In the village, we survey the damage:
every cedar lockbox smashed,
every pillow coated with blood, spit, snot.
The houses have crumbled.
By SARA ELKAMEL
1. They said that hiding in a pomegranate is a grain that opens the gates to heaven.
2. Habayet el-janna or grain of heaven.
Translated by MAIA TABET
As soon as he elbowed me in the ribs, whipping my averted face toward the pitch-black corner, I thought I heard him saying, “Frightened, eh?”
Truly, I was frightened.
By NED BALBO
For my adoptive mother Betty and her siblings
No matter where you vanished, you’re vanished still.
Astonished, pointing out your childhood face,
whatever I felt, I know I always will
By DIANE MEHTA
A sea-gap opens as surf crumbles
onto shifting sediment that pretends to be a beach
but has the bones of 13,000 years;
By GHALIB HALASA
Translated by THORAYA EL-RAYYES
At the borderland between the desert and the plains, Emirate of Transjordan, early twentieth century
Two men sat near the round threshing floor in the western fields. Each with his rifle on his lap. “What a goddamn year,” Tafish said. He had a skull-like face. Small, sunken, deep-set eyes. Emaciated cheeks with protruding cheekbones. A broad forehead with dark blue veins at the sides. Skin like an aged tortoise. His hair and lower jaw were hidden behind a white keffiyeh, held in place by a black fleece cord around his head. His frame was tall, straight, lithe. He rubbed his nose with his hand, letting a low whistle out of his nostrils. By the time he lowered his hand, a pensive expression of disgust had formed on his face. Staring straight ahead, he spoke, as if to himself: “What a goddamn year.”
By TEOW LIM GOH
Ten miles of concrete can bring you
to different places. Your feet carry you
across the ground, let you
When winter set in, they came
to see us with their baby,
a beautiful child about a year old
who was learning to walk
and stepped proudly
across our living room,
waved her fists and hands
and shook her straw colored hair.
Translated by ALICE GUTHRIE
Adam
As broken as a venial sin,
and as weary as the last to be created (or the first),
he looked to the sky, now become his ground.
Once he’d learned about naming and questioning, and saw what he saw of the blue corridors of space, he asked himself:
I wonder what the Throne is?
Did the Throne of the Almighty exist before water, or arise after water? And what is water, anyway?
Despairing, he smacked the trunk of the tree he was sitting under.
By JAMILA AMAIREH
Translated by THORAYA EL-RAYYES
1
I sit on my old chair, scatter my multicolored toys around me, and start watching evening cartoons on TV. Cool Pancho shoots off through the streets in his car, feeling awesome. He’d bought the car back from the old lady living next door. Never mind that he’d paid too much, more than two thousand pounds. No problem. He slows down, speeds up, and finally stops at the green fields to go for a stroll. The episode ends, but I stay glued to the television, waiting for my truly favorite cartoon: The Adventures of Zaina the Bee. Zaina is a menacing creature; she has no other business but instigating pranks on her friend Nahhul. Nahhul, for his part, has no choice but to come crawling back to his bully-of-a-buddy every time.
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Celebrating 15 Years