FALEEHA HASSAN

FALEEHA HASSAN

BLACK IRAQI WOMAN

Shortly before my father died, he whispered to me longingly: “Daughter, treasure this, because it authenticates your heritage to our kinsfolk!”  When I accepted this object, I discovered it was a stone with inscriptions I did not understand and delicate, mysterious lines.  He continued, “It is a keepsake from our great-great grandfather and can ultimately be traced back to Bilal, the Holy Prophet’s first muezzin, and his father, who was the king of Ethiopia.”  I accepted this small heirloom, which I carried everywhere with me in my handbag.  The person who shared my life under the title of “husband,” however, threw it down the drain at our house, thinking—as he told me—that it was a fetish.  From then till now I have endured successive exiles.  So I wrote this poem to explain the secret of my skin color—given that I am a native of al-Najaf, Iraq—spiritually, mournfully, and poetically!

My father said: “You were born quite unexpectedly,

Remote from Aksum, like a beauty spot for al-Najaf—‘the Virgin’s Cheek.’

Your one obsession has been writing, but

The sea will run dry before you arrive at the meaning of meaning.”

He affirmed: “During a pressing famine,

I devoted myself to watching over every breath you took.

I would thrust my hand through the film of hope

To caress your spirit with bread.

You would burp, and

I would delightedly endure my hunger and fall asleep.

I could only find the strength to fib to your face and say I was happy.

I would feel devastated when you fidgeted,

Because you would always head toward me,

And I felt helpless.”

Aksum!  They say you’re far away!

“No, it’s closer to you than your exile.”

“And now?”

“Don’t talk about ‘now’ while we’re living it.”

“The future depresses me.  How can I proceed?”

How can the ear be deaf to the wailing from the streets?

Aksum, you have colored my skin.  Al-Najaf has freshened my spirit.

She knows and does the opposite.

She knows that I inter only dirt above me, and

That I deny everything except spelling out words:

M: Mother, who went walking down the alley of no return.

F: Father, who hastened after her.

B: Brother, who never earned that title.

S: Sister who buttoned her breast to a loving tear, no matter how fake.

………………….There’s no one I care about!

The trees tremble some times, and we don’t ask why.

My life surrounds me the way prison walls surround suspects;

I am the victim of a building erected by a frightened man.

With its talons time scratches its tales on me,

And I transform them into a silent song

Or, occasionally, a psalm of sobs.

Father, do you believe that--the roots have been torn asunder?

Fantasies began to carry me from al-Najaf to Afyon

And from Afyon to nonexistence,

Yellow teeth stretching all the way.

“History’s not anything you’ve made,”

One American neighbor tells another.

He’s surprised to see me.

“Who are you?” he asks when he doesn’t believe his eyes.

Would he understand the truth of my origin if I told him I was born in al-Najaf

Or that Aksum has veiled my face?

I have walked and walked and walked.

I’m exhausted, Father.

Is your child mine?

Show yourself and return me to the purity of your loins.

Allow me to occupy the seventh vertebra of fantasy!

Don’t eject me into a time I don’t fit.

I need you.

I ask you:

Has my Lord forbidden me to be happy?

Am I forbidden to preserve

What I have left

And sit some warm evening

Averting my ear from a voice that doesn’t interest me?

Answer me, Father!

Or change the face of our garden

So it changes . . . .to what they believe!

By Faleeha Hassan

TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM HUTCHINS

MY MOTHER WAS LYING

When my father was wearing a military uniform

And went out before sunrise so no one could see him

My mom kept smiling for the length of his absence

So we didn’t see her choking back tears

And when we missed him

She told us

He is going to return the meaning to our map

We thought he was a cartographer

And when my father returned without an arm

She told us

He gave his arm to the homeland

And the homeland gave him a medal

We didn’t know the meaning of war until we grew up

That like plastic bottles

The tyrants had recycled our lives during their many war

Now I understand why my mom was lying

And why when my father returned from war

He didn’t recognize his face in the mirror

STALINGRAD

During moments I yearned for forests grown for me alone,

Caressing them in a dream,

I could sense the throbbing of the heart

Hidden beneath my ribs to bless my journey.

Summoning me with a pulse that he recognizes in me.

I heard the noise of abandoned smoke from a moment of care

Join with me,

Forcefully traversing desires to the hidden-most one.

My spirit swung toward him,

Creating a tingling

On lips that devour breaths alive.

I felt ashamed,

But the eye,

In moments—I scarcely know what to call them—that took me on another route

Toward the television, saw warplanes . . . spray death on them.

At that moment,

The fire of machine guns raked all the bodies,

And another fire raked my body when I trained my eye on him

Hesitantly inclining his head

Toward a shoulder unaccustomed to the secret of the stars of war

Or to insomnia.

Oh . . . . I leaned on it!

And when he caressed a dumbfounded person

I felt his fingers like coiling embers inside me.

Bashfulness seized the excuse this caress gave . . . and vanished,

Eliminating distance till the two of us were one.

And the eye—he moaned: May love not forgive her the eye—repeated another evasion

Toward a drizzle of men flung about in the air by just the rustling of a pilot penetrating a building

To fall on screens as the debris of breaking news.

But his breaths . . . shattering the still down of the cheek,

And turning their picture into mist as

Eddies of the screen’s corpses . . . varieties of death that they brought them.

The spirit that became a body,

The body that was sold for the sake of a touch,

The eye that was concealed in his image

And that approached the firebrand of conflagrations.

Everyone drawing close to everyone,

Everyone,

Everyone,

Everyone.

But the thunder of their machine guns splintered them:

Corpses piled on corpses,

I mean on me,

The eyes of those in it were extinguished.

They slept in a trench of silence.

My eyes’ lids parted in a wakefulness obsessed with them.

I rose … and embraced the chill

That the screens brought me in commemoration of Stalingrad.

TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM HUTCHINS

FALEEHA HASSAN

FALEEHA HASSAN: She is a poet, teacher, editor, writer born in Najaf, Iraq, in 1967, who now lives in the United States. And she is the first woman who wrote poetry for children in Iraq. She is leading poetic feminist movement in the holy city of Najaf She got a master's degree in Arabic literature, and published sixteen collections of poetry in Arabic: Being a Girl, and a visit to the Museum of the shadows, five titles for my sea-friendly, although the later poems to the mother, Gardenia perfume, and a collection of poems for children, The Guardian dreams. It includes its Arabic prose Hazinia or lack of joy cells and freckles water (short story). ........Etc Translated poems to (English, Turkmen, Bosevih, Indian, French, Italian, German, Kurdish, Spain and Albania) and has received awards from the linguists and translators Arab Society (AWB) and the Festival of creativity Najafi for 2012, as well as Naziq God Award angels, Al Mu'tamar Prize for Poetry, and the award short story of the martyr mihrab and institution. It is on the boards of Baniqya member, quarterly in Najaf. Rivers Echo (Echo Mesopotamia); Iraqis in Najaf and writers association. Iraqi Union and is a member of the literary women, and Sinonu (ie Swift) Association in Denmark, the Society of Poets beyond borders, and poets of the global community. Her poems and her stories published in different  American magazines Such as  : (Philadelphia poets 22), (Harbinger Asylum ), (Brooklyn Rail april2016), (Screaminmamas),(The Galway Review), (Words without Borders), (TXTOBJX),( intranslation) ,( SJ .magazine), (nondoc) , ( Wordgathering) ,( SCARLET LEAF REVIEW) ,( Courier-Post) ,( I am not a silent poet), ( taosjournal), (Inner Child Press),( Press of Atlantic City),