Nizar Qabbani: Women in My Poetry and in My Life:
Translated into English with an Introduction
In Nizar Qabbani’s own words:“This book in which I have collected some of my dialogues with the press… and excerpts from TV interviews concerning the topic of women… is simply an attempt to correct the old picture that has been engraved in people’s memory about me… hoping to replace it with a more modern image and also more humane… After forty years of wandering across the regions of poetry and women…I feel that my image in people’s minds is still cloudy, confused, and veiled with colors that are blended and intermingled… In spite of what is being said about me… that I am the most widely read poet from the Gulf to the Ocean…I continue to feel that I am also the saddest poet from the Gulf to the Ocean…I still feel that out there… there are those who still read me wrongly… understand me wrongly… and even those who slaughter me wrongly…I do understand that choosing women as a primary subject matter for poetry is a difficult choice… that even choosing women as a topic of discussion is in itself a taboo… and that he who touches a woman’s hand is like one who touches a burning coal… I also know that getting involved in a relationship with a beautiful woman in my country is like getting involved in a smuggling operation… or like robbing a bank.”
