Voices from Syria—Poets Stand for Humanity Amid Madness

Cruise missels fall on Damascus on Friday.

On Friday Donald Trump, teetering on the edge of a collapsing Presidency, ordered the launch of swarms of cruise missiles armed with allegedly smart bombs a three selected targets including one in Damascus that were supposedly associated with Syria’s chemical weapons program.  Never mind the Cheeto-in-Charge’s incoherent ramblings announcing the strikes, adults at the Pentagon assured reporters that the strikes were limited, and not the beginning of a larger campaign, active entry into the multiple-sided civil war, or aimed at regime change.  Word was more quietly put out that the action came only after days of quite back channel communications with Syria’s Russian allies in which Western intentions—the attacks included symbolic British and French participation.

That means the whole damn thing was largely a charade.  The Russians would have plenty of time to relocate any of their official military advisors or supposed civilian contractors,  unless they decide to leave a handful of the latter in place as sacrifices to be used as martyred bargaining chips in future negotiations.  Likewise the Syrians had time to move sensitive supplies and equipment.  The result would be like an earlier showy attack on an airbase after the last use of chemical weapons, where lots of explosives cratered tarmac and sand and collapsed empty hangers.  The airbase was fully operational again in weeks.

This time in the crowded city most of the casualties would be among the civilians living near by the not-so-perfectly-surgical-s strikes. 

Now two days later as I write this the retaliation that Vladimir Putin and the Russians threatened before the attack have failed to materialize.  Incoming ordinance was not shot out of the air, and no revenge attacks have been launched on “the sources of the attacks,” presumably American and Allied ships and land bases of aircraft.  That direct attack on American forces would ignite a full scale war that could easily escalate to a nuclear exchange.  For now, everyone seems to have stepped back and be content with a bloody mummery.

All of this assumes no massive miscalculation by somebody.  The situation remains so fraught with danger that any foolhardy move or even an accident could lead to cataclysmic consequences.  In such a situation the fact that one key player, Donald Trump, is erratic, impulsive, and may be seeking a war to prevent impeachment and possible criminal prosecution, leaves the world on edge.Allies, finally seems to be winning the Civil war.  The Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) has been crushed and all but driven from the country.  It was targeted not only by the Assad regime but by rebel groups sponsored or supported by the Russians and the West as well as Kurds who remain in possession of most of the North.  To complicate matters, the Saudis have backed Al Qaida related Sunni rebels to fight ISIS, the Assad Regime, and it Iranian and Shi’a allies.  U.S. and Russian backed rebels have clashed and the Russians have given material and military support to Assad in bloody assaults of the civilian bastions of “our rebels.”  Meanwhile Turkey has invaded Kurdish held areas near its borders and has attacked Russian, Syrian government, and American allied Kurds indiscriminately.  

The Russian backed Assad regime has been winning back teritory from a number of rebel groups some of which are also fighting each other

Millions of Syrians have been dislocated by the civil war and are living as refugees either within the country or in crowded camps in Jordan and Lebanon.  Many have tried to find safety in Europe along with Iraqi refugees  and Kurds creating the refugee crisis that has rocked governments in both Eastern and Western Europe and helped fuel nationalist neo-fascist backlash.

The scope of the still unfolding human tragedy is vast and almost incomprehensible. 

Syrians both in exile as refugees and in the country have turned for comfort and as a means of expression to their rich tradition of poetry.  Schoolchildren recite epics, pop stars set poetry to music, and literary parlor games can go on for hours in the culture said poet and translator Ghada Alatrash back in 2013 when the Syrian Uprising against Assad was already two and a half years old.  “The wall of fear has fallen, and people are saying things that they never would have said before.”  Before poets would leaned heavily on metaphor and allegory, but both inside and outside Syria have begun speaking out about the conditions they see, using vivid imagery and strong words.

Poet and translator Ghada Alatrash shares the work of Syrian poets in Canada.

Alatrash now lives in exile in Canada where she collects, translates, and performs the work of those daring poets .   Here is one example.

When I am Overcome By Weakness

When I am overcome with weakness,  I bandage my heart

with a woman’s patience in adversity.

I bandage it with the upright posture

of a Syrian woman who is not bent

by bereavement, poverty, or displacement

as she rises from the banquets of death

and carries on shepherding life’s rituals.

She prepares for a creeping, ravenous winter

and gathers the heavy firewood branches,

stick by stick from the frigid wilderness.

She does not cut a tree, does not steal,

does not surrender her soul to weariness,

does not ask anyone’s charity,

does not fold with the load,

and does not yield midway.

I bandage my heart with the determination of that boy

they hit with an electric stick on his only kidney until he urinated blood. Yet he returned and walked in the next demonstration.

I bandage it with the steadiness of a child’s steps

in the snow of a refugee camp,

 child wearing a small black shoe on one foot

and a large blue sandal on the other,

wandering off and singing to butterflies flying in the sunny skies,

butterflies and skies seen only by his eyes.

I bandage it with December’s frozen tree roots,

trees that have sworn to blossom in March or April.

I bandage it with the voice of reason

that was not affected by a proximate desolation.

I bandage it with veins whose warm blood

has not yet been spilled on the surface of our sacred soil.

I bandage it with what was entrusted by our martyrs,

with the conscience of the living,

and with the image of a beautiful homeland

envisioned by the eyes of the poor.

I bandage it with the outcry:

“Death and not humiliation.”

—Najat Abdul Samad , Translated by Ghada Alatrash

And this one:

I Am Syrian

I am a Syrian.

Exiled, in and out of my homeland, and

on knife blades with swollen feet I walk.

I am a Syrian: Shiite, Druze, Kurd,

Christian,

and I am Alawite, Sunni, and Circassian.

Syria is my land.

Syria is my identity.

My sect is the scent of my homeland,

the soil after the rain,

and my Syria is my only religion.

I am a son of this land, like the olives

apples pomegranates chicory cacti mint grapes figs ...

So what use are your thrones,

your Arabism,

your poems,

and your elegies?

Will your words bring me back my home

and those who were killed

accidentally?

Will they erase tears shed on this soil?

I am a son of that green paradise,

my hometown,

but today, I am dying from hunger and thirst.

Barren tents in Lebanon and Amman are now my refuge,

but no land except my homeland

will nourish me with its grains,

nor will all the clouds

in this universe

quench my thirst.

—Youssef  Abu Yihea , Translated by Ghada Alatrash

Amineh Abou Kerech was thirteen years old when she won the 2017 Betjeman poetry prize for 10- to 13-year-olds in Britain last November.  The young Syrian refugee had been raised mostly in Egypt before moving with her family to England a year earlier.  Since that time she quickly learned English and wrote her submitted poem  half in half in Arabic, and translated fully into English with help from her sister, her teacher and Google Translate.  At the competition she read the first part of the poem in English and switched to Arabic

 

Lament for Syria

Syrian doves croon above my head

their call cries in my eyes.

I’m trying to design a country

that will go with my poetry

and not get in the way when I’m thinking,

where soldiers don’t walk over my face.

I’m trying to design a country

which will be worthy of me if I’m ever a poet

and make allowances if I burst into tears.

I’m trying to design a City

of Love, Peace, Concord and Virtue,

free of mess, war, wreckage and misery.

*

Oh Syria, my love

I hear your moaning

in the cries of the doves.

I hear your screaming cry.

I left your land and merciful soil

And your fragrance of jasmine

My wing is broken like your wing.

*

I am from Syria

From a land where people pick up a discarded piece of bread

So that it does not get trampled on

From a place where a mother teaches her son not to step on an ant at the end of the day.

From a place where a teenager hides his cigarette from his old brother out of respect.

From a place where old ladies would water jasmine trees at dawn.

From the neighbours’ coffee in the morning

From: after you, aunt; as you wish, uncle; with pleasure, sister…

From a place which endured, which waited, which is still waiting for relief.

*

Syria.

I will not write poetry for anyone else.

*

Can anyone teach me

how to make a homeland?

Heartfelt thanks if you can,

heartiest thanks,

from the house-sparrows,

the apple-trees of Syria,

and yours very sincerely.

—Amineh Abou Kerech

Syrian Poets Bear Witness

Verse by the famous Syrian poet, Nizar Qabani. A long and honored tradition.

Like most Arab countries, Syria has a long, deep, and rich tradition of poetry.  Poets are honored both for the beauty they bring to the world, but as prophets and often the voice of the poor and powerless.  Naturally over hundreds of years many poets have paid steep prices for speaking truth to power, or for merely being inconvenient. In a country with often mutually hostile Islamic sects, ethnic minorities, Arab nationalists, and westernizers there were always many painful ways to run afoul of a neighbor.  Despite this both poets and their readers have treasured that special cultural relationship.

Now that the Cheeto in Charge has thrown his fit and $70 million worth of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles Americans are turning their short attention spans back to Syria—and away from those nasty tales of backdoor shenanigans and influence peddling between Donald Trump, his kin and cronies, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin and assorted moguls and mobsters.  His motives for raining surprisingly inconsequential damage on a Syrian airfield after giving the Russians due heads up. 

Perhaps, taking him at his word, he was moved by human sympathy seeing footage of those “beautiful babies” gasping for air after a chemical weapon attack.  Those would be the same sort of babies he is fighting tooth and nail to keep from ever entering the United States because of, you know, terrorism.  It would also be evidence of human empathy that he has utterly lacked in everything else he has said and done as either a candidate or President.

Then there is the real possibility he is just ragingly incompetent and completely flipped on his own policy—leave Syria to Assad and the Russians in exchange for them occasionally pausing in the slaughter of other Syrians to kill some ISIS terrorists  overnight without a forward plan.

And then there is a grab bag of conspiracy theories involving a Russian connection misdirection, cover for an Israeli attack, deals with Turkey to let them rub out the Kurds, or take-your-pick Saudi and Wahhabist plots.

The Syrian Civil War has seen to much of this on all sides.

It doesn’t matter.  The six year old, multi-sided Syrian Civil War which as displaced millions and created a worldwide refugee crisis just got even more fucked up. And it can only get worse if Trump and the U.S. keep mucking around.  The complex conflict has left no parties with clean hands and no populations on any side spared senseless atrocities or the wanton destruction of their communities.

Through it all it has been the poets of Syria who have risen to be the powerful voices of the victims.  And many of those poets have been women.  It is past time for Western ears to listen.

Dr. Nahat Abdul Samad, poet.

Najat Abdul Samad is a physician—an ob-gyn—from Sweida, about an hour’s drive from the Syria’s southern border with Jordan.  While practicing medicine she has seen much war and tragedy which she has written about in poetry and her novel Lands of Exile.  She says:

I read so that I am healed and I write so that I am healed. Today, while my homeland is covered with the color of blood, I write to bring back greenness back to the trees and height back to the mountains, and I write so that people do not die in subjugation or forget their right to live safely. I write with the hopes that the tyrants read and are ashamed of their extreme ugliness.

A friend from her home town, Ghada Alatrash who now lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, has translated her poetry and promoted in North America.

When I am Overcome By Weakness

When I am overcome with weakness, I bandage my heart with a woman’s patience in adversity. I bandage it with the upright posture of a Syrian woman who is not bent by bereavement, poverty, or displacement as she rises from the banquets of death and carries on shepherding life’s rituals. She prepares for a creeping, ravenous winter and gathers the heavy firewood branches, stick by stick from the frigid wilderness. She does not cut a tree, does not steal, does not surrender her soul to weariness, does not ask anyone’s charity, does not fold with the load, and does not yield midway.

I bandage my heart with the determination of that boy they hit with an electric stick on his only kidney until he urinated blood. Yet he returned and walked in the next demonstration.

I bandage it with the steadiness of a child’s steps in the snow of a refugee camp, a child wearing a small black shoe on one foot and a large blue sandal on the other, wandering off and singing to butterflies flying in the sunny skies, butterflies and skies seen only by his eyes.

I bandage it with December’s frozen tree roots, trees that have sworn to blossom in March or April.

I bandage it with the voice of reason that was not affected by a proximate desolation.

I bandage it with veins whose warm blood has not yet been spilled on the surface of our sacred soil.

I bandage it with what was entrusted by our martyrs, with the conscience of the living, and with the image of a beautiful homeland envisioned by the eyes of the poor.

I bandage it with the outcry: “Death and not humiliation.”

—Najat Abdul Samad

Translated by Ghada Alatrash

Sleek and western in Paris--still a voice of Syria, Maram al-Masri.

Maram al-Masri lives in Paris now and looks sleek and Western sitting in cafés drinking coffee.  She first rose to prominence as a poet in exile writing with searing honesty about the lives of displaced, sophisticated women like her including grappling with love, sex, and ambition.

She was born in Latakia, a city on the Mediterranean coast.  It was a cosmopolitan place that looked west as much as toward Damascus.  Her middle class parents were fluent in the colonial language—French.  She was caught as a young woman between her Arab roots and like her friends “nurturing ourselves with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Leonard Cohen.”  She studied English at the University of Damascus and was publishing poetry in Arabic journals as a teenager.  She initially moved to France in the 1980’s but continued to spend part of each year in Syria.  She published her first poetry collection in 1987.  A Red Cherry on a White-tiled Floor came out in 1997 and established a high flying reputation.

Before the war, the woman in me was my universe, my source of inspiration. I became fragile, I paid a price. It was like baring yourself naked in front of people. [My husband’s lawyer] used my poems in the divorce case against me. The judge agreed with him that my poetry was not compatible with marriage, with the mind of a good, faithful wife.

As late as 2009 her collection Barefoot Souls, which was widely praised was focused on her experiences as a wife, mother, and housekeeper.  The war changed that as she began to read the obituaries of old friends, many of them murdered in some way by the Assad regime.  And then the refugees began to flood Europe.  She began to go to the refugee camps because she could not go back to Syria, Her next book, published in France as Elle va nue la liberté and in English as Liberty Walks Naked is her remarkable war book.  It is powerful enough so that there is a movement in Paris to nominate her for the Nobel Prize.

The Children of Syria

The children of Syria

Swaddled in their shrouds

like wrapped sweets.

But, they are not made of sugar,

they are made of flesh

and dreams

and love.

The streets await you,

Gardens, schools and holidays

await you,

children of Syria.

It is too soon to be birds,

to play

in the heavens.

—Maram al-Masri

Have You Seen Him?

Have you seen him?

Carrying his infant in his arms

advancing with magisterial step

head up, back straight …

As if the infant should be happy and proud

to be carried like this in his father’s arms …

If only he was

alive.

—Maram al-Masri