Baghdad Central (38 page)

Khafaji picks up Nazik al-Malaika's diwan and places it on his lap. He takes a deep breath and opens it to the last page. Only then, after he turns off the lamp, does he begin to read again. And only then do the lines begin to pour again into his ears. Only then do they wash across the dry shores of his mind.

       
That voice will return

       
To my life, to the audition of the evening
.

       
I will hear your voice when I am

       
Amidst Nature's commotion, in moments of madness
,

       
When echoes of thunder evoke

       
Stories sung by Scheherazade

       
To that mad king

       
On winter nights
.

       
I will hear your voice every evening

       
When light dozes off and worries take refuge in dreams
.

       
When desires and passions slumber, when ambition sleeps

       
When life sleeps, and time remains awake, sleepless

       
Like your voice
.

Acknowledgements

There are many places where poetry plays a key public role. But perhaps it is only in Iraq that the public repertoire of poetry includes modernist, often experimental verse. Statues of poets are urban landmarks in Baghdad, Basra and Najaf, giving names to prominent public squares and the neighborhoods around them. In contemporary Iraq, Shiite religious parties routinely sponsor poetry performances just as the Baathist regime once did, and before them the Communist Party and the Hashemite court. Even when composed as lines on the page, Iraqi poetry is never silent. Entire poems are memorized and debated, individual lines are relished and used in everyday speech. To educated Iraqis, none of the poets in Khafaji's mind would be unknown. In fact, many of them are household names.
Baghdad Central offers
a fleeting glimpse of this rich corpus of Iraqi poetry. In the attempt to render these poets into English, I was fortunate to rely on the work of the literary translators credited below:

Extracts of ‘Myths' and ‘To Poetry' by Nazik al-Malaika, translated by Ferial Jabouri Ghazoul. ©
Modern Poetry in Translation
2002, reproduced with permission.

Extracts of ‘The River God' by Nazik al-Malaika, translated by Ibtisam Barakat. ©
Modern Poetry in Translation
2002, reproduced with permission.

Extracts of ‘The Hijra to God' by Nazik al-Malaika, translated by Saleh Alyafai and Jenna Abdul Rahman. ©
Modern Poetry in Translation
2002, reproduced with permission.

Extract of ‘Bridge of Old Wonders' by Muzaffar al-Nawwab, translated by Saadi Simawe and Carol Bardenstein. ©
Modern Poetry in Translation
2002, reproduced with permission.

Extract of ‘God's Freedom Lovers' by Ahmed Hardi, translated by Muhamad Tawfiq Ali. ©
Modern Poetry in Translation
2002, reproduced with permission.

Extracts of ‘Sleepers, Wake!' by Ma‘ruf al-Rusafi, translated by A. J. Arberry. © Cambridge University Press 1965, reproduced with permission.

Other translations from Arabic mine.

Thanks to the following writers, journalists and scholars for educating me on modern Iraq and American counter-insurgency: Nadje Sadig Al-Ali, Sinan Antoon, Fadhil al-Azzawi, Shimon Ballas, Orit Bashkin, Hanna Batatu, Hassan Blasim, Sargon Boulus, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Terri DeYoung, Joy Gordon, Lisa Hajjar, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Hussein N. Kadhim, Laleh Khalili, Dina Rizk Khoury, Joseph Sassoon, Anthony Shadid, Samuel Shimon, Saadi Simawe, Ali al-Wardi, and Saadi Youssef. Thanks also to the many Iraqis who showed me what steadfastness means and also how to make
shakirlamma
. Thanks to family and friends and everyone else who told me the other stories that found their way into this book.