far from the eye far from the heart

اﻟﺴﻤﻜﺔ ، ﺣﺘﻰ وھﻲ ﻓﻲ ﺷﺒﺎك اﻟﺼﯿﺎدﯾﻦ ، ﺗﻈﻞ ﺗﺤﻤﻞ راﺋﺤﺔ اﻟﺒﺤﺮ
The fish
Even in the fisherman’s net
Still carries the smell of the sea

Mourid Barghouti اﻟﺒﺮﻏﻮﺛﻲ ﻣﺮﯾﺪ
I Saw Ramallah ھﻠﻼ رام رﯾﺖ

(Translation: Ahdaf Soueif)

 

 

---

 

the first heat

 

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now they are here

one is called Port                        the other      the Adriatic Sea

 

---

groundwork that
nowhere in the world is
there this
nowhere is there i.e.
porous sedra like
cities here
crazed water lunatics makes
three-branched tree branches go
off on
open veins
beneath the house ice-cold run human fish swim olms
beneath the house
above              water surfaces in day
tufa capsules greenery and shell
next to the house in channels underground in holes namely           sedra like
porous rock like
cities that
must raze the house raze the houses but
not now

 

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When you sit down at the table and look out the door you also see yourself in blinding backlight, tottering in an aunt’s, a cousin’s, high-heeled boats, balancing
a cone with oversized scoops. Their size a testament to the ice cream seller and the family’s sound relations – kinship, even. Or is it simply the fact that everyone who knows of your parents’ perennial struggle to conceive celebrates your existence. Until they conceive again, that is, and the successors receive a protector in you who does not always deliver. It is still the same wood door with ornamental glass panes you’ve seen all around the Mediterranean. A cosmetic chimera ajar. It is the same Ottoman wall you see through the door, a white-washed stone wall high enough for passers-by not to be able to glimpse the family’s unveiled women in the garden. The only things higher than the wall are the two palm trees that one of the sons of the house smuggled here as cuttings from Egypt maybe forty years ago. No, that’s a lie: they are from Split. Both the pomegranate and the fig trees are shorter. The wild grape vines are placed at the same height and create the best possible outdoor shade in the space between the wall, the house, and the stable wall outside. You want to tame the vine. You sit down with your back to the shed beneath the arched stair in the hajat, the vestibule, where there now is room for a plastic table and four white plastic chairs. You want to sit facing out, but
also not have to contemplate the crappy painting job from shortly after the last war by the refugees who inhabited the house. You feel an affinity with them even if they grew more closely coupled, so to speak, with those who ousted you – but
why was it even necessary for them to paint the wood on the shed and stairs? And if it was necessary, why in this glossy shade of feces?

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you’re
so
vain
                           beloved

 

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boats                craft

rising water filled with shit rising water bearing debris

bears bodies                             bears debris

the water is large                     it’s gotta be sea but

the water        however           doesn’t         seem        that        salty

and in every room in every room                                macabre things happen
often one of the children is there

it’s small       much        smaller              than              how          it          is

larger     than       I                   am        now

and I dare not say what I see them do            and who they are

and while we sleep someone sneaks out            sees friends girlfriends
drunk

who unlike others manage to drink and smoke
until the water reaches its highest                                point

and I need to see where everyone is       and if they have fared well

and they haven’t              and they haven’t
and they haven’t              and I sit on deck and wait for
someone to                            come home

---

 

mouth agape gulps sea
hands cupped cleave waterfall

 

About the Translator

Jennifer Hayashida is a poet, translator, and artist based in Stockholm. She earned her BA from the University of California, Berkeley and MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. She is currently a PhD candidate in artistic research at HDKV, the Academy of Art & Design at Gothenburg University, and teaches in the creative writing program at Biskops Arnö Nordens Folkhögskola. Her dissertation project, Feeling Translation, is an artistic research enquiry where translation is deployed as writing apparatus, pedagogical scaffold, and practice of solidarity. She is the author of A Machine Wrote This Song (Gramma Poetry/Black Ocean, 2018) and the chapbook Översättaren som arkiv/Arkiv som översätter (Autor, 2020). Her scholarly and creative work has been published in journals including Women’s Studies Quarterly, Women & Performance, and The Asian American Literary Review. Her translations between Swedish and English include collections by Athena Farrokhzad, Don Mee Choi, Iman Mohammed, Kim Hyesoon, and Merima Dizdarević.