Guilts (or: Why I Didn't mention Iraq?)

I would like to begin with an apology. Apology, because my first post did not mention Iraq: The suffering, the injustice, the Gulf war, pigeons, poetry, misery, US, Bush, oil, Saddam.

Nada.

This post wouldn't clarify anything about Iraq. I promise to write about it more once I'll find the right resources: books, people, songs, and pigeons' guides.

What is about to happen on this virtual spot of mine, is a tentative game that will try to connect the puzzle pieces from the play's visions about Palestine, and the vision from Iraq.

Confused? Please, be patience. I shall explain.

After deciding to dedicate this post to the Palestinian exile through poetry, I've noticed that Dear Ms. Wallace gave me a hint-a tip of a shoelace- where to find the connections between the visions, between the politics, between the nations of Palestine and Iraq.

At Ali's vision, the last one in the trilogy, he mentions his friend, Samir, great affection to al-Sayyab. (p. 62). In short, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab (1926-1964) is an Iraqi poet, who considers to be one of the poets who revolutionize the Arab poetry, due to his usage of mythical images in order to criticize politics and social issues.

During my research about Palestinian poets and their artistic responses to the Nakba (the Disaster/The Catastrophe in Arabic, the Palestinian term for their Exodus from israel after the war in 1948), I found that many poets in the Arab world created their own artistic expression to the Palestinian Nakba-- among them, al-Sayyab.

This Iraqi poet wrote one of the most significant poems that empathized with the suffering of the exiled Palestinian people. His poem, "The Caravan of the Wretched," emphasizes the importance of brotherhood among the Arab nations:

Cain! Where is you brother? Where is your brother?

Heaven asked him burning with anger.

Cain! Where is you brother?

The star curled up in a call.

Lying in the tents of the refugees.

...

Not only did they drive us out of our

villages and cities,

but also from the habitation of men.

Today caves are filled by us

howling for hunger,

and dying unnoticed,

with no graves left behind us.

(al Sayyab, Badr Shakir, Palestine and Modern Arab Poetry, Suliman Khalid A., p.112)

There are many Arab poets that criticized the silence of the Arab world, the US and Israel to the suffering of the Palestinian people, but Wallace's choice to mention one of them in the Iraqi vision, proves me that she wants us to link them all together, not only under a play, but also politically, socially, artistically.

Al-Sayyab was a revolutionary figure in iraq, and was deprived of his profession as a teacher due to his social-communists points of view. One of his great inspirer was Mahmoud Darwish, the national Palestinian poet, who I will write more about at my next post. Meanwhile, I'll leave you with an Iraqi lullaby from the great collection "Lullabies from the Axis of Evil": a great lullabies collection from Iraq,Palestine, Korea and many more...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu4TkQffrWA

Until next time,

Renana

Welcome to our vision

Dear family of The Fever Chart,

My name is Renana Gal. As my name can tell, I'm not American. As my language shows, English is not my first language. "I come from there," as Mahamud Darwish wrote in his poem, but different from Darwish, I'm not Palestinian. I was lucky to be born as an Ashkenazi Jew- and to be part of a nation that occupied, and still occupies, Darwish's land and people. Did I say Lucky?.. what a tricky term.

Maybe my nation has the power, but our power is functions as a two-edge sword. The two nations, the Israeli and the Palestinian, argues who stab first. I'm not sure it matters. The sad reality now, is that the more we stab each-other, the more we bleed. Luck is not playing a game at the long term. Luck is the thing that just let us pass another day.

What the play depict for us, is the fragility of each side's strength.The Strong peeled off their shields, and the weak wear it instead. But every bit changes this dance of warriors, and we don't know who's beating who- we're ending up tired, and we're letting the metaphysical visions just run through us. By breathing, by singing lullabies, or by blowing a feather. These visions allow us to run away from the facts and statistics that are part of the fever chart... but it is chasing us. And One day we will wake up and face its facts.

Until then, I will collect for you the facts, the stories, the statistics, the lullabies, the photos... I will lay them down for you, and you will build the chart that will wake us all.

Salam,

Shalom,

Peace.

Renana