replace the awakening intellectuals. In precarious situations, displacement
becomes the norm, not settlement, and a poetic of exile grows and develops
into textual homelands.
Appendix I
Writing on al-Sayymb’s Tomb^98
I climb your fences, Baghdad, and fall a lover in the night
I stretch my gaze into the houses and smell the flower of the anteroom
I weep over al-Husayn,^99 and will be weeping for him until God may help
unite the separated^100
and tear down the wall of partition,
so that we can meet as two children
and begin where things usually begin.
We water the thirsty butterflies,
we make fire out of the papers of our notebooks,
we run into the gardens
and write the lovers’ verses on the wall.
We paint deer and nymphs that dance nude
under the moon of Iraq.
We shout under the Arch:^101
Baghdad, O Baghdad, O Baghdad
we came to you from the mud houses and from the ash cemeteries
to tear down your fences after death
to kill this night
with screams of our love which has been crucified under the sun.
(cAbd al-Wahhmb al-Baymtl, trans. with notes by Saadi A. Simawe)Appendix II
Elegy to Khalil Hawi
I
As the poet waited
Aisha died in exile
She became a morning star:
Lara and Khuzama/Hind and Safa’
Queen of queens
A flame of a fire in the oil towers
And in the verses of the Song of Songs,
Blood upon the lines of the Torah
And upon the foreheads of the thieves of the revolutions.
She became the Nile and EuphratesDEDICATIONS AS POETIC INTERSECTIONS