Letters from Guantanamo

I caught the whole of this programme on the drive back to Birmingham this evening and was moved. Gavin Esler offers an 'exclusive glimpse of the world inside Guantanamo Bay detention centre, told through the letters of a man currently being held there'. That man is Sami al-Hajj AKA Enemy Combatant 345, Camp 4. Sami's words carry an increasingly rarely encountered weight and poignance but it his dignity in the face of almost five years of incarceration that borders on the inimitable.

Listen to the programme here.

Waiting for the Barbarians

Waiting for the Barbarians by the Greek Alexandrine poet Konstantinos Kavafis (1836-1933) was one of Edward Said's favourite poems. In fact his daughter Najla recited at his funeral service.

Waiting for the Barbarians
by Constantine Cavafy (1864-1933), translated by Edmund Keeley

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn't anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city's main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don't our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people's faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.

The Last Mughal

A thousand camels to Hadi Sahib for bringing the following Radio 4 'Book of the Week' serialisation to my attention.

Monday 25 - Friday 29 September 2006

The Last Mughal

By William Dalrymple, abridged by Libby Spurrier, read by Robert Bathurst

An account of the largest uprising the British Empire ever had to face.

The last of the Great Mughals was Bahadur Shah Zafar II: one of the most talented, tolerant and likeable of his remarkable dynasty, he found himself in the position of leader of a violent uprising he knew from the start would lead to irreparable carnage.

Zafar’s frantic efforts to unite his disparate and mutually suspicious forces proved tragically futile: the Siege of Delhi was the Raj’s Stalingrad, and Mughal Delhi was left an empty ruin, haunted by battered remnants of a past that was being rapidly and brutally overwritten.

The Groundhog Factor

Here we go again...Cut and pasted (plus a brand new addendum) from November 2005.

With the imminent advent of moonfighting committees to diffuse the havoc caused by moonsighting committees, and the launch of the new Conservative manifesto, perhaps it's time to borrow a Tory phrase and get 'back to basics'. The perennial drive to standardise the Islamic calendar may well be blinkering us from the actual ethos behind the act of moonsighting - regaining a sense of perspective.

Hamza Yusuf touches on the issue in his commentary on Sachiko Murata and William Chittick's 'Vision of Islam' by quoting an unnamed Scottish phenomenologist:

There are efforts to standardise the Islamic calendar so that Ramadhan can be started on the same day in different communities. But the relationship of the celestial bodies to the earth is a living thing and every location has its own sky. So why shouldn't religious festivals begin on dates peculiar to different places? The modern mind, however, wishes to generalise and abstract the situation so the phenomena are bypassed. As with the length of the day, the average is calculated and becomes the accepted truth to accommodate the limits of circular wheels in clocks, yet none of the celestial bodies moves in circles.

You can listen to the relevant extract (in mp3 format) from Hamza Yusuf's commentary here.

Addendum

For the more astronomically inclined of you, check out the following powerpoint presentation outlining the fiqh of moonsighting and/or ths brief lecture on the same.

Iran Uncovered

Watch the provocative season trailer for BBC Radio 4's Iran Uncovered Season here. Catch up with the programme listings here.

I knew it!

It appears as though my seemingly irrational dislike of vegetables is but the phenotypic manifestation of my genetic make up according to the guys overs at Mind Hacks.

Liking for sprouts may be partly genetic:

Nature is reporting that a gene which is involved in a receptor for bitter tastes can predict people's liking for vegetables such as broccoli and sprouts.

It has been proposed that humans are particularly sensitive to bitterness as natural poisons often taste bitter.

Certain versions of this gene may make us especially sensitive, however. So sensitive, perhaps, that we dislike foods that are perfectly safe but have a bitter element.

There's more information in a over at Eureka Alert and the original study is published in the journal Current Biology.

Benedict XVI and Islam

Abdal Hakim Murad preempted Joseph Ratzinger's crude but seemingly calculated comments in this piece originally published in Q-News. He also sheds some light on the various influences that have shaped the Bavarian Pope's worldview or lack thereof.

In the immediate aftermath of the election of Joseph Ratzinger to the Papacy, Muslim reactions to the new pontiff were diverse and confused. Turks were dismayed by his very public opposition to their membership of the European Union, a view rooted in his conviction that ‘Europe was founded not on geography but on a common faith.’ Others pointed to the absence of any mention of Muslims from his inaugural address (a fact welcomed by the Jerusalem Post) as a hint that Vatican willingness to open minds and hearts to dialogue with Islam was now at an end.

...To date, Ratzinger has shown few signs of continuing this theologically-unarticulated but sincere desire to reach out in affirmation. On the contrary, he has already shown himself to be sharply judgemental. He worried Muslims across Europe when, in an August 2005 meeting with imams in Germany who were worried about discrimination against their community, he made it clear that the only issue he wished to raise was ‘Islamic terrorism’. Apparently echoing a standard right-wing claim (made by Joerg Haider, Pim Fortuyn and Jean-Marie Le Pen in particular), he has said that ‘Islam is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm of a pluralistic society.’ Another theme which he shares with the far right is his apparent belief that Muslims in Europe cannot be ‘assimilated’: ‘Islam makes no sort of concession to inculturation.’ (He does not seem to have noticed the immense differences in Muslim cultural style across the world.)

...Ratzinger’s seeming harshness is regularly interpreted as a sign of a larger change of heart that has come over the Catholic church in recent years in response to the growing demographic significance of Islam in Europe, and the rise of Wahhabi terrorism. However he is not primarily a politician. His emerging Islam policy is ultimately rooted in a distinctive kind of theology. In particular, it should be taken in the context of his wider conservative conviction that Catholicism alone can guide human beings to true salvation, a view that his predecessor had seemed less anxious to advertise. Muslims may wince at his opinion of Islam, but his views on non-Catholic Christians have hardly been less trenchant. He was the leading contributor to the ‘definitive and irrevocable’ Catholic declaration Dominus Jesus in the year 2000, which insisted that non-Catholic churches ‘are not churches in the proper sense,’ and implied that non-Catholics are naturally destined for hellfire. He certainly subscribes to the traditional view that the ordination of Anglican priests is ‘utterly null and void,’ making most church-going in England a kind of theatre, a dim groping after a truth that may only be reliably found in Rome. In fact, his formal position, and his habit of mind, are far from any kind of pluralism, and his criticisms of Islam must be seen in this light. It is not quite correct to say, as some Muslims have done, that he has singled out Islam for a unique condemnation; he is, by the logic of his conservative theology, passionately critical of everything that fails to be ‘in communion with Rome’.

...In his understanding of Judaism and Islam, Ratzinger is guided by the same Augustinian pessimism, which he finds ultimately in the letters of St Paul. Rituals of wudu and ibada are essentially worthless, as they lie outside the grace which is only mediated by God’s one true church. As he writes: ‘the law of Moses, the rituals of purification, the regulations concerning food, and all other such things are not to be carried out by us, otherwise the biblical Word would be senseless and meaningless.’ Such rituals are ‘slavery’, from which submission to the Church alone offers salvation. The Semitic principle is thus categorically inferior; Jews and Muslims, he seems to imply, are slaves, and their ability truly to please God must be Biblically doubted.

Elsewhere, Madeleine Bunting argues that 'Pope Benedict is being portrayed as a naive, shy scholar who has accidentally antagonised two major world faiths in a matter of months. In fact he is a shrewd and ruthless operator, and he's dangerous.'

"Allah is beautiful and He loves beauty"

Inna Allah jameel wa yuhibbu al-jamaal
Allah is beautiful and He loves beauty

I checked out the V&A's newly commissioned Jameel gallery (the result of a three-year-long renovation and re-design of the V&A's Islamic Gallery) recently and the splendour of the diverse artistic manifestations that surrounded me was overwhelming. The above saying of the Prophet neatly encapsulates the aesthetic ideal that underlies much of 'Islamic art' (the limitations of the term are beyond this brief entry).

The expression of this vision relies on a distinct and threefold visual structure, to which a series of panels in the gallery is very usefully dedicated. The first of these is calligraphy: for the faithful, the graceful ciphers of the Arabic script transmit the voice of the Divine, and are the substance of revelation made visible. In no other art form has the written word taken on such an exalted role; sultans and peasants alike strove to learn its many styles, which became disciplines in themselves, and around which an entire science of numerological symbolism evolved. The second is geometric design, brilliantly exploited in endless variations - intellectually enticing and puzzling at the same time. The third panel offers examples of idealised plant shapes drawn from the natural world: tendrils, vines, buds and flowers, all alluding to the fecundity and abundance of nature, and symbolically linked to the Qur'anic evocation of paradise as a luxuriant garden.

At the simplest level, these elements comprise the fundamental repertoire of the traditional artist; at a profounder level, they celebrate the relationship between God, man and nature. They are to some extent mutable - geometric patterns can form letters, and letters can be used to create pictures - and are combined in almost infinite and sophisticated variations of immense beauty. Great art, according to Ruskin, "is that in which the hand, the head and the heart of man go together"; it is precisely this insight that was so well understood by the traditional Muslim artist, whose finest works simultaneously appeal to the devotional, intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities of the onlooker. The most refined expressions of this exacting discipline - whether carved on to a paper-thin dried leaf or stretched across a monumental facade - are thus transformed from objects of mere visual delight into powerful focuses of spiritual contemplation.

The gallery is housed in the Middle East section of the museum and as such it focuses on Arab (including Andalusian), Persian, Turkish and central Asian artforms. You can stroll past dazzling Uzbek tile-work, admire Mamluk Qur'anic calligraphy, stare into the mesmerising blues of Turkish ceramics but your attention will always return to the centrepiece of the gallery - the Ardabil carpet - a 16th century wonder.

Rebuilding the entire gallery around the 50-square-metre marvel imposed multiple challenges on designers. The greatest of these was to allow the carpet to be viewed horizontally, but to protect it from undue levels of light and dust. The innovative solution has been to surround it with an enclosure of non-reflective glass (be careful - it's almost invisible), free of structural supports. This is made possible by a giant protective canopy above the glass walls, fitted with fibre-optic lighting and suspended by steel cables from the ceiling joists overhead. At long last, the delicate colours and intricacy of the carpet's pattern - created from a staggering 30m hand-tied knots - may now be appreciated at close quarters.

The Ardabil carpet is also a reminder of the days when the appreciation of things Islamic was less eclipsed by political issues. To William Morris, who in 1893 petitioned for its purchase from a London dealer, the "singular perfection" of the Ardabil carpet was an inspiration: "To us pattern-designers," he wrote, "Persia has become a holy land."

My own trip happened to coincide with the 'Iranian Weekend - Poetry, Picnics and Persian Pastimes' which promised much but proved to be a spectacular anti-climax, exacerbated by the free-flowing fizzy dugh - an Iranian carbonated-milk-based form of gastronomic torture.

For those of you planning to visit the exhibition, the challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to discover the tribute to the Seven Sleepers and for bonus points, to determine the name of their canine companion.

For lots more detail including some stunning video presentations of architectural styles from across the Islamic world visit the V&A's site here.

Nondh

Click here and share the joy.

The Circle Game

Shamelessly lifted from the NHS Blog Doctor:

This is so funny that it will boggle your mind. And you will keep trying at least 50 more times to see if you can outsmart your foot, but you can't.

1. While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor
and make clockwise circles.

2. Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand.

Your foot will change direction.

And there's nothing you can do about it!

It has begun...

Today's Independent reports:

UK tourists stage mutiny over Asian passengers

A holiday jet was grounded by worried passengers who staged a "mutiny" over fears that fellow travellers were acting suspiciously in the wake of the alleged terror plot to bring down planes.

The flight, from Malaga to Manchester, was delayed for three hours as police escorted the two Asian passengers from the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320, then conducted a security sweep of the plane. The men unnerved others waiting for the flight when they were overheard speaking in what was thought to be Arabic.

They were also wearing leather jackets and sweaters despite the heat of the southern Spanish city and were frequently glancing at their watches. The pair were taken to a hotel and then put on a later flight.

Six passengers had refused to get on board and word spread to those already on the flight and a number of people walked off the plane. Soon the pilot, police and airport security staff came to check their passports and then accompanied them off the flight.

College lecturer Jo Schofield, who was on the flight, told The Mail On Sunday: "There was no fuss or panic. People just calmly and quietly got off the plane. There were no racist taunts or any remarks directed at the men. It was an eerie scene, very quiet."

For the Daily Mail's account click here.

The Barber-ian Hordes

I popped in to my local barber's this morning for my regular fake-Haji cut. The venue never fails to disappoint. I could spend hours there just listening to the whacky conversations fading into each other, jostling for lyrical supremacy. But I'd need to understand Mirpuri to do that with any degree of success. Fortunately snippets of chatter do take place in English (or a least its Brummie equivalent).

The owner was valiantly holding the fort single-handedly while his colleague was "at a meeting", which prompted much speculation from the crowd of eager haircut-ees. Eventually, the AWOL tonsorial artist made a stunning entrance in traditional Pakistani dress. (We're accustomed to seeing him in 'Western' gear). Once the wolf-whistles had died down, the timely wail of a police siren triggered the expected:

Customer: Bro. You look like a Paki.
Barber #2: I am a Paki.
Customer: Yeah but the police don't need no help innit
Barber #2: I got nothing to hide man.
Customer: People dressed like that do all sorts of crazy things on aeroplanes. Dunno what they could get up to on the ground innit?
Barber #2: I aint cutting your hair.
Customer: I aint here for a cut anyway. I'm just chilling...It's all a cover up man. Taking attention away from the real stuff in Lebanon. Bush just says to Blair, "Oi Tony". Nah that's not it. How does he talk to Blair?
Me: I think he said "Yo Blair!"
Customer: Yeah that was it. He goes "Yo Blair!" What a joker. My car is mashed. I'm gonna sue BMW. But qasme, once I've replaced the transmission and stuff I'm gonna have 3.2 litres of power in a manual. Those rear wheels are gonna need serious replacing.

By that time my hair had been cut. I handed over the cash and made my exit stage left.

Postscript: People tend to get their hair cut by the barber* with the coolest cut but unless he/she has the supernatural ability to cut their own hair, surely the responsible hairdresser is someone else?

*insert relevant term for your coiffeur

An Insight into Shia Islam - Part 3/3

The twelfth of the Shia Imams is referred to as the Mahdi – a prominent figure in Islamic eschatology and not only a source of inspiration for Iranian presidents. Born in 866 he is believed to be alive to this day but in occultation, absent from the physical world since the age of five. Shias await his return in a manner akin to those expecting the Messiah. In fact it is commonly held that his reappearance will herald an era of world peace and he is expected to return in the company of Jesus. During his period of concealment, the mujtahids are viewed as the Imam’s representatives in his absence. The clerical hierarchy unique to Shiism is indicative of this role of guiding the community by proxy.

The day-to-day practice of Shia Muslims is almost indistinguishable from that of their Sunni counterparts. Nevertheless, there are idiosyncrasies such as the insistence on prostrating on the ground (rather than a carpet for instance) and many Shias carry a small block of clay on them to ensure they can worship accordingly. There are some practices unique to Shia Islam though. One such article of faith is khums – derived from the Arabic number five – which refers to a one-fifth tax payable by adult Muslims who are financially secure and have surplus in their income. Half of the total is distributed amongst the destitute and needy descendants of the prophet and the other half (referred to as the Imam’s portion) is given to the individual’s mujtahid –which can amount to a considerable sum for popular mujtahids, strengthening their freedom from the state apparatus. Inheritance and divorce rights are arguably more favourable for women under the Shia interpretation of Islamic law. This may well be a reflection of the lofty status given to Fatima, the daughter of the prophet and matriarch of the imamate.

In his book The Failure of Political Islam, Olivier Roy writes “we find Islam divided into three geographic and cultural tendencies: the Sunni Arab Middle East, the Sunni Indian subcontinent, and Irano-Arab Shiism.” While the Pentagon reconsiders its ‘Neo-Con Shia-philia’ as one commentator puts it, ‘Irano-Arab Shiism’ continues to forge an emerging political presence. The strategic importance of the Shia diaspora has never been reflected in what is generally known of them and their beliefs. Perhaps now would be a good time to redress the balance.

An Insight into Shia Islam - Part 2/3

One of the central tenets of Shiism is belief in the Imamate, the divinely appointed leadership of the Muslim community following the prophet. The majority of Shias are Ithna-Asheri or Twelver, so-called because of their belief in twelve Imams, the first being Ali. The Imams are regarded as infallible individuals and interpreters par excellence of the prophetic tradition, differing from the prophets only by not being direct recipients of Divine revelation. The concept of imamate is commonly regarded as a corollary of the Shia emphasis on the justice of God, one of the five ‘roots of religion’ alongside Imamate, Oneness of God, Prophethood and belief in the Day of Judgement. The notion of a period in history without a guide, a human exemplar, is unimaginable for a Shia.

An exact (and for that matter even an approximate) number of Shias in Britain is unavailable. The community has a significant presence judging by the number of Shia mosques and imambaras dotted around the country. Four ethnic groups form the bulk of Britain’s Shia population: Iraqi, South-East Asian, East-African Asian and Iranian. The East-African Asians are mainly Khojas who are represented by the umbrella charitable organisation the WF of KSIMC, or to give it its glorious Technicolor title, the World Federation of Khoja Shia Ithna-Asheri Muslim Communities. According to their impressive records there are 8,000 members currently residing in the UK. The National Statistics Office may well address this in the 2011 census.

Perhaps the most significant difference from an ideological perspective is the differing role of ijtihad (the derivation of Islamic law) in both traditions. The word ijtihad derives from the same Arabic root as jihad, both words reflecting a sense of struggle. Sunni Islam is classically composed of four schools of thought, named after their founders who lived in temporal proximity to each other during the 8th and 9th centuries. Sunni Muslims decide to follow a particular school, a decision inevitably influenced by cultural and familial leanings, and carry out their daily obligations in accordance with the school’s requirements. The reach of Islamic law is far and wide ranging from the form of prayer to the validity of voting.

It is said that once the Sunni schools of thought had taken on their solid independent existences, the door of ijtihad was then closed. Joseph Schacht, author of An Introduction to Islamic Law, states in this regard “hence a consensus gradually established itself to the effect that from that time onwards no one could be deemed to have the necessary qualifications for independent reasoning in religious law, and that all future activity would have to be confined to the explanation, application, and, at the most, interpretation of the doctrine as it had been laid down once and for all.”

Ijtihad amongst the Shias took on a more dynamic nature with scholars continuing to derive and refine Islamic law to the present day. Shias are required to imitate a mujtahid (expert jurisprudent) perhaps the most famous of which today is the Grand Ayatollah al-Seestani based in Najaf, Iraq. The position offers the Shia scholars a powerful tool in their armoury of independence from the state, shown to great effect in the Tobacco Fatwa issued by Grand Ayatollah Mirza Hassan Shirazi in opposition to the concession made to British tobacco companies by the Qajar head of state in the late 19th century.

An Insight into Shia Islam - Part 1/3

Fanatical flagellants. Bearded scholars. Revolutionary tendencies. Messianic beliefs. Leo Africanus uncovers the reality of Shia Islam.

With over one hundred million adherents, Shia Islam at a conservative estimate constitutes ten percent of the global Muslim populous. Shias make up to sixty percent of the population in countries situated in the ancient areas of the Levant and the Fertile Crescent including Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. The Iranian revolution triggered a crucial albeit brief encounter with the Shia world. A world regarded by many as shrouded in impenetrable mystery and by many Muslims as their own fifth column, a tolerated cultish minority. The political upheaval in Iraq and nuclear-jockeying by Iran has once more brought Shiism into the limelight.

Thud, thud, thud. As you approach a Shia community centre or imambara during the first ten days of the first month of the Islamic calendar, you would be excused for thinking you could hear the distant, mottled sound of drumming. Thud, thud, thud. The heavy, rhythmic sound becomes clearer and an accompanying sonorous yet sombre voice becomes audible. Thud, thud, thud. It becomes clear that the drumming is in fact the reverberation of palms striking chests as men stand, shoulder to shoulder, in concentric circles and parallel lines. This is not some Opus Dei reunion but one of the most visible and specific practices adopted by Shias: the mourning ritual commemorating the martyrdom of their 3rd Imam, Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad. The ceremonies have developed over a millennium and highlight some of the core features of Shia belief and practice: a deep veneration for the family of the prophet and communal spirit forged through hardship.

Edward William Lane, 19th century scholar and author of the prestigious (and prodigious) Lane's Lexicon – a dictionary of the Arabic language, offers the following definition of the word Shia: A separate, or distinct, party, or sect, of men.

He goes on to make mention of the specific application of the term to “a particular party [or sect] being predominantly applied to all who took as their friends, or lords, ‘Alee [sic] and the people of his house: those who followed ‘Alee, saying that he was the [rightful] Imam after the Apostle of God, and believing that the office of Imam should not depart from him and his descendants: they are an innumerable people, who are innovators; the extravagant zealots among them are the Imameeyeh [sic].”

This latter group is the very same group that form the majority of today’s Shia community. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s inflammatory pronunciations regarding the Shia are thus by no means novel.

Readers will be aware of the existence of distinctive Sunni and Shia traditions in Islam but their respective origins are steeped in a smokescreen of polemical diatribe and academic excursion with the Shias emerging as the underdogs, commonly portrayed as the religious manifestation of political partisanship. There is consensus that the trigger-factor for the schism was the issue of the immediate succession of the prophet Muhammad after his death in 632, an event to rival New Labour’s handover of power. The Sunnis favoured Abu Bakr, a companion of the prophet and elder statesman, whereas the preference of the Shias was Ali, war veteran and the prophet’s cousin and son-in-law and in their eyes, the divinely appointed choice, the Imam (based on their interpretation of certain verses of the Qur’an and the prophet’s traditions as reported by Shia and Sunni historians alike). Abu Bakr became the first caliph and Ali the eventual fourth.

Professor SHM Jafri, professor of Islamic studies at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, forcefully argues in his The Origins and Early Development of Shia Islam that there existed a group of Muhammad’s contemporaries who regarded Ali as not only his political but religious successor during the former’s lifetime who were referred to as the Shia of Ali. Subsequent political wrangling and civil wars served to galvanise this group into a fully-fledged religious movement.

Birmingham Zindabad!

Pictures courtesy of my sister and her K608i.

The Middle East Buddy List

Slate magazine has put together an interesting interactive tool looking at the intricacies of alliances and grievances in the Middle East.

Last month, Hamas militants tunneled into Israel and kidnapped an Israeli soldier. Israel immediately invaded Gaza. Hamas began lobbing rockets into Israel. The Lebanese group Hezbollah kidnapped two more Israelis near the Lebanon-Israel border. Israel responded by carrying out airstrikes against Lebanon. Egypt and Saudi Arabia condemned Hezbollah for instigating the violence. Syria, Iran, and Lebanon called Israel's retaliation an excessive use of force.

Confused? We are too. Slate's Middle East Buddy List breaks down the relationships between the countries, terrorist organizations, and political factions who are fighting it out in the current conflict. Who likes whom? Who are the bitterest of enemies? And which groups don't really know where they stand?

Perspectives on the Death of Poetry in Beirut

by George Dickerson

The commando cradled the poem in his arm.
When he made the poem speak, it spit stanzas
At pedestrians who fled from poetry.
From the rocket launcher a barrage of poems
Burst like roses in the street. The eloquent shards
Inscribed the houses with an elegy.
Fragments of the poem's petals were found
In the face and chest of a young girl
Overcome by the eternal aspect of poetry.
At night, when we fought with fitful sleep,
The deep guttural throat of poetry roared
Across the rooftops and devoured our dreams.
A wayward poem entered the boy's head
And left his eyes hollow with amazement.
A poem snatched hunger
From twenty people waiting for bread.
Two poems recklessly slit each other's bellies.
The head of a truncated poem
Was proudly impaled on a barricade.
From the cellar, where fifteen poems lay crushed,
Oozed the sweet odor of poetry.
When the plane lifted off over Beirut,
I could see poems shrouding the city,
And I abandoned poetry.

© 2000 George Dickerson
(Prior publ.: Medicinal Purposes Literary Review)

The Corniche

The Corniche, Beirut, Lebanon ©Tauseef Mehrali 2003

Corniche Fishing, Beirut, Lebanon ©Tauseef Mehrali 2003

Impotent

Impotent, South Lebanon ©Tauseef Mehrali 2003