I remember Al-Sayyab, hollering at the Gulf in vain:
“Iraq, Iraq, none other but Iraq …”
and answers only the echo. *
I remember Al-Sayyab … in this Sumerian space
a female vanquished the sterility of haze,
and bequeathed us homeland and exile together.
I remember Al-Sayyab … poetry is born in Iraq,
So be Iraqi to be a poet, my friend!
I remember Al-Sayyab … life wasn’t as he envisioned
amid the Tigris and Euphrates, he didn’t contemplate
like Gilgamesh the herbs of eternity, or Judgment Day.
I remember Al-Sayyab… adopting from Hammurabi his laws **
to shroud his loins and march to his grave.
I remember Al-Sayyab, when I suffer a fever and hallucinate:
My brothers made dinner for Hulagu’s army, ***
No servants but them ... My brothers!
I remember Al-Sayyab … we dreamt of no more than
what bees merit of sustenance, no more than
two little hands shaking our absence …
I remember Al-Sayyab … dead blacksmiths rise
from graves and build our chains!
I remember Al-Sayyab … poetry is experience and exile,
counterparts, and we dreamt of a life no farther
than life, and to decease the way we please:
“Iraq, Iraq, none other but Iraq.”
* In reference to Iraqi poet Badr Shaker al-Sayyab’s poem “The Chant of Rain” in which he writes: I cry out to the Gulf/ “O Gulf/ Giver of pearls, shells and death!”/ And the echo replies, /As if lamenting: / “O Gulf, / Giver of shells and death.”
** King of Babylonia, from roughly 1792-1750 B.C.E. The Code of Hammurabi is one of the earliest known examples of human laws being defined and written down in an orderly way. The code’s best-known dictum is commonly quoted as “An eye for an eye.”
***Mongol conqueror, grandson of Jenghiz Khan. He sacked and burned Baghdad in 1258 and eliminated the Abbasid caliphate.
Translated from the Arabic by Elissar Haikal.
This poem appeared in Al Jadid Magazine, Vol. 9, No. 44, Summer 2003.
Copyright © 2003 AL JADID MAGAZINE