[00:00:06] Tamara Dean: Welcome to the Terrain.org podcast Conversations with authors, artists, scientists, and others who share Terrain.org's passion for place and focus on climate, community, and justice.
In this episode, we listen in on a conversation between Kareem James Abu-Zeid and translator of the poems of Najwan Darwish in the new book from Yale University Press titled No One Will Know you Tomorrow and Terrain.org reviews editor Renata Golden.
Najwan Darwish has been described as one of the foremost Arabic language poets.
Born in Jerusalem in 1978, Darwish has published nine poetry books in Arabic. His works have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Kareem James Abu-Zeid is a translator, poet, and teacher with a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley.
No one Will know you Tomorrow, which is a collection of Najwan Darwish's published and unpublished poems from 2014 to 2024, has been a finalist for numerous prizes in including the 2025 Walcott Prize for Poetry and the 2025 PEN American Award for Poetry and Translation.
Listen to Karim and Renata take a deep dive into the poems in no One Will know you Tomorrow, poems that explore concepts of landscape and home in new ways.
We'll start with the poem you said, read by Karim James Abu-Zeid.
[00:01:49] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: You said, you said you'd feed the people with a handful of wheat from your small threshing floor, from the opening of a song, from the light that's setting in your eyes.
You said you do this despite abandonment's burden and all I could do was believe you as you broke your body into pieces for this pilgrimage of strange birds.
Here you are now, a handful of wheat for the people.
[00:02:29] Renata Golden: Hello Kareem, thank you for joining me here at Terrain.org.
I'd like to start first by talking about the poems and then maybe you can tell us a little bit more about the poet.
So this collection, No One Will Know You Tomorrow, spans 10 years of Najwan's writing and provides such deep insight into so many areas.
I mean, most of the poems are short, but they contain so much.
He brings the reader quickly into his vision of not just what he experiences, but also how he thinks and feels.
Najwan's poems are so multi-layered in terms of both the political and geographic history of Palestine as well as the history of its poetry. They build on a foundation of hundreds of years. I think the poem "Tall al Samak" sets the tone for the whole book. Can you read that one for us please?
[00:03:30] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: Sure.
It's called Tall Come to tell Usamak the waves have their words audible and the ruins of the old harbor will wake the openings of the pre Islamic poems from their long slumber.
Have the Hans left anything unsaid?
She told us she would soon be parting.
The abodes are desolate, emptied of its people.
Just come, come to tell us something beautiful.
[00:04:11] Renata Golden: Those closing lines are from well known Arabic poems, aren't they?
[00:04:16] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: Yes.
So it's difficult to see it when it's read out loud, but there's the beginnings of four of the. When I say the beginnings, it's literally the openings, opening verses of four of the most famous pre Islamic Arabic poems. And so these are kind of, these texts are considered the sort of foundation of Arabic literature. They predate the Quran even.
And they're from sort of the Arabian Peninsula, these Bedouin poets who, who lived, you know, in tribes for the most part in the Arabian Peninsula today.
What today would be Saudi Arabia, Yemen, that area.
[00:05:03] Renata Golden: So I'm also thinking of, I remember Amar, the poem about a caliph who allowed the citizens of the city their religious freedom. It's one of his longer poems, but in it he writes, I remembered Omar, the Arab who led the stars with the reins of his camel.
And I breathed in all the aromas of the perfumer's souk. Like people multiplying, changing, becoming neighbors. Without them, walking through the souk would be no prayer.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the background of this poem?
[00:05:38] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: Yeah, that is one of my favorite ones.
I remember Omar and I guess I should say a few things. So there's really in the book.
So that poem comes from a collection called you are not a Poet in Granada.
And so it's sort of within the book.
It's centered on.
That whole book is centered on Palestine in relation to Andalusia.
And of course the Arabs ruled Andalusia for about 700 years, from roughly 8th century to near the end of the 15th century.
And in the Arab imaginary at least, it was very much and to a large extent in reality, it was a time of religious and cultural plurality. It was a time of great scientific achievement and it's considered a little bit of a golden age in the Arab imaginary, that period.
And you had many different faiths, many different cultures living side in relative peace. Of course it wasn't perfect, but relatively speaking there was sense of diversity, certainly great expansion and flourishing in the arts and the sciences.
So that's the larger context of that poem, is that it's in a book where that is foregrounded even in the Title, You are Not a Poet in Granada.
And I should say within that, in Arabic literature, in general, modern Arabic literature, the sort of exodus of Palestinians out of Palestine in 48 and 1948 and beyond.
And this kind of idea of the fall of the land of Palestine is often paralleled to the fall of Andalusia in the 1492 is when that happens. So that's the bigger context of that poem, the more specific context here.
And again, you'll pointed this out, but Najwan Darwish, he's very much a student of history, and history comes up and it's Palestinian history, but it's also Arab history and it's also many times world history. It's not just limited to the world, but he evokes the lengthy history of Palestine and Jerusalem, and particularly here. The poem is called I Remember Omar. And Omar is Omar Ibn Al Khattab. And he was known most famously, he's another figure who kind of is mythical and almost legendary for his tolerance. There's many, many, many, many stories about him. But what he's known most famously for this is from a different time period. It's not from the time period of Andalusia.
So he's known for essentially taking Jerusalem from the byzantines.
So in 737, he was the one who, quote, unquote, conquered Jerusalem.
And the Arab empire was expanding. This is 737 AD of course, the Islamic empire was expanding. And the.
The incredible thing about his conquest of Jerusalem was that at that point it was clear that the Arab armies were going to take Jerusalem. And the Byzantine ruler of Jerusalem, Sophronius, knew this and he said, I will surrender the city if Omar comes in person.
And so this is evoked in this poem because Omar actually came, he did come in person. He came without the army and he rode in on a camel with one servant.
And it was a very. He very humbly came to Jerusalem to take over the city because not only did he only come with one servant, but he will. They alternated places riding on the camel. So the servant would sometimes essentially be on the camp, which was not common practice, of course.
And after he took Jerusalem, there was the Treaty of Jerusalem, which guaranteed religious freedom. Essentially, Christians were still allowed to worship there and Jews who had been banned from the city for, for centuries were allowed back also to worship. And so it was a another period, an earlier period of tolerance and respect of other religions and cultures.
Sorry, it's a very long answer to a very short question, but there's a lot going on behind the. Underneath these poems.
[00:11:08] Renata Golden: No, it's great to learn the history. And it's just amazing sometimes to think how history repeats itself. But then again, nothing. Nothing changes and everything changes.
[00:11:20] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: Yes.
[00:11:22] Renata Golden: So I understand the story of how you came to know Najwan and his work is an interesting story. Can you tell us that story, please?
[00:11:32] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: Yes.
So how I came to know his work. I actually knew his work several years before I met him.
I was in my 20s, I guess, at the time. Other translators, prominent translators, were translating his work, but poems here and there. And I remember actually there was a journal I was helping, two Lines, which is part of the center for the Art of Translation.
They were just kind of starting up at that time, and they had quite a few Arabic poems in some of their early issues. They still do a lot of Arabic, and his poems were in one of those. And they had asked me to help edit some of the Arabic as they published bilingual. So that was actually the first time I read any of his poems was.
Was a few years before I met him in other people's translations, but they were in journals and stuff, not in book form, in English.
And then a couple years later, the then poet laureate of San Francisco, Jack Hirschman, who passed away fairly recently, a year or two ago, he was organizing an international poetry festival in San Francisco and brought In, I think, 15 poets from all over the world.
And he asked me to translate. I think he had two or three poets who were writing in Arabic. He asked me to translate their work, and Najwan was one of them.
And Najwan's visa was denied kind of at the last minute. And he was the only poet who didn't make it to the festival.
And so I wound up weirdly reading his work for him, also in Arabic, at the festival, in addition to the translations.
And that was when we really began working together, because I had questions for him, you know, regarding the translations and the texts.
And, yeah, we got along very well.
After the festival, I kept translating some of his works, just poems here and there and, you know, publish them in journals and stuff. There was never.
We weren't thinking in terms of bigger projects at that point and then.
But I really loved his work. And, yeah, at some point I was at a residency in Banff, and I read, if not to work on his stuff, to work on a different project. And I read a few of his poems at a very informal reading we were doing.
And there was, it was sort of just a fun kind of evening that the translators were doing during their residency.
And the idea was just you can read anything, but not from the project you came here for. So it was more of a kind of a fun. A fun thing.
And there was an editor there, Jeffrey Yang, who at the time was editing for New York Review of Books, NYRB Poets series, and who had never published any poets in Arabic before.
And anyway, he really liked the poems that I read and said, hey, why don't you submit a sample? Maybe we can do a book. And that turned into the first book.
And then, you know, from there, one thing led to another.
But. Yeah, so I feel it was very fortuitous. There was a lot of synchronicity and yeah, like I said, he was the first Arabic language poet in that series. And then he actually became the first poet in any language to have two books in the series, which was neat.
And. Yeah. And then now we have this new book, fairly new book with Yale.
[00:15:14] Renata Golden: Yeah. Yeah. So have you been to visit him at his home, Najwan's home?
[00:15:19] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: No, I've never visited him in Palestine.
He did come to San Francisco at a later time, and we met up there and then I guess about two years ago. We've actually used to Skype all the time. Skype has disappeared now. It's gone. So now we have WhatsApp. But we. It's funny because he's really one of my closest friends. We've worked on three books together now, and we just get along really well, which is not always a given in. When working with authors. And so. But we've actually only. I realized we've only seen each other in person twice. Once was in San Francisco, and then another time we were both invited to Manchester to do some events there. That was about. In England. That was about two years ago now. Two or three years ago.
But no, I have not visited him in Palestine. I would love to.
I did go to Palestine once, but it was before I knew him.
[00:16:21] Renata Golden: Okay.
So as I was reading the poems in this book, I noticed many of them deal with land and concepts of home and homelessness, especially when he's writing about Palestine. In Najwan's poetry, home is a counterpart of loss, like two sides of the same coin.
No one poem exemplifies this idea completely, but many poems do, in part.
For example, in the Colony, Najwan writes, freedom's a statue made of clay cracking beneath the coastal sun, and the songs do not know it.
And there's a line from one of the poems in Discourses that I like a lot. Deep death reminds us we have a home.
I also like the poem you think of a house, which uses a bit of the repetition Najwan sometimes uses in his poems. Has Najwan talked to you about how he views home?
[00:17:24] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: So the short answer to that is no, he doesn't. So anything I say will be speculation. I guess in that sense he doesn't like to explain his poems too much in general.
[00:17:42] Renata Golden: That makes sense.
[00:17:44] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: And I mean, he talks about his practice in general.
You know, there's one interview that people have been quoting a lot where he says, you know, poetry is not, for me, poetry is not activism, it's a spiritual practice. So I do think that can help us hone in on home.
But he, and he may explain context of poems to me, but he generally leaves poem itself very open ended. And I feel they might be open ended for him as well. I think of certainly home and the land are maybe that's one of the biggest themes or motifs that come up in his work. It would certainly be in the top two or three if you were to mention it.
Much more so even than something like War and Peace, though you could say there's all of that is contained within the land and home in his work. And so it's very multifaceted. I think of him as sort of inquiring into these things and exploring the notion of home without there being necessarily one overarching way it's depicted.
And different places also, even within Palestine are depicted quite differently.
And it's interesting to note, you know, he lives, his family is originally from Jerusalem, but he also has an apartment in Haifa.
And for him, historically, Haifa is Palestine. But it is now in terms of the legal boundaries or political boundaries, it's very much, even though, you know, the, there's a huge Arab population. It is, it is in the state of Israel. But he, he lives, he splits his time between Haifa and Jerusalem.
And for him, Haifa is on the sea.
There's a certain, he loves the ocean, the Mediterranean, he loves the mountain, Mount Carmel, which is, dominates Haifa. And that's kind of, you'll see it, you see it over and over again in his poetry. It's a very, it's described generally speaking as quite a gentle place. And so the land is very gentle there and the geography and the geologies are gentle there. And, and I write a little bit about this in the, in my introduction to this book. So if, if any listeners want to hear more about this, there's, there is some stuff specifically about Haifa and the history of Haifa there.
And that's in contrast to Jerusalem, where his family is actually from and, and where he also spends much of his time. And Jerusalem is a much harsher kind of.
It's depicted generally speaking, much more harshly.
There's a lot more strife there. The city is very, it's not on the sea, of course, and much of the history, not what we just talked about with Omar, but much of the history is more brutal there. And it's interesting because it's two very different depictions of those aspects of Palestine, of home in Jerusalem in one of his earlier poems is called the older sister of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And so it's very different. And then even within, when he's talking about the land or home generally, it's often, sometimes there's a very gentle quality to it and then other times it's very brutal and it's almost like it's.
To me it seems very often like it's almost a blessing and a curse to be born a Palestinian and to be in a certain sense bound up forever with this land where there is so much war and strife, but also very deep, rich history that goes beyond that in many ways.
And then he has other poems about exile when he has been living outside of Palestine that are quite different as well.
So it's complex and there's not like one answer to the question, but I think there are many answers and I think, yeah, it's, it comes up over and over again in his poetry. As you, as you've noticed.
[00:22:37] Renata Golden: Yes, yes, I also noticed he does the, the subject of mountains and the sea comes up a lot as well as the concept of time and how he handles time. I think that a lot of Najwan's poems are forward looking while also considering the past at the same time. And I think handling time well in your writing is difficult enough and I think there are probably even more challenges that arise when you're translating the effects of time in these poems. I think that Najwan tries to find a certain timelessness in his poetry. So how do you deal with time when you're translating, especially from Arabic?
[00:23:23] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: Yeah, time is always tricky. I mean on the very, in a very nitty gritty sense of just grammatical tense.
They don't always correspond one to one with Arabic, does not correspond one to one with English grammatical tenses. And I would say there's a bit more openness and fluidity in Arabic with regards to that than in English.
Generally speaking with the two languages, you could say Arabic has a bit more ambiguity. Words tend to have more meanings in Arabic. Be a bit. Have a broader semantic range, whereas in English, it tends to be much more direct.
And I'm speaking in general terms, of course, with the timelessness. You know, it's. I do think you're right there. There is a, he evokes that almost as if all of history is sort of bubbling up and all of it is available in the present moment.
And it's, I don't know if I have a strategy for it other than to really see if once the English text is.
If I feel like that specific quality has really come through in English, if that makes sense.
So it's not one where I have a specific strategy, but I can usually. It's usually pretty obvious. If I'm working on the draft of a translation, I can usually tell if I've gotten it. I haven't done it well. There'll be something that's a bit jarring or that. Yeah, just doesn't quite work.
But I do feel in his text there's often this, you know, hundreds and in some cases thousands of years of history that from. And not just history, that's specifically the land of Palestine, but all across the Arab world and often other places as well.
He has a kind of fascination also with Central Asia, what is today Turkey, Afghanistan.
Those areas as well are kind of a bit of an obsession for him, I would say. And it's sort of part of maybe Islamic culture historically.
There's no specific strategy for something like timelessness, but it's more something intangible that I kind of know if I've managed to evoke it somewhat or if I lost it. And if I've lost it and it seems like a important aspect of whatever poem I'm translating, then I'll have to go back and keep working on it until I feel like it's coming through.
[00:26:17] Renata Golden: I think translating the intangible must also be challenging.
I can imagine it relies heavily on the translator's vision.
So I'm thinking of An Afternoon in Albaycin. I love the way the poem begins, although it strikes me as a difficult poem to translate. Can you talk a bit about the subjectivity you bring when you're translating while trying to remain faithful to the emotional impact of the poem?
[00:26:45] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: Yes.
And that poem you mentioned, that's another one from the Granada collection, which is. Yes, certainly one of the ones that relies very heavily on place in terms of translating the intangible. You mentioned the translator's vision.
And so I'll put on my teaching cap here, because I do teach quite a few workshops for translation. And one of the first things I always tell the students is you have to have a clear vision of the poem you're translating.
In other words, you know, there's, especially with poetry, there's always a lot going on and the English text is never going to be a mirror of all of those aspects. So the, the translation is going to foreground certain aspects and potentially lose other aspects. Right, because there's, there's never going to be a one to one where everything just gets carried over.
Poems are very complex, obviously.
And so we talked about timelessness. That's one intangible kind of thing. There's, you know, sound is, I think, less tangible as well. The sonic qualities of a text, there's all kinds of things. The emotional impact, those which you just mentioned of the way a poem kind of lands at the end with the reader and, and, and many, many, many other things that we could be discussing.
So for me, having the vision is very important because that's what is going to guide the translation.
And when a choice has to be made about foreground, you know, one word will foreground something or evoke something, and a different word will, it will change it. And so that's very important for any translator, I think, to have a clear vision of what they're translating. In other words, what do I feel is really the crux of this text or of this poem?
And the way you translate one word can, especially in a poem, which many of these poems have you noticed, as you've mentioned, are very short.
There's an economy to his poetry, particularly his more recent poetry, but always, I think so you may only have 15 or 20 words in the English translation of the poem, and there'll be even fewer in the Arabic. Usually English will have more words. And so I'll just give one example because I think it's easier to talk in terms of a concrete example, but it's one that comes up all across. I mean, ever since I first started translating his poetry is the word in Arabic is art, which you can hear sounds very close to earth, and it does mean earth, but it cannot. So it can be translated as earth or land.
And, and then occasionally maybe it might be translated as something like dirt. I don't know. That's also possible. Usually it's earth or land and, but those are two very different translations of that word.
And specifically, when you're dealing with a poet from Palestine, where you know, the reader, whether or not there is anything political in the poem, usually A reader is going to bring some politics into it or read Palestine into it, whether or not it's there explicitly true. So when you're using the word land, you're giving it, you're automatically in English, there's going to be more, more of a political sense probably, and also more of a local sort of familiar sense. You could say, right, it's a bit more personal.
Whereas earth is more ontological. It's much more.
Yeah, it's a much bigger thing. Right. You could say maybe also sometimes more spiritual.
So that's a big choice in any poem. And the Arabic is playing with both of these levels. But in English you kind of have to decide. You know, there's. I remember, I can't remember which poem it is, but there's one where it ends with something like the land won't let me go.
Right. And you, it reads very differently, the earth won't let me go. It also would have been an interesting end to that poem, but it moves it in a totally different direction in English then the land won't let me go. And so with Najwan's poetry, most of the time I think I have translated as land, but there are poems where.
Earth is the translation that I go for.
So that's one example of the vision you have to have. And what being just kind of being aware, okay, this choice versus this choice, what is it? What is it going to do?
And then you asked about the subjectivity that I bring when translating and I will say, so there's, there's a couple things.
First of all, you mentioned that and you also mentioned the emotional impact.
I think a lot about translating emotional impact because I think that's really the way a poem lands, the feeling it leaves the reader with.
And poetry in a certain sense is nice because you have these sort of self contained little texts, even though they might relate to one another. But you can kind of, you know, it's like a little painting or something. You can finish that one and then move on to the next. So I do think a lot about translating emotional impact the way what's the feeling that a poem leaves the reader with?
And so that's one thing.
And it's like, it's very intangible. It's very much just a feel that you get.
And then there's another almost deeper level that I think is connected to this, which is, it's almost like in an intuiting or an empathetic part of my translation practice, which is kind of, it's where translation Becomes more of a meditation for me.
And with Najwan's poetry, it's really great because I do feel like his poems are very much meditations on these subjects.
But if we think about it as when a poet is writing a poem, right, there's certain impulses or intangibles that give rise to that poem. There's something underneath even the words, I think. And this is. Sounds very abstract, but it's part of. I feel my job as a translator is to kind of try to tap into those more original impulses. What was it that gave rise to this particular poem? As much as I can. It's never a process where you say, oh, I've got it right there. You know, that never happens where it's just like nailed it. But it's more of just a sense of.
Of trying to feel into the initial impulse that gave rise to the poem. If that makes sense.
[00:34:40] Renata Golden: Yes, definitely.
Wow. So many choices that you have to make as a translator.
You also mentioned sound and how you can translate the sound from Arabic to English.
So can you please tell us about Algerian Nubas and maybe read that poem, An Algerian Nuba. That poem seems to really, for me anyway, capture the music of Najwan's poetry. How do you capture the music of the original language in a translation?
[00:35:14] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: Yes, I'll read the poem. I do love that poem. It's very.
It is a very unique poem in his work, I feel. And I always enjoy reading it.
I'll just give before. I'll read it before I answer. Try to answer your question.
I'll give a note. Well, a couple of notes. One is that Najwan is quite obsessed. One of his obsessions is music and all different forms of music. Arabic music, Western classical music.
He's a student in many ways of music.
And so it's fitting that, you know, he became a poet.
And this poem is about. It's also in that, from that collection. You are Not a Poet in Granada. And the nuba was a melodic or musical form that was sort of derived from the Andalusian musical tradition.
And then it kind of moved from the Arabs in Spain into the Maghreb. So Algeria and I, I believe, also Morocco.
And this particular poem is kind of composed in line with the well known Algerian nuba.
So you can think of a nuba almost as like a type of song, something like that.
And of course it's about loss and oblivion and many other things. But I'll read it now. An Algerian nuba.
And he poured me the second cup.
Leave me Friend, leave me.
And he poured me the 10th cup.
Leave me, friend, leave me.
I lost my share of grace while my share of hell lies before me.
Leave me, friend, leave me.
I lost the way to my country, Though the only thing I know is the way to my country.
Leave me, friend, leave me.
Your cup contains oblivion.
So leave me. And if love asks after us, say leave me.
Leave me.
The waves of the sea have neither eyes nor ears, and the boats took your family and mine.
Leave me, friend, leave me.
And pour me the second cup, and pour me the 10th, and leave me. Friend, leave me.
[00:38:06] Renata Golden: Wow, What a poem.
[00:38:09] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: Yeah, it really is.
And it evokes also, in a very unusual way, the rich Arabic tradition of Samariya, which is the wine poetry. Wine verse, which is. Dates back, I mean, almost to the very beginning of Arabic poetry.
And this one is interesting because here wine is very much about, these cups seem much more about trying to forget and almost.
Yeah. Forget the sufferings and sorrows.
Your question was. Was about translating sound. And it's always tricky to translate sound. There are poems where the English sounds very much like the Arabic in terms of the rhythms and stuff, and sometimes that can be carried over. Other times, I feel like the English will take on its own sound and have its own kind of.
Is much less of a mirror of the Arabic and much more of a new creation.
And I do feel it's a little bit...I don't want to say completely a matter of chance, but there's certainly a bit of luck involved. Or if. If the English does wind up sounding a lot like the Arabic because the languages function very differently. They work very differently. You don't even, you know, with scanning poetry, meters of poetry, totally different, the way the two systems work. Arabic has its. It's not like English, you know, where we just have stress on, you know, you have your Iams, iambic pentameter, and your whatever, your trochees. And these. Arabic doesn't have Iams. That's not a thing in Arabic. Right. There's no iambic pentameter that you could.
You could, you know, put something into. But I will say what I do try to do with the Arabic and the English. But I always, usually when I get further along in my drafts of a poem, I try to kind of with the English, I try to listen to the poem purely for sound.
And so it's generally involves reading it. Reading it out loud, and trying to kind of suspend the part of my brain that processes meaning and really just listen for the sound. And see where.
Where there's maybe some stumbling where I don't want stumbling. Maybe there's a poem where I do want stumbling, but it's going too smoothly, stuff like that. And so that's one part of the practice. And then sometimes what I'll also do is kind of I'll read the Arabic and then I'll read the English out loud, and I'll kind of see where they're both at and almost try to bring the sounds of the two. It's almost like they come into a kind of dialogue or resonance. And doing that, I'll often notice things. If I read the Arabic and then read the English, I'll often notice things that I can change with the English to kind of convey a bit more of the Arabic. I was. There's a poem in here called We Never Stop, which also is about the land, but it was written when I was just speaking with someone else about this one.
But it's this poem where there's just a ceaseless running, and the poet is running and land is running, and they're running parallel to each other, and neither of them is stopping so that their two paths can actually meet.
And so it's kind of almost like a tragic poem in a way, because neither can stop running. And the speaker or the voice of the poem never arrives at the land. The land also never arrives at its people in a certain sense.
And that poem, in terms of the sound and the rhythm is very quick, and there's a certain breathlessness to it, almost like you are running, running and running. So that's one where that process, reading the Arabic, reading the English, kind of very much influenced the translation, because I felt like that quality of the sound was very important to that specific text.
There might be another text where the sound is a bit less important and it's more about, okay, this one specific image really needs to come out clearly.
But with that poem, because it was a poem about running and not stopping and just constantly moving, I wanted to get that quality, the quick quality and also the breathless quality into the English.
[00:43:24] Renata Golden: So, again, it comes down to the choices that you make as translator.
[00:43:29] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: Yeah, exactly. In the vision. In the vision, sort of. What. What is. What are you going to foreground? Because I think it's a, it's an unrealistic ideal that all of these different aspects of the Arabic or whatever source text are magically going to be conveyed into the English. It's not the... It doesn't work.
[00:43:48] Renata Golden: Translation's not magic.
[00:43:50] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: Yeah, I thought it Was it doesn't work that smoothly. Having said that, often the English will gain something that the Arabic doesn't have. So that can also happen.
And there's things that are gained that are maybe not fully there in the Arabic. So there's other potentials that can come out. You're really creating a new text.
It's not like you're inventing something new, but there's just, yeah, different.
You know, we had that poem with the beginnings of the pre Islamic Arabic poems.
I have translated one of those. They're very long poems. They're. They're, you know, almost. They're not epics, but they're, they stretch on for maybe 100 verses, which would be 2 or 300 in English, those old poems. And what's interesting, what was interesting translating, I translated the very first of those and published it. And what was interesting with that was because it was, it was a poem. The poet's name is Imrul Thais, who's considered kind of the very first figure in Arabic literature from 6th century, roughly.
What was interesting with that was there's what in English seemed like kind of crazy images. You know, it's a desert milieu.
But because he was kind of the first in such a foundational figure, many of those images almost became tropes and were repeated throughout the centuries with variations in Arabic literature. And so they're very familiar. They're very.
Yeah, they're like tropes almost.
Whereas in English, many of them are very new and feel kind of strange and unfamiliar. So that's one example where what was a. I felt a fairly literal translation, I wasn't going crazy in Arabic. Read much more to an Arabic reader was like, oh, I know this. This is. Every poet evoked this image.
Whereas in English it's a different tradition. So it felt new and in a certain sense modern, where it maybe didn't in Arabic.
[00:46:06] Renata Golden: Wow.
There's so much to think about. You've given us so much to think about.
And Najwan's poetry is so full of, so rich in so many facets.
So thank you so much for your time. Kareem, can we maybe end with another poem by Najwan?
[00:46:27] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: Yes, absolutely. And thank you, Renata, for the excellent questions and for reading the poetry so closely, which is always nice.
[00:46:38] Renata Golden: My pleasure.
Definitely.
[00:46:43] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: So I'll end with the poem. It's called The Shelling Ended.
And I should say this was written before the current genocide in Gaza and everything that's going on there. This is actually all of the poems in this book. Were written before, some of them were edited, I think after.
So this is called The Shelling Ended.
No one will know you tomorrow.
The shelling ended only to start again within you.
The buildings fell, the horizon burned only for flames to rage inside you, Flames that devour even stone murdered are sunk in sleep, but sleep will never find you awake, forever awake until they crumble these massive rocks said to be the tears of retired gods.
Forgiveness has ended and mercy is bleeding outside of time.
No one knows you now and no one will know you tomorrow.
You like the trees are planted in your place while the shells are falling.
[00:48:02] Renata Golden: Wow. Thank you so much, Kareem.
Thank you for your time.
[00:48:07] Kareem James Abu-Zeid: Thank you, Renata.
[00:48:10] Tamara Dean: Thank you for listening to the Terrain.org podcast.
Today's episode featured Terrain.org's reviews editor Renata Golden in conversation with Kareem James Abu-Zeid, translator of the poems of Najwan Darwish, in the new book from Yale University Press titled No One Will Know You Tomorrow.
You can find a transcript of this conversation and previous podcast episodes
[email protected]. The music is "Liftoff" by Nature Connection. I'm Terrain.org's podcast editor, Tamara Dean.
