Rashid Hussein: Without a Passport (From Arabic)

Rashid Hussein was born in 1936 in Galilee, and died in 1977 in New York City when his apartment caught fire. A week later he was buried in his ancestral home thanks to the efforts of his friends in Israel. 

Without a Passport
By Rashid Hussein
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Arabic

I was born without a passport,
I grew up
And saw my country turn
Into prisons, without a passport.

So I sowed.
I raised a country in every house,
Raised a sun
And wheat.
In every house, I nurtured trees. I learned
To write leaves of verse
To make the people of my village happy,
Happy without a passport.

He whose land is stolen, I learned,
Has no love for the rain
And if he returns to it, he shall return
Home without a passport.
But I am tired of the minds that have turned
Into a single chain
Of hotels for yearnings that can't give birth
Save with a passport.

Without a passport
I came to you
And rose against you.
So take me, slaughter me in return
And then perhaps I will feel myself dying
Dying without a passport.

The Original:

‎بدون جواز سفر

‎بدونِ جوازِ سفر

‎ولِدت

‎ُكَبِرْت

‎رأيت بلادي تصير سجونا

‎بدونِ جواز سفر

‎فربّيتُ في كل بيتٍ بلادا

‎وشَمسا

‎وقَمحا

‎وربّيتُ فيها شجر

‎تعلّمتُ أن أكتُبَ الشعرَ

‎أن أجعلَ الناسَ في قَريَتي يَفرَحونْ

‎بدون جواز سفر

‎تعلّمت أن الذي سُرِقَت أرضُه لا يحبُّ المطرْ

‎وإن عاد يوما إليها , يعودُ

‎بدونِ جواز سفر

‎ولكنني أتْعَبتْني العُقولُ التي أصْبَحَت

‎فنادقَ للأُمْنياتِ التي لا تَلِدْ

‎سوى بجواز سفر

‎بدون جواز سفر

‎أتَيتُ اليكمْ

‎وثُرتُ عليكُمْ

‎فقوموا اذبحوني

‎لعلي أحِسُّ بأني أموتُ

‎بدونِ جواز سفر

Samih Al-Qasim: Kafr Qasim (From Arabic)

The poem translated here deals with a massacre that was a particularly sad and enraging episode in Israeli history. See my note after the original text for more.

Kafr Qasim
By Samih Al-Qasim
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original in Arabic

No monument raised, no memorial, and no rose.
Not one line of verse to ease the slain
Not one curtain, not one blood-stained
Shred of our blameless brothers clothes.
Not one stone to engrave their names.
Not one thing. Only the shame.

Their circling ghosts have still not ceased
Digging up graves in Kafr Qasim's debris. 

The Original:

كَفرْ قاسم

لا نُصْبَ... لا زهرة... لا تذكار

لا بيت شعر يؤنّس القتلى ولا أستار

لا خِرقة مخضوبة بالدم من قميص

كان على اخوتنا الأبرار

لا حجرٌ خُطّت به أسماؤهم

لا شيء ... يا للعار!

اشباحهم ما بَرَحَت تدور

تَنْبُشُ في انقاض كفر قاسم القبور

On Kafr Qasim:

On October 29, 1956, on the same day the Israelis launched their attack on Egypt, the Israeli border patrol was given special orders. With the impending war in mind, authorities announced a 5:00 curfew (as opposed to the normal evening-curfew) in Arab villages on the border, bolstered with a shoot-to-kill order. Although it was already late afternoon when the order was given and the chief of the village of Kafr Qasim begged the authorities to rescind it, the Israeli military bureaucracy waffled and was ultimately unwilling to inconvenience itself. The villagers working in the fields were too far off to receive word of the curfew in time, and when they returned home, Lt. Gabriel Dahan carried out his orders and had his platoon open fire, murdering 48 civilians, including 13 children (one of them an 8 year old boy) and one pregnant woman. All were Israeli citizens.

It would seem the only reason the massacre was limited to Kafr Qasim, and didn't spread to the other villages where the death-curfew was in effect, is that the local commanders there couldn't bring themselves to obey such an order. (Though some accounts suggest that the shoot-to-kill order was limited to Kafr Qasim, even so, of those stationed in Kafr Qasim itself, Dahan's was the only platoon that did any shooting.)

News of the massacre was initially suppressed (Israel didn't get around to passing anything resembling a free speech law until decades later) for two months by order of Ben-Gurion, so that when the media blackout was lifted and the whole story spilled, it was seen as "old news" by the public in much of the (non-Arab) world, and even if not, it wasn't enough to occupy a whole news cycle. Though a trial was eventually held, and several officers convicted, most were pardoned- and those who weren't ultimately had their sentences reduced to 5 years or less. Indeed, several were promoted. Lt. Dahan was even placed in charge of Arab Affairs in Ramla, as a hilarious little joke from Ben Gurion. har har (sob). Colonel Issachar Shadmi, who was nominally in charge of the area to which the curfew applied, was later tried and found guilty on a technicality, a common tactic to prevent the true source of an order (in this case Shadmi's superiors) from being subject to legal scrutiny, or even verified. Shadmi served no jail time, and was ultimately punished with a fine of precisely one cent.

The trial also resulted in an absurd legal precedent: the judges presiding came to the conclusion that members of the military are not entitled to disobey orders for reasons of moral conviction or out of a subjective belief that a given order was illegal, nor did they have any duty to examine the legality of an order before obeying it, only that soldiers could, and had to, disobey those orders that are plainly illegal, leaving open the question of how one could determine which orders were plainly illegal without stopping to examine their legality, or how a soldier in the field could base that determination on anything other than subjective belief. (Meanwhile, somewhere in the cosmos, the ghost of Adolf Eichmann was chuckling.)

The massacre, being a fine manifestation of the extraordinarily high regard in which Israel held its Arab citizenry, quickly gained notoriety, and became a symbol for dissidence and resistance. The Israeli military realized that outright massacres of civilians were bad PR, and that it now had to resort to more civilized forms of dehumanization, such as humiliating hour-long personal searches at checkpoints, random arrests without charge, imprisonment of children to put pressure on their parents etc.

It would take another 10 years before the martial law under which Israeli Arabs lived was finally abolished, as Israel's policy toward its Arab citizens (at least officially, though hardly culturally) gradually changed to reflect the fact that Arabs were human. And it took until 2007 before president Shimon Peres finally gave an open full-throated presidential apology for the massacre which one of his predecessors had tried to cover up.

Mahmoud Darwish: Passport (From Arabic)

Revision

Passport
By Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the Arabic

They did not recognize me in the shadows
That suck my color out of the passport.
To them, the wound in me was an exhibit
For tourists collecting photographs for sport.
They did not recognize me. No . . . don't leave
My hand's palm with no sun, for trees in bloom
Do recognize me. Every song
Of the rain recognizes me.
Don't leave me pale like the moon!

All the birds that followed my palm
To the doors of the distant airport
All the wheatfields
All the prisons
All the white tombs
All the borders
All the waved handkerchiefs
All the eyes
Were with me,
But taken from my passport.

Stripped of my name and what I am?
On soil I worked with my own hands?
Today Job's cry
Filled all the sky:
Don't make another example of me!
Good prophets, my good sirs
Ask not the name of any tree.
Ask not the valley about its mother
From my brow bursts the sword of light
And from my hand springs the river's water...
The people's hearts are my identity.
Go, take my passport away from me.

The Original:

جواز سفر
محمود درويش

لم يعرفوني في الظلال التي
تمتصُّ لوني في جواز السفرْ
وكان جرحي عندهم معرضاً
لسائح يعشق جمع الصور

لم يعرفوني، آه... لا تتركي
كفي بلا شمسٍ، لأن الشجر
يعرفني...تعرفني كل أغاني المطر
لا تتركيني شاحباً كالقمر!

كلُّ العصافير التي لاحقتْ
كفى على باب المطار البعيد
كل حقول القمح،
كل السجونِ،
كل القبور البيض
كل الحدودِ،
كل المناديل التي لوَحتْ،
كل العيونِ
كانت معي، لكنهم
قد أسقطوها من جواز السفر!

عارٍ من الاسم، من الانتماء ْ؟
في تربة ربَّيتها باليدينْ؟
أيوب صاح اليوم ملء السماء:
لا تجعلوني عبرة مرتين!
يا سادتي! يا سادتي الأنبياء
لا تسألوا الأشجار عن اسمها
لا تسألوا الوديان عن أُمها
من جبهتي ينشق سيف الضياء
ومن يدي ينبع ماء النهر
كل قلوب الناس... جنسيتي
فلتسقطوا عني جواز السفر

Samih al-Qasim: Travel Tickets (From Arabic)

Travel Tickets
By Samih al-Qasim
Translated by A.Z. Foreman 

The day I'm killed,
my killer, rifling through my pockets,
will find travel tickets:
One to peace,
one to the fields and the rain,
and one
to the conscience of humankind.

I beg you my dear killer: don't
Ignore them. Don't waste such a thing,
But take and use the tickets. Please
I beg you to go traveling. 


The Original:

تذاكر سفر

وعندما أٌقتَل في يومٍ من الأيام
سيَعثُر القاتل في جيبي
على تذاكِرِ السفر:
واحدة الى السلام
واحدة الى الحقول والمطر
واحدة
الى ضمائر البشر

ارجوك الّا تُهمِل التذاكر
يا قاتلي العزيز
ارجوك ان تسافر

Mahmoud Darwish: It is our right to love autumn (From Arabic)

It is our right to love autumn
By Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me reciting the original Arabic

We too have every right to love this autumn's

Last days and ask "is there room in the field 

For a new fall? Where we can lie like coals?" 

Autumn that downs the leaves in gold. If only

We were fig-leaves, or even neglected plants

To witness seasons' changing, oh if only

We had not said goodbye to the eyes' south

To ask our fathers what they asked themselves 

When they went flying at the points of spears.

Poetry and the Lord's name in hope

Have mercy on us. 

                               We, too, have the right 

To warm the nights of lovely women, talk

Of what cuts short two strangers' night as they

Wait for the north to reach the compass. Autumn.

We have the right to smell the fragrance of

This autumn. The right to ask night for a dream.   

Does a dream sicken as the dreamers do?  

Fall. Autumn. Autumn. Can a people be

Born on the guillotine? We have the right

To meet whatever death we wish to meet. 

Let the earth vanish in an ear of wheat.

The Original:

يحقّ لنا أن نحبّ الخريف
محمود درويش

ونحن، يحِقُّ لَنَا ان نُحِبَّ نهاياتِ هذا الخَريفِ، وَأَنْ نسألهْ
أَفِي الحَقْلِ متَّسِعٌ لِخَريفٍ جَديدٍ، ونحن نمَدِّدُ أجسادَنا فيه فَحْما؟
خريفٌ ينكِّسُ أَوْرَاقَهُ ذَهَباً. ليتنا وَرَقُ التِّين، يَا ليتنا عُشبةٌ مُهمَله
لنَشهَدَ ما الفرقُ بين الفصول. ويا ليتنا لَمْ نوَدِّع جَنُوبَ العيونِ لنَسْأَلَ عَمَّا
تساءل آباؤنا حين طاروا على قِمَّةِ الرُّمْحِ. يَرْحَمُنَا الشِعرُ والبَسْملَهْ
ونحن يحقّ لنا أن نجَفِّفَ ليلَ النِّساءِ الجميلات، أنْ نتَحدَّثَ عمّا
يُقَصِّرُ ليلَ غَريَبيْن ينتظرانِ وصولَ الشَّمال إلى البَوْصَلهْ
خريفٌ. ونحن يحقّ لنا أن نَشُمَّ رَوَائحَ هذا الخريف، وأن نَسْأَلَ الليلَ حُلْما
أَيَمْرَضُ حُلْمٌ كما يَمْرَضُ الحَالِمُون ؟ خريفٌ خريفٌ. أيولَدُ شَعْبٌ على مِقصَلَه
يحقّ لنا أن نموتَ كما نشتهي ان نموت، لتَختبئَ الأرضُ في سُنبُلَه

Wanaḥnu yaḥiqqu lanā ʔan nuḥibba nihāyāti hāḏā l-xarīfi, waʔan nasʔalah

ʔafī l-ḥaqli muttasiʕun lixarīfin jadīdin wanaḥnu numaddidu ʔajsādanā fīhi faḥmā

xarīfun yunakkisu ʔawrāqahū ḏahaban. laytanā waraqu l-tīni, yā laytanā ʕušbatun muhmalah

linašhada mā l-farqu bayna l-fuṣūli, wa-yā laytanā lam nuwaddiʕ janūba l-ʕuyūni linasʔala ʕammā

tasāʔala ʔābāʔunā ḥīna ṭārū ʕalā qimmati l-rumḥi, yarḥamunā l-šiʕru wa-l-basmalah

wanaḥnu yaḥiqqu lanā ʔan nujaffifa layla l-nisāʔi l-jamīlāti, ʔan nataḥaddaṯa ʕammā

yuqaṣṣiru layla ɣarībayni yantaẓirāni wuṣūla l-šamāli ʔilā l-bawṣalah

xarīfun. wanaḥnu yaḥiqqu lanā an našumma rawāʔiḥa hāḏā l-xarīfi, waʔan nasʔala l-layla ḥulmā

ʔa-yamraḍu ḥulmun kamā yamraḍu l-ḥālimūna? xarīfun xarīfun. ʔayūladu šaʕbun ʕalā miqṣalah?

yaḥiqqu lanā ʔan namūta kamā naštahī ʔan namūta, litaxtabiʔa l-ʔarḍu fī sunbulah. 

Mahmoud Darwish: I am from there (From Arabic)

This poem ends by making innovative use of the technical linguistic terminology of the Arab grammarian tradition. It annoys me that the existing translations into English underplay or ignore this coolness.

I Am From There
By Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click here to hear me read the poem in Arabic

I am from there and I have memories. Like any other
Man I was born. I have a mother,
A house with several windows, friends and brothers.
I have a prison cell's cold window, a wave
Snatched by seagulls, my own view, an extra blade
Of grass, a moon at word's end, a supply
Of birds, and an olive tree that cannot die.
I walked across the land before the crossing
Of swords made a banquet-table of a body.

I come from there, and I return the sky
To its mother when it cries for her, and cry
For a cloud on its return
To recognize me. I have learned
All words befitting of blood's court to break
The rule; I have learned all the words to take
The lexicon apart for one noun's sake,
The compound I must make:
Homeland.


The Original:

انا من هناك

محمود درويش

أنا من هناك. ولي ذكرياتٌ . ولدت كما تولد الناس. لي والدة

وبيتٌ كثير النوافذِ. لي إخوةٌ. أصدقاء. وسجنٌ بنافذة باردهْ.

ولي موجةٌ خطَِفتها النوارس. لي مشهدي الخاص. لي عُشْبةٌ زائدهْ

ولي قمرٌ في أقاصي الكلام، ورزقُ الطيور، وزيتونةٌ خالدهْ

مررتُ على الأرض قبل مرور السيوف على جسدٍ حوّلوه إلى مائدهْ.

أنا من هناك. أعيد السماء إلى أمها حين تبكي السماء على أمها،

وأبكي لتعرفني غيمةٌ عائدهْ.

تعلّمتُ كل كلام يليقُ بمحكمة الدم كي أكسر القاعدهْ

تعلّمتُ كل الكلام، وفككته كي أركب مفردةً واحدهْ

هي: الوطنُ...

Samih Al-Qasim: Buchenwald (From Arabic)

Buchenwald
By Samih Al-Qasim
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original in Arabic

Have you forgotten how you were shamed in Buchenwald?
Do you remember how you were flamed in Buchenwald?
Have you forgotten your love in the great glossary of silence?
Do you remember your panic at the great sovereignty of death,
In the great nightmare of time,
That all the world would become a Buchenwald?
Whether you have forgotten or not,
The images of the dead
Remain among the flower wreaths...
And from among the dismembered,
A hand rises forth,
With palm nailed through, with wrist tattooed
As a sign unto all the planet.
Do you remember, or do you not?
Buchenwald-
Whether or not you've forgotten,
The images of the slaughtered
Remain among the flower wreathes.

The Original:

بوخنفالد

سميح القاسم

هل تنسى عارك في بوخنفالد

هل تذكر نارك في بخنفالد

هل تنسى حبك في قاموس الصمت

هل تذكر رعبك في ناموس الموت

في كابوس الوقت

ان يصبح كل العالم بوخنفالد؟

تنسى. لا تنسى. تبقى صور الموتى

بين أكاليل الورد

ومن الأشلاء البشرية

تطلع يد

مسمار في الكف ووشم في الزند

لافتة للكرة الأرضية

تذكر؟ لا تذكر؟

بوخنفالد

تنسى؟ لا تنسى؟

تبقى صور القتلى... بين أكاليل الورد...