DIARIES
Mahmoud Darwish
translated by Fady Joudah
THE GIRL/THE SCREAM
GREEN FLIES
LIKE A PROSE POEM
I WISH I WERE A STONE
BEYOND PERSONIFICATION
THE ENEMY
NERO
THE JUNGLE
DOVES
THE HOUSE MURDERED
OPERATION INFILTRATION
THE CUNNING OF METAPHOR
THE MOSQUITO
On the beach a girl, and the girl has a family
and the family has a house. And the house has two windows and a door . . .
and in the sea a warship passes the time while hunting pedestrians
on the shore: four, five, seven
fall on the sand. And the girl survives for a little bit
because a hand of fog
some kind of divine hand rescues her. So she calls: Father
O father! Get up, let's go back, the sea is not for our kind!
But he, shrouded in his shadow in the rise
of absence, does not reply,
some of his blood on the palm trees, some of it in the clouds.
And the voice carries her higher and farther than
the beach. She screams in the night of a wilderness,
but there's no echo to echo.
Then she becomes the eternal scream in breaking
news that is no longer breaking news when
the fighter jets returned to bombing a house with two windows and a door.
The scene is the same, the same. Summer and sweat. And an imagination unable to envision what's beyond the horizon. And today is better than tomorrow. But the murdered are replenished. Everyday they are born. When they try to sleep, killing takes them away from their drowsiness to a dreamless sleep. There is no value in numbers. None of the murdered asks for help from anyone. Voices search for words in the wilderness, but echo returns clearly and wounds: There's no one. Yet there is someone who says: “It is the murderer's right to defend the instinct of murder.” And the murdered say too late: “The victims are entitled to defend their right to scream.” And then the calling to prayer ascends to funerals that look alike: coffins raised in a hurry, buried in a hurry . . . there is no time to complete the rituals, other victims are on the way, fast, from other raids. They come singular or in groups . . . or as a whole family that leaves behind no orphans or bereft mothers. The sky is ashen and leaden. And the sea is gray and blue. As for the color of blood, flocks of green flies veil it from the camera!
An autumnal summer on the hills is like a prose poem. The breeze is a gentle cadence I sense but don't hear amid the humility of shrubs. And the yellowing grass is an ascetic, chapped, image that seduces eloquence to mimic its wily acts. No celebration on these trails other than what is permitted through the sparrow's action, an action between meaning and absurdity. And nature is a body in the gaiety of adornment and ornament, until the figs and grapes and pomegranates ripen, and also the forgetting of desires that the rain awakens. “Had it not been for my mysterious need for poetry I wouldn't need a thing,” the poet, whose errors became fewer since his valor diminished, says. And he walks, because the doctors ordered him to walk aimlessly and train his heart on some kind of nonchalance necessary for health. Though if he obsesses, it is over a thought that costs nothing. Summer is rarely suitable for song. Summer is a prose poem that doesn't heed the falcons that hover up high.
I long for nothing
for neither yesterday passes, nor tomorrow comes
and my present doesn't advance or retreat
nothing happens to me!
I wish I were a stone, I said, I wish
I were some kind of stone for the water to burnish me,
turn me yellow, or green . . . and I could be placed
in a room as a sculpture, or as an exercise in sculpture,
or as matter for the bursting of the necessary
out of the frivolity of the needless . . .
I wish I were a stone
so I can long for anything!
I sit in front of the television, since I can do nothing else. Over there, in front of the television, I place my emotions. And I see what happens to and for me. Smoke rises from me, and I extend my severed arm to grab my body parts that are scattered out of numerous bodies, but I neither catch nor escape them, because the gravity of pain is unbearable. I am under siege, by air, land, sea, and language. The last plane took off from Beirut's airport, and placed me in front of the television, so I could see my death with millions of viewers. Nothing proves that I am , when I think along with Descartes, and even when the sacrificial offering rises out of me, now, in Lebanon. I enter the television, the beast and me. I know the beast is stronger than I am in the clash of the jet with the bird. But I am addicted, perhaps more than I should be, to the heroism of metaphor: the beast ingested me but did not digest me. And I came out safe more than once. And my soul that had flown out of me, and out of the beast's belly, like a beam of light, used to reside in another body, agile and stronger. But I do not know where I am now: in front of the television, or in the television. I see my heart rolling, like a pinecone, from a mountain in Lebanon to Gaza.
I was there a month ago. I was there a year ago. And I was always there as if I had never been elsewhere. And in the eighty-second year of the last century something of what is happening to us now happened then. We were under siege, we were murdered, and we resisted what we were offered of the inferno. The murdered/the martyrs don't look alike. Each one has a distinct torso, a distinct face, two eyes, a name, and a different age. The murderers are alike. They are one who's spread among metal machines. He pushes electronic buttons. He kills and disappears. He sees us but we don't see him, not because he's a ghost, but because he's a steel mask for an idea . . . he has no features, no eyes, no age, no name. He . . . he is the one who chose his only title: the enemy.
What goes on in Nero's mind, while watching Lebanon burn? His eyes squirm with intoxication, walking as a dancer in a wedding: This madness, my madness, is the boss of wisdom, blaze up all that doesn't obey me . . . and the children should behave, learn some manners, and quit their screaming in the presence of my melody!
And what goes on in Nero's mind, while watching Iraq burn? It pleases him to wake in the history of jungles a memory that preserves his name as enemy to Hammurabi, Gilgamesh, and Abu Nawass: My commandments are the mother of all commandments. And the herbs of immortality grow in my ranch. And poetry, what does the word mean?
And what goes on in Nero's mind, while watching Palestine burn? It delights him to list his name among the prophets as one no one has ever believed in. A prophet of murder entrusted by God to rectify the innumerable faults in the holy books: “God speaks also to me!”
And what goes on in Nero's mind, while watching the whole world burn? “I own Resurrection Day.” Then he asks the camera to stop filming, he doesn't want anyone to see the fire burning in his fingers at the end of this long American movie!
I don't hear my own voice in the jungle, even if
the jungle is vacant of the hunger of the beast . . . even if
the vanquished or triumphant (no difference) army
returns over the remains of the nameless dead
to the barracks or to the throne /
And I don't hear my voice in the jungle, even if
the wind carries it to me and says:
“This is your voice” . . . I still don't hear it! /
I don't hear my voice in the jungle even
if the wolf stands on two legs and claps
for me, saying: “I hear your voice, command me!” /
I say: The jungle is not in the jungle,
my dear father wolf, my son! /
I hear my voice only when the jungle
is empty of me, and I am empty
of the silence of the jungle!
A file of doves breaks suddenly out of a deficiency in smoke. The file glistens like a flash of a heavenly peace. It hovers between what's ashen and the blue crumbs over a city of rubble. It reminds us that beauty still exists, and that the non-existent isn't fully concerned with us: it promises us, or we think it promises us, the transfiguration of what contrasts it from the void. In war, none of us feels he has died if he feels pain. Death precedes pain, and pain is the only blessing in war. It moves among the living pending execution. And if one is lucky he forgets his long-term plans and waits for the non-existent as it hovers in a file of doves. The doves are many in this sky, dallying with smoke that rises from the direction of the void!
In one minute, the whole life of a house ends. The house murdered is also mass murder, even if vacant of its residents. It is a mass grave for the basic elements needed to construct a building for meaning, or for an insignificant poem in a time of war. The house, murdered, is the amputation of things from their relations and from the names of emotions, and it is tragedy's need to guide eloquence to contemplate the life of a thing. In each thing there's a being that aches . . . the memory of fingers, of a scent, of an image. And houses get murdered just as their residents get murdered. And as the memory of things get murdered: wood, stone, glass, iron, cement, they all scatter in fragments like beings. And cotton, silk, linen, notepads, books, all are torn like words whose owners were not given time to speak. And the plates, spoons, toys, records, faucets, pipes, door handles, and the fridge, the washer, the vases, jars of olives and pickles, and canned foods, all break as their owners broke. And the two whites, salt and sugar, are pulverized, and also the spices, the matchboxes, the pills and oral contraceptives, elixirs, garlic braids, onions, tomatoes, dried okra, rice and lentils, as happens with the residents. And the lease contracts, the marriage and birth certificates, the utility bills, identity cards, passports, love letters, all torn to shreds like the hearts of their owners. And the pictures fly, the toothbrushes, hair combs, make-up accessories, shoes, underwear, sheets, towels, like family secrets hung in public, in ruin. All these things are the memories of people who were emptied of things, and the memories of things that were emptied of people . . . all end in one minute. Our things die like us, but they don't get buried with us!
Today, the twenty sixth of July, twenty one murdered/martyred in Gaza, among them two newborns, were able to bypass the military checkpoints and the barbed wires . . . and they snuck into the news hour. They did not make a comment, because pain fell from them before they could reach the word. And they did not state their names that are so poor and ordinary. And they did not raise their arms in victory sign to the camera, since the camera was crammed with more thrilling images. War is excitement, a series where the new episode obliterates the previous one, a massacre copying another. And when death becomes daily it becomes ordinary and the murdered become numbers, and death routine, the temperature not higher than thirty degrees Celsius. Routine causes boredom. And boredom distances the viewer from the screen, and prohibits the correspondent from doing his work. And when the viewers become fewer, the commercials dry up and the image industry goes bust. Not to mention the sites in Gaza have become familiar, their connotation weakened: a leaden sky over narrow alleys in camps that don't overlook the sea. No hill there, no natural scenes to please the viewer. Everything is ordinary. Murder is ordinary and the funeral is ordinary and the streets are ashen. But what is extraordinary today: twenty one murdered/martyred were able to courageously infiltrate, without the help of informants, the evening news.
Metaphorically I say: I won
metaphorically I say: I lost . . .
then a precipitous valley stretches before me
and I extend into what remains of the holm oak
then two olive trees
gather me from three directions
and two birds lift me
into the vacant direction
away from the zenith and the abyss
lest I say: I won
lest I say: I lost the bid!
The mosquito, whose masculine name in Arabic I do not know, is more ferocious than slander. Not satisfied with sucking blood, she pushes you into a futile battle. And she only visits in the dark like al-Mutanabi's fever. She drones and whizzes like a fighter jet, you don't hear her until after the strike. The target is your blood. To see her, you turn on the light, but she hides in some corner of the room, in whispers, and stands on the wall . . . safe and peaceful as if in surrender. You try to kill her with your shoe, but she maneuvers, escapes and reappears in contempt. You retry and fail. You curse her in a loud voice, she doesn't care. You negotiate a truce in a friendly voice: sleep so I may also sleep! And you think you have convinced her, turn off the light and return to bed. But as she has sucked more of your blood, she repeats her droning with another raid. She pushes you into a lateral battle with insomnia. You turn on the light again and resist her, along with insomnia, by reading. Then she lands on the page, and you are filled with joy, murmuring to yourself: She fell in the trap. And forcefully you shut the book: I killed her . . . I killed her! You open the book to rejoice in victory, but don't find the mosquito, and don't find the words. Your book is white. The mosquito, whose masculine name in Arabic I do not know, is neither metaphor nor metonymy, not even disguise. She is an insect who loves your blood. She smells it from twenty miles. And your only means to bargain with her for a truce: is to change your blood type!
©2007, Poets Against War, all rights reserved.
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