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Nathalie Handal
Conversation with a Soldier when no one is Around
It’s been a long time- where have you been, where are you? I miss your frowns, the dark shadow on your oval chin. I can’t breathe at night, can’t feel my legs. Dreamed I stopped seeing. Are you lost? Are you returning? Am I returning? I suppose you would say, I should be happy that I can still love.
It’s been a long time. Stop looking at me from so far, come to me, stop following me, come to me, through these dark alleys, yellow-green forests, these hills of stone, rows of olives and lives; stop walking behind me, come to me, you make me lose my way and ways… I look out the window and think of the shadows behind your shadows we both don’t recognize, think that between us, sleeps the words we had to leave, think of the movement of hay twirling on that breezy afternoon we crossed to, somewhere we did not expect to be.
Twelve Deaths at Noon
I look for their eyes, only see the dust at the corner of their hearts. It’s twelve o’clock. Midday. Everything starts here. The sun heating our foreheads. The arrival of a murdered son or husband. The bullet they vow to find. The voices like drumbeats in our ears. The strangeness of light between these boys and their stones. The prisons in our souls. The rivers dying in our mirrors. When was the last time we looked at our reflection and saw ourselves, not jars of eroded bones, not the small child in us looking for our burnt eyelashes. When was the last time we slept without dreaming we died, without wishing the killer dead, without looking for our gun while making love.
I pass tanks, soldiers, orange blossoms, look at the earth, wait for a message a song. Hear nothing. The land lies bleeding. It’s noon. The boys, now angels in stone, have come back to a different home. Jenin
A night without a blanket, a blanket belonging to someone else, someone else living in our home. All I want is the quiet of blame to leave, all I want is the words from dying tongues to fall, all I want is a row of olive trees, a field of tulips, to forget the maze of intestines, the dried corners of a soldier’s mouth, all I want is for the small black eyed child to stop wondering when the fever will stop the noise will stop, all I want is a loaf of bread, water help for the stranger’s torn arm, all I want is what we have inherited from the doves, a perfect line of white- where are the bodies? Conversation with a Soldier when no one is Around
When no one is around I change my address. Can’t change my face give my father freedom my brother peace so I change my address. Change trains to keep me going bring me back. Change lovers to keep me coming keep me going…
When no one is around I see the book about to land on the wet floor but do not pick it up; can’t leave myself alone. There are secrets we can’t leave unguarded, secrets we don’t even know we have…
When no one is around and a child is shot dead, what will the fighter or the soldier do, what did you do? Who cares but the mother and the father, who are dead who died yesterday, a while ago, who knows, no one was around… were you around?
When no one is around who will answer your questions— take your time, don’t answer right away, no one is around to hear you, I am no longer here no one is around you know that.
When no one is around the leaves dye the earth the color of Fall, a fall we never see coming.
Baladna
We are who we are, and home is home to keep the seasons dreaming to remind us of ahweh, zaatar, khoubiz, kaak— the common things
I am no longer sure what I see: a field of wheat or a field of olive trees, a herd of sheep or a burning mountain, not sure if it matters now that I stand alone at the corner of a small road somewhere between my grandfather and what seems to be my present… Am I as old, as young, as sad, as torn, as strange, as sorry as those I have lost? I try to remember all that has been offered to me: winkled bed sheets, library passes, old passports, ports we stopped at for an hour… we are who we are; are we who we are?
We write a ballad to celebrate ourselves, baladna and wonder, is that what it’s like to dance in Arabic…
Blue Hours
In the blue hour, the negrita cries, I hide not to deceive the darkness or myself…
La negrita is not far from where I stand her eyebrows her one hand… I too am visible now, behind the tree behind the night, behind the cry and all I want to know is her name and ask her: have you ever heard your heart undressing, seen a stray dog at midnight, realize he understands this hour better than we will understand any hour? have you seen yourself in every woman with your eyes or in women with eyes more difficult than yours? have you ever really heard your voice, echoing in your nipples?
She offers me tea, we end up drinking coffee, trying to reach the bottom of the cup unafraid….
now, my teeth are stained, my English failing me, my Arabic fading my Spanish starting to make sense… we are in a finca now— perhaps we are safe, perhaps we desire nothing else, but I can’t stop bowing in prayer five times a day, my country comes to me, tells me: Compatriota- I will always find you no matter what language you are speaking. Strangers Inside Me
We all have reasons for moving I move to keep things whole. -Mark Strand, “Keeping Things Whole”
Outside, the quivers of winter, a sudden moistness, a slow darkness. Outside, strangers looking for themselves in the silent motion of my handwriting. I stand at the corners of night hoping that violets will remain purple in winter.
There is a country on my tongue a small world between my heartbeats. Strangers inside me that understand the strangeness of strange things, that understand they are not strangers to each other but it seems strange to others that they belong together, as if we can refuse ourselves ourselves.
Words slide down my throat like velvet rivers and outside a tiny echo is calling me as I travel and move from one continent to the next, move, to be whole.
Around My Body, Lost Songs
Before soldiers and dictators invaded the bridges over the Euphrates, before speeches haunted our dreams and army trucks scrolled their wheels deep in the heart of Iraq, every evening was evening in Baghdad. elegant, convincing, orange skies seducing neighbors reciting Al-Mutanabbi, women smoking sheesha, dancing a small dance, coping with the terror buried in the dark lines under their eyes.
Before tonight, the lost songs danced around my body. But tonight the desert blows at the desert looking for itself the storm enters the storm to chase the invaders, bombs explode the sleep of children leave them orphaned, hungry, leave them collecting skulls, bodies of victory…
Tonight the sky’s colonized where will heaven go? The earth a battlefield the new refugees refusing their new destinies, running away from their shadows, running toward Babel, toward the Arabic language well preserved un-cracked until now, until then, lover—don’t you understand? I did not die even if they killed me, I have forgotten everything just so that I could never forget…
Pequeñas Palabras
It all ended here between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy our disagreement about wealthy liars and poor thieves left at the corner of these two avenues, left the way we leave an unfinished sentence hanging if we think it might betray us, left the way we leave the awakening of morning in a place we do not recognize, left the way we leave our country rising from a dream – its rios, colinas, llanuras the way we leave the radio our grandfather and father listened to leave the barbershop we passed in front everyday empty usually empty left the way we leave it all one day except the haze of a rainy afternoon and the words we know best: cerveza, comida, musica, miseria, amor. War
A cup of empty messages in a room of light, light that blinds; blinded men lined up the young are unable to die peacefully, I hear a man say.
All is gone: the messy hair of boys, their smile, the pictures of ancestors, the stories of spirits, the misty hour before sunrise when the fig trees await the small hands of a child.
Now the candles have melted and the bells of the church no longer ring in Bethlehem.
A continued past of blood, of jailed cities confiscated lives, goodbyes.
How can we bear the images that flood our eyes and bleed our veins: a dead man, perhaps thirty, with a tight fist, holding some sugar for morning coffee.
Coffee cups full left on the table in a radio station beside three corpses.
Corpses follow gunmen in their sleep, remind them that today they have killed a tiny child, a woman trying to say, Stop, please...
a single man holding on to his prayer rug, holding on to whatever is left of memory…
listen, how many should die before we start counting, listen, who is listening, there is no one here, there is nothing left, there is nothing left after war, only other wars.
water will reach the rim of the glass but will not allow itself to leave the glass
violence will erupt and horrors will tie themselves to every bare tree
tonight we will hear speeches that tell us to open our legs to scandal like whores
tonight we will see tattooed waistlines and kalashnikovs in the back trunks of cars
paralyzed memories and revolutions behind every house door
we will see red landscapes, stones of light, light feathers swaying in the nightscape
and wrinkles will multiply on our faces tonight as each dead rises from its grave
tonight exiles, immigrants, refugees will be caught in songbirds, cracked asphalt will recite old verses
tonight we will listen to the cracks of narratives the screams of those strangled by the night at night
we will listen to the longing of purple evenings under god’s robe
tonight love will be difficult.
Poems from the volume “The lives of rain” by Nathalie Handal
Notes (In order poems appear) “Baladna”: Baladna: my country; ahweh: coffee; zaatar: spice, mixture of toasted sesame seeds, dried thyme, sumac and salt; houbiz: bread; Kaak: Arabic cookie. “Blue Hours”: negrita: little black woman; finca: farm; compatriota: countrywoman, compatriot.
“Around my Body, Lost Songs”: sheesha: water filtered smoking pipe, also known at arguileh.
“Pequeñas Palabras”: Pequeñas: small; Palabras: words; Abraham Lincoln and Kennedy: two main avenues in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Ríos: rivers; Colinas: hills; Llanuras: fields; Cerveza: beer; Comida: food; Música: music; Miseria: misery, poverty; Amor: love. Nathalie Handal is a poet, playwright and writer, who has lived in Europe, the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Middle East. She finished her MFA at Bennington College and her post-graduate degree at the University of London. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines, literary journals and anthologies worldwide, and she has been featured on NPR, KPFK, and PBS Radio. She has directed and is the author of numerous plays; and of Traveling Rooms (Poetry CD), The NeverField (poetry book), and The Lives of Rain, Shortlisted for The Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize/Pitt Poetry Series. She is the editor of The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, an Academy of American Poets bestseller and winner of the Pen Oakland/Josephine Miles Award. Handal is presently working on two theatrical projects, finishing a short story book, editing two anthologies, Dominican Literature and Arab-American and Arab Diaspora Literature (forthcoming, Fall 2005); and co-editing along with Tina Chang and Ravi Shankar, Asian and Middle Eastern Poets. She is Poetry Books Review Editor for Sable (UK) and Associate Artist and Development Executive for the production company, The Kazbah Project. She teaches at Columbia University.
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