[Engaging Books is a monthly series featuring new and forthcoming books in Middle East Studies from publishers around the globe. Each installment highlights a trending topic in the MENA publishing world and includes excerpts from the selected volumes.This installment involves a selection from University of Texas Press on the theme of Emerging Voices in the Middle East. Other publishers' books will follow on a monthly basis.]
Ibn Arabi’s Small Death
By Mohamed Hasan Alwan (translated by William M. Hutchins) About the Book About the Authors In the Media Praise Where to Purchase Additional Information Excerpt
A Bed for the King’s Daughter
By Shahla Ujayli (translated by Sawad Hussain) About the Book About the Authors In the Media Praise Additional Information Excerpt
Poetic Justice: An Anthology of Contemporary Moroccan Poetry
Edited by Deborah Kapchan with Driss Marjane About the Book About the Authors In the Media Praise Additional Information Excerpt
I Saw Her in My Dreams
By Huda Hamed (translated by Nadine Sinno and William Taggart) About the Book About the Authors In the Media Praise Additional Information Excerpt
By Sonia Nimr (translated by Marcia Lynx Qualey) About the Book About the Authors In the Media Praise Additional Information Where to Purchase Excerpt
Ibn Arabi’s Small Death is a sweeping and inventive work of historical fiction that chronicles the life of the great Sufi master and philosopher Ibn Arabi. Known in the West as “Rumi’s teacher,” he was a poet and mystic who proclaimed that love was his religion. Born in twelfth-century Spain during the Golden Age of Islam, Ibn Arabi traveled thousands of miles from Andalusia to distant Azerbaijan, passing through Morocco, Egypt, the Hijaz, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey on a journey of discovery both physical and spiritual. Witness to the wonders and cruelties of his age, exposed to the political rule of four empires, Ibn Arabi wrote masterworks on mysticism that profoundly influenced the world. Alwan’s fictionalized first-person narrative, written from the perspective of Ibn Arabi himself, breathes vivid life into a celebrated and polarizing figure.
Mohammed Hasan Alwan is a Saudi novelist with a PhD from Carleton University. He is the author of four previous novels, including al-Qundus (The Beavers), which was shortlisted for the IPAF in 2013 and won the Arab World Institute’s Prix de la Littérature Arabe.
William M. Hutchins is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. He is an award-winning translator, best known for his translation of the Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz.
Article about Alwan’s IPAF Win
Interview with translator William M. Hutchins
Praise for Ibn Arabi’s Small Death
“A Small Death explores the life and thought of Ibn ‘Arabi. With striking artistry and in captivating language it sheds light on Ibn ‘Arabi’s view of spiritual and temporal love in their most refined forms. The life of Ibn ‘Arabi, the man, evolves and takes shape against the background of a tumultuous historical period filled with wars and conflicts.” – Sahar Khalifeh (referring to Arabic version)
This hut has a conical roof. When I lie down inside to sleep, I curl up, since the floor space is so cramped. When I stand, smoke from the fire chokes me, because it collects at the top, veiling the ceiling. When I walk outside, the sky before me resembles a fallen slice of itself rising straight from the earth. So I imagine I’ll bump into the sky, if I walk toward it. The mountain peak reduces things on its slope until they’re almost invisible. They look still and motionless--too insignificant to be of any interest. Grit has abraded the exterior of this hut and created countless cracks through which a cold wind whistles on winter days, rain seeps during storms, and bugs infiltrate on spring nights. When I leave the door open, an errant cloud may enter. The gusts of wind are frequently fierce enough to knock off a plank or two. Then, once the wind dies down, I spend an entire day searching for the boards. A stray nanny-goat may bleat at my door, and an ailing bird may land on the roof. Otherwise, not much happens here. Yet my heart’s activities are multifarious, and the turbulence within me is dangerous.
The hut was like this the day I first took refuge here; all I’ve added are my belongings. These include a pallet of uncarded wool in a corner of the hut and a basin for ablutions with a comb in it. Next to the basin rest bundles of my papers, my lamp, and my threads and inkwell, in which the ink freezes during the winter. All these are on the one shelf attached to the hut’s wall. Near the door is a flour bin with a water jug leaning against it. On the bin I keep a bag of salt and a basket of dates and dried figs.
Even these few possessions present many distractions to a person searching for khalwa, a spiritual retreat, and they pose far too many temptations for me. When I stay up late to watch the divine lights rise, the wool pallet tempts me to fall asleep. When I remain silent to hear the whisper of sacred secrets, my belly growls. So I feel hungry and grow distracted. When I light my lamp, bring out my papers, fill the inkwell, and place the paper just where I stopped the previous night, the ink as it touches the paper opens a window on the farms of Andalusia, the alleyways of Fez, the zawiyas of Tunis, the monasteries of Cairo, the trails of Mecca, the shops of Baghdad, Damascus’s Ghouta, and Konya’s lakes—what sort of isolation is this?
I have no idea where exactly I am on this earth, but that doesn’t concern me, because God has buttressed my heart with His four Pillars. All I remember is heading east and leaving Malatya with a camel-hair bag of my belongings on my back. I walked till I felt tired, ate whatever I could find, and slept wherever I was when night fell. By the third day, the soles of my feet were callused and had turned such an odd color they no longer seemed part of my body. My beard grew increasingly shaggy, and my lips were so cracked that I couldn’t open them to eat without a line of blood trickling down. Each part of my body groaned and complained as I journeyed on unceasingly. One road after another attracted me like a magnet. Hills raised me up, and valleys brought me low. I encountered people in villages and major cities and wild animals in the wastelands and deserts. The moon—crescent, waning, or full—accompanied me until mountains blocked my way.
Then I turned my face toward a peak and began my ascent. I climbed for many days only to find my way blocked. I had to descend and search for another route. I clambered higher only to find myself confronted by an abyss. I was forced to retrace my steps. So I scaled a third cliff face, looking for a passage that would bring me closer to the peak. The higher I climbed, the more acute my hunger became, because fewer plants grew there and the ground was rockier. My fingers developed sores, and my aches, which reduced me to tears at times, intensified. When I finally reached the mountain’s summit, I slept out in the open the first night. The sky was clear the next morning, and I spotted this hut in the distance. I headed to it and discovered that it had been abandoned, apparently for a long time. Then I realized I had reached a retreat suitable for my calling as a qutb—a spiritual Pole--after fifty years on God’s path, enduring seclusion, travel, hunger, exertion, and strife.
I was sleeping when the higher powers pledged support for me the night before I left Malatya. They elevated me till I rose above my bed and floated an inch in the air, lifted by the will of the Almighty, Omnipotent Lord. Levitation did not come as a surprise. I had actually been waiting for it to occur since I met the last of the earth’s spiritual Pillars. This was something that had been destined before I was born. Each jahba, each divine attraction stuns me, though, and my heart becomes a dove in God’s dominion. My speech is too ethereal, then, for ears to detect. My sight is dazzled by God’s light, but my insight shines. Then God unveils to me His command for His impoverished worshipper, who is stripped of everything save Him. He orders me to write a book and disclose a science, to accompany a shaykh, to accept a disciple, to enter into seclusion when I need a spiritual retreat, and to reveal myself at the appropriate moment. Everything I do on my path toward God is what He has ordered and arranged: the easy tasks and the taxing ones, joyous and sorrowful moments, stays and departures, rational knowledge and ecstatic shath utterances, letters and numbers, and words and silences. So I have become the qutb, the Pole of divine concern, a succor for the temporal age, and a mirror of Truth. Almighty God’s talisman is in my hand, as are the scales of al-fayd, the all-pervasive effusion, and. . . .
“Hey Man, are you here?”
The Azeri herdsman interrupted my train of thoughts—calling me from outside the hut in his foreign accent. I rose and immediately went to him, taking my container and jug. I greeted him, and he returned my greeting. He drew bread, grain, and radishes from his mule’s saddlebag and placed them in my container. Then he took my jug, filled it with water from the water-skin dangling on his back, and returned it to me. Finally, he adjusted his water-skin, poked his mule, and said, “See you in a week.”
I handed him two Seljuq dirhems, explaining, “I want ink and oil for the lamp.”
He nodded and departed. I carried into the hut the supplies he had brought and went back outside to light a fire. I gazed at the eagles that soar around the summit at this time of day, every day, waiting for prey. I poured some water in a pot, added broad beans and a pinch of salt, and placed the pot between two burning logs. Then I sat warming myself by the fire and waited for the food to cook. I ate as the sun set and then prayed as a wolf’s howl echoed from the distant mountain slope. The moon was concealed by lofty peaks, and night fell upon me like a dark box devoid of slits. Stars overhead assumed the same positions they had occupied the previous night. I eventually took shelter in my hut, lit the lamp, and sat down to write what only I can write and what only I will value. This is the life story of one of God’s friends--someone God chose, for whatever reason, and ordered to obey His command. I wrote this by the light of the lamp that never lies, even if people have different opinions about me and disagree with me on various matters.
A groundbreaking collection of experimental short fiction by award-winning Syrian author and Booker International Prize for Arabic Fiction nominee Shahla Ujayli, A Bed for the King’s Daughter uses surrealism and irony to examine such themes as women’s agency, the decline of collective life and imagination under modernity, and the effects of social and political corruption on daily life. In “The Memoir of Cinderella’s Shoes,” Cinderella uses her famous glass slipper as a weapon in order to take justice into her own hands. In “Tell Me About Surrealism,” an art history professor’s writing assignment reveals the slipperiness of storytelling, and in “Merry Christmas,” the realities of apartheid interfere with one family’s celebration. Through twenty-two short stories, Ujayli animates—with brevity and inventiveness—themes relevant to both the particularities of life in the Arab world and life outside it.
Shahla Ujayli is the author of four novels: The Cat's Eye (2006), which won the Jordan State Award for Literature 2009; Persian Carpet (2012); A Sky Close to Our House (2015), which was IPAF-shortlisted in 2016; and Summer with the Enemy (2018), which was IPAF-shortlisted in 2019. She has also published one other short collection in Arabic, The Latticed Window (2005). The Arabic edition of A Bed for the King’s Daughter (2016) won the 2017 Al-Multaqa Prize for the Arabic Short Story awarded by the American University in Kuwait.
Sawad Hussain is the winner of the 2019 Arablit Short Story Prize and an English PEN Translates award. She co-teaches a workshop on translating Arabic comics at UK secondary schools via the collective Shadow Heroes. Her upcoming translations include a Palestinian surrealistic work by Akram Musallam for Seagull Books. She holds an MA in modern Arabic literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Praise for A Bed for the King’s Daughter
Don’t let the relatively brief length of this collection fool you—these stories offer readers a fascinating cross-section of styles, tones, and themes. Some grapple with the political and social struggles of the present day, while others address more timeless themes. The end result is a memorable showcase for Ujayli’s skills as a writer. ~Words Without Borders
How do you sharply round out a story that is headed for a cliff? How do you make the sudden feel inevitable, circumventable, then over, as if all at once? Repeatedly, Ujayli manages, if not to square the circle, then to circle the square and so every square within it.~Chicago Review of Books
1. The Memoirs of Cinderella’s Slipper
The uniformed conscript came forth carrying a small rose velvet pillow with a woman’s shoe perched atop it. The shoe was a washed-out color, bent out of shape in one part, its leather torn in another; even its heel was broken, with part of its sole having come away from the body. The obvious attempts that had been made to restore it to its former glory had failed spectacularly. The conscript, with a group of horsemen in tow, was wandering around the city from one home to the next, searching for the woman whose foot would fit this shoe. In fact, said shoe had actually belonged to a young woman in her mid-twenties, beautiful and radiant: Cinderella was her name.
A few days before, she had bought the pair from one of the stores downtown: shiny, black, rounded-toe front, high heeled, without much else by way of adornment. One of them had been slipped on her elegant foot, size thirty-seven, with great ease, fitting like a glove, as if they had been made just for her. The following day, Cinderella put them on and set out for a job interview with a prospective employer. She went on her way, entering the fray, when all of a sudden a group of young men clustered around her. She had a bad feeling about them, so she kept her body away from any possible jab or grope, but before she could fully grasp what they were up to, one of their hands shot out towards her handbag and yanked it. The contents of her bag spilled out and because she screamed, they made a run for it, except one of them who stayed behind to pick up what he could of her things. Cinderella grabbed him by the collar while her shoe flew off her foot to settle in her hand. Fuming, she rained blows upon his head and body with such resolve that people had to wrench the shoe out of her hand before she went too far. When she put her shoe back on, its leather had cracked a little, its former elegance fading.
Cinderella arrived at the entrance of the office block, enraged and in tears; the company’s offices were on the seventh floor. In front of her she found a strange looking man waiting for the lift; overweight, in his forties, a revolting unkempt black beard, wearing a white jelbab that barely kissed his ankles, leather thong sandals on his feet and in his hand a string of prayer beads. The man turned his back to her and entered the lift, willing the doors to shut before she could join him, but she jabbed the call button and got in, clearly against his wishes. During the ascent from the ground floor to the seventh, the man glared angrily at Cinderella, then averted his eyes muttering, “God save us.” He then threw her a cursory glance, raised his voice and said, “God alone is enough for me,” then started to writhe in the tight elevator, hysterical, yelping, “God help us!” Confused, and at a loss for words, Cinderella examined her reflection: modest, ordinary and professional. Her uncovered head didn’t make her the devil! When the lift arrived at the seventh floor, the man was leering at her, his continued growl pushing her to do what would be disapproved of. Before the doors opened, she turned around and jabbed the ‘ground’ button and as soon as he objected, she pulled off her shoe and attacked him with a downpour of blows that would take a while to heal from.
Angry and worn out, Cindarella opened the company’s door. She adjusted her carefully chosen outfit, which no longer looked as polished with the state her shoe was now in: the sides folded in on themselves, too big for her foot, no longer matching its twin on her other foot. Cinderella met the sixty-something-year-old director, known for being a member of one of the most progressive unions in the country. He started to ask some questions about her major, her experience, her current situation, how she saw the world … putting her at ease. She sipped coffee to the promises of a respectable and comfortable work environment, a healthy salary, while little by little, the director edged out from behind his desk to sit on a chair in front of her. And before she could even process what was happening, his hand shot out toward the lower half of her body. She reflexively swatted it away only to feel a failed pinch on her thigh. What else could she do but take off her shoe and rain blows upon the man’s head, body, face, and all around him while he yelped, crying out for help from under the sole of her shoe, whose heel was now nearly liberated from the leather body. She didn’t leave him until his employees came streaming in to save him.
Cinderella left, frustrated and astonished at the events of her strange day. She was furious, agonizing over and lamenting the world that seemed so black and obscure to her. She wanted to distance herself from people and be alone with her sorrows, so she started on her way back home. While passing through the public square she came across an old woman stretched out on the road, selling passers-by fresh vegetables from straw baskets. Suddenly a luxurious black car, its windows tinted and with the national flag stuck to the back, sped towards them and screeched to a halt by the sidewalk. Another car burst onto the scene right behind it. Several beast-like men stopped pedestrians from walking in their way. They combed the area, knocking over the baskets of vegetables to allow an agile woman to descend from the car, not even bothering to turn her head to where the old woman sat brokenheartedly, lamenting her incalculable loss. What else could Cinderella do but slip off that same shoe and slap the woman from the car in a surgical swoop so quick that her bodyguards didn’t even notice what had happened until Cinderella had already melted into the crowd.
Cinderella walked the city streets aimlessly until darkness fell. From afar, people holding torches came into view. She followed the light to see what was happening and ended up at a large demonstration taking place on the road leading to the Great Palace. There were too many people to count. They chanted, cheering for the ruler, who was addressing them from a platform soaring from the heart of the massed bodies; from a distant corner, Cinderella could make out the opposing voices of a group of youth. They were calling for the downfall of this ruler, but before they could fully chant their heated slogans, Cinderella saw them become lifeless corpses in a pool of blood while the voice of the ruler grew louder, emitting words like freedom, justice, equality and principles….
Cinderella, now more terrified than ever, realized she had a blister on her foot, the one in the now shabby shoe. So she ripped it off and threw it with whatever energy she had left. The shoe’s body sailed through the air and landed with a thud, but the heel, which had come apart from the body once and for all, collided nail-sharp edge first into the leader’s nose. He gushed blood.
Of course, as it was now the middle of the night, the clock struck twelve and Cinderella promptly disappeared.
Poetic Justice is the first anthology of contemporary Moroccan poetry in English. The work is primarily composed of poets who began writing after Moroccan independence in 1956 and includes work written in Moroccan Arabic (darija), classical Arabic, French, and Tamazight.
Why Poetic Justice? Moroccan poetry (and especially zajal, oral poetry now written in Moroccan Arabic) is often published in newspapers and journals and is thus a vibrant form of social commentary; what’s more, there is a law, a justice, in the aesthetic act that speaks back to the law of the land. Poetic Justice because literature has the power to shape the cultural and moral imagination in profound and just ways.
Reading this oeuvre from independence until the new millennium and beyond, it is clear that what poet Driss Mesnaoui calls the “letters of time” have long been in the hands of Moroccan poets, as they write their ethics, their aesthetics, as well as their gendered and political lives into poetic being.
Deborah Kapchan is a professor of performance studies at New York University. A Guggenheim fellow, she is the author of Gender on the Market and Traveling Spirit Masters, as well as numerous articles on sound, narrative, and poetics.
Article in ArabLit & ArabLit Quarterly
“Kapchan’s collection brings together a rich and varied tapestry of Morocco’s many poetry traditions, addressing themes as various as desire, political prisons, and spirituality.” – Al-Fanar
“This book is a superb achievement, the best, most wide-ranging diwan of contemporary Moroccan poetry (in its Arabic, French and Amazigh incarnations) available in excellent English translations. Breathtaking in its sweep from the live traditions of oral poetries to avant-garde inventiveness. And Kapchan’s introductory essay is the most accurate meditation on culture and translation it has been my pleasure to read in decades. A must.” – Pierre Joris, author of Arabia (Not So) Deserta, and Barzakh (Poems 2000-2012).
“This volume is an outstanding contribution to knowledge, to modern Moroccan poetry and in an extended sense, to modern Arabic poetry; to the societies and cultures within Morocco out of which these poems emerge and which they reflect or challenge; and to contemporary English and particularly the American poetic idiom.” – Michael Sells, Emeritus Barrows Professor of the History and Literature of Islam and Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago.
“Poetic Justice is at once a wide-ranging introduction to Moroccan poetry and an ardent reflection on translation as ethnography, an art which Kapchan performs with characteristic perspicacity and grace. Shifting words and images from Arabic to French and English, she draws on an intimate, longstanding engagement with the complex multi-lingual terrain of the Maghreb to inspire the reader to reflect on what transpires between syllables as well as languages.” – Susan Ossman, UC Riverside, author of Shifting Worlds, Shaping Fieldwork; A Memoir of Anthropology and Art.
“Poetic Justice is as eloquent as it is erudite. In her Introduction, “On Translation and Ethnography,” Kapchan expands upon Merleau-Ponty's notion of a wild logos of carnality, emotion and sensation (logos endiathetos) to simultaneously challenge translation and transcend cultural borders.” – Michael Jackson, author of The Palm at the End of the Mind
“Contemporary Moroccan poetry is, as Deborah Kapchan teaches, not only heteroglossic but interstitial. It finds resources in the recesses that it overflows, displacing fixed notions of the west and the Arab world, classicism and radical innovation, the secular and the sacred, sound (or gesture or feel) and meaning. It does so in French and Arabic, as well as in a range of calligraphic modes, comprising a poetic field of extraordinary richness, which Poetic Justice shares with incredible grace and gravity.” – Fred Moten, author of All That Beauty!
“With high linguistic skill and remarkable poetic flair, Deborah Kapchan presents us with translations of poems from Arabic, French, Moroccan darija and Tamazight into English. The poets represent three generations of Moroccans: colonial ones, postcolonial ones, and a younger contemporary generation. The poems in this collection speak to a number of political and cultural issues present in Moroccan society since independence: imprisonment, militancy, rape, in/justice, women’s equality, peace, and the dreams and frustrations of youth. This is a remarkable work made possible by a titanic effort throughout a decade, and it fills a large gap in Maghrebi studies. It also fills a gap in Middle Eastern studies, which represents that region to the English-speaking world as only its eastern part whereas its western (Maghrebi) part does not always get the attention it deserves. This is an excellent volume of high value for a diverse audience of anthropologists, literary scholars, or a public interested in the cultures, politics, and poetic creativity of the Maghreb.” – Abdelmajid Hannoum, author of The Invention of the Maghreb: Between Africa and the Middle East
translator’s note and introduction
Our business is to count the stars, star by star
to chew the wind's haughty arrogance
and watch the clouds for when they'll throw us a handful
and if the earth goes far away from us
we'll say everyone is possessed
everyone has lost their mind
and time, never will its letters fall between our hands
until we write what we are
“...no translation would be possible if in its ultimate essence it strove for likeness to the original. For in its afterlife -- which could not be called that if it were not a transformation and renewal of something living -- the original undergoes a change...”
Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator” Illuminations, p. 256
On the Threshold of Translation: the flesh of imagination
The cover of this book is graced with the artwork of Moroccan creator Khalil El Ghrib. I say creator because El Ghrib does not call himself an artist.[1] Rather most of his oeuvre is fabricated of the detritus and organic matter that he finds in the streets and on the beaches of the northern coastal city of Asilah where he lives. In his studio he stores piles of paper, wire, boxes. He wades through it as if a fisherman waist deep in the water with a hand net looking for the right catch -- the one that fits his vision, his eye, his intuition.
But El Ghrib also paints with watery colors and minimal lines. He gives agency to paint and to chance.The painting on the cover of this book suggests a portal, a doorway perhaps into another world, for there is no visible human habitation on the other side. The lintel casts a shadow across a threshold. Beyond there is only more color -- translucent light illuminating the interior while outside a suggestion of the sea. It is a frame without a door, an opening in or out, a passageway. As a watercolor, it is sparse and unstudied. The overwhelming majority of his works, however, are not paintings but found objects; not representations but re-workings, re-framings. This painting of a frame thus finds particular relevance in his oeuvre. Following Benjamin’s quote above, El Ghrib gives objects an after-life and in so doing translates them into another language and world.
The painting is also a portrayal of a limen, evoking what Sufi philosopher Ibn al-‘Arabi (1165-1240 AD) has called a barzakh -- that is, an isthmus between worlds. For Ibn al-‘Arabi a barzakh is an ontological “imaginal” realm where the corporeal is spiritualized and the spiritual may become corporeal; it is a dimension where imagination “takes shape,” where forms are realized. This is not a Platonic model where ideals precede forms or where mind precedes or is separate from the body. To the contrary, Ibn al-‘Arabi stresses the materiality of all ontological realms – corporeal, imaginal, spiritual, and everything in between. It is this materiality that allows for intermingling, like the chemistry of two breaths together. There are nothing but barzakhs, says Ibn al-‘Arabi, nothing but thresholds between worlds of different densities and subtleties ever unfolding.[2]
The imaginal or “barzakhi” realm has much in common with what Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) has called the flesh (chair),[3] a porous, reversible, layered, and renewable substance. Merleau-Ponty describes it as an element:
“The flesh is not matter, it is not mind, is not substance. To designate it we should need the old term element in the sense it was used to speak of water, air, earth and fire; that is, in the sense of a general thing, mid-way between the spatio-temporal individual and the idea, a sort of incarnate principle that brings a style of being wherever there is a fragment of being. The flesh is in this sense an “element” of Being. ...If we can show that the flesh is an ultimate notion, that it is not the union or compound of two substances but thinkable by itself, if there is a relation of the visible with itself that traverses me and constitutes me as a seer, this circle which I do not form, which forms me, this coiling over of the visible upon the visible can traverse, animate other bodies as well as my own.”
Like Ibn al-‘Arabi, Merleau-Ponty is reaching for a vocabulary of the intersticial. His writing is poetic, analogical. He is creating a philosophical concept from a material all humans (and mammals) share - flesh. But he extends it beyond the human, talking about the flesh of the world and of the “ek-static” encounter of self and other, world and Being.[4] Flesh is an isthmus, a kind of fascia or connective tissue that “brings a style of being wherever there is a fragment of being.” It traverses at the same time that it forms. It is, we might say, always transforming.
I invoke these two philosophers, so disparate in time and space, because both are trying to understand the materiality of the imagination, and the relation of the visible to the invisible -- themes evoked by El Ghrib’s painting as well.[5] Poems also present themselves as thresholds into other worlds. Sometimes these worlds are easy to access and inhabit. Sometimes they are esoteric, oblique and even resistant to entry. In all cases poetic translations are after-lives, barzakhs that partake of the imagination of the author and that of the translator to create a third thing entirely, a style of being, or what Merleau-Ponty calls a chiasm, an intersection.[6] Poems and translations are also objects that go on to live lives in the world. Both are acts of embodied imagination, depending not only on a linguistic but on an ethnographic sensibility since words only mean through their enfleshment with the world.
I Saw Her in My Dreams is a powerful novel about interpersonal and systemic violence, examined through the lens of a relationship between Zahiyya, an anxious middle-class Omani artist, and Faneesh, the Ethiopian domestic worker she hires. When Zahiyya's husband Amer, a novelist, leaves for Zanzibar in search of his biological mother, Zahiyya is left to confront her anxieties and prejudices. Both Zahiyya and Faneesh begin to suffer a recurring nightmare, prompting Zahiyya to read Fanheesh's diaries in search of answers. Alone and afraid, Zahiyya reads excerpts from Amer's novel, written from his father's diaries about living in Zanzibar, where he fell in love with Amer's mother, a Zanzibari woman whose absence still haunts him. Weaving between multiple perspectives and stories within stories, the novel explores honestly—but without sensationalizing or self-Orientalizing—the anti-Blackness that has endured in the Arab world and elsewhere. About the Author and Translators
Huda Hamed (Author) is an Omani author and managing editor of Nizwa Magazine. Huda Hamed’s publications include the short story collections Namiima Maliha, Laysa Bi al-Dabt Kama Uriid and Al-Ishara Burtuqailiyya al-Aan, and the novels Allati Ta‘ud al-Salaalim, Al-Ashyaa’ laysat fi Amakiniha, and Cinderallat Muscat which has been translated into Farsi.
Nadine Sinno (Translator) is an Associate Professor of Arabic at Virginia Tech. Her work includes a translation of Nazik Saba Yared's Canceled Memories and a co-translation of Rashid al-Daif's Who's Afraid of Meryl Streep.
William Taggart (Translator) is an Instructor in the Arabic program at Virginia Tech. He holds a M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Arkansas and a S.M. in Science, Technology, and Society from MIT.
Article about Omani authors that features Huda Hamed
Praise for I Saw Her in My Dreams
“Sinno and Taggart offer an impressive, nuanced, and sensitive translation of a powerful and timely novel exploring the enduring racism against domestic workers in the Arab Gulf. Set mainly in Oman—but with episodes in Ethiopia and Zanzibar—I Saw Her in My Dreams tells three intertwined stories by three different narrators, who collectively address the Omani occupation of Zanzibar, the fate of Arab-African children, and the plight of domestic workers in Oman. The novel focuses on the dreams of characters both literally and figuratively, thereby recovering intersectional possibilities and challenges across time and space. A very welcome addition to the burgeoning body of work by Arab authors investigating the symptoms and consequences of racism within the Arab world.” -Mazen Naous, Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Massachusetts Amherst
“I Saw Her in My Dreams is a beautiful interweaving of a fictional narrative with an episode of modern Arab history unknown to most Arabs, let alone non-Arabs. Through its intertwined narratives, the novel offers a depiction of Arabs that diverges from their image as victims of colonial and post-colonial powers and Western racism by revealing the racism in the Arab Gulf, the bloody Omani history in Zanzibar, and Omanis’ involvement in the slave trade while depicting ordinary Arab characters pursuing their artistic passions, childhood dreams, as well as mundane business like other humans do.” -Ghadir Zannoun, Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Kentucky
I don’t know what happened to me. Between the sudden departure of Darsheen, the Sri Lankan, and the arrival of Faneesh, the Ethiopian, it felt as though I had fallen into the trap of chaos, a schadenfreude of dust. I was constantly on the run, hiding in corners that were cleaner, purer, and safer. I would catch my breath and feel a shiver run through my body. I contemplated the chaos, the particles of dust that started climbing the walls of the closets, until I was filled with anxiety.
“Who’s going to clean my house in the absence of this despicable…?”
My house is big. On the lower level is the women’s living room, next to the men’s living room, the dining room, and the formal majlis meeting room. Big windows allow light to fill the rooms every day, which brings me tremendous comfort. The wooden floors of my house groan under my feet, the creaking makes me feel ecstatic. I was happy with the choice although it’s rare for Omani houses to have wooden floors. But I had insisted, especially after Chinese tiles invaded everywhere else.
I would carefully mop the spaces separating one board of wood from another, since these areas are not safe at all, while Yanni’s music eased my feelings of boredom and disappointment. No one can beat me at buying cleaning supplies and concocting mixes—I even own a small notebook that includes their various names and types. I have an extraordinary ability for giving cleaning instructions. But in the midst of all of this, I shocked myself. I’m good at greedily shopping for cleaning supplies, but I’m not as good at using them.
I love creating designs on sheilah scarfs, glass, clay pieces, and shirts. I have even painted on some of the walls of my house…I pay a huge fine for this love of mine. I pay from the pocket of my own emotional wellbeing because every time I find something readymade that I like, I notice some annoying or off-putting detail about it.
The situation had not been extreme or complicated, but Darsheen’s absence was the final blow that made me face a world I wanted to hide from and whose existence I wanted to ignore.
On my last visit to Sharjah, I purchased different types of soft, black sheilahs so that I could decorate them with roses, branches, and other shapes whose identities I do not know well. I just fling them from my imagination to my hand.
I forcefully rubbed the rug with a small rag soaked in detergent, but the stain that my trembling hands had caused resisted me stubbornly and spread more and more. I tried hard to force it into disappearing from the new rug I’d purchased at the Chinese Market in Dubai, but it kept spreading its edges boldly and occupying additional space.
I ran toward the kitchen cabinet, full of household cleaners of all colors and shapes, and looked for the 409 Carpet Cleaner that my friend Hind said had saved her carpet from being tossed into the trash. I found a blue Clorox bottle that had “409 Carpet Cleaner” written on it. Before reading the instructions, I pressed the nozzle and then pushed both my hands on the rag in a new, serious attempt to wipe the stain from existence, but nothing seemed to work. Adding to my misery was the color fading from the brown rug. I still don’t know how the thick, red-colored solution from the fabric dye had tricked me and dropped onto the rug instead of the sheilah!
I couldn’t look at my rug in that wretched condition, so I called my friend Tarfa to help relieve my disappointment. After answering, Tarfa first reprimanded me as usual for giving up on Darsheen after nine years of dedicated service. Then, as if realizing that the conversation was starting to bother me, Tarfa changed the subject.
“Try using some kind of colorless soda. Or I guess you should boil some water and lemon and pour it over the stain.”
I cut our conversation short. Tarfa still didn’t understand that I didn’t have a choice regarding Darsheen and that she was the one who destroyed her livelihood. But I wasn’t going to play that broken record again. I now had two options for saving my rug. I emptied a bottle of Seven-Up over the stain, and I brought a clean rag and started rubbing. The stain started to fade, and with it, the color of the rug faded even more. I poured the hot water with lemon juice on the stain, and the sight shocked me.
I rolled up the rug nervously, lifted it from its place, and left it close to the entrance so that Amer would understand as soon as he came back from work the necessity of taking it to the cleaner’s. I washed the big brush that I had been using in the bathroom sink. I made sure that nothing remained stuck on it and poured what was left of the color solutions in the toilet. I flushed more than once and disposed of the plastic cups that I had been using.
I relaxed in the chair and imagined the possibility of things being at my beck and call. Just like that, I’d snap my fingers and the world would respond to me. My house would become suited for me, as clean and orderly as I dream it could be. I imagine a big mouth blowing air and removing all the dust from my house, a big mop passing over the windows and washing them in record time, a robot working to music, finishing his work in seconds by reading my thoughts, without having to open my mouth to yell or provide or repeat any advice.
Many of those who come to visit my home, either to buy sheilahs and abayas that I design and paint, or to attend the parties that my husband and I throw for our mutual friends, describe my house the same way: “strange.” Perhaps it is the open spaces I maintain between the pieces of furniture; perhaps it is the whiteness that climbs over the walls and other details; perhaps it is the curtains with bright colors; or perhaps it is the artifacts that Amer has brought me from all the countries he has visited. I arrange the artifacts on the shelves in an attractive, elegant manner that entices guests to ask about the story of each piece.
The Thunderbird trilogy is a fast-paced time-traveling fantasy adventure centered on Noor, a young orphaned Palestinian girl who starts in the present and must go back in time to get four magical bird feathers and save the world. Aided by a djinn cat and girls who look identical to Noor and who each have one of the bird’s powers, in this initial volume Noor begins her journey through different historical periods, striving to keep the wall between worlds intact.
Sonia Nimr is a Palestinian writer, storyteller, translator, ethnographer and academic. She writes for children and youth in Arabic and English and relates folktales in colloquial Arabic. She is the winner of the 2014 Etisalat Award for Children’s Literature for Best Young Adult Book for her book Extraordinary Journeys to Unknown Places. Nimr is an associate professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University.
M. Lynx Qualey holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota and, in addition to guiding Arab Lit, covers Arabic literature for The Guardian. Her writing also appears in Al Jazeera, The New Republic, Your Middle East, and AGNI, Boston University’s online journal.
Read the Kirkus review of Thunderbird here.
Listen to kids (including the translator’s son) discussing Thunderbird on the Bulaq podcast here.
“Magic, female heroine, adventure, history & Palestine…what more could a girl want. This should be in every Middle School Library.” -Lina Barkawi
“This richly descriptive novel paints a moving portrait of a lost, lonely girl; a historic land with a painful past and present; and an enchanting magical world. The cliffhanger ending will leave readers eager for more. Intriguing, textured, and immersive.” – Kirkus
Umm ‘Arab looked carefully into the coffee cup, wordlessly tipping it right and left. She allowed only a few grunts to escape each time she turned it in a new direction. “Hmm. Hmmmm.”
“What do you see in the cup, Umm ‘Arab? Is it good?”
As Widad asked, she shifted her huge body toward the ashtray that sat on the table in front of her, stabbing out her cigarette and looking back at Umm ‘Arab with an expression of interest.
“It’s good, Widad, it’s good. I see a big fish, and you know what that means—wealth is on its way.” Umm ‘Arab glanced up at Big Widad to see the effect this had on her before going on. “Didn’t I tell you good days were on their way?”
Widad fixed Umm ‘Arab with a serious gaze. “And when’s it going to happen? Soon?”
“I don’t know exactly. I see three signs, so it might be three days, three weeks. You know the cup doesn’t give specifics.”
After Umm ‘Arab spoke, she looked back at the cup.
“And what else?” Widad asked, urging her on.
“A phone call is coming that will make you very happy. Mm, and I see two signs, which means it could be two hours or two days.”
Umm ‘Arab moved the cup toward Widad’s hand. “Now, when you’ve got your wish in mind, press your thumb to the bottom of the cup.”
Widad cradled the cup as though she were holding something sacred. Then she looked around until her eyes settled on Noor, who was sitting glued to her grandmother. Widad gave a spiteful smile as she pushed her thumb with all her strength to the bottom of the cup, jabbing it down so that it left a clear mark. She handed the cup to Umm ‘Arab before she took a tissue and wiped off her thumb.
Umm ‘Arab looked at the bottom of the cup. After a moment, she turned to Widad. “You’ll get your wish.”
Widad smiled triumphantly. “Bless your mouth.”
There was a brief silence in the room before Umm ‘Arab spoke again. “Evening prayers are coming, I’ve got to go.”
Noor’s grandmother had been watching the scene in silence. Now, she finally spoke. “Before you go, Umm ‘Arab, take a look at the little one’s cup.” She put a hand tenderly on Noor’s back.
“Little ones don’t drink coffee!” Widad said, indignant.
The grandmother quietly went on, “She’ll take a sip from my cup. I haven’t drunk from it, and I want Umm ‘Arab to see whatever there is to be seen.” She looked at Noor and reached out her cup. “Drink, my love, drink. Perhaps your fortune will be as lovely as your face.”
Widad glared at the girl with bubbling resentment. “Drink fast,” she said sharply. “The lady wants to go pray.”
Noor gulped down the hot coffee, which burned her tongue, and handed the cup to Umm ‘Arab. The woman turned it, then flipped it onto the saucer.
“And me, and me!” said Wafaa, who sat on the couch beside her mother. “I want her to read my cup, Yumma.”
“But there’s no coffee left, my sweet,” Widad said, lovingly stroking her daughter’s hair. “Maybe next time.”
Wafaa slammed her foot against the floor and pointed a jealous finger at Noor, who pressed more tightly against her grandmother.
“I don’t care! Why does she get to?”
“All right, my love, I’ll make more coffee for you. And Umm ‘Arab will read your fortune, won’t you, Umm ‘Arab?” Widad turned with a look that made the other woman throw up her hands.
“I’ll read her cup.”
Widad got up, slipping her feet into her high heels and heading for the kitchen, followed by Wafaa. Umm ‘Arab held Noor’s cup in her hand.
“Now let’s see what the cup has to say about your fortune.” Umm ‘Arab turned the cup around several times before she shifted, getting closer to the light that spilled in through the window.
Noor’s grandmother fixed her gaze on the expressions flitting across the cup-reader’s face. Involuntarily, her grandmother let go of the prayer beads she’d been clutching and reached out to grasp Noor’s hand.
“Strange!” Umm ‘Arab said, looking carefully at the cup, her thick eyebrows knitting together.
“What have you found?” Grandmother asked.
But Umm ‘Arab wouldn’t answer. She held on to the cup, looking at it carefully, before lifting her gaze to look at Noor’s grandmother.
“This is something strange! I’ve never seen a cup like this before!”
“What do you see in it, Umm ‘Arab? Just say it! I can’t wait,” Noor’s grandmother said, her voice urgent.
Umm ‘Arab gave her a serious look, eyebrows still knitted together. She adjusted the scarf on her head.
“The cup isn’t clear. And honestly, it’s hard to read.” Her voice was edged with surprise. “I don’t see anything well enough to explain it. It looks like a bird spreading its wings over the whole cup. I can’t say if that’s good or bad. Forgive me, but I don’t want to lie to you.”
Without noticing what she was doing, Noor’s grandmother tightened her grip on her granddaughter’s hand.
“Listen,” Umm ‘Arab said. “The bird in the cup usually means a remedy or cure. It usually means good news, but . . . I’ve never seen a bird like this before. It’s a riddle! I seek refuge in God from the accursed Satan.” She put the cup aside as though relieving herself of a heavy burden.
Widad came in with a silver tray laden with coffee. “Wafaa’s turn!” she announced, without noticing the grim expressions on the three faces. Then she turned to her daughter. “Come on, sweetie, drink the coffee, just be careful not to let it burn you. It’s still hot.”
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suIQZ1jrTu4, accessed September 13, 2018.
[2] For Ibn al-‘Arabi the imaginal is not imaginary -- that is, disembodied and unreal -- but in fact is very much a fleshly matter. “The reality of imagination is that it gives sensory form to everything that becomes actualized within it,” says Ibn al-‘Arabi in the Meccan Openings II 375:34). In addition to being an isthmus between worlds, a barzakh is marked by a hijab as well, that is, a veil. (Think of skin and not flesh). The portals between worlds are not open doors so to speak, but are hidden with the gauze of in-between. Were it not so, reality would indeed be too much to bear, a clash of multiple worlds of various and precarious orders.The veils between worlds are there to protect the traveller, but they are also there to hide a reality that the traveller may not be ready to understand or assume. To veil is to render secret while to draw the veil away, is to step across the threshold into another reality.
[3] Not skin (peau), which although it may act as a sonically permeable envelope between self and world in infants is nonetheless a border, a marker of separateness; but flesh (chair) See Anzieu 1985
[4] “One’s own body is in the world just as the heart is in the organism” Merleau-Ponty writes in the Phenomenology of Perception. PP: 245/209)
[5] Both philosophers however are grappling with the paradox of separateness and unity, of distance and proximity (tanzih and qarb in Arabic).
[6] For Merleau-Ponty flesh is the continuity that links the perceiver’s body with the world in what he calls an “intercorporeity.” This continuity is marked by chiasms -- intersections and differentiations. A chiasm is based on the double helix of genetics, it is one strand made up of two coils. If for Ibn al-‘Arabi there are nothing but barzakhs, for Merleau-Ponty, there are nothing but chiasms, what he also refers to as the “thickness of flesh between the seer and the thing.” Merleau-Ponty 1968:135. There are also many resonances here with Karen Barad’s notion of an “agential cut” -- the way experience is intersected in any given time and place to produce a phenomenon she calls an “intra-action.” Barad 2007.