By MAJD HIJJAWI, MOMEN MALKAWI, and HUSAM MANASRAH
Photography by Majd Hijjawi
An abandoned villa in Um Uthaina. This house is a remnant of a once affluent residential neighborhood in Amman, with an eighties architectural style popular at the time. This home no longer exists, as commercial projects have been taking over the neighborhood.
By YARA GHUNAIM
Translated by WIAM EL-TAMAMI
Eight Ways of Looking at a City
1.
Every day, on my way to work, I make a bet with myself: Will I find the tree—the one next to the Own the Apartment of a Lifetime! sign—still standing in the same place? When we’re together in the car, my mother wonders aloud: “My God, when did that building come up?” I imagine the buildings sprouting up from the earth, like plants.
2.
I spend more than half my day in an office, behind a closed door, inside a gigantic glass building. I sit in front of the computer screen. I contemplate how empty space becomes apartments to be bought and sold. Now that homes have become investments, there is no sky left; all the air is now conditioned. They’ve blocked out the sun, buried the sea in another city. And yet, when I go out, I see flowers growing, forcing their way through the concrete of the sidewalk. I marvel at their intuition—their knowledge that concrete is bound to break.[1]
Chrysippus laughed so hard
at a donkey who ate all his figs
that he died. Melville said Death
winked at him with the left eye.
By KHALED SAMEH
Translated by WIAM EL-TAMAMI
1.
As I sit here in the Hashemite Plaza, I am surrounded by noise—visual, auditory—coming at me from all directions. This grand forum attached to the Roman Theatre has now become a breathing space for hundreds of thousands of residents of East Amman and the surrounding governorates. Some come here for recreational reasons, to get together, or to make a living. There are many other reasons why people come to this square, reasons that are not unique to Amman and that are found in most cities around the world. There are pimps and sex workers (heterosexual and homosexual); children being exploited in different ways; dealers of hashish and other drugs—along with various other things that Ammanis would include in their long list of taboo topics.
Some of The Common’s Arabic fiction contributors, MARYAM DAJANI, ESTABRAQ AHMAD, and ISHRAGA MUSTAFA HAMID, made virtual appearances at the Sant Jordi Book Festival last week! The hybrid celebration, sponsored by the eponymous Sant Jordi in New York, is held annually in New York City to raise awareness of literature in translation, and pays homage to the famous Sant Jordi Book Festival in Barcelona, where the streets are lined with bookstands and flower stalls in honor of “the St. Valentine’s day of Catalonia.” The Farragut Fund for Catalan Culture in the United States sponsors the festival and is led by MARY ANN NEWMAN, a renowned Catalan translator and contributor to TC’s Issue 28 portfolio of Catalan women’s literature in translation.
It might be too late to grab a book and a rose, but you can get a feel for the beautiful festival by checking out the readings of Dajani, Ahmad, and Hamid’s stories below—which includes a sneak peek at our Issue 29 Amman portfolio, launching next week!
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