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The Road To Damascus

June 2005

Syria today is better known for its poet in exile, Adonis-often mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize-than for its writers in residence. Yet it is home to one of the oldest and most complex artistic cultures in the Middle East, persisting in heroic fashion, even under dictatorship. In “The Lanterns of Seville,” Abd el-Salam al-Ujayli spins a dazzling tale of a search for the lost richness of Arabic culture in Spain. In “Darkness” and “Ahem,” Ibrâhim Samûel illuminates the most repressive corners of a world without any such lanterns. In Haifa’ Bitar’s “Fatima” and Hasiba Abd al-Rahman’s “First Breaths of Freedom,” two powerful women writers explore the response of strong women characters to poverty and injustice. Dissident Faraj Bayraqdar is the third of our featured writers to address the experience of prison, in three poems written during his own confinement for political activism. And classic poet Nizar Qabbani leaves another light burning, in his lyric meditation on a more romantic Damascus of memory.

The Lanterns of Seville
By Abd el-Salam al-Ujayli
“It reminds me of the past, of the time when I too came looking for the world of my ancestors.”
Translated from Arabic by Taline Voskeritchian & Tania Tamari Nasir
Darkness
By Yolanda Pantin
But there are condemned men
Translated from Spanish by Katherine Silver
Multilingual
Ahem
By Ibrâhim Samûel
After this silence reigned. A silence I had not heard the likes of a day since I entered the cell.
Translated from Arabic by Alexa Firat
Fatima
By Haifa` Bitar
Begging is the profession of humiliation and degradation, but Fatima possessed a great sense of dignity and self-worth.
Translated from Arabic by Taline Voskeritchian & Tania Tamari Nasir
The First Breaths of Freedom
By Hasiba Abd al-Rahman
Now I go back to my worry again. This is my bed, so why do I feel alienated? I spent my childhood, my adolescence, my youth here . . .
Translated from Arabic by Shareah Taleghani
Cooing
By Faraj Bayraqdar
Your cooing wears me out at night—                    so wear me out.Like wine in the odes, you go on cooingand leave me what moves horses   …
Translated from Arabic by The New York Translation Collective
Neighing
By Faraj Bayraqdar
Stop, and weep  Not sadness over the corpse ofthe remnants of a cursed godand so not a sadnessover a bird burdened with open spaceDon’t take me-Don’t leave me-maybe, my two friends,…
Translated from Arabic by The New York Translation Collective
Ode of Sorrow
By Faraj Bayraqdar
 The blue of depth is sadnessand the depth of blue-sadnessand a star quivering tears in this space-Language at the peak of clarityunfurls the night . . .Indeed, the moment is wounded by a dreamto…
Translated from Arabic by The New York Translation Collective
Barada
By Nizar Qabbani
Barada, oh father of all riversOh, horse that races the daysBe, in our sad history, a prophetWho receives inspiration from his lordMillions acknowledge you as an ArabPrince . . . so pray as an imamOh…
Translated from Arabic by Shareah Taleghani
Damascus, What Are You Doing to Me?
By Nizar Qabbani
How do the gardens of Sham transform me?
Translated from Arabic by Shareah Taleghani