Stained white paper Splashes of dust on the nose of the sun How wonderful to feel so ridiculous Mounting my stupidity trying to face my face. I listened to her eyes While drinking hot chocolate with cream on top In Old Compton street, Trying to understand the colours of this side of the earth. Gays, straights, whites, blacks and in between. Night clubs, bars, and mosques. Rednecks, flat chests, bare feet Ugly heat It’s Soho, she mumbled Not recognizing her voice. She smoked her head Desperately and said You are not listening to me I threw it all saying why? […]
English
Ahmed Yousef Aqila: The Clock (Short Story)
By: Ahmed Yousef Aqila (1) We were waiting for the time to reach five o’clock. Actually we were waiting for the General. We Came and went, checking the stag and decorations, It’s true that the stage is slightly humble, and will nearly fit the General and his companions, but what can we do more than this, here in our village we don’t have any experience in preparing celebrations, and despite this, the organizers notified each other to any mistake, what ever small, and to tell the truth, the General is meticulous in these things, notices anything, doesn’t allow any […]
Drought
By: Al Sadiq Abudowara* (1) – But I don’t drink it… I don’t like coffee. – But the fortune lives in it…I will only see your face at the bottom of the cup. – I see it in the mirror and that’s enough. – The mirror shows only what you want to see…But your fortune doesn’t care…It happens every day…Renews…Approves deals… His face smiles and frowns… It might become skinny like starving children and it might die from fullness…Do you know that ones fortune might die?I knew someone whose fortune died…They say that it committed suicide or it drowned in […]
On reading and books
Few years ago the BBC launched a campaign to promote reading. The campaign was called (The Big Read) and used a book worm as a mascot for the project. The aim was to choose the favourite 200 books voted by the public and then choosing the best 21 titles. The survey carried out by the BBC, aimed on finding the “Nation’s Best-loved Book” by way of a viewer vote via the Web, SMS, and telephone. The project focused more on literary books especially novels, and many schools and public libraries across Britain established book clubs and some groups campaigned for […]
A man walking entirely alone
By: Moftah Al Ammari T.: Ghazi Gheblawi Lonely enough with what I am That which is my body in the simple clothes Running as if the lightenings are my shoes Howling alone: Oh, she-wolf Take me from my mouth Away from your bosom Everything becomes in extreme rottenness and grandeur The sparrows wear their mystic fear And the terraces raving with extincted suns Alone Waiting every night With fearful ears For my house to fall down Take me from my mouth Oh, she-wolf I am tired from my wife When her hands tide me with confident imagination Wake up my […]
Lost in Words..
All the way to Norwich I kept thinking about the reason why we go on pursuing an ambition that we know from the beginning that we won’t achieve satisfactory results or won’t gain more than we are going to give in return, this was my opinion with literary translation, especially from Arabic into English, and Whilst I translated and published many texts (poetry, prose, articles, and even chapters of novels) from English into Arabic, which some were rewarding, my ambition to translate from Arabic into English was until now a lost quest despite my efforts to reach a sort of […]
Desert Heart & Failure
Desert heartHe promised never to look back,columns of slat growing on the dunesembracing the snow cursing his old face.On the bitter lake,sitting on the edge telling me the tale of his lost dream why we come back?!why you come back?! Nothing is happening on our side of the sunspits his love to olive trees longing to eat row truffleslosing his weakness in front of the white see Snap, Snap He takes pictures of his cured heart Snap, Snap He cuts his curly long hair short.Why you go back to the sand?! Bang, bang He listens to the coppers artists of […]
African Writers' Evening
African Writers’ Evening (AWE) is one of the main regular events that is held every two months at the Poetry Cafe in London, last month the event celebrated its fifth anniversary, and next Thursday 17th July it begins its sixth year by inviting me to read some of my works (poems, short stories): “African Writers’ Evening Thursday July 17, 2008: Ghazi Gheblawi & Saradha SoobrayenWe usher summer in with a little bit of desert and a little bit of island. Reading for us will be blogger, poet, translator and short story writer Ghazi Ghablawi (Libya) and emerging poet and editor […]
podcasts.. inspirations 2
My second entry on podcasts inspirations comes from my second best podcast that I listen and re-listen time and time again. The show is called Radiolab (Radio Lab) from WNYC, New York public radio, hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, an hour long show that focuses on scientific and philosophical subjects in the form of humour, storytelling, interviews, and scientific experiments. The show also experiments in presenting a different kind of radio show in editing and sound mixing which is the specialty of Jad Abumrad and it approaches science and abstract topics such as (space), (laughter), and (morality) in […]
What are you?
What are you?! Is this a simple question? In this time and age, the answer is not that simple, what are you? Doesn’t imply a straight forward answer, especially that whenever we meet somebody we start to find similarities or differences between each other, the way you dress, comb your hair, grow a beard or use a specific kind of perfume, do you wear a hijab or a niqab or maybe it is the way you talk or even your body language, or it might be as simple as the colour of your skin or eyes or hair. Sometimes it […]