was originally published in al-Aalem (Baghdad) in July 2010 following a campaign to exterminate stray dogs in Baghdad] I smelled a strange odor at night. It was a nagging and repulsive odor. I was told it was “Johnny” or “Tony’s” corpse. Tony is Johnny’s son. They both share the same genetic features as if they were twins. One day Johnny would be making a loud noise in the alley, the next day it would be Tony. They were never together. Now there ...
Keep Reading »Infomous
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