Starry Temptation

Between Cecil Rhodes' colonial ambition to annex the planets, Muhammad al-Maghut's refusal to own a home in the stars, the Little Prince's vision of them as laughing joys, and Ibn Arabi's Sufi "marriage" to them, different dimensions of the relationship with place and the cosmos are revealed.

أيام مع محمود درويش في حصار بيروت ١٩٨٢

Days with Mahmoud Darwish During the Siege of Beirut 1982

During the 1982 siege, Darwish read: "In the name of the fedayeen who created / from a boot, a horizon" — then locked himself in to write "Memory for Forgetfulness": "We only saw our image on Lebanon's polished stone."

محمود درويش: ذكاء القلب

Mahmoud Darwish: The Intelligence of the Heart

Jadaliyya

What is death? Its color is white. Watch your heart — for others it's ordinary, for you it's a means of production. Death is the only crime for which there is no punishment.

تجربة في صُنعة المترجِم: من الترجمة الى التعريب

An Experience in the Translator's Craft: From Translation to Arabization

Translation is a struggle to make a foreign text authentically Arabic, not just a transfer of words, by disassembling and reassembling the original so it reads as if written in Arabic, which is the essence of "ta'rib."

Edward Said in Translation – The personal and the academic

A lecture on translating Said and the friendship: "Your language is convoluted—I plan to deconstruct it and reconstruct in Arabic." Twenty years barred from the US, and emails about Tahiyya Karioka, Cyd Charisse, and Oslo as "the peace of the weak."

قصة حوار لم يتم

The Story of a Dialogue That Never Was

Bidayat

He chose his "inveterate friend" as interviewer, then reclaimed the answers before they were copied. Only the questions remain from a dialogue that never happened.

Incurable Hope

Extracts from the siege diary: an Israeli officer says "Palestinians are an epidemic"—asked about the resemblance to Hitler, he answers: "Yes." And "boutiques equal the number of martyrs."

نيرودا بول روبصن

Neruda - Paul Robeson

A translation of Neruda on Paul Robeson: his voice separated from silence as light from darkness—singing for all peoples, triumphant over the silence of rivers that lost their voice from carrying too much blood.

اعجب المخلوقات – ناظم حكمت

The Most Wondrous of Creatures - Nazim Hikmet

A translation of Nazim Hikmet: "Brother," you are like a sheep rushing to the flock when the executioner raises his staff—stranger than a fish that lives in the sea and does not know the sea.

لمس – اكتافيو باث

Touch - Octavio Paz

A translation of Octavio Paz: hands invent another body within the body, and the woman is "beautiful like a revolution of the poor"—the body is the other face of being, time, and life.

بريشت – اسئلة العامل

Brecht - Questions from a Worker

Translation of Brecht: Who built Thebes? Books list kings. Caesar defeated the Gauls — didn't he have a cook? Every decade a great man. Who paid the bill?

ترجمة النظرية: تجربة شخصية

Translating Theory: A Personal Experience

Translation is temptation and struggle between two languages; its only success is when the text sounds as though it were born in Arabic.

Giordano Bruno is a bronze tree

Giordano Bruno was burned on wood and sculpted from wood—he is not the one standing upside down, our world is.

Variations on an Andalusian Theme – Undated Letters to Etel

From Granada to Cana: civil wars replicate—and water did not turn to wine, "blood simply turned into blood."

في تكريم اتيل عدنان

In Honor of Etel Adnan

She captures Duke Ellington in five words: "He turns noise into velvet" — and tells the poets: "Change the world or go home!"

On Etel Adnan

A tribute to Etel Adnan: "she transforms noise into velvet," and woman is what man lost since Adam—his paradise lost. "Change the world or go home!"

عشر سنوات على غياب ايميه سيزير١٩١٣-٢٠٠٨، عودة الى الوطن الأم

Ten Years Since the Passing of Aime Cesaire (1913-2008): Return to the Motherland

Al-Hurriya Magazine

On the anniversary of Aimé Césaire's passing, the Martiniquais poet and politician evokes his return to the "Native Land," declaring his commitment to be the mouth of sufferings and the lover of his unique people.

Ahmad uz-Za’tar – A poem by Mahmoud Darwish

Translation: "Let the siege be—my body is the fortress—for I am besieging you"—Darwish's Ahmad uz-Za'tar, translated by Traboulsi.

بيروت ٢٨ – نون والقلم

Beirut 28 - Nun wal-Qalam

A translation of Etel Adnan's poem on the siege of Beirut 1982: "Name your children Deir Yassin and Sabra and Shatila so we do not forget"—and poets are called to change the world or stay home.