AUGUST 2007
The Iraqi Flute
By: Abbas Baydoun
Translated by Adib S. Kawar
Nazik Al-Malaikah,
the great pioneering Iraqi Arab poet, is the victim of
American colonialism. She had to desert her occupied and
shattered land and her terrorized people in Mesopotamia.
A land which had contributed more to universal culture
and heritage than other lands. So-called
"freedom"and "democracy" destroyed
this great land’s culture, people and unity.
The so-called “liberators” brought to this land
and its people the worst type of terrorism, which Holaco
himself failed to bring to it…
Nazik Al-Malaikah had to desert her beloved land to
escape with her life as millions of others, her
compatriots. She passed away in Egyptyearning to
see her birthplace, the great, fallen Baghdad.
A.S.K.
The
passing away of Nazik Al-Malaikah followed an absence
that started a long time ago; seclusion, illness and old
age kept her away from poetry and life itself. It was
painful that there was nothing left except the news of
her passing away, that no one asked about her - for the
fact that she was no more. Even the Arab poetry
conference was held and ended in Cairo without mentioning
her name. It could be our chronic undutifulness, it could
be the undutifulness of life and time, and the news of
her death was but a final point for this absence that has
lasted such a long time.
We should be called to rescue her out of forced oblivion.
We shall not say that she had finished something that was
gone long ago, nor that an era was lost with her absence
from the world of poetry. It is clear that in
history this brilliant and exceptional woman's presence
has no clear place. It is sorrowful that nothing remained
of Nazik Al-Malaikah except contention about this
pioneer. It was confirmed, but there was nothing more
than conflict about it, a trial and modernity, which
became part of the archives, and besides this a late
objection to innovation that she thought had gotten out
of control and jumped over the fence.
It is regretful that there is nothing left of Nazik
Al-Malaikah except signs of unrecorded history; we
don’t find anything other than that which is buried
and secluded, nothing more than certificates of
people’s readings and reviews. The anachronism of
this modernity is that it is no longer in the opinion of
its founders and those who called for it, and thus it
remains without a library, without a memory and no
heritage. What is now affecting Nazik Al-Malaikah today
is a curse that targeted all these : As-Sayyab, Hawi,
Abed Al-Sabour and Kabbani, who obtanined no more than
eulogies. The passage of time did not permit their
rereading or interpretation.
Let us return with Nazik Al-Malaikah to Iraq of the
fifties, a time, the birthplace of outstanding works in
history in the arts of music, poetry and the fine art of
painting and sculpture. It is possible that much
pioneering was done there although it is universally
agreed that all of that did not come out extemporarily;
on the contrary it was built on bases that are almost a
reality. And it is connected and analogous to things that
form, between their boundaries, a world. The musical,
painting and sculptural works could have been driven by a
common enthusiasm, which is a sort of reproduction of the
actual; composing a second story for Iraqi life, and a
second vision that redraws the past in the present, and
history in the popular scene. The history of Jawad Ali,
the ornamentations of Jawad Salim, the music of the two
Bashir brothers and the poetry of As-Sayyab and
Al-Malaikah are nothing but analogous and similar to this
enthusiasm.
It is not strange that Iraqi enthusiasm sprang from the
womb of a suffering that gave birth to many poetesses and
which brought to the arena Nazik Al-Malaikah, Lami’a
Amarah and Atika Al-Khuzarji, who are without
exaggeration great poets. It was not strange that such a
poetess as Al-Malaikah could compete with another poet in
pioneering, and in this case she is the initiator and she
succeeded. Pioneering is not important in the first place
if it doesn’t come as a mutation that is superseded
by a respected and rich culture, and a special and unique
poetic characteristic, which qualifies the poetess to
make this leap. We don’t find a borderline between
her column poetry (traditional Arabic poetry in which
every line of it is divided into a first hemistich
“Alsader” and the second hemistich
“Alajez”) and its rhyming, because the matter
here is in this classification. The column poetry of
Nazik bears all the renovation in its momentum that is
found in her scanned verse.
She is, here and there, putting a brake to the fervor of
Arab poetry, and its belligerent warlike richness, as
well as its oratory and approach to the masses, also,its
confusion with other purposes such as teaching, its
instigation of historical recording and its merger with
the occasion. The poetess, who wrote in her column of
poetry - the moon is “a soft and rich glass of
milk”, did not need to say much more in her prosody
verse. This doesn’t mean that the moon is a glass of
milk; it opened up our imagination. This doesn’t
mean that Al-Malaikah did not achieve anything in her
prosody poetry (with foot of verse measure), but we shall
not build a wall between a poet’s early, middle and
late poetry. It doesn’t mean that it deprives her
prosody of a special essentialism.
There is something in her prosody poetry that is not so
distinct in her poem “THE CHOLERA” as much as
it is distinct in her poem "THE PRAYER OF THE
GHOSTS"; for example the ability of the poetess to
limit her poem to a linguistic, sensational and
spectacular pit without any inclination to ramification
and dispersion that usually exhausts the modern poem. In
her prosody there is an inclination for a clear singing,
seriated, frank, argumentative, mature, sensational,
courageous, identical, and an almost analogous a demeanor
of sentimental intensity that is not trapped by
superficial emotions and “chewed” words.
Whatever is the situation, in spite of the paradox, we
are facing a poetess. It would be unfair to Al-Malaikah
to limit her to one historical milestone, though in spite
of that, she succumbed to such an attribution. In fact
she was exactly less than suitable for this contention.
She is further ahead as a poetess and there is in her
poetry a real exposure of a mature pure essence, of a
rich and able woman. Thus with this poetess and with this
essence and the person hereself, Nazik Al-Malaikah should
be an outstanding figure in history.
But the years of solitude, absence and possibly
unconsciousness are not enough to hide a woman with this
brightness, intelligence, and her confrontational
characterof protest and pioneering (meaning to be the
followed and not a follower). Probably the final death of
Nazik Al-Malaikah makes us understand that what she
achieved was an exceptional special personality as a
woman.
Source : Assafir, June 22,
2007
Identity
Card: The great Iraqi Arab Poetess Nazik Al-Malaikah
(Angels)
The Arab Iraqi poetess, Nazik Al-Malaikah was born in
Her mother was the poetess, Salma Abdul Razzah (Umm
Nizar), her father was man of letters and a researcher,
Sadek Al-Malaikah. She spent her youth at home with her
family in an atmosphere of culture and literature.
She left
Nazik Al-Malaikah wrote a number of famous poems,
important critiques, stories and her autobiography. The
High Council of Culture recently published her complete
works in
After
finishing secondary schooling, she joined the
Upon her return to
She got her Bachelor’s degree in the Arabic language
from the
She represented
She published seven collections of poems (Diwan in
Arabic). Her last diwan, The Sea Changes its Colors, was
published several times.
Her full works were published in two volumes and have had
several editions.
She also wrote the following books:
The Affairs of Modern Poetry
Separatism in the Arab Society
The Red Hermitage and Balcony
The Psychology of Poetry
Several
research works and thesis’s for many Arab and
foreign universities were written about her.
She published her first diwan “The Lover of the
Night" in 1947. The Arab critic Maroun Abboud said:
“Deep grievance was the common factor between all
its poems, whereever we sail among its poems you see a
funeral, and you don’t hear anything except crying
and sometimes wailing and agony.”
She published her second diwan “Shrapnel and
Ashes” in 1947. According to her, “A big wave
of uproar took place about it.”
Strangers
By: Nazik
Al-Malaikah
Translated by: Adib S. Kawar
Blow out the candle
and leave us strangers here
We are two parts of the night, so what is the meaning of
light?
Light falls on two fancies under the eyelids of the
evening
Light falls on some shrapnels of hope
I was called we and I call myself I:
Hot ashes. We are here like light
Strangers…
The pale cold
gathering is like a cold day
It was a murder for my anthems and a grave for my
feelings
The clock rang in the darkness nine and then ten
And I with my pain hear and count. I was puzzled
Asking the clock what is the meaning of my happiness
If we spend the evenings, you know better…
Strangers
Hours passed like
in the past covered with withering
Like the unknown tomorrow, I don’t know is it dawn
or dusk?
The hours passed and silence is like winter weather
Don’t you see? Our eyes are withering and cold
As if it is strangling me and oppressing my blood
As if uttering in me and saying
You two are under the storms of the evening
Strangers
Blow out the
candle, the two souls are in a thick night
Light falls on two faces colored like autumn
Don’t you see? Our eyes are withering and coldness
Don’t you hear? Our hearts are extension and
extinguishing
Our silence is the echo of a frightening warning
Sarcastic from that we will return
Strangers…
We who brought us
today? From where did we start?
Yesterday didn’t know we are comrades… Let us
Expel the memory as if it had never been from our youth
Some rash love passed by and forgot us
Oh… Wish we return where we where
Before we vanish and we are still
Strangers
(1948)
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