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Munājayāt al-Sab'īn (Orisons of the Seventies):  'Azīz al-Sayyid Jāsim's Latest Prose Poems

Abstract:

 This short introductory essay focuses on the biographical and critical value of these short monologues or orisons that were printed posthumously in Arabic in 1994. The output of their author, ‘Azīz al- Sayyid Jāsim, is enormous, especially in matters of ideology and literature; but his poetic excursions are few, and he never claimed them as significantly central to his literary and cultural itinerary. Yet, as their publisher and editor in Arabic notices, these pieces offer new insights, not only in the record of an influential author, but also in his Sufi career, which led to his seclusion and eventual execution despite his disinterest in any political involvement. .The orisons have their depth, intimacy, and poetic power that integrate them in the scant poetic tradition of the Sufis.

Introduction:

In one of the most memorable issues (13 September 1994) of the Beirut weekly Istijwāb (interrogation or interlocution), there appeared a collection of prose poems by the late Iraqi intellectual and thinker ‘Azīz al- Sayyid Jāsim, introduced by the late Lebanese artist and novelist Fārūq al-Buqaylī (d. 2001).  A few important observations can be discerned from the Arabic prologue to these poems.  First, the editor Fārūq al-Buqaylī was obviously very proud of his friendship with ‘Azīz al- Sayyid Jāsim and had great respect for his intellectual and literary capabilities.  In the introduction to a series of interviews with him, the editor explains how he  greatly admires ‘Azīz’s “encyclopedic knowledge, rigorous analysis, and combination of theory and practice in his intellectual interventions…”[1]  Al- Sayyid Jāsim published over forty books on various subjects keeping his focus on “man” throughout his career.  Second, in spite of his prominent and distinguished status as a thinker and a visionary, al-Sayyid Jāsim’s modesty as a poet was overwhelmingly humbling. We know that ‘Azīz disliked public relations, conferences, and official meetings. His critique of opportunism, bureaucracy, sham politics, and hypocrisy was also the reason behind the counter views from among party opportunists, and infantile leftists. His attitude made others suspicious of and sensitive to his criticism.[2]  Third, ‘Azīz al- Sayyid Jāsim’s  disappearance, although tragic, was hardly surprising in a world that killed and silenced its most sincere and gifted intellectuals because their political views simply disagreed with those of the oppressive, ruling regime.  

            Al-Buqaylī also mentioned that he had met with ‘Azīz al- Sayyid Jāsim one last time in Baghdad in 1985 during which he conducted a lengthy and informative interview with him about the current status of the Arab intellectual.[3] Despite his demoralized psychological state and the deteriorating condition of his health, al- Sayyid Jāsim granted his friend, the editor, this interview, but neither one of them realized that this might be the last time they would ever meet. Unfortunately, al-Buqaylī admits with regret that the script of that comprehensive interview was lost.  Luckily, however, during that meeting, al- Sayyid Jāsim gave the manuscript of the Orisons to the editor to copy and return.  As it turns out, the two men never met again, and the poems were never returned to the poet. We say “poems,” knowing too well that the Iraqi intellectual, who held himself to extremely high standards, did not really consider these pieces to be poems.  On the other hand, after reading them, the editor felt that they were far superior to much that had been written and labeled as poetry across the Arab world.[4]

            Since al-Sayyid Jāsim had always been modest and never made any claim to being a poet, he therefore called these prose pieces simply “monologues.” The question remains, why “of the seventies?”  Were they written then?  We know that he was under surveillance during that time.[5]  Three years later, 1988, he was imprisoned for the publication of a book that deconstructed the early history of Islam and the Arabs according to a new methodology which excluded value judgment but searched for informative answers through a thorough reading of some specific documents. ‘Azīz al- Sayyid Jāsim, like many Iraqi poets and intellectuals, was repeatedly imprisoned, but he refused to go into exile even when he knew that his life was being threatened, a fact that was noticed by the editor in his introductory note to the monologues or orisons. He refused to abandon his homeland and flee even though he knew that it was only a matter of months before the regime would get rid of him considering him a threat to national security. There is even reason to believe that al- Sayyid Jāsim was consciously or unconsciously, searching for a path to martyrdom.[6]  If this is so, then the poems included here, especially the “Al-Shahīd”/(The Martyr) acquire a more urgent and sublime sense of self eulogy and indicate that ‘Azīz al- Sayyid Jāsim foretold, rather immortalized, his ending even before he was arrested and tortured.  He prophesied his fate and projected to his admirers how he wished to be remembered. Behind self-elegizing there develops an acute sense of life, too, for imminent death endows life with poignancy. Recollection and exposition work together to involve writing in density which only Sufism can recapture. Through a seeming departure from the factual, the word maps the unfathomable and direct it anew towards unchartered lands and locations of forbearance and loss. Perhaps, this aspect, the navigation of the word for an anchor in a visionary experience, represents the most distinctive feature of this writing, and is certainly the one that should entitle it to appreciation.      

            As an intellectual and a visionary, al- Sayyid Jāsim vehemently rejected life in the ivory tower and strongly believed in putting his teachings to practice, as the editor rightly notes.[7] He preached that the intellectual/rebel should remain above any suspicions and must be a guide and an example to others.[8]  Like Khalil Gibran, he believed that every thought that he imprisoned in his words must be freed by his deeds. Even during his darkest hours of arrest and torture, he never apologized or sought the help of his influential friends to save him from a painful end. He stood in front of his executioner as a “just pole” or a banner of conquest.[9]  He was imprisoned in 1961 and also in 1963. “From 1977 onwards, he was under surveillance, and at least eleven of his books were banned.  Official newspapers were ordered not to publish his literary writings…” [10] On April 15, 1991, ‘Azīz al- Sayyid Jāsim was taken to prison again and was kept there for the rest of his life.  No information was ever made available concerning his condition.  There are strong suspicions that he might have died under torture perhaps because of “a letter which the writer sent to Saddam in early April 1991, criticizing him for the invasion of Kuwait, and for his atrocious slander of the south, its tradition and culture in a series of editorials.” [11]

            Although these orisons belong entirely to the Sufi register, they are nevertheless also saturated with the scent of the Koranic tradition and oscillate between romantic, surrealistic and existential imagery. They take us on a spiritual journey through our own anguish from Genesis to Revelation and masterfully blend the mystical poetry of William Blake and Khalil Gibran, whom he used to admire,[12] with that of Eliot’s The Waste Land and “The Hollow Men.” In these prose poems, written in the early 1980s, the Sufi strain is conspicuous. Along with it, there is an oblique criticism of man’s futile search for glory and the accumulation of wealth at the expense of other fellow humans. We also strongly detect the frightening and foreboding prediction of the downfall of the dictator juxtaposed to the powerful and immortal image of the martyr and his beloved homeland. Perhaps, this is the third aspect that gives the orisons a political dimension, a timely one that sets the visionary in touch with the timeless.

            Through comparison and contrast, the Sufi strain is there to show the false glare of materialistic entanglement, the sickening obsession with glorified oppressive deeds, and the certainty of the eventual miserable death of the dictator.  This is contrasted with the  absolute detachment  of Sufis from all worldly possessions, their  continuous search for ultimate peace and altruism, and the absolute and just glorification of the martyr who is compared to “paradise…the eternal spirit….dream….resurrected name…sacred saying….banner of conquest….the soul of global pages….national lover….”[13] In these orisons, it is clearly the martyr who wins the other space, the widening borderless luminosity far away from noise, money and corruption.  It is towards the martyr as a spirit and a presence that the narrator/protagonist directs meditation and longing for it is through that path alone that the heart can retain its pulse and identify with a purpose and a commitment. It is at this state of unity and purification that love transcends the bodily limitations, escapes restrictions, overcomes constraints, and assumes a sublime meaning outside mundane reality.  Love, as a sublime emotion in the human heart, has its own language, agonies and frustrations, but as soon as the heart surrenders its destiny to the inspiration of Sufism, it will no longer remain a prisoner, an “organ” in the human chest.  It will transform itself into a “skylark” and a song of liberty.

            Although many of the familiar signs in these poems belong to the Sufi tradition, others clearly build on ‘Azīz al- Sayyid Jāsim’s own narrative, especially his novel, The Suffering Primrose (1986). As noticed by Muhsin al-Musawi, in this novel we encounter for the first time, Sayyid Ibrāhīm, the mysterious figure who is endowed with extraordinary powers.  His piercing looks enable him to paralyze people and even freeze machines. Sayyid Ibrāhīm visits the protagonist’s mother, his own sister, but for unknown reasons, refuses to read the fortune of her son. Thus, the ash-gray face which belongs to all, yet distinctive only of the one addressed in the poem, could well be the character of the narrator/ participant in Al-Zahr al-shaqī (The Suffering primrose), namely Wā’il.[14]

            In these prose poems, the author reveals what dictators deem as their overpowering right and irrevocable mastery over the writers’ fate but which is just a temporary illusion.  The great intellectual, ‘Azīz al- Sayyid Jāsim, sadly, but brilliantly, predicts his own fate and records the odyssey of his death with a resounding victory for the martyr and a smashing defeat for the dictator. Thus, these poems may be seen as an epic of self eulogy and a personal hymn of victory and endurance.  Similar to the Romantic and Transcendentalist poets and thinkers before him such as Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman and Gibran, al- Sayyid Jāsim ‘Aziz also confirms that he is not concerned with his body as much as with his soul, his voice, and his message. His body could be in jail while his mind and his teachings are freely roaming around and penetrating the ears and the hearts of the people.  His body could be annihilated, but his words remain free and escape captivity and point towards a better tomorrow that can resist brutality, cruelty and oppression. Certainly the oppressive regime under which ‘Aziz lived understood this.  That is why the dictator in his high tower felt threatened that his regime could be destabilized by the words and thoughts of al- Sayyid Jāsim and issued an order to silence the voice of the bard.

            In these monologues “sleeping” is a state of union, of communing with the beloved: the Perfect, “The Pure”, ultimately The God-Head. “Longing” is the emotional manifestation of the spiritual journey towards the beloved. “Awakening” is a false state of existence, a “Separation,” a “fallen state,” away from the beloved. The “journey” or the quest is the ultimate purpose of the Sufi’s existence on this earth as he aspires towards the perfection of the “pure beloved.”  The Sufi must accept life in all its seemingly contradictory forces. Life has both “joy and despair,” “innocence and experience,” “night and day” because life is a “Tear and a Smile,”[15] and happy innocence leads to bitter experience which, according to Blake, leads to a higher innocence that dwells only with knowledge. It is through the marriage of opposites, the harmony between the contraries that we may become one with the spirit of the universe. According to al- Sayyid Jāsim, pain, not comfort and complacency, is the boat that leads to safety.  The “perpetual inquirer” does not rest in his quest for the eternal truth.  Praying becomes an act of creativity associated with burning, fire, flame, purification, cleanliness and melting. Such imagery abounds in both Blake’s and Gibran’s poetry and prose. “Aziz wants to “set himself ablaze” for what is the body but the empty shell that envelopes the soul. Here he is the closest to Blake who proclaimed:

                                     I am wrapped in mortality

                                    My flesh is a prison

                                    My bones the bars of death.[16]

Love is the road to paradise, a constant longing, better yet “a postponed kiss” not to be consumed but always desired. The only constant is truth.  All else is a variable. The flesh is weak, and when morals become “the fear of others,” they lose their meaning and border on hypocrisy.

            The stanza on the “liar” contains a horrific depiction that can only compare to “Revelation.”  It evokes images of the Anti-Christ, the false Messiah, in his fake self glorification while the good people are sacrificed “on the masts of glory.” Throughout the poems, words like “transfiguration, sulphur, rapture, mud, and soothsayers” are replete with rich and controversial meanings that would necessitate volumes of interpretation to do them justice and to place them in their proper context in the poems and within the Sufi register.  Perhaps it suffices here to learn from al- Sayyid Jāsim that “the joy of the summit is in divining the descent” because he certainly agrees with Gibran that when we reach the summit, only then do we begin to climb, and that when we reach the heart of life, only then do we realize that “mud is the most deserving of charity.”  

            To situate these orisons in the career of an intellectual is not possible, however, without some understanding of his Sufi register which is best explained in  some of his early books, especially al-Iltizām wa-al-tasawwuf fī shi‛r ‛Abd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī(1990; Commitment and Sufism in Abd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī’s poetry). In this book he appreciates the poet’s tactful use of the Sufi register, but he notices a discrepancy between the register and the overall effect of poetry. While the Sufi register

 provides the poet with enough sweep and  lyricism to venue his emotions and feelings, it nevertheless collides with an adamant jargon that prevents  this flowing feelingness from attaining  the necessary harmony. In so far as the critic himself is concerned, the orisons were written at a certain stage in his life when there was no disharmony between the word and the direction of emotion and feeling. Both work together, fuse into each other, and sound as a harmonious musical piece. In other words, faith and practice are no longer disparate, a fact that the original Arabic version conveys, and are hopefully captured as well  in the English version.   


 *This brief critical introduction that accompanies the English translation of these prose poems is not meant to be an explication de texte nor a detailed commentary on the rich Sufi heritage embedded in these wonderful poems.  Rather, this is simply a highlight of some Sufi aspects that are readily detectable in the text and a glimpse at the life of such an eminent Iraqi intellectual.

  

“Munajayat al- Sab‘in” (“Orisons of the seventies”)

‘Aziz al- Sayyid Jasim’s prose poems

(1)

When I sleep longing for the faces that I love

And awake with nothing but separation,

I imagine that women, all women, are spinsters

And that the journey is a widow among maidens.

I say:  This is but a false love

For one who is a perpetual inquirer.

I say to the one, who is in my heart,

To the stranger, the pure beloved,

And I say to myself, scolding myself:

You and I are two gates

For Night and Day

For Despair and Joy

But who can comprehend this or that?

Who can comprehend that despair is joy?

That pain is a boat,

Amidst a world suspicious of safety?

(2)

I want you, 

I yearn for you,

I devote prayers to you.

Does the Sufi stop praying?

Does he patch himself?

You who have melted on my forehead

Is there malice after today,

Will there come

A conqueror or a conquered?

One who will mediate

Between the old and the young?

One who will not allow the forgotten to return?

Listen,

The eye is but a mysterious plant

The sun’s shore is aflame

Tell him who longs to embrace you

To set himself ablaze!

(3)

Don’t you know?

The heart is failing….failing

And the ribs are but a cover!

Don’t you realize that love is a postponed kiss?

And that singing is an endless rain?

Where would I find the Just One?

Who would rule between me and myself?

Where would I find the Just One?

Who would tell me that truth is dead?

And that God is eternal?

Only my beloved says!

Another lie, for this heart has no love and no beloved

Truth is a word, and lying is a book

Ay beloved, you only have to choose the word… and then depart.

  

(4)

Such is my rambling from  question to  answer

Such is mercy and reprisal

This is a torment that I do not comprehend

I sob, I bear it, I laugh, I remember,

You who blame me,

The world is a mask

Life is a Saqi

Oh Saqi, take me away from your cup

And at the time of forgetfulness,

 I call on you to possess this moment.

A shore searching for a fugitive

An eternal sidewalk

A lonely night!

Sorrow!

Oh yearning that people sip

I say unto you,

Between me and my emotions,

Something I intend to forget

Something I am unaware of

Then you broken-hearted, you need to know

That morals are the fear of others

That I am dead

Pick yourself up then, and leave

Like a pale chariot in the street of fog

And if they ask me about you

I shall say he died

I shall say… he is gone.

(5)

Let the wailers lament

Your handkerchief is shame

He who cries must cry

Nevertheless, the most imminent danger is

That the questions are more than what we need

The mind has resigned

And between those whom we love and those whom we don’t

Distance diminishes.

I cry:

Leave the breasts for milk

Leave the ghost for the sleeper

Leave uncertainty for contentment.

Ask those who fuss,

Those who eat,

Those who dwell in coffee-houses,

And those who flirt:  Why?

  

(6)

Ay, my beloved,

Joy is but a memory for the abducted    

As he beseeches time for help

Joy is but a mat deserted by its sitters

A lover glancing at strange faces,

Searching for the face that nurtured him,

And then departed.

You who are absent, do you hear my voice

You who are absent, would you return?

Then there begins a new season

The season of memory and remembrance

After which my beloved, we grow old together.

  

Gratis – Love Elegy

 

(1)

Our love is sulphur

We are overfed with peace

We roam around the dining tables of grass

In our early stones

We receive the blessing

And on the rope of eventuality

Our necks hang

In the silence of the sacrificed.

(2)

Ay, you vendor, hovering like death

In the courtyards of passion

A bed walks, and a bed falls

And on the moustaches of men falls flies’ waste

This is a world which provides a lean spinster

With joy.

(3)

You in your faith

I in mine

And between yours and mine

Extends the bridge of mercy

But I am a lover

And love is a blazing fire

I say to my beloved

I was the wood

And guided by this bonfire

I trace my ashes

(4)

Yesterday

I saw the liar

Floating on waves of gold

Carried and glorified by the waves

And on the masts of global glory

The eyes of the virgins were vanquished

But in those eyes, the benevolent stood like symbols.

(5)

Let it be barren

Barrenness is ashes

That extinguishes the eyesight of the prosperous

And in their faith

Your orphans are a whirlwind

If barrenness breeds feebleness

Then the orphan’s bones

Are defences against the years.

(6)

The dearest lip

Swelled with the first kiss

As we departed

A lip dreaming of swelling

And a kiss dreaming of the lip

Between the kiss and the lip

A code and a debt

While we stagger and collapse.

(7)

Every table is overburdened by its load

And I am burdened by my years

And in the early hours

Oh years of fog

We touched the cross with our lips

And took flight after our oath

I, a stumbler, sank

Mud is my love.

(8)

If transfiguration is the sudden rapture of the eyes

Then, before my beloved’s face, I forsake my history

I move on one foot

Over the thorns of hope

Who is able to bring back my face?

Who can fasten my fingers to my reed flute?

(9)

Caution on a sophists’ table

Is better for the heart and purer.

 The Martyr  

 

(1)

While some are overtaken with

Accounts of furniture

And money

And empty flaunting

You proceed towards death

Like a just pole

As if your soul were a paradise

And with your passion

You plough through the thickness of

Unhappy times

As if you are fire

As if you are the eternal spirit

Oh you migrating soul

Oh you personified presence

Like a dream

Oh you resurrected name

Like a sacred saying

Like the banner of conquest

If we did not join you

If we did not take the leap

That you took

If we did not give the young maidens

The music of everlasting longing and craving

If the word, the spirit, the life, the longing

Were not the endless end

Who are we then but the furniture of a playful fate?

Who are we then?

(2)

Perhaps I met you in a small coffee house

Perhaps I met you in the brass market

Or in the market of the cotton carders

Or perhaps we incidentally met over the bridge

Of the lovable Shatra.[1]

Perhaps you didn’t know politics

Perhaps you were ashen faced

Like the so many faces of the coffeehouse goers

Perhaps the soothsayer said to your naïve mother one day:

Your son would be a great merchant

Or a distinguished officer or a physician

Perhaps…Perhaps…Perhaps

But you did not carry the distinctive mark

Your face was difficult to discern

By Sayyid Ibrahim[2]

Hard it was too  for  fortune-tellers’ eyes, both male and female

So blended you were with the rest of the people

To the point of anonymity

And just like our faces were

Dressed with the colour of  

The earth in pastures

In the courtyards of old schools

In the decayed buildings

So was your colour, similarly blended

Except that your colour

Poured out of you

So much so that you yourself became the ultimate colour

You became

The genesis of sleepless cities

In the laziness of land features

You the offspring of our familiar shores

The son of the pastures of our longing

If these cities didn’t take pride in you

Then, who would break the siege of our cities?

(3)

 Come out, you heart buried

Among layers of pretension

Come out, you transitory organ

With a faint pulse

Be a skylark, a voice

Be the wind… be whatever you wish to be

For what can you do when you hide

In the lean travel coffin?

What can you do if you didn’t follow the calling

In the company of the beloved country?

In the service of the beloved homeland?

You who gives this body energy and great intent

You the sign’s master

You who guides this body towards devotion

Or towards humiliating annihilation

Oh, my miserable heart

Help yourself, move on

For all the light of the earth

Is but a kiss.

   

(4)

In the memory of martyrs’ resurrection

Vacate the squares and streets from pedestrians

Because only in places empty of all but light

The martyrs stroll

Playing with innocent small toys

Games of childhood and growth

But in the noise of funerals

They pull away from crowds

They go away .... to the seventh layer.

(5)

While one of us sees the moon in a bowl of water

You see it in the sky as a sign of health

Swimming towards it as a migrating planet[3]

You are the soul of global pages

Oh you national lover

You the country of overflowing luminosity

You, the martyr.

(6)

The breast swells with voices

And the soul is overcrowded with voices

Voices spread silently, sixty altogether.

The heart leaps

You would like to scream

Or to run … or to throw yourself from above[4]

Or to fly

You would like to hit your head

With the very root of latent rebellion

With all the pressure of tension and imprisonment

You would like to utter even a single word

To shout it openly

In the streets of the city

One long word …. Uninterrupted

Until the pressure is lifted off of the heart

Until relief reaches you

From the window of communion

Who would bring back to this heart

A dead lover?

Woo to me, how much I fear death

For my beloved

  

 (7)

My country extending

Between my heart and my beloved’s

So small, yet so large

This is for you from a lover

Longing for your Simoom

In your flaming summer

As much as he longs for

Your spring air

This is from a lover

Who loves your pools of salt

As much as your meadows

Who loves you as you are

Protect your living martyrs

Protect your living martyrs.

A Face like Providence

In the disturbance of the seasons

And the confusion of representations

Your face enters the world like providence

You, the unique starry season

You who are filled with rainbows

Your luminosity is the universe

Which has no equal.

Your soul is the relentless call that does not bow

But the tale, deserted in the caves of time relates

That you nourish the insults,

That you offer the despicable ones your smile

That your lover, drowning in the sea of your memory

Is wounded by your tyranny

While beauty craves him, longing for him. 

Beloved,

Who taught the eyes to practice vengeance?

Your eyes are the languorous longing

Your eyes are the charming succour

Why then do you deny me a fair share?

Why do you shut the door in the face of inquiring hearts?

Learn at least the lie of greeting back

Even a lie

For the sake of mercy

Is justice

According to the heart’s code

Oh, if justice could only reach the beloved’s eyes and greet him.

Only then, love will flow magnanimously

And the eyes would receive their due status

Each eye breathing approval from the other

And so, the wedding of eyes will commence

Such is the eyes’ ceremony

And on the street crossings, Oh beloved of my soul,

Cross

We all become the carrier, the stretcher

We all become the home you seek

We will all take you in

Though without a shelter.

People’s Destinies[5]

A sleepless man said

The heart’s icon is nobler on your neck

You the boon-companion of the highest star

And along the expanse of the distance

You overtly migrate

For dead is he who consumes his manhood

Dead is he who is enslaved by wile

The survivor is he who immersed his hand in the longings of daylight

And roamed freely!

Oh, you pure delight of my eyes

Oh, you essence of generous hands

Oh, you delicacy of guiding fingertips

Oh, you offspring of wheat, light, heavenly sweets and populated drawings

Do the nights pass you so leisurely? No succour!

Oh, you spring of the soul, image of the place!

About Certainty and its Holders

One of the repressed said:

My friend, certainty is an endless, fathomable suffering

Build your soul into a ship and sail downward, dive.

For the joy of the summit is in divining the descent

And in the depths of the dark seas

There are barges

Drunk with the first ingot

Where silver is preferred to gold

And mud is the most deserving of charity.


[1] Reprinted in ‛Aziz al-Sayyid Jāsim, Naúwa  taúrīfiyyah awsa‛  lil-fikr al-qawmī( Towards greater revisionism of Nationalist thought; Beirut and Amman:Al-MuÕssasah al-‛Ammah lil-DirŒsat, 2005), p. 239. Only four parts appeared, then the publication in al-Bayān (Dubai) stopped.


[2] See Muhsin al-Musawi, Reading Iraq: Culture and Power in Conflict ( London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), appendix.


[3] ‛Aziz al-Sayyid Jāsim, Naúwa  taúrīfiyyah awsa‛  lil-fikr al-qawmī, .pp .9-3o.


[4] ‛Aziz al-Sayyid Jāsim, Naúwa  taúrīfiyyah awsa‛  lil-fikr al-qawmī, p. 240.


[5] ‛Aziz al-Sayyid Jāsim, Naúwa  taúrīfiyyah awsa‛  lil-fikr al-qawmī, p. 239.


[6] His editor said in the introductory note to the orisons:” Here we read for this great writer the writing down and signing of the date of his death.” ‛Aziz al-Sayyid Jāsim, Naúwa  taúrīfiyyah awsa‛  lil-fikr al-qawmī, p. 240.


[7] ‛Aziz al-Sayyid Jāsim, Naúwa  taúrīfiyyah awsa‛  lil-fikr al-qawmī, pp.239-240.


[8] See Muhsin J. al-Musawi, Reading Iraq: Culture and Power in Conflict ( London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006), p. pp.13-39, 78-87.


[9] Êêalāú al-Far‹ūsī, http://www.kitabat.com/azi_jaaass.htm, 01/18/2006, 1-7, at. p.3.


[10] Ibid.


[11] Muhsin J. al-Musawi, Reading Iraq: Culture and Power in Conflict, pp. 145-46.


[12] Muhsin J. al-Musawi, The Postcolonial Arabic Novel ( Leiden: Brill, 2003), p. 296.


[13] ‛Aziz al-Sayyid Jāsim, Naúwa  taúrīfiyyah awsa‛  lil-fikr al-qawmī, pp. 247-248.


[14] Muhsin J. al-Musawi, The Postcolonial Arabic Novel, p. 296. Also, Muhsin J. al-Musawi, Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition ( London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 178-79, 180, 261.


[15] Reference to Gibran’s  book under the same title.


[16] See Geoffrey Keynes, ed. The Complete Writings of William Blake (London: Oxford UP, 1966), pp. 605-606.


[1] A town in southern Iraq across from the river al-Gharrāf, south of Nāsiriyyah, known for its urbanity, specialized markets and leftist leanings; thus, undergoing so many reprisals and enduring a series of repressions since 1962. For this piece of information and the rest on Iraqi cities and their significance for the text, I am indebted to Professor Muhsin J. al-Musawi

 [2] The name appears in the author’s novel, Suffering Primrose, as the protagonist’s uncle who is endowed with some extraordinary powers, but who refuses to read others’ fortune, and even magicians are afraid of him. In the original Arabic text, the name is erased.

 [3] The reference is to Sufi riddles. The author points out the following: When the renowned Iranian mystic Awúad al-Dīn B. Abī al-Fakhr al-Kirmānī (d. 1238)  said: “I see the moon in a bowl of water,” Shams al-Dīn al-Tabrīzī (d. 1244) responded: “Unless there is a bubo on your back, why don’t you see it in the sky?”.

 [4] In the author’s novel Suffering Primrose the reader comes across such conflicting feelings. On one occasion a strong premonition takes hold of him of a feeling of some advancing predicament. Then a foreigner, young and charming, throws himself from above leaving a note to explain his feeling of ennui and  nothingness. The protagonist develops this as a leitmotiv addressing himself every now and then while contemplating a way out.  See Muhsin al-Musawi, The Postcolonial Arabic Novel (Leiden: Brill, 2003, reprint 2005), pp. 296-301.

 [5] The word in Arabic is “Qadr” plural “Aqdār”. It may also mean status as well as moral or social fortune or fate. The pun here is to draw attention to precariousness in attitudes and politics



[Munajayat Al-Sab‘in(ARABIC) (Orisons of the Seventies(ENGLISH)): ‘Aziz Al-Sayyid Jasim’s Latest Prose Poems, translation and introduction, in Journal of Arabic Literature, Volume XXXVII, No. 2, 2006, Brill Publishers, Leiden, the Netherlands.]

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