1 – اعدمه. تثاقلت بندقيته تحاول يده جرها على امتداد ساعده، لأول مرة في حياته قد تغيّر ملمسها المخلّق من لوح الماهوجني على كفِّه ليحس به خشناً وبارداً، ملأ فوهتها وتقدم في خطىً حثيثةً نحوه، زمنه يمر كأنه أيام، أشهر أو أعوام. العرق يتسرب من جبهته، كانت رقبته دبقة من العرق، حرر زراً في قميصه الأبيْض، العرقٌ بين إبطيْه يزيد من خضرةِ بدلته العسكرية؛ خضرة تشبه ورق الخروْع أثناء تبللها بالندى، ذلك الندى الذي يأتي خلال حرِ الصيْف، بدلته المليئة بدبابيس لا يتذكر كم أفنى من عمره ليضعها لا لكيْ يثبت شيئاً: لا كونه وطنياً، لا كونه بطلاً، لا شيء […]
Libya
Danya Hajjaji: Bazeen
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 […]
Ashur Etwebi: Norwegian Blues (Poem)
The trees listen to my song The sky listens to my song The land rises Races me to the well, blesses the water. Are those my steps on the mound or sighs of a passing gazelle?! Come back to your home oh, steps of the wounded Come back to your home oh, songs of the wandering poet Come back to me Come back to me My heart flutters with joy My heart flutters with fear Come back Come back Come back. There is only water in this rain In Twebya’s rain The drop is a body The drop is a […]
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 […]
جمعة بوكليب: هامش عابر على متن الواقع الليبي الراهن
” اللي في البيضه أوعر من اللي فقس “، مثل شعبي مغربي قرأته في صفحة الأستاذ الهادي حقيق، على الفيسبوك، في المدة الماضية، وألتصق بذاكرتي كانجذاب برادة حديد لقوة مغناطيس، لشدة دلالاته، التي يسلطها على ما يحدث في واقعنا، على المستويين القطري الليبي، والقومي العربي. الحقيقة، أن علاقتي بالفيسبوك تتسم بكثير من التذبذب، بمعنى أنني لا أحرص كثيراً على ما متابعة ما يجري فيها، أولاً: لانشغالاتي اليومية الكثيرة التي لا تترك لي إلا هامشاً صغيراً من الوقت، أفضل قضائه فيما أحب. وثانياً: أن الكثير مما ينشر على صفحات الفيسبوك ليس مثيراً كثيراً لاهتمامي. وبالطبع، كما في كل شيء، هناك استثناءات […]
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 […]
Alessandro Spina's The Confines of the Shadow: A multi-generational series of novels set in Benghazi from 1912 to 1964.
WINNER OF THE PREMIO CAVALLINI 2011 & THE PREMIO BAGUTTA 2007 “The Italian Joseph Conrad” Libero, 09/07/2011 “A 20th Century Balzac” Il Giornale, 09/09/2011 The Confines of the Shadow The Confines of the Shadow is a sequence of novels and short stories that map the transformation of the Libyan city of Benghazi from a sleepy Ottoman backwater in the 1910s to the second capital of an oil-rich kingdom in the 1960s. Alessandro Spina’s saga begins in November 1912 with The Young Maronite, which sees Italian soldiers solidifying their control over Libya’s coasts, leaving Libyan rebels to withdraw to the desert and prepare for a […]
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 […]
Bitter Hope
In a short story I wrote long before the Libyan uprising, I imagined a man riding beside a reckless and erratic driver along with several other silent passengers in a very old car. Driving for an eternity on a long never ending hot baking road, the man kept asking the driver only one question, “Where are we going?!” That scene and that question depicted the general sense of despair and helplessness towards the situation in Gaddafi’s Libya. Two years ago Libya was on the verge of a tumultuous transformation. The capital Tripoli, was being taken by rebel forces […]
بودكاست امتداد: نصوص ادبية (محمد الفقيه صالح: قصيدة طرابلس الغرب)
في هذه الحلقة من امتداد بودكاست (نصوص ادبية) يلقي الشاعر (محمد الفقيه صالح) قصيدته الشهيرة والمتميزة (طرابلس الغرب). للاشتراك في البرنامج