Even as a strong IRAC (Israel Religion Action Centre) supporter and its feisty director, Anat Hoffman I can’t agree with everything she and her organisation do.
In the past week, for example, I felt more embarrassed than engaged when she used her newsletter, The Pluralist, to suggest that the tradition of ‘inviting’ historical guests to celebrate the festival of Succot be widened to include “seven Israeli-Arab and Palestinian treasures, including performers, politicians, and poets”.
But never mind! It’s given me a reason to look at the work of one of Hoffman’s proposed ‘guests’, Taha Muhammad Ali, a Palestinian poet and short story writer who lived in Lebanon with his family during the 1948 Israel War of Independence but went on to spend the rest of his life in Nazareth where he owned a souvenir shop. He died there in 2011.
The Poetry Foundation says of Ali: “Self-taught through his readings of classical Arabic literature, American fiction, and English poetry, Ali started writing poems in the 1970s. His collections in English include Never Mind: Twenty Poems and a Story (2000) and So What: New and Selected Poems, 1971–2005 (2006).
Adina Hoffman’s biography of Ali, My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century, won the 2010 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize.
“Exodus
“The street is empty
as a monk’s memory,
and faces explode in the flames
like acorns—
and the dead crowd the horizon
and doorways.
No vein can bleed
more than it already has,
no scream will rise
higher than it’s already risen.
We will not leave!
“Everyone outside is waiting
for the trucks and the cars
loaded with honey and hostages.
We will not leave!
The shields of light are breaking apart
before the rout and the siege;
outside, everyone wants us to leave.
But we will not leave!
“Ivory white brides
behind their veils
slowly walk in captivity’s glare, waiting,
and everyone outside wants us to leave,
but we will not leave!
“The big guns pound the jujube groves,
destroying the dreams of the violets,
extinguishing bread, killing the salt,
unleashing thirst
and parching lips and souls.
And everyone outside is saying:
“What are we waiting for?
Warmth we’re denied,
the air itself has been seized!
Why aren’t we leaving?”
Masks fill the pulpits and brothels,
the places of ablution.
Masks cross-eyed with utter amazement;
they do not believe what is now so clear,
and fall, astonished,
writhing like worms, or tongues.
We will not leave!
“Are we in the inside only to leave?
Leaving is just for the masks,
for pulpits and conventions.
Leaving is just
for the siege-that-comes-from-within,
the siege that comes from the Bedouin’s loins,
the siege of the brethren
tarnished by the taste of the blade
and the stink of crows.
We will not leave!
“Outside they’re blocking the exits
and offering their blessings to the impostor,
praying, petitioning
Almighty God for our deaths”.
© Natalie Wood (02 October 2015)
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