Poets’ diaries: Iman Mersal

January 18, 2006 Friday, 13 June

We usually arrive to a new country with an instinctive readiness to be happy. Landing at Amsterdam airport, I was happy that someone was waiting for me and that many more flowers appeared to be in bloom in comparison to Canada’s late summer. I felt especially happy that the distance between Amsterdam and Rotterdam was less than an hour, that Leiden (where Nasr Hamid Abu Zeid resides) is mid-way, and that the roads were not highways in the American sense. Their narrower width were similar to the modern roads on the Nile’s Delta. The pleasure of arriving to a new place isn’t a simple sensation. One experiences an ambiguous melancholy associated with geography, maps and airports. Since immigrating to America, Europe’s position has changed for me. It once used to be in the North, and now it is in the East; and instead of being in the West, it is now in the center. A European city bears a resemblance to my empty house in Cairo in the sense that the buildings are huddled closer than the quiet sprawl of the suburbs; with streets designed for walking and not for fast cars. As a place it appeared more welcoming to all foreigners. Europe is no longer situated half-way between my old home and my new one. My return ticket, however, is booked for the latter.

Saturday, 14 June

The first evening of the Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam was dedicated to poems on the Mediterranean. 16 poets read poems about the sea, with sand sifting with their steps as each poet rose to walk to the microphone. The stage was set up to resemble a real sea, with a large photograph of its waters projected onto a large screen. My reading was scheduled to be the last. I did not experience the nervousness of waiting for my turn in an event like that. I found myself absorbed with the poems and photographs. There was one scene of a cafe in the south of Marseilles with a glimpse of a minaret emerging gloriously on the Moroccan coast; another of the shores of Alexandria where from a minaret nestled by birds one could see the Italian coast. There always appeared a parallel shore. The poems weren’t about a Mediterranean dividing South from North. Instead they were about 16 different seas, shores, memories and languages.

Sunday, 15 June

Why does a poet read to an audience?

The last time I read my poems publicly facing an Arab audience was in the Autumn of 1995. No doubt, each reading has its special tension and that reading of mine was probably the richest and the most intense. I read in the theatre hall of 'al-Hanager' in the Cairo Opera House. I had hesitated that morning on whether I should attend, feeling strongly that poetry – or what I write at least – should not be read out loud to an “audience” because it was not written for that purpose.

All subsequent readings, those in Europe and the United States, were more complicated. Apart from reading a text initially not written to be delivered to an “audience” – there was the issue associated with the expectations a Western audience would have from hearing Arabic poetry. No doubt it is an unavoidable question, and it is important that the audience would ask it. Therefore, in addition to all the political reasons that would make every Arab these days feel self-conscious on arrival to any Western airport, the expectation in a poetry reading is connected to the image of Arabic poetry in the light of the limited exposure the West has had to Arab literary output. In general, translation has favoured the Islamic poetic tradition, especially that of Sufi poetry, at the expense of modern poetry. There are the samples of relatively known poets such as Adonis, Mahmoud Darwish, Sa'adi Youssef whose poems appear – in the way that they have been presented – as if suspended in a poetic vacuum, and any associations they would have would more likely be political, without providing a background that would place them in a cultural or literary tradition. As for the more recent poetry movements, these have been ignored completely.

Monday, 16 June

My first extended reading in Rotterdam was with Katalin Molnar (France) and Boris Maruna (Croatia). I gave an interview to Cornel Bierens. I had no way of predicting the kind of questions on Bierens’ mind, although I had a hunch that as an Egyptian Muslim poetess I would be asked the standard questions where I would have to make an effort to direct them, in order to create a dialogue transcending the inevitable preconceptions that the interviewer or the listener would have on Arab culture. I was not far out with my guesswork, for although some of the questions were on poetry, there were also the expected ones like: “You just read a poem on Marx. Are you a Marxist? Describe your interest in Marx. How do you write about a man as an Arab poetess and how have others received this poem?”

Responding to these questions involved the attempt to change many misconceptions. I had to explain the stature Karl Marx had for Arab intellectuals, the impact the collapse of the Soviet Union on that stature, the role of the 1991 war where Egypt participated besides the United States in killing Iraqis, and the role of the war in re-stating questions on the meaning of Arab Nationalism in the same way that the American occupation of Iraq has raised questions with regard to Western democracy. I wanted to pass on the honour of explaining feminist Marxism by instead alluding to a map of Arab national defeats of which the Marxist dream was the worst one of them all. I had to invite Bierens to read what other Arab poetesses had written on men in the course of fourteen centuries, so that he could learn by comparison what a failed audacity my contribution as a poetess in the nineties had been. Over and above I had to emphasize that as a member of an Arab generation we all shared these concerns and that in the end I was expressing my own opinions.

After the evening was over, I thought how the politician still controls and directs the intellectual everywhere. Both I and Bierens did our best to say what we wanted to say which had been prepared beforehand. He had an image on how the interview was to be conducted, and I had one on how to direct its course. Nonetheless, it was the essential step to open a real dialogue once one could admit to having experienced failure, misunderstandings and many attempts at clarification. The end result would be to hope for a time when different questions would be asked.

Tuesday, 17 June

There was a meeting of a few poets with the Prins Claus Fonds, an opportunity to continue the same dialogue and questions. The discussion was centered around the role of cultural organizations in endorsing the freedom of speech in countries known not to have it. The invites came from Egypt, Nigeria, Jordan, Mexico, Turkey and China – in other words, no one from the First World was present, as if those who organized the event has preempted their disinterest in such a discussion. In the meeting, Amjad Nasser (Jordan) raised and criticized an important point: not a single Palestinian writer was nominated by the Fonds in 2002. This, in his opinion, reflected a serious vacuum with regard to the position of the Palestinian intellectual under Occupation. The members of the organization acknowledged the oversight.

Chris Abani presented an ambitious project to safeguard Nigerian cultural heritage. I asked about the priorities of cultural organizations in the West: was it to create a space for other cultures where one could defend writers against the political autocracies in their own countries or was it to provide monetary support for a few cultural projects in the Third World? I questioned the difference between charity based institutions and cultural organizations apart from the good intentions with which their work is carried out. It was a enriching meeting not only because of the seriousness and the receptive spirit of its members but because the meeting highlighted the importance of our contribution – as Arabs – in creating our own independent cultural organizations as partners to their Western counterpart. Our roles then would change from simply asking and criticizing to undergoing the experience of prioritizing our projects.

The dog's bite:

A stray dog once bit me when I was a student in college. For the duration of 21 days I had to go every morning and stand in a long queue in front of the nurse's office at the Hospital of al-Mansoora to get an injection against rabies. While waiting, I would hear repeatedly the same question from others in the line: “A dog or a cat or a horse?” It took a while before I understood that one injection was generally given against all types of bites, and that the inquiries were a way for those waiting to get to know one another, seeing that everyone had a dramatic account on the type of bite while veteran patients advised newcomers on what to expect at the moment the injection was inserted in the stomach.

I remembered that scene as I listened to some of the invited poets, who began introducing themselves to others by stating the number of years they had been imprisoned, and the types of torture they had undergone. It was not that the experience of prison and torture is not worthy of listening to and empathizing with, but this preface on the part of the writer or the poet was presented as if it had a positive qualitative value in addition to writing. Often the objective of Western organizations in drawing writers who had been imprisoned in their countries is a way of stating their inculpability from the absence of the freedom of speech. It could also be a denial of the role the West plays in not encouraging this right in some areas of the world like the Middle East.

Wednesday, 18 June

The photographs of the participating poets were displayed at the entrance of the theater and inside the lobby. There was an amusing side to this exhibit. We laughed heartily at the photograph of Abbas Beydoun (Lebanon) whose picture was the farthest from reality. He looked handsome without the marks on his head which he had received in prison. All Poetry International Festivals include this celebratory side – making the poets believe that they are like film stars if even for a few days.

Today the festival offered the poets sandwiches of the fried fish Holland is famous for, instead of the light fare that many romantics believe is more appropriate to a poetry atmosphere. The smell of the fish and the onion in the Poet’s Foyer was a brilliant and genuine moment. Simply put, it made dreamers come closer to earth.

Thursday, 19 June

I don't know what it takes to stand and deliver a good reading.

Classical Arabic poetry, with its internal rhythm and its metaphors, lures one to perform a magical elocution. The present day poem is different. I don’t know when I started to love anxious poets as they read their poems. Their hesitancy is probably due to a failure in separating oneself from the moment of writing. Maybe objectivity is the triumph of divorcing oneself from that intimate moment.

The reading of Lidija Dimkovska was the most inspiring. She waited for a silence; her voice sounded strong and confident without intending any particular effect. Yet it wasn't an objective reading at all. She read:

You in my death
And I yours will meet only, only then,
Because I do not hope to turn again home, ever.

Her serious elocution was without flourish. Lidija changed my idea on the poetic reading I used to prefer for ever.

Friday, 20 June

One might in the beginning experience a letdown in Rotterdam, a modern city that lost its architectural memory during the Second World War.

I asked at the hotel where the closest post office was. Surprisingly, I found that the building that I had passed by twice before and had intended to visit as a church or an old mansion or a museum was indeed the post office. The building appeared to have escaped the ravages of war and modernity. I crossed the street. I thought as I entered it of the memories this building must have. Memories are like etchings on the walls of a building now used as a post office with a window for currency exchange. These etchings are physically more real than the ambiguous emotions that can be elicited in the dampness of the large hall with its high ceiling. I had to use a phone card phone to call my father in a village in the Delta. In that large hall, Arabic was blotted out. “I miss you . . .” And I did not translate it for him.

Oddly enough, I did not once lose my way in Rotterdam. Knowing any new city comes after several times of getting lost. The city was condensed during our short stay to the space between the hotel and the theatre of Rotterdam. In this building, the organizers created an entire city inside: a restaurant, bar, newspapers, a place where poets engaged in long and meaningful conversations, sitting most of the day smoking, talking, rehearsing their poems and placing them in order for the evening reading. The organizers succeeded in providing a genial atmosphere with their continuous presence and dedicated attention to all the details. One of my friends once wrote a story dreaming of a large house that would collect all his friends. I thought of how this building was the closest realization to my friend’s dream. The intimacy of the place was created by our daily attendance where within each of us an image of all the others who were present was formed. That was the moment the poetry days in Rotterdam all came to an end.

Read more about Iman Mersal and her poetry on her Poetry International profile page.