Book Review: Hagar Before the Occupation, Hagar After the Occupation by Amal Al-Jubouri
Alice James Books, 2011.
Translated by Rebecca Gayle Howell
with Husam Qaisi.
Poetry.
Reviewed by Debrah Lechner
From Poetry After the Occupation:
Weighted with shame, you became
too weak to hold my grief
So heavy my death
could not hold you,
a slaver trading my memories
bidding my papers to strangers
These lines come from the last poem
in Al-Jubouri’s collection, in the section Farewell, Poetry. They
happened to be the first lines I read, before I had read any of the background
provided by the translator Rebecca Howell or in the foreword by Alicia
Ostriker. My response was emotional, immediate. I didn’t entirely understand
the second stanza, but the could certainly feel the broken heart of the poet
mourning the loss of faith in her art.
The best of poetry paired with the
best of translations achieve this immediate bridge between cultures. It is a
double gift.
The person speaking in these poems is
Hagar; her name is pronounced with a soft g sound, and is directly related to
the word and act of hajj, “pilgrimage.”
Learning Hagar’s story helped in understanding the second stanza of Poetry
Before the Occupation. Learning a little about the structure of Arabic,
which finds its meaning in inflection rather than word order as English does,
was similarly enlightening. The translation process, as usual, was fascinating
to read about: the poet and translators drew charts of the various meanings of
all words before attempting to find a way to do justice to the highly
compressed Arabic when rendered into wordy English.
In this tragic piece, Al-Jubouri
uses both the term Abu Ghraib, the prison that shamed America, and the nearly
rhyming abu gharib, literally meaning
“father of strangers,” to describe poetry. This information brought me back to
this poem several times, and as understanding began to sink in, deepened my own
grief for this world of wars.
Grief is a good thing; it recognizes
a lack and stretches a hand across a void to fill it. It has no biological or
cultural imperative to exist; grief is a pure act of hope where it cannot be
justified. I have nothing much I can do for a world of war, but I hope my grief
may be a sort of prayer.
I loved the structure Al-Jubouri
used for this volume. It is not used as a Part One and Part Two of the entire
experience of the occupation of Iraq, but is applied to each particular
subject, such as: Men Before the Occupation, Men After the Occupation;
My Soul Before the Occupation, My Soul After the Occupation; My
Mouth Before the Occupation, My Mouth After the Occupation; Freedom
Before the Occupation, Freedom After the Occupation; Regret
Before the Occupation, Regret After the Occupation. This is very effective,
bringing to life in strong vignettes some of what Al-Jubouri experienced and
felt, avoiding a structure that would produce a narrative effect in English
that would cause readers to expect resolution.
As a result, this poetry inhales and
exhales; breathes, thrives. I don’t expect that Al-Jubouri really will be able
to say goodbye to poetry, but if she does, she should know that this work will
live on. I hope it will have a life of its own for decades to come.
Hagar
Before the Occupation, Hagar After the Occupation is a part of the Alice
James Books Translation Series, the first
volume of the series. Alice James Books is to be congratulated on this very
important undertaking. Long live this translation series! Buy this book and
study it; support the author and this press.
Amal Al-Jubouri is the author of
several books of poetry in Arabic, and is also the founder of East-West
Publishing, a press dedicated to international literature.