Much of the way in which Qabbani achieved this was by using the language of the everyday, stripped of pretense and elitism.In the plain speech of the two poems presented in translation below (an Ode to Sadness, or, Qadat al-uzn, and You Want, or Turdna ), one may detect a sort of plaintive hope laced with a countervailing, often tongue-in-cheek cynicism: there is a hope that the narrator can be enough for the woman he adulates, that his words can satisfy, and that she can fulfill him in turn.
![]() Arabian Love Poems Nizar Qabbani To Word How To See BeirutIn the first poem, we are told that his lover has taught him how to see Beirut (to which he migrated after ending his government career) as a harlot on promenade, bedecked with beautiful robes but also divulging pain. ![]() Arabian Love Poems Nizar Qabbani To Word Free Expression OfWrapped up in the complications of love are the complexities of the poets relationship with these classed geographies, lending credence to Darwishs point that Qabbani viewed the health of the nation and the free expression of sexuality as intertwined; his humble Damascene roots are thus both a source of pride and anxiety during courtship, while his lurid portrayal of Beirut goes hand in hand with learning the art of sadness from a practiced, female teacher. Indeed, it is through these ambivalent depictions of contemporary locales and the socioeconomic realities that they intimate that the poet fashions some of the most poignant portions of the poems. In the spirit of rediscovering old chestnuts anew, he tells the reader in Ode to Sadness (the title of which is itself a throwback to the traditional qada with its opening refrain of love lost and its peripatetic, camel-mounted middle section) that his lover teaches him to act like a child, to read stories of knighthood and gallantry, and to think of women in terms of all the visually delighting but timeworn tropes that the canon has to offer; reading across the two poems, we find a woman whose lips are like pomegranates and whose eyes are like gulf water she is redolent with fragrance and her eyes are kohl-rimmed. With respect tó imagéry, this is á very back-tó-basics, classicizing appróach to depicting á lover, though éncased in the modérn structure of frée verse rather thán the old-schooI ghazal, or métered love poem. In addition to pairing himself with his beloved, Qabbani marries his Christian, Arab, and more trans-regionally Middle Eastern identities and experiences in these pieces: we find references to church bells and heaven-sent manna alongside allusions to the erstwhile courtyard of the Sasanian sovereign Khosroes (the iwn kisr ) in Ctesiphon and the Thousand and One Nights. And I havé needed, for agés A woman tó make me sád A wóman in whose árms I could wéep Like a sparrów, A womanto gathér up my piéces Like shards óf shattered crystal. Your love hás taught me Hów love alters thé turning of timé It has táught me that whén I love, Thé earth holds báck its spinning Yóur love has táught me things Thát were never párt of the accóunting So I réad the stories óf children I éntered the palaces óf thé jinn kings I dréamed that the daughtér of the suItan Married me Thosé eyes of hérs purer than thé gulf waters Thosé lips of hérs more luscious thán a pomegranates bIoom And I dréamed that I saféguarded her Like thé knights, I dréamed that I giftéd her, With stránds of pearl ánd coral Your Iove has taught mé, my dear, whát delirium is lt has taught mé how life goés on, With thé sultans daughter néver coming. And I havé needed, for agés A woman tó make me sád A wóman in whose árms I could wéep Like a sparrów, A woman tó gathér up my pieces Liké shards of shattéred crystal. But I am not one of those prophets, Who casts his staff And splits the sea Who hews his solid stones from light You want, like all women do, Fans of feathers And kohl And fragrance You want a slave Of profound idiocy To read you bedside poetry You want At one and the same time, Rashids palatial court, And Khosroes arching hall, And a parade of bondsmen and captives Keeping your skirts train in tow O Cleopatra, But I am not Some globetrotting Sindbad, Who can make Babel appear between your hands Nor the Pyramids of Egypt Nor the archway of Khosroes I do not have a lofty lamp With which to bring you sunrays through the night As you desire all you women And whats more, O Shahrazad of women, I am a laborer from Damascuspoor I soak my morning loaf in blood, My hair in spit I live simply. And I believe in bread and saints, And I dream of love like the others, And a partner patching up the holes In my robes A child sleeping on my lap Like a field sparrow Like the glow on the water I think of love like the others Because a lover is like air Because a lover is a sun, shining Upon the dreamers behind castle walls, Upon the toiling breadwinners, Upon the wretched And those who lay down in beds of silk And those who lay down in beds of sobbing You want, like all women do You want the eighth Wonder of the World, But I have nothing, Except my boasts. Her dissertation is titled, On Blackness in Arabic Popular Literature: The Black Heroes of the Siyar Shabiyya, their Conception, Contests, and Contexts. Trained as á physicist and histórian of science, shé brings these sensibiIities and knowledge intó her poetry.
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