{"id":44907,"date":"2014-07-21T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T11:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=44907"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:33:39","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:33:39","slug":"sleeping-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/07\/sleeping-in-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Sleeping in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Najwan<\/a>

Najwan Darwish. Photo by V\u00e9ronique Vercheval.<\/p><\/div>\n

Fado, I\u2019ll sleep like people do
\nwhen shells are falling
\nand the sky is torn like living flesh
\nI\u2019ll dream, then, like people do
\nwhen shells are falling:
\nI\u2019ll dream of betrayals<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll wake at\u00a0noon\u00a0and ask the radio
\nthe questions people ask of it:
\nIs the shelling over?
\nHow many were killed?<\/p>\n

But my tragedy, Fado,
\nis that there are two types of people:
\nthose who cast their suffering and sins
\ninto the streets so they can sleep
\nand those who collect the people\u2019s suffering and sins
\nmold them into crosses, and parade them
\nthrough the streets of Babylon and Gaza and Beirut
\nall the while crying
\nAre there any more to come?
\nAre there any more to come?<\/em><\/p>\n

Two years ago I walked through the streets
\nof Dahieh, in southern Beirut
\nand dragged a cross
\nas large as the wrecked buildings
\nBut who today will lift a cross
\nfrom the back of a weary man in Jerusalem?<\/p>\n

The earth is three nails
\nand mercy a hammer:
\nStrike, Lord
\nStrike with the planes<\/p>\n

Are there any more to come?<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: Amir Farshad Ebrahimi\/Flickr<\/p><\/div>\n

__________________________<\/p>\n

Used by permission from <\/em>Nothing More to Lose (New York Review Books<\/a>, 2014)<\/em><\/p>\n

Translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid.<\/em><\/p>\n

Najwan Darwish, one of the foremost Arabic-language poets of his generation, was born in Jerusalem in 1978. He has worked as the editor of two cultural magazines in Palestine and was a cultural critic for the prominent Lebanese newspaper\u00a0Al-Akhbar\u00a0from 2006 to 2012. Darwish has been an organizer and advisor for many public arts projects, among them the Palestine Festival of Literature. In 2009, he founded a literary press in Jerusalem, and he is currently involved in establishing a new pan-Arab newspaper, where he will be the chief editor of the arts and culture section. In 2009, he was on the Hay Festival Beirut\u2019s list of the \u201cBest 39 Arab authors under the age of 39.\u201d He lives in Jerusalem.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kareem James Abu-Zeid<\/em> has translated novels by the Lebanese writer Rabee Jaber and the Sudanese writer Tarek Eltayeb, as well as the poetry collection The Iraqi Nights by Dunya Mikhail. Abu-Zeid also translates from French and German, and has taught university courses in four different languages in Berkeley, Mannheim, and Heidelberg. He works as a freelance translator and editor.<\/em><\/p>\n

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 blogthisrock.blogspot.pt<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fado, I\u2019ll sleep like people do
\nwhen shells are falling
\nand the sky is torn like living flesh
\nI\u2019ll dream, then, like people do<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}