The HyperTexts

Iqbal Tamimi



Iqbal Tamimi is a Palestinian poet, and the Editor in Exile of The HyperTexts. She is also the creator of Palestinian Mothers, online at www.palestinian.ning.com. You can get to know Iqbal and better understand her work by reading her poems below about the Nakba ("Catastrophe") of the Palestinian people, and the plight and perils of being a Palestinian woman in exile . . .



The painting above, "Thirst on the Way," is by the great Palestinian artist Ismael Shammout. His family was forced to flee from Palestine in 1948 during the Nakba (Arabic for "Catastrophe") after being attacked by Jews. They ended up refugees in Khan Yonis in Gaza Strip. On their way to Gaza his little brother Tawfeeq died of thirst, so he painted this wonderful, painful work of art in the memory of his brother.

Aching clay
by Iqbal Tamimi
for Ismael Shammout

I bridge two points with hesitation
It's a step back
The shoulders of memories
That used to jostle me in a crowd
Evade me

I slip in the bosom of surprise
Your eyes undressed
Exposing … silent cries

You were panicking
Frightened of shaking my hand
That is wet
With a culture of emergency
And signals you do not understand

I bear the pains of clay
You knead the sand
I am the bread of the strangers
You are my homeland of olive and palm trees
The groves I return to when I’m cold

Let’s hide our poem
In the evening’s silk
Tonight we will be a field
Until the trees yawn wearing their birds

As daylight returns from its night out
We have voiced
All the hopes of the faithful
Scaffolding our souls
Still we fear frequent defeats

You are a meteorite
Chased to earth while I sleep
and I am a tempest battering the streets

Our pulses give us away
Two poles you and I
Though my night
Adores perfuming the sleeves of your daylight



The picture above is by Yosef Katalo.

Leave your sin on my palm before you go

For Mahmoud Darwish, who left before my dream awoke, 10/8/2008.

We came from the same tribe of drifters
I left my head behind
Dangling in the well
Swinging with the horsing doors
Can you ... please ...
Leave your sin on my palm before you go
Or send me
An embarrassed tune
Written with your silent eyes
Since we have made a hole
In that ugly apartheid wall
And because I have left behind a poem
Sunbathing with your olive trees in the dunes
And because we
Have paved the way
For armies of wise shoes
Because the feet colluded with heads
Did not know how to choose
And because I ...
Have fallen between the letters
Got stuck between two commas
And because I was the shepherd of my wild dream
Declaring my fears to strangers
Rebelling against the snow
Shivering whenever I read a map
That did not lead home
Or whenever a nation of ignorance
Called my country by a pseudo name
Last night
I saw love sneaking from the crack of my dream
Rarely do I commit such follies
So ... if you don’t mind ..,
Please
Leave your algae on my shirt
It might just bloom some peace



Take me home when I’m dead

Take me home
When I’m dead
I am crowded by corpses
Occupying me
A long queue of departed loved ones
Are still marching in
One after the other
Changing me from within
While one of my eyes
Is teasing the other
Hiding its despair
Behind my sleep
Take me home to my homeland
Where the houses that lost their doors
Are crouching at the borders,
Waiting to hug their orphaned keys
Take me home when I’m dead
To where the hills are waiting
To clothe me in the bush of thyme,
Or resurrect me an olive tree
Take me home when I’m dead
To where the stones of my demolished home
Became the toys of an angry child
Stripped of his right to fly a kite

Take me home when I’m dead
To where I will join the battalions of the freed oppressed
Abandoning their prisons at last
Death will set them free
A thousand years of exile
Will never issue a new birth certificate
For the occupiers’ lies
I might wear a hat
My tongue may forget its name
But my feet will still identify
With the soil
That found its refuge in me
Take me home when I’m dead
To where the houses will embrace their long lost windows
To where the skin of the soil will breathe
When I am reborn an apple tree
I dream of sleeping in the womb of my mother land
Take me home
I am cold
I need to wear my dignity



The picture above was painted by a young Palestinian boy refugee who wrote in Arabic "We have the right of return."

The striver's departure

I wrote this poem for George Habash, a Christian Palestinian hero who was exiled. He was a doctor and a fighter for his city, Lid. He had a tough time in exile, as he had to move from one place to another until he died brokenhearted before he could actualize his dream of returning home. He was nicknamed Al-Hakeem, which means "the Wise Man" in Arabic.

In Memory of a Real Man, the Palestinian Hero, Al-Hakeem ( the Wise Man), George Habash
UK 16/2/2008

He left us,
the dean of strivers.

As he departed us
the pleasure of harvest
was in his hands.

He wore the orange's wounds
to wash the blood of defeat
from his cross ...

A thousand resolutions
in its birth conspired,
Halleluiah!,
for the victory of
feathered wings it sprouted.

Give tribute to the man,
for he paid the price
of amputating his own legs to fly ...

O sky ...

Decorate yourself with jeweled dewdrops
to welcome the free prisoner.

O sky ...

The Hakeem came to you
encompassing
honor and identity ...

The harvesting season.
Pregnant with sorrow, the spikes were
hoping to miscarry the shame
they carried in their womb.

The lover of Palestine died.
Died ... like the sacred olive trees he represented
standing on his feet.
Died ... the man
who tore his voice's cry
to heal the harp's raucousness.
like autumn's browning leaves.

His pains fell
with the cause he was embracing;
from one trench to another
he decamped.
He was intoxicated
with life's longing
at half a glance
to see Al-Quds' braids
from a hole in the wall.

In our life's bread
Al-Lid's son left us a heritage.

In the almond tree's navel
was his bride's dowry:
a crescent and a cross,
a scalpel and an anthem,
patience and exile,
a handful of sugar and salt,
and a chain of pains
like a bracelet.

O sky ...

Al-Hakeem left us,
an aging cause awaiting its knight.

Singing
while stitching its wounds.
Praying ...
while cursing the sons of the dollar.

Al-Hakeem
you have been
mending the sky's wounds
while your own wounds were
widening,
deepening,
burning
and blazing.

In your pockets
you gathered the stings of fire and gunpowder.
Rejoice ...
for you have joined the clouds' battalions.

Oh Sky ...

Rain now
on Palestine, blossoms
of violets ...
Rain sweet as the scent
on Al-Lid's scarf.

Oh Sky,
Oh Al-Hakeem!

On churches and on mosques' domes
mercy you pour.
Al-Fateheh
read
from the sky.

For
Deir Yassin's babies' skulls.
And for the blood
of those buried under Jenin's debris.
And for the martyrs of Ibrahim Al-Khalil's house
whose blood
spilled while they knelt in prayer;
they were praying
for
mercy, happiness and relief ...
praying to God;
they were
praying for salvation,
riddance
from the assassins
who attacked from every door ...

Oh Sky ...

The killers dried up the sea,
fired up their swarming hatred
to put the clouds
under curfew.

They pulled up the ground
from under the young ones' feet.
They poisoned
every book's page.

Oh those with Mercy ...

Pray for mothers
who drift without their children.
Pray for stones resting in
our youngsters' hands.

And a dawn that tore its shirt.
on the long nights' doors
to announce his guiltlessness
from Joseph's blood.

Pray
for the eleven thousand
war prisoners
who are crucified
on anticipation's doors.

Pray
for eyes that never sleep.



Stones that sprouted legs

Written for the memory of my Iraqi colleague
Atwar Bahjat who was killed while reporting from Iraq.

The bed of defeat has always been feminine.
Ever since the sky was within reach
a woman fluffing a wombless vanilla pillow
has given birth to scandals.

The thorns took advantage,
climbing the shoulders of the bare peach,
stealing the bride
whose perfume never swirled in the wind.
The apple went mad,
glued in his grief
to the fingers of his land.

Stripping off his desire
He shouted, cried,
"I’ve perfected banging water drums
because my share of plight is exactly like yours,
although my teardrops
could quench hatred’s fire."

We all perfected the game
attacking the features of things.
We dallied with the nails of our jailer
who bought the East
sometimes with prayers,
at other times
with a convoy of female slaves.

The knight of the mountains
has been collecting our wounds
to sprinkle them on a heap of dew.

He waited a long time
until the stones sprouted legs,
chasing the mud groom
who tested the virginity of the heavens,
bearing his imported season
on the shoulders of winter.

I screamed into his shirt,
"Rescue me please, from this cold body.
My circle has been defeated by armies of frost,
chased by eagles of dust.
Toss your body
against the ink lorry,
Drown your sorrow in a cup of coffee or . . .
die standing up like a wall:
defend the hymen of the thyme;
defend a wagon
ready to load the victims of terror.
Fight for
honey-flavoured Poems,
document your defeat . . . if you choose
on a sobbing poem.
For a lilac became a naked martyr
in becoming a trembling pavement for a camera crew."



Murdered by my own ink

The ports of my papers,
are fields of uncertainties.
I plant my anchor
to secure my old face
while it ages toward oblivion.
My dream is stretching
between a place
under the umbrella of the wind,
and
an illusion under the rain.
The distance
is . . . too far
to arrest the dead man,
who crucified me
in a hideous, unthinkable moment.
I am just a number within an army
of unlucky ones,
killed by the poison of their own ink,
and the stupidity of their own fingers,
slaughtered by despair.
Our traps
race us in our sleep,
to attend a wedding
between the rain and the desert.
Our pains . . . twitter
While we assassinate ourselves,
hoping some one;
not one of us
will rise
to write a better dirge
while watching the skittering feet of the poor
following their own footprints,
forgetting the phantoms behind,
to the side,
on some other route,
swarming with the dust of honor,
as we abandon our bevy
to increase our number
by . . . one.



Shut the door behind you

Your absence creeps up on me,
Peeping through my sleepy eyes,
Yawning from the look of surprise.
Did you return .... to apologize?

My prides roars, rears back
in the face of my submission.

The clock has swallowed
the hands that danced through my tears.
My wounds have licked their salt.
I will never breathe your breath again.
My sadness is folded away
in the worn purse of memory.

The gulls' wings that weaved
spells beyond the window,
the rusty needle that once
stitched our photos back together
must be shattered beyond repair.

Stuff the sky in an envelope
if you must, stick on all the stamps.
Your letters will never be delivered.

See what remains from the harvest of slaves.
I have been drowned in dew.
Gather me up in a bottle
and like the nectar of pain
spray me on your arid heart.

My fingertip is plucking
on a string which yearns instead
for the touch of a lost legend.



Do not open the diary

Do not open the diary:
I'm afraid the birds
Carrying the sugar plantations under their wings
Will fly away.

My lie has put on its high heels.
I’m still sixteen and a half years old,
Walking on one hair stretched between
Your first promise

And your next one.

And I have never stumbled.

I still believe that silence is more eloquent than words—
But my high is jaded because of one letter.

I don't get drunk on poetry as I used to:
Deception doesn't hurt me any more.

I sleep deeply
And the sky complains:
I cover myself with its rainbows.

I no longer shed bitter tears:
The race of the lines of my face in the mirrors
Has stopped, and I have patched the dress
Of my achievements.

I no longer get a buzz from my persistence.

I no longer cry on a festive day
Because the dust has taken the shine
From my shoes.

I have given up my throne of illusions.

Now I understand the deathly cement crawling on the braids of the thyme,
crushing them beneath its corpselike weight.

Everything is going fine:
Chaos erupts regularly
And all my worries
Seem smaller in size.

I've stopped craving to play with water.

I've stopped watching the sun
Change its scarf behind
The evening’s curtains.

I beg you.
Do not open the diary.
The birds that keep the sugar plantations
Under their wings
Might fly away.





Armed with a prayer

Once upon a crime,
the night
hijacked the face of my homeland.
The next day,
the spring was pronounced dead.
My blood
lost its way rivuletting through sand.
I was not courageous enough
to declare
the theft of my skin;
It was stretched by loathsome hands
to create a new face for an old drum.
There . . .
sat my anxiety
on the banks of pain,
washing my punctured voice,
asking me
how would I . . .
fish for my poem’s crumbs in a mine field?
What could I say?
For . . .
I had lost the dawn in the market,
my mouth was stuffed
with the sweat of my exile,
nothing of me remained
but
my few half-living fingers
exhuming the guts of lines,
a nose . . .
striving hard to find its way home,
and a pair of eyes,
that looked but could not see
any
of the absent loved ones,
who used to be there for me.
My pulse was swinging,
documenting my name,
alongside others hanging
on the verge of plight.
My loaf was naked.
I was armed only with a prayer.
A child beneath the rubble
Screamed, calling my name
Mama . . . Please . . .
tell them not to execute my kite.







The HyperTexts