English Autumn, and: Forbidden City, and: The Woman With a Walking Stick, and: Shatila
- English Autumn, and: Forbidden City, and: The Woman With a Walking Stick, and: Shatila
Khaled Mattawa, autumn, gifts, English, death, family, shame, forbidden, woman, witch, memory, Palestine
ENGLISH AUTUMN
Should I say autumn?Ok. But it's an English autumn!No tree will release butterflies that fallin yellow ripples swirling in the wind.No wind whistling at night.The local beer will not turn into wine.The city girls half naked in the summerare now going for wool.The sheep of Wales will render all their gifts.In the park, the green grass fades where the chestnuts fall.In the distance, the boats are wrapped upin the white smoke of their chimneys.And the birds migrate.The cold touches our ribs with bones from the cemetery.The church will not be overcrowded on Sunday,and the old women will go pastoneafter the otherto their graves. [End Page 20]
FORBIDDEN CITY
Whispering as if through a spider web,free yet ashamed, she calls.
I'll come over, I say.
That's where my sons live, she says.
We can't meet there?
Yes, don't call me!
No, no, but,no, but no,and no, no, not, no.
I love it there, I tell her.
But this is the city where my sons live! she tells me.
But who said it's a forbidden city now? I say.
Don't worry!I'll take the train.I'll just come for a glass of wine at the station. [End Page 21]
THE WOMAN WITH A WALKING STICK
I sat dumbfounded on the garden bench.I was wrapped up in a woolen burnoosethat I brought home here, in Londonfrom the souk in Guercife.In the garden, there are no passersby, not even a bird.Butas in the old folktalesa woman with a walking stick cameand said to me:"It seems you are not from hereabouts.Wake up,gather up your clothes,and walk away.The people will imagine a witch under your woolen hood,and some of them, like the old days,may kindle a fire!" [End Page 22]
SHATILA
How the days have shunted us.I remember that I stopped in Shatilathe day after.No one was there.The wind, which was weak, scattered the remaining blood:Pictures from the Palestinian past,family memories,and smiles of children who grew old in the desolation of memory.Suddenly, I felt I was going to be killed, that I would be like those killed yester-day.I left the camp,turned away. [End Page 23]
saadi youssef (1934–2021) is considered one of the most important contemporary poets in the Arab world. He was born near Basra, Iraq. Following his experience as a political prisoner in Iraq, he has spent most of his life in exile, working as a teacher and literary journalist throughout North Africa and the Middle East. He is the author of over forty books of poetry. Youssef has also published two novels and a book of short stories, and several books of essay and memoir. Youssef, who spent the last two decades of his life in London, was a leading translator to Arabic of works by Walt Whitman, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Federico Garcia Lorca, among many others.
khaled mattawa is the William Wilhartz Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan. Mattawa's latest book of poems is Fugitive Atlas (Graywolf). He is the editor-in-chief of Michigan Quarterly Review.
