Israel's war on Lebanon bears strong reminiscences of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon to expel the PLO out of the country. Below, Al-Ahram Weekly prints poetic testimonies of summer 1982 in Beirut. Dhakira lil-Nisyan ( Memory for Forgetfulness ), by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (b. 1942), of which we publish extracts here, is an extended meditation on the 1982 Israeli siege of Beirut, closest in genre to the "prose poem", as its translator suggests. The two poems below by Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef (b. 1934) are taken from his collection about the 1982 invasion Maryam Ta'ti (Maryam comes), of which the title poem was first published in the 27 July 1982 issue of the newspaper Al-Ma'raka (The Battle) issued in Beirut during the 100-day siege By Mahmoud Darwish Memory for Forgetfulness "August, Beirut, 1982 Out of one dream, another dream is born: -Are you well? I mean, are you alive? -How did you know I was just this moment laying my head on your knee to sleep? -Because you woke me up when you stirred in my belly. I knew then I was your coffin. Are you alive? Can you hear me? -Does it happen much, that you are awakened from one dream by another, itself the interpretation of the dream? -Here it is, happening to you and to me. Are you alive? -Almost. -And have the devils cast their spell on you? -I don't know, but in time there's room for death. -Don't die completely. -I'll try not to. -Don't die at all. -I'll try not to. -Tell me, when did it happen? I mean, when did we meet? When did we part? -Thirteen years ago. -Did we meet often? -Twice: once in the rain, and again in the rain. The third time, we didn't meet at all. I went away and forgot you. A while ago I remembered. I remembered I'd forgotten you. I was dreaming. That also happens to me. I too was dreaming. I had your phone number from a Swedish friend who'd met you in Beirut. I wish you good night! Don't forget not to die. I still want you. And when you come back to life, I want you to call me. How the time flies ! Thirteen years! No. It all happened last night. Good night! Three o'clock. Daybreak riding on fire. A nightmare coming from the sea. Roosters made of metal. Smoke. Metal preparing a feast for metal the master, and a dawn that flares up in all the senses before it breaks. A roaring that chases me out of bed and throws me into this narrow hallway. I want nothing, and I hope for nothing. I can't direct my limbs in this pandemonium. No time for caution, and no time for time. If I only knew--if I knew how to organize the crush of this death that keeps pouring forth. If only I knew how to liberate the screams held back in a body that no longer feels like mine from the sheer effort spent to save itself in this uninterrupted chaos of shells. 'Enough!' 'Enough!' I whisper, to find out if I can still do anything that will guide me to myself and point to the abyss opening in six directions. I can't surrender to this fate, and I can't resist it. Steel that howls, only to have other steel bark back. The fever of metal is the song of this dawn. What if this inferno were to take a five-minute break, and then come what may? Just five minutes! I almost say, 'Five minutes only, during which I could make my one and only preparation and then ready myself for life or death.' Will five minutes be enough? Yes. Enough for me to sneak out of this narrow hallway, open to bedroom, study, and bathroom with no water, open to the kitchen, into which for the last hour I've been ready to spring but unable to move. I'm not able to move at all. Two hours ago I went to sleep. I plugged my ears with cotton and went to sleep after hearing the last newscast. It didn't report I was dead. That means I'm still alive. I examine the parts of my body and find them all there. Two eyes, two ears, a long nose, ten toes below, ten fingers above, a finger in the middle. As for the heart, it can't be seen, and I find nothing that points to it except my extraordinary ability to count my limbs and take note of a pistol lying on a bookshelf in the study. An elegant handgun--clean, sparkling, small, and empty. Along with it they also presented me with a box of bullets, which I hid I don't know where two years ago, fearing folly, fearing a stray outburst of anger, fearing a stray bullet. The conclusion is, I'm alive; or, more accurately, I exist. No one pays heed to the wish I send up with the rising smoke: I need five minutes to place this dawn, or my share of it, on its feet and prepare to launch into this day born of howling. Are we in August ? Yes. We are in August. The war has turned into a siege. I search for news of the hour on the radio, now become a third hand, but find nobody there and no news. The radio, it seems, is asleep. I no longer wonder when the steely howling of the sea will stop. I live on the eighth floor of a building that might tempt any sniper, to say nothing of a fleet now transforming the sea into one of the fountainheads of hell. The north face of the building, made of glass, used to give tenants a pleasing view over the wrinkled roof of the sea. But now it offers no shield against stark slaughter.... 'Our Lady of Lebanon, protect him for all Lebanon!' The barely audible prayer spreads like a prophet's tent, like the raised turrets of Israeli tanks. The Israeli secret habit has now become an open marriage. Israeli soldiers stretch out on the shores of Junieh. And Begin on his birthday eats a whole tank made of halva and calls for signing a peace treaty, or for renewing the old one between Israel and Lebanon. And he chides America: 'We've made you a present of Lebanon.' What is this old treaty, now up for renewal? It is a fact that Begin doesn't live in this age or speak a modern language. He's a ghost, come back from the time of King Solomon, who represents the golden age of Jewish history that passed through the land of Palestine. In Jerusalem, he made coins as common as stones. He built the luxurious temple on a hill and decorated it with cedar and sandalwood, and with silver, gold, and dressed stone; and he made the royal throne of gilded ivory. He struck a treaty with Hiram, king of Tyre, who offered metals and master craftsmen, and fished with him in the Mediterranean. Solomon built the boats, and Hiram gave him the seamen; he built the temple and ruled when he became king. His people learned metalworking and the making of weapons from the Philistines, navigation from the Phoenicians, and agriculture, house building, reading, and writing from the Canaanites. Begin has assumed the persona of Solomon, pushing aside Solomon's wisdom, his songs, and his cultural resources. He's taken only the golden age, hoisted on combat tanks. He hasn't learned the lesson about the fall of the kingdom, when the poor became poorer and the rich, richer. His only concern with Solomon is to seek out the king of Tyre to sign a peace treaty. Where is the king of Tyre? Where's the king of Ashrafiya? Begin freezes history as of this moment, not seeing the end of the temple, of which nothing remains except a wall for crying--a wall that archaeology hasn't been able to prove Solomon built. But what have we to do with the history of what came out of history? For in the mind of the king of the legend everything has been frozen as it had been, and since that time history has done nothing in Palestine and on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean except wait for the new king of the legend.... Let Beirut be what it wants to be: This, our blood raised high for her, Is an unbending tree. I now wish, I wish I knew where the heart will fly, That I may release for her the bird of my heart And from my body let him set me free. I am not yet dead and know not if I'll grow One day older, to see what can't be seen Of my cities. Let Beirut be what it wants to be: This, our blood raised high for her, Is a wall holding at bay my sorrow. Should she want it, let the sea be ours, Or let there be no sea in the sea, If that's what she wants. Here, within her, I live, A banner from my own shroud. Here, I leave behind what's not mine. And here, I dive into my own soul, That my time may start with me. Let Beirut be what it wants to be. She will forget me, That I may forget her. Will I forget? Oh, would, oh, would I could This moment bring back my homeland Out of myself! I wish I knew what I desire I wish I knew! I wish I knew!" From Mahmoud Darwish, Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982, translated by Ibrahim Muhawi ( Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1995 ). See http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft1z09n7g7/ By Saadi Youssef Maryam comes 1. In a moment she covered you with kisses and when she left she was crowned with a white straw hat. In which river will her fingers dip? Which water will drench her shirt? By which date palm will she rest her back? Will the ripe dates fall? Will shaking the palm trunk be all that Maryam does? The trees are music and this whitewashed apartment in Beirut still faces the sea. In the distance another coastal city looms. I see my grandfather's face: the blue eyes, the red kaffiyeh. Through barricades I see Maryam's face. And across the axis-lines echo the footsteps of a king crowned with a rocket. The Romans enter orderly in a regiment while nationalists murder each other in the stores. Maryam in her city and you watch the distant roads: will she come today? She was at the street garbage dump and she lit her fires. Then, crowned in fumes, she left and the city was blessed. My heart is with you, ablaze at night behind the sand fortifications. Can hope palpitate without you? Was the horse stable throbbing? Every house you come to, you remember another house. Whenever you felt alive, you forgot the dead. But what you've come to now is not what you were. Nothing is left for me. Nothing left for me except a shade. So be it. A passing shadow is the best that can be hoped for in the parade of exodus. 2. If I know where Maryam is I will follow a star to reach her land. But Maryam left me in a labyrinth when she departed. She said: "You will find me if you love me." In sand I search for her fingers. In the black ruins of Ain el-Hilwa I look for her eyes. At the door of "the agency" I ask the young men: "Did she come?" And between the pages of newspapers I search for clues. On the radio, yesterday, I heard a voice: Maryam's voice. Is she living among the "explosions" between Lailki and Sullam? Beirut, against whose stones I rest my back, Beirut is startled like a seabird and the lovers swing their machine guns and the sea calms. The children listen for a treacherous sound and in the distance fires break and planes gyrate in a leaden horizon. For you, Maryam, lovers and explosions. Are you coming then? Come.... This space, we will continue to knock on its door until we reach the flag that rises in depravity, until the released bird heads for the stars to release our caged vows. Palestine in the prairie, trapped in shelters in the thick floods of bullets, in the voice of the stone thrower. Palestine in songs, in the coal black tress, in the martyr's shirt, in iron hurled at iron, in a hand, in an arm, in the country coming toward us. 3. Here we are, Maryam, plotting our escape in overcast night, watching for the bullets that follow us, and like two terrorized birds we jump between a rocket and another. Here we are, Maryam, descending the staircase to the shelter. We count the raiding planes and we say: "We believe," and we walk in secrecy to the sea. We sit behind the sandbags and watch the waves crash and the young fighters. Their clothes are greened like the rocks on Mediterranean shores. Wait a little, let's say "Peace" to them. Let us bless their weapons with tears. Let us wash our hair with scarce water and chew on hard bread in silence. Maryam, mirror and vision, a prophecy that we will die in honor and that we will live the way simple friends live. Maryam lives in nativity, she lives in Arab blood. We follow her and she follows us, but here in the cruel moments we weave our identity from her clothes and proceed to the day of judgment. From a stone foundation our flag rises, planted in the stoppage of time. We will plant it and replant it until we burst this nation's spring. Let what is to be come. Let madness come. Let it. We are bound to arrive. Beirut, 25 July 1982 Days of June In a sour morning a soldier grabs his rifle and smashes it on a tree. In a sour morning Khalil Hawi grabs his rifle and smashes it on his head. In a sour morning S. drinks his tea alone. This is how these sour mornings pass, living tissues leavening, the sun a muddle, the sea fogged up, and the record spins around itself like the newspapers, like the PLO, like Sinnin water, and civilians planes and anti-Marxist think tanks and the ideal methods for two bodies to join. The tree near my window doesn't want to spin. The sea has no wish to soften into green. The passersby have no desire to walk on. And I stutter here in secret like a swing seeking the water in the trees, hoping the sea will soften to green, the sea that will rise to my window. I will move lightly to spinning terraces. But what makes the noon light glow this way, heavy with vapors and empty bottles? Who invited one of the enemy's colonels to sit on the low chair? Who taught the pig how to eat flowers? And this roaring from Palestinian skies -- is it bearing the rockets of judgment day? Noon is hot and bloated like a ram tied to a ragged tree. Noon shuts the inflamed eyes of a dog. Noon stretches on the sea like a whale that has been dead for days. And in the refugees' thousand-story hotels the smells of winter socks, milk, vegetable oil, and distant fields. Noon throbs and when the jet fighters pass overhead, roaring, a small vein throbs between my temples and eyes, and this small space between the cigarette and the ashtray throbs. When the planes fly over pieces of shrapnel lodge in the soul. Then it becomes the spirit of a counterfeit god, an Israelite god, an ugly god. I do not want to see you on another evening. I want to see you this evening, this evening only. The boat like a warship, the warship like a warship. There is the tree and there is the warship. Maryam's coat and a warship. The evening alone with a warship. Isn't she the one who slipped away from Cherbourg one evening to cross the Gibraltar Strait while an Arab king watched her? This evening is red. Is it Dante's cloud? I want to see you this evening.... To the thirty shells per minute, to the houses that crumble, to the eyes that look out or grow dim, to the strewn tombs, to the saplings choking in ash, to the refugee camp isolated like an island nation, we draw a circle, we draw a fumbling nation, then drag it into the air of the trenches. Beirut, 15 July 1982 From Saadi Youssef, Without an Alphabet, Without a Face Selected Poems by Saadi Youssef , translated by Khaled Mattawa ( Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2002 ) .
