What We’re Reading: Nostalgia, My Enemy

Nostalgia, My Enemy by Saadi Youssef translated by Sinan Antoon and Peter Money (Graywolf Press, 2012)

People who have been reviewing books for longer than I have discussed the challenges of writing about books in translation much more eloquently than I could hope to do here. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that translation necessarily means losing much of what gives a poem its heart when it is rendered in a new language. That being said, Saadi Youssef’s poems in Nostalgia, My Enemy maintain much of the lucidity and rage that must be present in the original Arabic.

The poems in this collection were written in the last decade which means Youssef was watching the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, his home country, while writing them. Watching from afar because he has lived in exile due to his political beliefs. Youssef’s relationship with Iraq is complicated and he explores this complexity dexterously. Borrowing a line from fellow Iraqui poet Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri, Youssef writes,

Peace be upon Iraq’s hills, its two rivers, the bank, and the bend.

Did I know that my face would be wandering these roads after you?

I left shut doors and a house inhabited by wind,

your green waters were not my basin,

you left me in the desert fort.

What would I expect of you at night

when you let me down in the morning?

You took to the trenches and said: war is more beautiful,

you shall never see my feet again.

Beginning beautifully with al-Jawahiri’s hills and rivers, this passage becomes a bleak depiction of a war-torn country as it continues. Another poem much later in the collection, fittingly titled “A Desperate Poem”, begins, “The country we love was finished / before it was even born.”

War and exile aren’t the only subjects Youssef touches on, however, and there are several lovely poems about nature and love scattered throughout. In one, “Seasons (4)”, Youssef describes white blossoms falling from a plant on his home. The poem ends,

Tonight the blossoms came to me in my dream

to take me with them—

I shall be happy!

“Cloves” describes the scent of a woman, Layla, who “is the orchard when it’s wet[…]”. It continues,

Layla knows now

that I am drunk with the scent of cloves,

she stitches together my clouds

and then scatters them together

in a sky like a sheet

as she clasps me[.]

Poems like “Cloves” and “Seasons (4)” display Youssef’s ability to tackle the personal as well as the political, all with a light, lyrical hand.

All translators face many challenges when rendering poetry into a new language. One of the choices a translator makes is whether to pair the poem in its original language with the poem in the new language. With Nostalgia, My Enemy translators Sinan Antoon and Peter Money chose not to include the original Arabic, which, for a largely non-Arabic speaking audience, is probably fine. However, there is something to be said for seeing a poem’s original shape, the way it sits on the page, and the length of the line. With any translation, the reader has to trust that the translator has rendered a poem as accurately as possible; the reader must trust the translator doubly if the original poem is omitted.

Luckily for the reader, Antoon and Money have done a fine job of rendering Youssef’s poems in English. One can only hope that more of Youssef’s work gets translated in the coming years. Graywolf has also published another selected works called Without an Alphabet, Without a Face translated by Khaled Mattawa (2002), but between these two volumes only about 300 pages of Youssef’s more than 30 books in Arabic have been translated into English. Now, more than ever, poets from across borders need to be reading one another’s work. Poets can be at the forefront of cultural shifts that promote tolerance between cultures, and that starts with translation.

Has a poet’s work in translation enhanced or changed your view of another culture? How? Whose work do you think should be translated more?