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Best Poems Written by Faleeha Hassan

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Black Iraqi Woman
Written by Faleeha Hassan
Translated from the Arabic by William Hutchins
Shortly before my father died, he whispered to me longingly: “Daughter, treasure this, because it authenticates your heritage to our kinsfolk!” When I accepted this object, I discovered it was a stone with inscriptions I did not understand and delicate, mysterious lines. He continued, “It is a keepsake from our great-great grandfather and can ultimately be traced back to Bilal, the Holy Prophet’s first muezzin, and his father, who was the king of Ethiopia.” I accepted this small heirloom, which I carried everywhere with me in my handbag. The person who shared my life under the title of “husband,” however, threw it down the drain at our house, thinking–as he told me–that it was a fetish. From then till now I have endured successive exiles. So I wrote this poem to explain the secret of my skin color–given that I am a native of al-Najaf, Iraq–spiritually, mournfully, and poetically!
My father said: “You were born quite unexpectedly,
Remote from Aksum, like a beauty spot for al-Najaf-’the Virgin’s Cheek.’
Your one obsession has been writing, but
The sea will run dry before you arrive at the meaning of meaning.”
He affirmed: “During a pressing famine,
I devoted myself to watching over every breath you took.
I would thrust my hand through the film of hope
To caress your spirit with bread.
You would burp, and
I would delightedly endure my hunger and fall asleep.
I could only find the strength to fib to your face and say I was happy.
I would feel devastated when you fidgeted,
Because you would always head toward me,
And I felt helpless.”
Aksum! They say you’re far away!
“No, it’s closer to you than your exile.”
“And now?”
“Don’t talk about ‘now’ while we’re living it.”
“The future depresses me. How can I proceed?”
How can the ear be deaf to the wailing from the streets?
Aksum, you have colored my skin. Al-Najaf has freshened my spirit.
She knows and does the opposite.
She knows that I inter only dirt above me, and
That I deny everything except spelling out words:
M: Mother, who went walking down the alley of no return.
F: Father, who hastened after her.
B: Brother, who never earned that title.
S: Sister who buttoned her breast to a loving tear, no matter how fake.
………………….There’s no one I care about!
The trees tremble some times, and we don’t ask why.
My life surrounds me the way prison walls surround suspects;
I am the victim of a building erected by a frightened man.
With its talons time scratches its tales on me,
And I transform them into a silent song
Or, occasionally, a psalm of sobs.
Father, do you believe that–the roots have been torn asunder?
Fantasies began to carry me from al-Najaf to Afyon
And from Afyon to nonexistence,
Yellow teeth stretching all the way.
“History’s not anything you’ve made,”
One American neighbor tells another.
He’s surprised to see me.
“Who are you?” he asks when he doesn’t believe his eyes.
Would he understand the truth of my origin if I told him I was born in al-Najaf
Or that Aksum has veiled my face?
I have walked and walked and walked.
I’m exhausted, Father.
Is your child mine?
Show yourself and return me to the purity of your loins.
Allow me to occupy the seventh vertebra of fantasy!
Don’t eject me into a time I don’t fit.
I need you.
I ask you:
Has my Lord forbidden me to be happy?
Am I forbidden to preserve
What I have left
And sit some warm evening
Averting my ear from a voice that doesn’t interest me?
Answer me, Father!
Or change the face of our garden
So it changes….to what they believe!

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Stalingrad

Stalingrad
During moments I yearned for forests grown for me alone,
Caressing them in a dream,
I could sense the throbbing of the heart
Hidden beneath my ribs to bless my journey.
Summoning me with a pulse that he recognizes in me.
I heard the noise of abandoned smoke from a moment of care
Join with me,
Forcefully traversing desires to the hidden-most one.
My spirit swung toward him,
Creating a tingling
On lips that devour breaths alive.
I felt ashamed,
But the eye,
In moments—I scarcely know what to call them—that took me on another route
Toward the television, saw warplanes . . . spray death on them.
At that moment,
The fire of machine guns raked all the bodies,
And another fire raked my body when I trained my eye on him
Hesitantly inclining his head
Toward a shoulder unaccustomed to the secret of the stars of war
Or to insomnia.
Oh . . . . I leaned on it!
And when he caressed a dumbfounded person
I felt his fingers like coiling embers inside me.
Bashfulness seized the excuse this caress gave . . . and vanished,
Eliminating distance till the two of us were one.
And the eye—he moaned: May love not forgive her the eye—repeated another evasion
Toward a drizzle of men flung about in the air by just the rustling of a pilot penetrating a building
To fall on screens as the debris of breaking news.
But his breaths . . . shattering the still down of the cheek,
And turning their picture into mist as
Eddies of the screen’s corpses . . . varieties of death that they brought them.
The spirit that became a body,
The body that was sold for the sake of a touch,
The eye that was concealed in his image
And that approached the firebrand of conflagrations.
Everyone drawing close to everyone,
Everyone,
Everyone,
Everyone.
But the thunder of their machine guns splintered them:
Corpses piled on corpses,
I mean on me,
The eyes of those in it were extinguished.
They slept in a trench of silence.
My eyes’ lids parted in a wakefulness obsessed with them.
I rose … and embraced the chill
That the screens brought me in commemoration of Stalingrad.

Translated by William Hutchins

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Let's Strongly Celebrate My Day

Let's Strongly Celebrate My Day
I'm in my seventies- 
Ms. Faleeha , as they call me. 
I have  decided 
To celebrate my day.
I'll invite all my close friends to the party
Since I have many.
…………………………………
………………………………
………………
I'll send invitations to the sea gulls at the beach
……..
To the flowers grown on the sides of the roads,
………
To the running waves, those flatterers
Who, when I show up, hasten to kiss my toes again and again.
I'll invite the breeze; how much I love it though stricken with snowflakes,
My old friend, the bus
Which used to take me home from work,
…………..
The other one, that was blue,
………………….
The  flocks of ducks,
………………..
The leaves of trees – those coming back home,
………………….
And my children's faces; all are  here around me- as I imagine.
But,  they  seem busy now
With other things- more important.
What else? I asked myself.
Oh, yeah  I remember …….
I'll write on a piece of paper: 
"Let's celebrate it, it's my day."
But,  I've not thought of ...
Who will make the cake, suffering I am from rheumatism,
I can hardly move.
Even If I can, what kind of a cake will it be
Without sugar or oil? I am on a diet. 
And who will make the apple juice- I'm already run out of apples.
And Who will set the balloons 
And fix them up to the ceiling?
And …..and …..and ? 
Oh, I've got  sick of all that.
I am, the so-called Faleeha , strongly willing
To celebrate alone by myself,
And thus, I'll embrace the computer and sleep.

Translated into English by
Hussein Nasser Jabr

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Longing Ness

Longing ness
When the tomb has regained its lovely dimness,
I made my heart a window,
And started to praise my murderer.

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Age

.  Age
I part my days:
One half for daughters not able yet 
To count by hand
Or walk with open heart,
And a half for the man huddling upon the age
As heavy as the war
Or, like a palm with no breath of odour.
What left I turn to birds
Replete with white…
Fleeting sea gulls,
Butterflies lisping with magic,
Signs of Surprise,
Tales about elves, 
And the carol
Living deep in the dream
Narrated by the grandma
As she was warning me 
To run away
So that the core of the sea would cool off.
But, I forget her warning,
Wandering far out in my head,
But .. the clock calls to my dreams
So I come back…
To part my days:
One half for daughters not able yet
To jump as high as the wash rope
Burdened with woolen clothes, 
And half 
For the man sitting in silence 
Away…
Sipping the nectar of the present
And cursing upon the future sorrow.

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The Revolution Is Futile Near Cemeteries Noise

The revolution is futile near cemeteries noise
                         
                (To the oldest of me, of course, my son Ahmad in my birthday)
Introduction
                  	 Cut out my soul as shirt
Wrenching the heart arteries 
Boot strap of your shoes
The poem 
The patched soul with raw dreams
And soft body which was stained at cicatrixes of war
And crowded broken heart as falling leaves trampled a track
These are my only signals refer to my being
In a room like storm dreaming of blowing
Oh, my baby
Allowed me to say
Tonight and objectively
I couldn't do anything
Because what happened
Happened always
And what didn't happen
Didn't happen
And we always improve toward the worst

Best Poems Written by Faleeha Hassan

Wish

Similarity

Arabic Homeland

A Talismanic Incantation

Black Iraqi Woman

Stalingrad

Let's Strongly Celebrate My Day

Longing Ness

Age

The Revolution Is Futile Near Cemeteries Noise