Nathalie
Handal
 Nathalie Handal is a Palestinian
poet, writer and playwright and a cultural and literary activist.
She has lived in the
Europe, the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America and
the Arab world. She finished her postgraduate studies in English
and Drama at University of London, United Kingdom, her MFA
in Creative Writing and Literature at Bennington College, Vermont,
her Master of Arts in English and her Bachelor of Arts in International
Relations and Communications at Simmons College, Boston. Handal
studied play writing, fiction writing and poetry with many
distinguished authors, namely, Edward Allan Baker, Arthur Giron,
Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, Lucille Clifton and Howard Norman.
She has read/performed, lectured and taught theatre and creative
writing workshops worldwide, namely at La Sorbonne, University
of London, McGill University, City University of New York,
Yarmouk University, University of Jordan, Lewis and Clark,
Arvon Foundation, UK and at numerous other universities, festivals
and conferences. She was one of the Chairs at the Pushkin Club,
London (Russian Literary Center) and the Program Director of
Summer Literary Seminars in the Dominican Republic
Her work has appeared in
numerous magazines/literary reviews and she has been featured
on NPR, KPFK, and PBS Radio. Handal's plays
have had readings and have been produced in numerous venues throughout
the United States and England, and she has also directed several
plays, most recently, Grenade by Yussef El Guindi. She
is the author of Traveling
Rooms (Poetry
CD-improvisational music by Russian musicians, Vladimir Miller
and Alexandr Alexandrov, ASC Records, UK), The NeverField (poetry
book), and The Lives of Rain which was Shortlisted
for The Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize/The Pitt Poetry Series;
and she is the editor of The Poetry of
Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology,
an Academy of American Poets Bestseller and Winner of the Pen
Oakland/Josephine Miles Award. Handal is presently working on
two major theatrical projects, finishing another book of poetry,
editing two anthologies, Dominican Literature and Arab-American
and Arab Anglophone Literature (forthcoming
2006), and co-editing along with Tina Chang and Ravi Shankar, Contemporary
Poetry of the Eastern World.
She is Poetry Books Review Editor for Sable (UK), a member
of Nibras Theatre Collective and Associate Artist and Development
Executive for the production company, The Kazbah Project (currently
working
on the
feature film, Gibran, written by Rana Kazkaz and a Tribeca
Film Festival Screenplay Winner). She teaches at Columbia University.
Her books are available at Amazon.com
Weblink: http://www.nathaliehandal.com |
From The Lives of Rain:
Amrika I
The Curfews
of History
Distance keep us in its wake;
our half deserted streets
keep impossible equations,
Fedayeens and Mujahaddins,
the Old City, Sittis and Jiddos,
nights all night digging,
digging for body parts,
for anything that was once part of them—
arm, leg, finger, a sliver of hair
Without water or prayer, we continue
walking to all the borders we can reach
somewhere - different each time.
We are neither breath nor death,
we are a body of holes,
a skull of silence
witness the gaze
the bruised child, the throat
of our national song,
our heart stopping time
as we leave our conversations
in a broken ashtray
somewhere in this divided country
women weave, weave
thread after thread,
lost songs of Palestine, Oum Kulthoum
buildings built and torn down,
the way home changing as the city does -
with every bomb, a new wall.
The years grow taller
past the unopened doors,
we continue to dance, hands swaying
the air, Ya Allah, Ya Allah,
we will never leave.
II
The Tyranny
of Distance
From Jaffa to Marseille:
How does one begin to understand the difference
between Sabaah el khayr and bonjour,
the difference between the city of lights and black-outs.
C’est comme cela, tout change habibti,
but our names stay the same,
our eyes remain, our memory.
I sing Inshallah in French as I walk les banlieue
Parisienne,
walk through Barbes, Bercy, St. Denis, Rue Bad-el-Oued
uncertain, looking for what I am most certain of.
Wait for my lover in Nazareth
whom I write to years later:
Love, you never saw my hair grow out
or did you see me cut it?
You never asked me about the men
I betrayed for you, nor did I ask you
about the window sill that held the hissing
between our lips, a glass of wine shattered
on the cement floor
silence broken in a room
too small to survive.
We were lost again,
this time we did not pretend,
we were prepared for our tendencies.
Will we ever smell the sweet scent of morning
in Haifa again,
remember the faces who never slept in our bed.
Is your throat swollen with history?
They divided us.
Dead Sea. Trenches. A verdict. A verse. A voyage.
Never mind. Tell me the color of your hat,
if we will arrive on time for death.
Je n’ai jamais oublie
ce que tu n’as pas cesse de me dire,
la terre ne ment jamais.
III
The Cry
of Flesh
Et Maintenant, les Antilles.
The ticking of tombs,
abandoned
somewhere we never find,
between
the dance of darkness
in the island of Boukman, tap-taps,
Tabou Combo and Sweet Mickey,
in the streets of Port-au-Prince-
Ayiti cherie, plus bel pays-
Cité Soleil, where the sun forgets
and people compete for the heavens,
with baskets on their heads
perfectly balanced
walking at all speeds
counting their steps their days,
hoping to find God
in the poor hands of another.
I leave with the Kreyol -
tioul, zonbi, refijye, testaman, ma lé-
leave the soft drumming of shadows
leave our sleep: we did what we had to,
but it was not enough.
IV
Opening
New England
quiet echoes raindrops autumn leaves
an alley of tiny butterflies
the difference between where we are from
and where we now live.
The years behind a broken door
my father’s grief –
I understand nothing -
only later do I hear the Arabic
in his footsteps…
I walk through Fenway Park, through
streets with names that escape me,
their stories of sea
their cries for a stranger’s grief.
I understand – no one can bear partings.
Only the stationary I left in that apartment
remembers what I might
forget to say, but time looks different now,
it wears another hat and owns a car,
and we are comfortable in foreign tongues
but the music that continues to move us
is a melody from the east –
an opening of whispers in our shivers.
V
El Color
del Inmigrante
We land somewhere we recognize –
the Spanish language, rows of inmigrantes
playing dominos, drinking rum,
paint peeling
secrets falling on floors,
we reach the Miami beat,
Cubano dreams and South Beach,
la revolución, Azúcar,
carnivals, hurricanes and superstitions,
speak about la tierra de Dios
while living in a tower on Collins,
where everyone visiting
is considered suspicious
a word we know
a reality we understand -
leaving, we survive.
VI
Another
Sun
Too many highways,
we head south
Santo Domingo - isla dulce,
listen to Bachata, Juan Luís Guerra,
speak about Sosa, El Camino Real,
las calles en la Zona Colonial
where priests and witches
small hells and bitter plains
live between the hours
between the cracks of doors
between conjugations of verbs
we do not know in the past
or future tense
but keep practicing…
and behind edificios and torres
are barrios, a world of blakao, apagón
stillness splitting, portraits of a daily war,
the stains of ashes, of dust between lips.
We leave mosquitos and mamajuana,
pack our pictures
the sweet taste of sugar cane,
the caress of coconut in our mouth,
as if we can hold on to everything we pass through,
as if we can remember our past,
think of our future as if it is sure to come.
Why do we insist
on disappointing ourselves-
past or future
suspense or dream
instead of hoping the present.
VII
Incantations
English verses and riverbanks at midnight,
uncover the broken vases of whispers
hidden in Shakespeare’s country
as I cross the different faces of the wind,
a past I passed in words and dreams,
Yeats and Beckett, smoking sheesha
on Egdeware Road
the mist, a room I could disappear in,
the odd colors found in Portobello Market
a way into – a small muse in London
where I came to know
the silent rain inside of me
as the Thames had come
to the rhythm of my breathing.
VIII
Debke in
New York
I arrive. In New York
witness barbers
cutting the hair of men
faces vanishing without
returning for morning coffee
shadows on my forehead
war in old newspapers
frost on the winter windows
the past a bedroom I once slept in.
I wear my jeans, tennis shoes,
walk Broadway, pass Columbia,
read Said and Twain,
wonder why we are obsessed
with difference,
our need to change the other?
I wait for the noise to stop
but it never does
so I go to the tip of the Hudson River
recite a verse by Ibn Arabi
and between subway rides,
to that place I now call home,
listen to Abdel Halim and Nina Simone
hunt for the small things
I have lost inside of myself -
and at the corner of Bleeker and Mercer
through a window with faded Arabic letters
see a New York debke…
It is later than it was while ago
and I haven’t moved a bit,
my voice still breaking into tiny pieces
when I introduce myself to someone new
and imagine I have found my way home.
Notes
(In order poems appear)
- “Ephratha”:
Ephratha is Palestine’s Canaanite name, meaning ‘the
fruitful.’
- “Gaza
City”: Debke: Traditional Arabic dance.
- “Une
Suele Nuit à Marrakech”: Hel’lou means beautiful
in Arabic; qu’elle belle musique means what a beautiful song
in French. Kab El Ghzal is a honey and nuts pastry, otherwise known
Baklava. Arak: an alcoholic drink. Marrakech is situated in the center
of the Haouz plain. Abayas: Long robes, typical in Morocco.
- “El
Almuerzo de Tía Habiba”: Almuerzo means lunch in Spanish.
Arguileh is a water filtered smoking pipe.
- “Caribe
in Nueva York”: Arroz: Rice; Habichuelas negras: black beans;
Plktanos: plantains; son: typical music from Cuba; Los malecones:
waterfront boulevards; Gloria, Shaqira, Mark, JLO, Juan Luís
Guerra, Celia Cruz are all Latino performer/musicians; Tierra: land.
- “Baladna”:
Baladna: my country; ahweh: coffee; zaatar: spice, mixture of toasted
sesame seeds, dried thyme, sumac and salt; houbiz: bread; Kaak: Arabic
cookie.
- “Blue Hours”:
negrita: little black woman; finca: farm; compatriota: countrywoman,
compatriot.
- “Around
my Body, Lost Songs”: sheesha: water filtered smoking pipe,
also known at arguileh.
- “Kolo”: Kolo
is a round dance, an important aspect of Balkan folklore.
- “Goran’s
Whispers”: Klaonica in Serbo-Croatian means slaughterhouse,
butchery.
- “Pequeñas
Palabras”: Pequeñas: small; Palabras: words; Abraham
Lincoln and Kennedy: two main avenues in Santo Domingo, Dominican
Republic; Ríos: rivers; Colinas: hills; Llanuras: fields;
Cerveza: beer; Comida: food; Música: music; Miseria: misery,
poverty; Amor: love.
- “Presidente”:
Colmadtio: small convenience store; “Eso si, en este país
Presidente es la mejor: “Take’s right, in this country
Presidente is the best; flamboyanes, amapolas are kinds of trees;
orquídeas, anturios and flores de caoba are flowers.
- “Una
Leyenda Invisible”: La noche desaparecerá: The night
will disappear.
- “Amrika”:
Fedayeen: one who sacrifices his life for a cause-martyrs; Mujahaddin:
freedom fighter- he fights in the name of god-jihad; Sittis: grandmothers;
Jiddos: grandfathers; Oum Kulthoum: one of the most well-known female
Arab singers; Ya Allah: Oh God; c’est
comme cela, tout change habibti : that’s how it is, all
changes sweetheart; Inshallah: God willing; Je n’ai jamais
oublie, ce que tu n’as cesse de me dire, la terre ne ment jamais ;
I did not forget what you never stopped telling me, the land never
lies; Boukman: a statue in Haiti which symbolizes the revolt of the
slaves in 1971; Ayiti cherie, plus bel pays : Haiti darling,
the most beautiful county ; Cité Soleil: A poor area
in Haiti; Kreyol : Creole ; tioul; slaves; zonbi; ghosts;
refijye; refugee; testaman; testament; ma lé, I’m going;
inmigrantes; immigrants; revolución: revolution; Azúcar:
sugar, and the well-known Cuban singer Celia Cruz always says it
when she sings; la tierra de Dios; the land of God; isla douce: sweet
island; Bachata: type of popular music in Dominican Republic; Juan
Luís Guerra: well-known Dominican singer, composer; edificious;
buildings; torres: tower- buildings; barrios: slums, ghettos, quarters,
suburbs; blakao: slang for blackout; apagón: blackout; mamajuana:
alcoholic beverage made with rum and herbal roots; debke: typical
Arabic folkloric dance.
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