Excerpt from Without an Alphabet, Without a Face

SOLITUDE

One morning I saw them hurrying by,
walking together,
the scent of almonds filling the street.
Are they sisters?
I noticed their practiced cat steps.
Why did I feel the scent of almonds following me
and that I knew something about two sisters
walking the morning in a hurry?
Every morning
when the clock strikes ten, I worry.
Will they pass by?
They pass by
and I catch the scent of almonds
and I touch the soft side of a cat's paw.
Then they disappear among the trees
or around the bend
or in the last angle of my window.
Sometimes they turn back
and I see a thread
connecting my room
to everything.

15/1/1975



THE NEW BAGHDAD

She comes to me with a bowl of soup
when I am besieged by
fumes
of cheap arak.
She comes to me in dusty noons.
And with each sunset night snatches
she comes to me with
an evening star.

In the cafes she sits to bitter tea.
In the market she sells cheese
and buffalo livers.
She dusts her used-clothing stores,
searching for bones in a bowl of soup,
for milk to the lips of a child
and a glimmer in a pair of eyes
and something a woman does not yet know
and streets where water never greens.

At night
she roams among houses abandoned by the poor
and churches where a muffled mass fades
and huts where poor girls faint.
At midnight
she returns to her enchanted shelter
behind muddy streets,
carrying the bread of the dead,
myrtle flowers,
slivers of buffalo liver
and two bones for a bowl of soup.

At dawn she stops by all her houses,
waking all her children,
dragging them to the street,
the thousands waiting to march on Baghdad.

8/4/1975



POETRY

Who broke these mirrors
and tossed them
shard
by shard
among the branches?
And now
shall we ask L'Akhdar to come and see?
Colors are all muddled up
and the image is entangled
with the thing
and the eyes burn.
L'Akhdar must gather these mirrors
on his palm
and match the pieces together
any way he likes
and preserve
the memory of the branch.

Batna, 26/3/1980



ABDUCTION

That was not a country.
But it had all it needed
to imprint its image on us,
we the children of impossible clay.
That was not a country.
But it could erase the scrolls of our destiny.
Look how it rises in us again
and splits our blood like lightning!
We had forgotten it
and said we'll never see its papyrus,
not even in dreams.
We had forgotten it
the way soldiers forget first kisses,
the way a bed forgets the floor,
the way a wave forgets bottom moss.
We had forgotten it
and said we'll never see it again.
Who let it in through the window?
Who slipped it under the door?
Who brought it to us unaware
to abduct us
with its bloody hands
and to toss us
on top of a heap of meat
for vultures?

Paris, 5/5/1991



A VISION

This Iraq will reach the ends of the graveyard.
It will bury its sons in open country
generation after generation,
and it will forgive its despotÉ.
It will not be the Iraq that once held the name.
And the larks will not sing.
So walk — if you wish — a long time.
And call — if you wish —
on all the world's angels
and all its demons.
Call on the bulls of Assyria.
Call on a westward phoenix.
Call them
and through the haze of phantoms
watch for miracles to emerge
from clouds of incense.

Amman, 8/3/1997

English language translation copyright 2002 by Khaled Mattawa. All rights reserved.