Leaves of dispersion ‘awraq al shatat’

This is not a collection of poems

These are just scattered leaves

Lost in airports, highways, ports and alleys.

I have tried to save some of them from the destruction of tanks

Some drowned in the depths of the seas

Others were torn under the dust.

These leaves pursue me at all times

Like an unending falling rain

They carry me away with the wind,

Then their weight pulls me down into shifting desert sands.

I carried a few in bags made of rags

Through the cities of my exile.

My back was bent and the bags were ripped

The leaves faded, burned by the rays of the sun

Melted in blood ponds.

Swallowed   by time

These precious leaves carry with them

All the episodes of my life

All the secret loves,

All the unsolved mysteries,

And the novel of a scattered path

A history of unending dispersion.

Precious leaves, I have preserved all that remains of you,

My only possession, locked in a closed room.

Trapped in a whirlwind under the dust

You formed a mountain of sand.

My story then became a puzzle,

Telephone bills, gas bills

Pages from my old memoirs,

Copies of ancient birth certificates

Unused airline tickets,

And half a notebook of my first poems

Facing me with the most serious dilemma:

Should I plunge into my memory?

To recompose all its pieces

Or should I dive into the tons of dust

To find its other half.

Should I finally reconstruct all the parcels of my life?

By putting order in these scraps of paper

Or should I burn them all

Before their heavyweight crushes

And scares after my death

The heirs of my fate.

Precious Leaves

Parts of my life

Primary witnesses of my lonely exile,

Dusty leaves,

I shall write my will

And plant it as a banner

On the summit of the mountain of dust:

Let my coffin be weaved by these murderous leaves,

With flowers confected by the remains of colored papers

And a kite composed of these flowers

To carry my soul, through land and sea,

Letting the wind disperse it again

As it had once dispersed my life.

Translated from Arabic (From my collection ‘Awraq al Shatat’ published in Tunis 2002)