Saudi Arabia

Here is a link to a traveler's observations about the more hidden side of Saudi lifestyles.  While I enjoyed seeing the Western stores in Arabic print, I really hit gold when I followed the link embedded on the "Saudi skating."  The combination of the music and the sheer inanity of it contradicted completely my notions of what Arabians did for pastimes and I started to see more similarities than differences.

http://andreas.com/faq-saudi-arabia.html

Read and respond.

"Endless Poem"

The following is a poem by Amichai.  What rhetorical devices does he use and for what effect?  Read and respond.

Endless Poem

In a modern museum
In an old synagogue
In the synagogue
I
Within me
My heart
Within my heart
A museum
Within a museum
A synagogue
Within it
I
Within me
My heart
Within my heart
A museum 

Yehuda Amichai

"And We Shall Not Get Excited"

The following is a poem by Yehuda Amichai.  What rhetorical devices does he use and for what effect?  Read and respond.

And We Shall Not Get Excited

And we shall not get excited. Because a translator
May not get excited. Calmly, we shall pass on
Words from man to son, from one tongue
To others' lips, un-
Knowingly, like a father who passes on
The features of his dead father's face
To his son, and he himself is like neither of them. Merely a mediator.


We shall remember the things we held in our hands
That slipped out.
What I have in my possesion and what I do not have in my possession.

We must not get excited.
Calls and their callers drowned. Or, my beloved
Gave me a few words before she left,
To bring up for her.

And no more shall we tell what we were told
To other tellers. Silence as admission. We must not
Get excited.


Translated from the Hebrew by Barbara and Benjamin Harshav 

Yehuda Amichai

Here is another poem by Nye.  Connect to other works we have read.  Read and respond.

The Words Under the Words
by Naomi Shihab Nye
for Sitti Khadra, north of Jerusalem My grandmother's hands recognize grapes, the damp shine of a goat's new skin. When I was sick they followed me, I woke from the long fever to find them covering my head like cool prayers. My grandmother's days are made of bread, a round pat-pat and the slow baking. She waits by the oven watching a strange car circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son, lost to America. More often, tourists, who kneel and weep at mysterious shrines. She knows how often mail arrives, how rarely there is a letter. When one comes, she announces it, a miracle, listening to it read again and again in the dim evening light. My grandmother's voice says nothing can surprise her. Take her the shotgun wound and the crippled baby. She knows the spaces we travel through, the messages we cannot send—our voices are short and would get lost on the journey. Farewell to the husband's coat, the ones she has loved and nourished, who fly from her like seeds into a deep sky. They will plant themselves. We will all die. My grandmother's eyes say Allah is everywhere, even in death. When she talks of the orchard and the new olive press, when she tells the stories of Joha and his foolish wisdoms, He is her first thought, what she really thinks of is His name. "Answer, if you hear the words under the words— otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges, difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones."

Naomi Shihab Nye

Here is another poem by Nye.  Read and respond.  (How is it similar to For Mohammed Zeid of Gaza, Age 15?)

Blood
by Naomi Shihab Nye
"A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands," my father would say. And he'd prove it, cupping the buzzer instantly while the host with the swatter stared. In the spring our palms peeled like snakes. True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways. I changed these to fit the occasion. Years before, a girl knocked, wanted to see the Arab. I said we didn't have one. After that, my father told me who he was, "Shihab"—"shooting star"— a good name, borrowed from the sky. Once I said, "When we die, we give it back?" He said that's what a true Arab would say. Today the headlines clot in my blood. A little Palestinian dangles a toy truck on the front page. Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root is too big for us. What flag can we wave? I wave the flag of stone and seed, table mat stitched in blue. I call my father, we talk around the news. It is too much for him, neither of his two languages can reach it. I drive into the country to find sheep, cows, to plead with the air: Who calls anyone civilized? Where can the crying heart graze? What does a true Arab do now?

Interview with Ali al-Sharqawi

The following is an excerpt from a recent interview with poet Ali al-Sharqawi.  Connect these ideas with his poem Warmth of Blood.

Al-Shorfa: What are the most prominent challenges faced by writers and poets in Bahrain? And, in your opinion, what are their solutions?

Al-Sharqawi: After half a century of writing, the challenge now, in my opinion, is not external or objective. The challenge now is between the poet and his craft, the poet and his ability to reach deep into his infinite imagination, and between the people and the cosmic spirit, which he must know how to deal with. In the beginning our concern was national, then regional then class-related, but for me now, my concern is humanitarian. Each human being on this planet is an extension of me. Now, I do not believe in the "the other," because "the other" is an extension of my being. Now, I do not see barriers between man and the environment, between man and other creatures, man and the universe. To my mind, the role of the national, patriotic, revolutionary and class intellect has ended, and the turn for the universal intellect has arrived.

Here is another poem by Darwish.  What rhetorical elements does he use and to what end?  Read and respond.

In Jerusalem
by Mahmoud Darwish translated by Fady Joudah
In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls, I walk from one epoch to another without a memory to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing the history of the holy . . . ascending to heaven and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love and peace are holy and are coming to town. I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone? Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up? I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me. All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly then I become another. Transfigured. Words sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t believe.” I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white biblical rose. And my hands like two doves on the cross hovering and carrying the earth. I don’t walk, I fly, I become another, transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I? I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I think to myself: Alone, the prophet Mohammad spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?” Then what? A woman soldier shouted: Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you? I said: You killed me . . . and I forgot, like you, to die.

Here is another poem by Darwish.  Read and respond.  What rhetorical elements, etc. do you notice in his writing and why does he use them?

I Belong There
by Mahmoud Darwish translated by Carolyn Forché and Munir Akash
I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born. I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own. I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon, a bird's sustenance, and an immortal olive tree. I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey. I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to her mother. And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears. To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood. I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a single word: Home.

Mahmoud Darwish

About Darwish's work, the poet Naomi Shihab Nyehas said, "Mahmoud Darwish is the Essential Breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging, exquisitely tuned singer of images that invoke, link, and shine a brilliant light into the world's whole heart. What he speaks has been embraced by readers around the world—his in an utterly necessary voice, unforgettable once discovered."

I pulled the above citation from an online obituary of Darwish, who wrote A Lover from Palestine.  

Taking what Nye (who also wrote a poem you read in this unit!) wrote, apply her beliefs to the poem you read of his.  In what ways do they fit?  To what was she responding?  How did these poems speak to her?

Kahlil Gibran

Follow the link to read more of Kahlil Gibran's poems.  Choose one of the topics on the left after following the link and find something that speaks to you.  Then share it and explain why it appeals to you and how he manipulates language.

http://www.katsandogz.com/gibran.html

Godfrey of Bouillon

In his account, Solomon bar Simson references Duke Godfrey rather harshly.  Here is a passage from wikipedia.  What does the additional information do for your understanding of Godfrey?  How would Solomon's account have changed had he included some of this data?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey_of_Bouillon