A Meter of Exile
The Poetry of Ibrahim Nasrallah
———
Translations and Introduction by Omnia Amin
Poetry by Ibrahim Nasrallah
Ibrahim Nasrallah was born in Jordan in the Al-Wihdat refugee camp in 1954 to parents who had fled their homeland village Al Breuij near Jerusalem as a result of Israeli occupation. The 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the violence that followed, led to the Palestinian Diaspora, in which many, like Nasrallah’s parents, lived in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Having lost most of their homeland, Palestinians remained confined to the Gaza Strip or West Bank, living as second-class citizens, or to exile in different parts of the world.
Nasrallah spent the first thirty-three years of his life in a refugee camp. It was the harsh and life-threatening conditions there that made him into a poet. In the ninth grade when he was attending school at the United Nations’ Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), his Arabic teacher was killed by a bomb that scattered his body all over the yard of his small house. The incident prompted Nasrallah to write his first verses, an elegy to the wasted life of his teacher. This early attempt was to be followed by many more, ranging from a child’s dream of having a safe roof and a soft bed of his own to more complex notions of the suffering of the Palestinian people. The camp became his first true exile, and the intense mixture of emotions he felt during the time he lived there drove his poetic and artistic experience beyond an individual sense of exile as a Palestinian refugee, to a more profound, universal conception that includes all exiles around the world, from the dawn of history to the present day.
Nasrallah has been awarded a number of prestigious prizes, including the Arar Literary Award for Arab poets in 1991, Al Awais Literary Award for Arab poetry in 1997, and the Katara Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2016 for his novel The Spirits of Kilimanjaro. He was short-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction for The Time of White Horses, and long-listed twice for The Lanterns of the King of Galilee and Balcony of Abyss. In addition, he is a painter and photographer and has participated in several exhibitions around the world.
The five poems that follow, newly translated, are taken from a number of his books that explore the theme of exile. My interview with Nasrallah appears below as well.
Window
The field's window: a cloud
The poem's window: a wing
The painting's window: an eye
The lover's window: a dream
The window of the lost: a shadow
The window of exile: a homeland
Beyond the times of killing!
Apology
I will remember every day
I will remember that
I’ve forgotten how with carefree steps
I used to run by the shore of Haifa
Ever since that day I have been stumbling
from one exile to another
Fourth Name
All your names here do not identify you
I mean your four names!
Your first name is nothing, there are a million similar names!
A void gathers around it and the stones of Babel fall inside it!
After five minutes you will add your father's name.
Nothing has changed,
The soldier whispers with half a smile.
You add your grandfather's name
After three names you still resemble an echo, or something fainter!
Your family name
Silence prevails
You utter it and nothing happens
Where from? you are asked
From here!
I mean your country.
I am from here!
No one is from here!
Your fifth, sixth, seventh, thousandth name
I am the son of Adam
Then you are Cain?
No I am not...
Abel?
No!
Who are you? Confess!
I am everything! Every exile and every homeland!
The Wall
A journey to trace the effects of the wall and its idea in human history from the dawn of humanity to the Israeli apartheid wall.
The wall advances
one stone, two stones
Extending, rising
And unexpectedly surprises a field
Bites off a shoot dreaming of spring
A carnation falls for a hovering bird
between one war and another
At times the wall turns and runs
Imitating a river
Unaware that timeworn darkness is its course
As it pours into a great hell
In the beginning the wall was a garment
It was peace with the beast
in the spacious ground of death
It was a friendly conversation with the wind
that hides a woman bathing in her desire
and an eloquent gazelle
In the beginning it was the weapon of its children's dreams
And the stones of a valley overlooking the plain like a mountain
When seasons of snow and fire flowed
When our ancestors wondered in the victories of their bewilderment
What's to be done?
—
Far away a surge
Tempted and ignited the men with the women
With paradises in the exposure of this nakedness
It multiplied: a fence, a thick wood, a bed, a cover, a jungle
And when they felt a little reassured
And fear was no longer their enemy like the beasts
they directed it to the horizon
They called the moon, the wind, the sun and the smell of the fields
Time was simple like the heart of a cloud
So they did not scowl when it passed by them hurtful and lost
A wolf with its young, a fly landed on their game
There was plenty in the land:
A stream and field for every horse
Clouds and fields for birds
Fifty lambs for the hyena
And half a herd of deer for the leopard
An awesome wilderness for the stags
As for the birds, they had their secret: fruit
And of course everything was for man
I mean: he has the hyena, leopard, birds, women, deer, field and horse
Castles had to be constructed
The stones came to have a new meaning
So the fighter could grab time by the throat
And lead immortality obediently to his throne
Taming the horses of time
—
We are closer
The houses move to the hill and climb up,
They land there atop the mountains
And the wall multiplies:
It becomes the truncheon, the sword,
Rifles, missiles and planes
The eyes of the investigator
The watchman, the worshippers
The oppressors
Thrones laying thrones
The leader's palace, his soldiers
His line of ancestry
And his birthdays as a child, the forthcoming ones
And the wall multiplies:
It becomes the newspaper that devours half the truth
before speech begins and after will devour the rest
The wall became peace and comes to mean:
the descent of lazy pigeons
on every known meaning that narrows the meaning of peace
—
The wall disappeared, the wall manifested
The wall protruded,
The wall became a border,
the absence of existence
Silence, repudiation
A crossing in the palms of death
As death stares at us
The school courtyard became two
Divided sky and divided promises
And the exile a meter away from the violated homeland
A tank staring through the souls of our children
And invaders inside Jerusalem testing weapons
I will wage thirty wars if need be
Said the Politician to the General
So that the sky becomes ours alone
And the lands are ours alone
And the seas are ours alone, and the wind!
I want a wall so our enemies will have no rain nor stars
Nor horizon nor morning!
—
A poet wrote once, long ago:
"Good walls make good neighbors"
A wall made of cypresses suffices
A wall made of almond trees, palms and figs
A wall made of roses and jasmine
A wall made of bread
The stones of those days had the form of loaves
Before their cement expanded
And their windows became afraid of our sun!
—
The air is lovely'
So will a child say after a while
He has his sun, wind and horizon
And songs fill him with life
He will stare at a wide expanse and add:
The air is lovely like a young man in love, and flowers are his youth'
Then he will write with the light as he dances:
When a wall falls in any land
The one who built it will fall
from The Saint
We did not leave much grass when we left
We carried urns of sad songs on our backs
We carried streets and schools
We carried rooftops laden with mint and the steps at the thresholds
We carried the reading book
The Chapter of Mary
And walked to the end of life
to learn our names anew
For the sea to remind us when we return
Father, we didn't know that the further we wade
The more the scene becomes incomplete
it overlooks neither wheat nor roses
and we grow up to be killed here in the shadows without rain or witness
—
The modest rose becomes more of a rose
As it calls out and the mountains bend so the sound may pass
All the story is us
But we are not the heroes
Every time the charade lights up
It dwindles away in exile.
Neither can the youthful ending refer to us
Nor could the beginning that became old recall what used to be
We did not stand in front of the door
to ask the sons about their fathers who lived here
We did not see the light fall with longing behind the curtains
And we did not circle around our houses
lest we hurt them for being strangers
I told you that the story is ours
But we are not the heroes
—
We walked far away to the end of the earth
Death stripped us of our death
Father, when no enemy of ours remained,
Except this poor shadow like dust,
it stripped us of the road home at the top of the land
And of every exile we descended upon at daylight
We were surprised by mourning
And stripped from longing for what had passed
And longing for what might come
—
You are gentle with your song on your way to the wedding
As young women find their path in cypress groves
And the whiteness of their ceremony in the horses
They are gentle with their steps on their way to dream
In order not to scratch the air and light beneath them
They hold the dust lest the body slips from it
We hate death, not that we are greedy for immortality
But for the love of those who remain alive
I will not tell you to be gentle with the rose
While you give it to someone else
—
Exile!!!
Was no more than a mirror
In which our images are clearer though we do not exist outside them.
We are exiled as if we had never possessed a homeland once.
On which bosom can we place our heads?
On which bosom?
How we tried to lift the palm trees so the children would grow
So they would bend when a woman in mind passed by
—
On the balcony a house waves
A window slips away from the wood and metal
to run with the wind
On the balcony lies the phantom of a wounded steed
—
Separation looks through the crack of tears
And through the floating lily on the surface of the water
Take the wind to the fields and teach it breezes
And the desert to the oasis and teach it palm trees
Take the homeland to your name and teach it the sea
And salt to the green and teach it the shore
Take the river home and teach it about land
Take the land to your bosom and teach it about the heart
Take poetry to the water and teach it about the soul
Take the soul to the birds and teach it wings
Take sight to insight and teach it wisdom
And wisdom to the book and teach it sarcasm
—
Take the end to its limit and teach it life
An Interview with Ibrahim Nasrallah
This interview was originally conducted in Arabic on January 10, 2017, and translated into English by Omnia Amin.
Q: In your various writings, you seem to have many definitions of exile. You say the exile of a poet differs from that of a novelist, and from that of a human being. If you were to define exile from one perspective only, what would you say?
A: I think that the various definitions are the sum result of my reflection on exile and were shaped in various stages of my life. Exile has no static or fixed form; it is a mobile entity as long as we too move and live different experiences, see new places, and meet with surprising changes throughout our life journey. The closest definition of exile that can be given under the most favorable conditions is that it is a 'cold womb' and under the worst circumstances is that it’s ‘like a mirror in which our images are clearer but we have no existence outside of it.’
Q: In your poem “Fourth Name” you define yourself in a universal manner: “I am everything! Every exile and every homeland!” How important for you is this idea compared with your Palestinian identity?
A: Let us confess that exile does not only exist outside a place but it also exists in a place. Exile is complex. In fleeting moments, you sense that it contains part of the homeland, and at other times you sense that it contains hundreds of other exiles. It supersedes one's condition as a human being who has been uprooted from his land, and it reaches one's inner essence as a human being who has been uprooted from his paradise or from anything he loves: a beloved, a family, even the thoughts that one wants to express and is not allowed to.
Also, one's longing for what is lost is an exile. When I'm in an airplane that passes over a Palestinian coast on its way to Amman or Europe, I feel my heart is being crushed. All the sea that lies below it is mine but I cannot dip my hand in its water. All the fields, villages, mountains, are pulled out from me. It feels as if your chest is empty and your soul is filled with void instead of all that belongs to you, as you are cast far away without mercy. There are Palestinians in Palestine but the majority of them are denied a visit to their villages that sometimes lie only a few hundred meters away. When I speak to them, they too speak about themselves as exiled. Exile is any oppressive power that prevents you from meeting whom or what you love, or even yourself.
Q: You give a wonderful definition of being Palestinian by saying that by being Palestinian you are being human. You link humanity with a sense of suffering and exile.
A: As human beings we are the children of the details that shape our daily lives and souls in crucial moments as children, adults and in old age. But the intrinsic thing in this life is that a human being is born to be human. This is the reason for his existence on earth and this is his attribute. But he has to struggle a great deal to be worthy of it. I fight in order to be human or to be Palestinian. Thirty-five years ago, I wrote:
We stand with Palestine not because we are
Palestinian or Arabs, but because Palestine
is a daily test for the world's conscience.
I believe that when we stand by every just cause, it makes us better human beings. I cannot predict what my position would be, humanistically-speaking, if I were not Palestinian, because this is how I was born. But I do see that many people around the world were able to choose the causes they want to support and defend. They do not choose them by accident but because they were able to embrace the long heritage of humanity in its defense of justice, rights, freedom, and beauty.
Q: Writing is often seen as a homeland and seen as a place of exile. Which is it for you?
A: Writing is the place of the soul, its isolation and opening up to the apprehensions of the human spirit whether we are in exile or in our homelands. It is also able to accommodate the exile and the homeland and what lies between them. But even the most beautiful poems and novels cannot be enough as a homeland. For in order to live your life, you need to depart from your poem and walk on earth. You need to roam, fly, touch, and love. The poem is like an amazing train. It is brilliant to be in, but at some point, you have to get up and go down to your station. Your station is your home, your beloved, your homeland, in order that writing itself does not become an exile as well.
Q: Can you recall the very first incident in which you truly felt in exile?
A: The first incident was when I was just a child and we had arrived at the refugee camp. It happened that we reached there in winter, and the fog was quite thick and so, I could not figure out the directions. I couldn't make out east, west, north, or south. Only with difficulty could I make out where my little feet were. This narrow space with no orientation was my first exile. The minute I started to search for direction, I started to discover myself because I realized that I do not belong to this estrangement. I decided that if an exile had to be forced upon me, then it had to be more spacious than that narrow spot, and I was deliberately going to widen it!
Q: The image of women is usually connected with belonging. For instance, we say ‘the motherland’. In depicting women, did you use them as symbols for a lost home or did their image intensify your sense of exile?
A: I think that it was part of my good fortune that when I started to publish, writers had overused the mother as a symbol for homeland and land, so I did not choose that. I tended towards woman as a human being, because I believe that whoever cannot be a human being first, cannot become a home. That is why there are marvelous women in many of my novels and poems. They are simply women, and I love them as women, and it does not come to my mind that they are a homeland. For me this is why they are great.
I recall that an Egyptian writer did some research on women in my novel The Time of White Horses, entitled: “The Marvelous Women of Ibrahim Nasrallah.” I love this study a great deal and I am proud of it.
A human being is bigger than a homeland because it is he who makes a homeland a real home or a hell.
Q: You refer a lot to places, especially Amman, and you refer to your experience in Saudi Arabia. Do you think the place creates a sense of exile or our inner feelings and emotions are what make us feel estranged? Where and when did you most feel you were in exile?
A: This is also a complex matter. Exile is your sense of yourself and the place together at a certain moment. Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being sees that exile is like walking on a tightrope high above the ground and home is the air cushion that lies underneath this rope. I like this description because exile is an endless moment of danger. So long as the air cushion does not exist below you, then the rope is endless. It is like being between two moments out of time and not between two points in place.
One day I caught malaria while I was working as a teacher in the Saudi desert. It can be fatal, and used to reap the lives of many of my pupils and fellow teachers. They were unable to treat me in this desert village so they carried me in the back of a small open cargo van as I shivered and was bombarded by nightmares. I was transported to the city of Taif that was hundreds of kilometers away, driven along unpaved roads. The hospital refused to admit me as I did not carry a passport, for my passport had been taken away by the educational administration, like those of all the teachers, so that we could not run away from that hell! That night the owner of a goldsmith’s shop agreed to let me sleep in his shop until the morning. There was no cover, medicine, or even enough water. They locked the door on me from the outside. I remained burning in the dark and my head was on fire from the fever until they opened the door in the morning. Then they found someone to help me get treatment in spite of not having any ID to prove who I was. This is an incident I cannot forget because I was more than an exile and less than a human being by far, in this darkness, behind that locked door.
Q: Memory of places, people, and things is often the only thing we have to fall back on in order to preserve our sense of belonging and identity. Do you think that memory is a blessing or a curse?
A: In my novel Two People Only or Inside the Night, I say: “We forget in order to live, but we do not forget completely in order not to die!” In one of my poems, I wrote: “I will forget because I remembered more than I ought to.”
We connive a little with ourselves in order to lighten the cruelty of memories. But we know that if we overdo it, we will no longer be ourselves. Humanity is memory, and memory is our joys, sadness, experiences; with them we shape not only a picture of our past and our identity, but the nature of our dreams, our future, our fate, and the fate of our world. To let go of memory in the end is to accept total defeat and absolute extinction.
Issue 1
Publication Date: May 17