By HENDRI YULIUS WIJAYA
Translated By EDWARD GUNAWAN
Content warning: Some offensive slurs that appear in the source text have been carried over into the translation.
Translator’s Note
Fueled by far-right nationalist politics and religious extremism, persecution and violence from both state institutions and the general public against queer and trans Indonesians have reached unprecedented levels—mirroring similar disturbing patterns worldwide.
This month we’re honored to bring our readers an excerpt from MARY JO BANG’s new translation of Dante’s Paradiso, out soon from Graywolf Press.
From Paradiso: Canto XI
The first eighteen lines of this canto are Dante’s elaboration of human difference, his lament over the failure of some humans to realize their gifts, and an exultation for the opportunity he’s been given—which is to enter Heaven before he has died.
Thomas Aquinas’s clarification of “where they fatten up” begins at line 22 and continues without interruption until the end of the canto. In lines 124 to 126, Thomas complains that Saint Dominic’s flock, the Dominican friars, are showing signs of ambition and greed, seeking honors and offices. They are wandering away from the tenets of the order, which are to live a life of humility and self-sacrifice. In lines 137 to 139, he says, “You’ll see what has splintered the tree, / And how the remedy for that can be deduced from // ‘Where they fatten up, if they don’t lose their way.’” The tree is the Dominican order, and it has been scheggia (“splintered” or “chipped away at”) because so many of the sheep have strayed. If the monks and clergy remain true to the principles set out by Saint Dominic, they will be enriched with the “milk” of spiritual nourishment and “fatten up” the way sheep are meant to.
Throughout the Divine Comedy, Dante is concerned with the ways in which selfishness destroys the social fabric. He details how people pay for that selfishness in Hell or by having to trudge up the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory. But Dante isn’t only interested in what happens after death, he is also talking about how we live while on earth. His life was destroyed by the petty grudges of partisan politics. As an exile, he was under constant threat of death. He takes great risks in writing his poem because he hopes that by addressing the greed and megalomania that is destroying Italy, he can help put a stop to it. He also knows that this is not a time-limited problem but a timeless one, which is why he wrote the poem in the vernacular—so that, unlike poems written in literary Latin, it would change over time. He said he was also writing his poem in the vernacular so that it could be read by everyone. That is why I translated the poem into the American vernacular.
—Mary Jo Bang
By HISHAM BUSTANI
Translated by NARIMAN YOUSSEF
Amman is not incidental. The sayl, the stream that patiently carved a path between seven hills for thousands of years, drew—as waterways often do—the din of life. It was somewhere close to here that the Ain Ghazal statues were found. Nine thousand years old, captivating in their simplicity, they seem to be about to speak as you contemplate their black-tar eyes, the details of their fine features, their square torsos and solid limbs.
By ALA JANBEK
Translated by ADDIE LEAK
Amman was culture, colorful walls, and distant souqs in the old city where Mama tried to buy everything we needed in one trip. Na’ur was where my grandfather built the mill near a spring, where our home by the hill watches the sun set behind Palestine, far from the chaos of the valley.
By HAIFA ABUALNADI
Translated by ADDIE LEAK
Deferred Migration
Amman is a city of deferred migration with no hope of arriving, depression with no hope of recovery, and the scam that is returnees’ dream of connection. Amman isn’t mine. Because I’m the daughter of parents who left for a time.
When I was just a girl in braids, my hair already settled into its center part, I would walk along the beaches of the Gulf near our house in Mina al-Zour, on the border between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The Kuwaiti desert stung my feet with its extreme heat and cold. I went to a primary school with only four grades. It had a small pen that held rabbits, two sheep, chickens, and a rooster. On the right side were “barracks” where we had art and vocational classes, and on the left were barracks housing a female nurse and doctor who rarely had office hours. “Home” meant both school and home, and the hugs followed me wherever I went; my mother was with me constantly, day and night. She was a supervisor at the school, and I was her pampered little girl. The other students watched me with envy. My friends were all teachers’ daughters, and we were spoiled: we were given small gifts and made members of the Library Committee, the Scouts, the gymnastics team, and more. The population of Mina al-Zour was scant, so there weren’t many girls at the school.
Translated by MAYADA IBRAHIM
They say that Amman is merely a caravan crossing, and that the spiritual tie between it and its people has been severed. I do not mean the concept of “belonging”—that is a loaded word—but rather the spiritual connection between a person and the city they inhabit. This is the ability to grasp moments from the past to relive them anew, to reflect on memories shared with the city, to feel its streets coursing through them, and to imagine, in a whimsical moment, the city pulling a feather from its pocket to gently tickle them.
By RANEEM ABO RMAILA
Translated By MAYADA IBRAHIM
A Confrontation with Place: The City Changes, and We Change with It
I walk amid the traffic and the rush of people downtown. Here is where I first came to know the city, or so my memory claims, and I fall for it. Downtown has a “soul” that other parts of the city lack. It reminds me that I, in defiance of the hostile noise, am here, and that Amman the city is also here, attempting, however feebly, to find answers to questions that have long exhausted us. The soul of the place tempers the weight of those questions.
We return, regardless of how much we try to run or hide, to our questions about place and identity. Does the city grow weary of its people? Do we become, in our attempt to understand it and to keep up with it, the victims of place? The city changes rapidly; it loses its characteristics and becomes a stranger to us. Those of us who fear suffocating in our city try again to find familiar things in it. Downtown, whose landmarks begin with the Roman Theatre and end at Al Shamasi1 and Al Kalha Stairs, once formed the identity of the city; today there is only dissonance. Shops, cafés, and the ambition of investors extend across it from every side. It no longer resembles its past; it no longer resembles us.
As for me, weary of walking in the center of town, I try to lean on the first stairs I see. Others around me, fellow tired wanderers, take refuge in the stairs as well. There is no room to rest in this city. It’s as if Amman entangles us in an imminent and predictable trap. It commands us to keep moving while concealing our destination.
By MARYAM DAJANI
Translated by ADDIE LEAK
I’m leaving Abdoun after having sushi at Noodasia, heading toward Airport Road. The traffic light in front of me turns red, and all I have to do is step on the brakes… but where are the brakes? Are they on the right, or is that the gas? I’m getting closer to the light, cars are stacking up in front of me, what do I do? Is the pedal on the right or left?!
I wake up.
My car: a room of my own with glass walls open to the world. One that makes me feel free and independent, when, in truth, I’m public property.
Driving isn’t my time for reflection anymore. Ever since I started using GPS for everything—even finding the shortest route to places I know well—I’ve gotten too busy trying to shave a minute or two off the drive to think. Too busy following the blue line.
Translated by MAYADA IBRAHIM
When Did Life Flip Upside Down and Make Us Walk on the Ceiling?
I asked him, “Where are we?”
He said the name, then became preoccupied with finding batteries for his portable radio with one hand, and with the other clutching me so that the crowds would not sweep me away.
“What does that mean?” I pressed.
By AMY ALKHALIFI
Translated by MAYADA IBRAHIM
Fardous Loses Her Mind and Invents a New Future
“At the beginning, it was easy. Customers were in and out all day, and money was flowing,” Fardous the soothsayer says to her neighbor Um Khalid after revealing to her that “business is bad.”
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