My mother and I in the garden of our Tripoli home, circa 1995.Libya is the land of insatiable hunger. Our dishes differ in many ways, but their foundation is more or less similar: roots, history and love. You can taste the North African sunshine and clean groundwater on the vegetables. The multitude of spices is strange to foreign tongues, but equally as savoured. Our meat, whether tender or dry, sponges up the aromatic sauces it accompanies. All this, and more. How could you ever know satisfaction? I was a hungry child. My white brick, one floor Tripoli home knew two […]
English
Ahmed Yousef Aqila: The Wall (Short Story)
(NO) Mid-morning… the three of them are leaning on the peeling wall… – Why do we bury ourselves in this dusty forgotten village? – How about we travel? – To where? – The world is wide… there are always horizons to reach. – Aren’t we going to be consumed by nostalgia? – Nostalgia to this wasteland?! To the sandstorms?! To a country its people are always in a hurry but do nothing?! (ST) The taxi station… each one of them rides a car… each one of them sits in the backseat… each one of them blows vapour and wipes the […]
Nouri al-Jarrah: A Boat To Lesbos – Tablet III (Poem)
Come let us walk under a silent sky with stony tongue Walk on the years. Walk, walk and exercise, Walk and send the words from tongue to tongue. Come let us open the dictionary and greet the words, Open the books and read on the paper what the poets wrote. Come let us walk barefoot on the silence, so we don’t wound the words. To whom is this shirt with a bloody collar To whom is this coat on the clothes hanger Dripping with blood And this mark from a step at the door, And the strange smell in the […]
Sipping Tripoli in Puglia
We reached the town just after three in the afternoon, and as all the towns and villages in this southern region of Italy it was eerily quite and its streets deserted, people here take their afternoon siestas seriously, most shops and public places were closed. We parked the car not far from a small square close to a park where we saw a group of elderly men and women sitting on the benches chatting. The historical centre was a fortified part of the town that had bastions and high walls and where you can enter the town centre through particular gates […]
Ashur Etwebi: A House In The Wind (Poem)
A fragile afternoon A vast sea Empty trees A butterfly and a grave I am here The villagers are here Tales in strange languages are here Broken tongues are here I wish I knew that I lied down on a pillow of absence I wish I knew that the cricket frightened the little larva I wish I knew that the words are adrift and the coffee is light I wish I knew that the eyes are veiled and the bell is cursed The poor boats raised the faces of the refugees as its sails Only the fearful are capable of […]
The Legacy of Tyranny in Libya*
As we approach the fifth anniversary of the Arab uprisings, with all its manifestations and aftermaths, the debate on the outcomes of those historic events are becoming more crucial and polarising. Nothing is more indicative of this polarisation than in the case of the Libyan uprising with its consequences: civil war, foreign intervention, and the many crises that followed the toppling of the Gaddafi regime in the North African country. The legacy of any tyrannical regime can take many decades to be resolved. The clear threat by Gaddafi in 2011 to commit mass slaughter in Benghazi and other Libyan towns […]
‘African Titanics': A Book to Humanize the Reader
Originally posted on Arabic Literature (in English): There are at least a half-dozen ways you could read the English version of African Titanics, depending on how — and with what — you approach it: The short novel, written by Eritrean novelist Abu Bakr Khaal (2008), and ably translated by Charis Bredon (2014), could be read as a “there but for the grace of God go I!” narrative. From this vantage, the book is about poor migrants who make their way up through desert and sea to start new, better lives in Europe. Or, for the reader interested in world events, it could be read as a “humanizing” tale that […]
Libya: a postponed hope
After three years of the fall of the Gaddafi regime, Libya is facing new challenges in its struggle to build a nation with state institutions based on the rule of law and the principles of democracy. Since the fall of the dictatorship, Libya has been through many troubling and chaotic times, but the current crisis that began since the June 2014 elections seems to be the most challenging, which could lead to more crises in the country’s transition process. The current Libyan crisis was the result of many factors, notwithstanding the legacy of despotism that the new state institutions inherited […]
Short Story: Techno
It was the first day of summer, the sun was high in the sky when he decided to walk to the near by bakery to get some bread and pastries. The street was empty, quietness dominated the the neighbourhood where he lived since his birth four decades ago. A stray cat was rummaging through the bin bags, thrown at the corner of the alley, it was devouring a piece of bone when it looked up at him then returned back to its meal. He can still remember when there was no pavement or tarmac in this part of the city, […]
Chewing Gum: Absurdity in its Beautiful Form
Chewing Gum By: Mansour Bushnaf Translated: Mona Zaki Publisher: DARF Publishers 2014 Pages: 125 This is a book that I first read in Arabic, when it was published by a small independent publisher in Cairo in 2007, the novel which wasn’t allowed to be distributed by Libyan authorities inside the country, was handed over from one reader to another and became famous for its satirical criticism of the Qaddafi regime. Now in its new resurrected form in English, “Chewing Gum” has proven to be one of the best novels in modern times to describe in a satirical, cynical style the […]