المشرب ليس بعيداً.. ما جدوى ذلك
أنت كما الاسفنجة تمتص الحانات
ولا تسكر
يحزنك المتبقي من عمر الليل بكاسات الثملين
لماذا تركوها؟
هل كانوا عشاقاً؟
هل كانوا لوطيين بمحض إرادتهم كلقاءات القمة؟
هل كانت بغي ليس لها أحد
في هذي الدنيا الرثة؟
لو كنت هنا خبأت بسترتك التاريخية رغبتها
وهمست بدفء في رئتيها الباردتين..
أيقتلك البرد؟
أنا يقتلني نصف الدفء.. ونصف الموقف أكثر
سيدتي.. نحن بغايا مثلك
يزني القهر بنا.. والدين الكاذب.. والفكر الكاذب..
والخبز الكاذب..

والأشعار.. ولون الدم يزور حتى في التأبين رماديا
ويوافق كل الشعب.. او الشعب
وليس الحاكم أعور
سيدتي.. كيف يكون الإنسان شريفاً
وجهاز الأمن يمد يديه بكل مكان
والقادم أخطر
نوضع في العصارة كي يخرج منا النفط
نخبك.. نخبك سيدتي
لم يتلوث منك سوى اللحم الفاني
فالبعض يبيع اليابس والأخضر
ويدافع عن كل قضايا الكون
ويهرب من وجه قضيته
سأبول عليه وأسكر.. ثم أبول عليه وأسكر
ثم تبولين عليه ونسكر
المشرب غص بجيل لا تعرفه.. بلد لا تعرفه
لغة.. كركرة.. وأمور لا تعرفها
إلا الخمرة بعد الكأس الأولى تهتم بأمرك
تدفئ ساقيك الباردتين
ولا تعرف أين تعرفت عليها منذ زمان
يهذي رأسك بين يديك
بشيء يوجع مثل طنين الصمت
يشاركك الصمت كذلك
بالهذيان.. وتحدق
في كل قناني العمر لقد فرغت
والنادل أطفأ ضوء الحانة عدة مرات
لتغادر
كم أنت تحب الخمرة.. واللغة العربية.. والدنيا
لتوازن بين العشق وبين الرمان
هذى الكأس واترك حانتك المسحورة
يا نادل لا تغضب فالعاشق نشوان
املأها حتى تتفايض فوق الخشب البني
فما أدراك لماذا هذي اللوحة للخمر..
وتلك لصنع النعش.. وأخرى للإعلان..
املأها علنا … يا مولاي
عفواً يا مولاي فما أخرج من حانتك الكبرى
إلا منطفأً سكران
أصغر شيء يسكرني في الخلق فكيف الإنسان
سبحانك كل الأشياء رضيت سوى الذل
وأن يوضع قلبي في قفص في بيت السلطان
وقنعت يكون نصيبي في الدنيا.. كنصيب الطير
ولكن سبحانك حتى الطير لها أوطان.. وتعود إليها
وأنا ما زلت أطير.. فهذا الوطن الممتد من البحر الى البحر
سجون متلاصقة
سجان يمسك سجان

….

مظفر النواب

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCyzcmpmwe8&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1]

تجدون كامل المعلقة هنا
]]> http://tololy.com/2008/08/30/%d8%b4%d8%b9%d8%b1-%d8%b9%d8%b1%d8%a8%d9%8a-%d8%b9%d9%86%d8%aa%d8%b1%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d8%a8%d8%b3%d9%8a/feed/ 6 http://tololy.com/2008/08/25/love-in-the-time-of-cholera/ http://tololy.com/2008/08/25/love-in-the-time-of-cholera/#comments Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:33:01 +0000 Tololy http://www.tololy.com/?p=1273 What follows is a transcript of what went through my mind as I labored through the novel Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. Think of this as a review of the book and be forewarned as it will ruin your experience of the story if you have not read it yet:

Yes, so he loves her.
She loves him.
She rejects him.
Meaningless events in his life.
Meaningless events in her life.
Some more events.
His sexual escapades.
Her mundane life embellished with travels.
Blah Blah Blah.
More events.
When will this story ever end?
A ton of GRE words here, good practice. Love Barron’s list.
They both age.
He still loves her.
He consoles her after husband’s death.
They’re old but still “active.”
They hook up on a boat.
The end.

Suffice to say that I did not enjoy the novel. I found the style to be tedious and onerous, and the plot to be an inflated repetition of an overrated romantic notion. What compelled me to read Márquez in the first place was the recent popular fascination with him, which I bluntly found to be uncalled for.

*شبه-تصرف بإحدى العبارات الوارة في قصة حقاً قام؟
]]> http://tololy.com/2008/08/23/%d8%b4%d9%88-%d9%83%d9%85%d8%a7%d9%86%d8%9f/feed/ 2 http://tololy.com/2008/08/15/%d9%88%d8%ac%d8%a7%d9%87%d8%a9/ http://tololy.com/2008/08/15/%d9%88%d8%ac%d8%a7%d9%87%d8%a9/#comments Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:52:14 +0000 Tololy http://www.tololy.com/?p=1239

و تزغرد النسوة خلف أحاديث الرجال.
]]> http://tololy.com/2008/08/15/%d9%88%d8%ac%d8%a7%d9%87%d8%a9/feed/ 8 http://tololy.com/2008/08/10/darwish/ http://tololy.com/2008/08/10/darwish/#comments Sun, 10 Aug 2008 06:22:35 +0000 Tololy http://www.tololy.com/?p=1217 Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian poet and activist, passed away last night.

To a reader: Do not trust the poem –
The daughter of absence
It is neither intuition nor is it
Thought
But rather, the sense of the abyss…

(State of Siege)

حــــالة حصـــار

(مقاطع)
هنا، عند مُنْحَدَرات التلال، أمام الغروب وفُوَّهَة الوقت،
قُرْبَ بساتينَ مقطوعةِ الظلِ،
نفعلُ ما يفعلُ السجناءُ،
وما يفعل العاطلون عن العمل:
نُرَبِّي الأملْ.

بلادٌ علي أُهْبَةِ الفجر. صرنا أَقلَّ ذكاءً،
لأَنَّا نُحَمْلِقُ في ساعة النصر:
لا لَيْلَ في ليلنا المتلألئ بالمدفعيَّة.
أَعداؤنا يسهرون وأَعداؤنا يُشْعِلون لنا النورَ
في حلكة الأَقبية.

هنا، بعد أَشعار أَيّوبَ لم ننتظر أَحداً…

إلي قارئ: ف لا تَثِقْ بالقصيدةِ ـ
بنتِ الغياب. فلا هي حَدْسٌ، ولا
هي فِكْرٌ، ولكنَّها حاسَّةُ الهاويةْ.

How do you mourn a poet?
You don’t. You mourn the world without him.

First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/ missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age – say, 14. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at 15 you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire. It is a pond, a cherry blossom, a wind brushing against sparrow wing leaving for mountain. Count the syllables. Show it to your mom. She is tough and practical. She has a son in Vietnam and a husband who may be having an affair. She believes in wearing brown because it hides spots. She’ll look briefly at your writing then back up at you with a face blank as a doughnut. She’ll say: ”How about emptying the dishwasher?” Look away. Shove the forks in the fork drawer. Accidentally break one of the freebie gas station glasses. This is the required pain and suffering. This is only for starters.

My favorite part is the end of the how-to:

Quit classes. Quit jobs. Cash in old savings bonds. Now you have time like warts on your hands. Slowly copy all of your friends’ addresses into a new address book.

Vacuum. Chew cough drops. Keep a folder full of fragments.

An eyelid darkening sideways.

World as conspiracy.

Possible plot? A woman gets on a bus.

Suppose you threw a love affair and nobody came.

At home drink a lot of coffee. At Howard Johnson’s order the cole slaw. Consider how it looks like the soggy confetti of a map: where you’ve been, where you’re going – ”You Are Here,” says the red star on the back of the menu.

Occasionally a date with a face blank as a sheet of paper asks you whether writers often become discouraged. Say that sometimes they do and sometimes they do. Say it’s a lot like having polio.

”Interesting,” smiles your date, and then he looks down at his arm hairs and starts to smooth them, all, always, in the same direction.

Read it all here.

I miss writing.

The most laudable aspect about their behavior is that they know for a fact that I derive much of my attitude and a good bulk of my opinions from the books I read. Both of these things (my attitude and my opinions) clash severely with their own, and cause conflict and overall unease at home. I suppose the easy route for any parents would have been banning these books of “useless knowledge” as the good hadith tradition put it, yet my parents never considered that as an option. I really respect that, precisely because it is the road less traveled and it’s more sensible than trying to cut off the Hydra’s head.

This brings me to yesterday’s trip downtown with my mother, during which I bought all three parts of Nawal El Saadawi’s autobiography from a small bookshop right off Al Husseini mosque square. This place had over 30 of her works, so I plan to go back and buy some more after I’ve acquainted myself with her life first.

My mother doesn’t like Saadawi, and she likes her thought a lot less, but she waited in that bookshop with me for about 15 minutes while the shop boy fetched the three volumes. She also endured the questions the shop owner asked about me as I was taking pictures outside, and she answered him with such pride despite our differences. Now that’s special.

My then-professor, now-friend, Maria, recommended Pillars of Salt with enthusiasm. I had never heard of Faqir previously, and quite frankly I never heard of her afterwards except from Maria herself who, only a few months ago, recommended yet another book by Faqir. She emphasized that this was a Jordanian writer who treated issues such as honor and gender inequality in this society. Her being a woman was an instant plus as well.

Two days ago, I finally found Faqir’s Pillars of Salt at Prime. I started reading the book tonight and I have not yet finished it, but I was so moved by its realism that I felt compelled to write about it here. I do not know how the story will develop, I do not know if I will enjoy it in the coming pages as I have so far, but I do not think that would alter my reception of it so far.

Pillars of Salt is not only a novel about Jordan, the Bedouin Jordan and the developing Amman, it is a historical account of the situation of Jordanian women, a situation that has remained static for the most part. It relates the story of two women, one Bedouin and the other an Ammani, during and after the British Mandate. In doing so, it reveals the injustices, the myths, and the hardships that clouded and decorated the Jordanian scene.

That above was a brief summary of the novel. My own impressions upon reading it are not different from my sentiments when I used to hear my late aunt recount stories of her childhood in Karak. The stories she told of her father, my grandfather, riding a horse with a jinnee, the stories of men hunting at dawn and sleeping in caves, the stories of women giving birth as they participated in harvest (my grandmother included). Pillars of Salt also relates, but in a more limited way, to my mother’s upbringing in Amman as a Circassian. My mother tells me stories of Cinema Philadelphia, of Syrians and Bedouins flooding the old markets in Amman, and of a girl losing her hair while looking through a drop of oil in a coffee cup to uncover the location of an ancient treasure with the help of jinn.

There seems to have been a common historical fabric that united this Jordan together, and women seem to have been a vital part in this union, albeit in a repressed way. Faqir’s novel taps into that but refrains from making judgment. It recounts the events and seems plot-less precisely because it is so smooth and revealing, and it leaves it to the reader to observe and judge. While reading the novel, I feel like Faqir is narrating my own familial history, which to me has always been the history of the women rather than the men.

To put it in a word, this novel is captivating. Perhaps it is because I can relate to it to a large degree that I feel this way about it, but I believe it will be appreciated equally by others. I do think, though, that people from other cultures would be more taken by the religious-mythical-romantic theme the book has rather than the actual events. It might seem to them that the constant religious remarks and mythical references in the book are tools of style used by the author, but the reality is that these occur in reality exactly like they do in the book. I could hear the characters speak in Arabic Jordanian, although the book is in English. That is a sign of a successful, honest portrayal of Jordan.

Read this book is you’re interested in learning more about Jordan and its mentality and culture. I strongly recommend it and thank Maria for bringing it to my attention. You can also check out Fadia Faqir’s website by clicking here. I do hope this post preaches Faqir to you, she is a truly brilliant writer, and it’s a shame that such Jordanian writers do not get the attention they deserve.