‘One remembers one’s innocence’ (Last drawings by children who were killed) Photo: | Artwork by Indian conceptual artist Mithu Sen ‘One remembers one’s innocence’ (Last drawings by children who were killed) Photo: | Artwork by Indian conceptual artist Mithu Sen

Dear Ghassan, Dear Fatin55bmw,

You are both constantly on my mind. I hope you are as well as is possible in these terrible times.

I’m about to begin to reach out to friends for the annual Seagull Books catalogue, and I wanted to start with you. In hope. But not in stress. I completely understand if this is not the time.

Unlike the previous years when I used to share a single ‘provocation’ with our community of affection, this year I’ve decided to write specific texts for the 12 individuals I am inviting to contribute. Sometimes I may share more than one text as a possible choice.

So, here is a text I’ve chosen for you:

I

She was five then. When. She first stumbled. Tripped, actually. Stubbed her toe. Would be even more precise. Accurate. The stumbling. A blessing. The tripping a revelation. Only the toe hurt. For weeks. In pain after this accident. Of fate. This I think is an accurate description of what befell the child. The point being that if she hadn’t. Fallen. Tripped. Stumbled would be more apt. Yes. She may not have discovered the rainbow. To be more accurate. Precise even. She may eventually have stumbled upon it. But not so early. In life. Had the initial stumbling not taken place. The revelation would not have happened. As it turned out she accidentally stepped on a landmine. In a field full of rainbows. Shortly after the war. The one that had drifted into ceasing. Out of sheer exhaustion. Or to be precise. And accurate. The war had stumbled into a roadblock. Yes. The warring nations had run out of their young. The young had all tiptoed into the field. The one with the landmines. And been reincarnated. As rainbows. For it is said that children who die young. Are reborn. Almost immediately. As rainbows. I confess this may not be accurate. Or precise. But it is what I have heard.

She accidentally stepped on a landmine. In a field full of rainbows. Shortly after the war. The one that had drifted into ceasing. Out of sheer exhaustion...The war had stumbled into a roadblock. The warring nations had run out of their young. The young had all tiptoed into the field.

II

A Dream for Our Times

I remember, it was an old projector. The kind that shuddered. With each revolution of the reel. I also remember, there was no particular chronology. Or fixed order. To play them. No fixed dream. Only a dim memory. Of stepping outside the dream I am dreaming. Into another. While I continue to dream the one I was dreaming in the first place. Before I wet my feet. In the blood all over the floor. I had to step out of it. Into the clear cold spring. Flowing in the dream. I had just stepped into. The one I had begun to use. To wash my feet. Rid my soles of the blood. Cleanse them. All the while keeping the blood-soaked dream playing behind my eyelids. Like a memory grown dim. Wiped out by constant replay. I continue to step out. My feet wet. From a dream yet to be dreamt. My eyelids swollen. Full of the dream they are rewinding. Like the one before. Trying to rub the blood off my feet. Jumping. Stop. Start. No longer stepping. Out of the dream. Into the blood. The water is no longer a clear spring. Or if it is. It changes swiftly. Into blood blood blood. The reels are out of sync. Again. The film often stops. Out of breath. Or a torn sprocket. Needing to be fixed. Spliced again. Restart. Start. The water in this dream. The one my dim memory is screening. The one I stepped into from the earlier one. Or the one before that. Is rising. It is no longer water. It is. The blood that soaks. Into my memory. Rising. I step into the dream. The one I was dreaming in the first place. Even as I step out of this dream and walk into the next one. The one with the clear spring water. No longer clean. The blood has risen. I no longer remember. That the film has no fixed dream. The projector shudders. Grinding to a halt. As the water drains out of the dream. Drowning me in blood.

Naveen Kishore of Seagull Books speaks to Outlook Editor Chinki Sinha

BY Outlook Web Desk

Fingers crossed . . . and as always, in friendship

Love,

N

Dear Naveen

I chose the second text after multiple readings, from which I took the movement of the film reel, its confused rotation, its trembling, its interruptions, the tremors of the light. The movement of the film reel is the centre on which I leaned.

The ambiguous past, the overlapping of time and uncertainty.

I am sending you two texts in the hope that you will agree with the angle from which I saw the scene, in case you find it appropriate to choose one of them.

Ji-Hyun Yan scored the only South Korean goal that came in the 30th minute of the clash. 

China, meanwhile, have experienced a rollercoaster of results. After a demoralizing 0-3 defeat to India, they bounced back with a 4-2 victory over Malaysia. However, their momentum was short-lived as they faced another loss, this time 2-3 against South Korea.

Love and appreciation,

Ghassan

Time and Forgetting

—Ghassan Zaqtan

Alone, he thinks only of forgetting

Like clumsy counsel, everything around him falls down

Nothing else is happening

He walks the path of departure without the keys to the houses,

without a sigh for the many losses or waiting for night to

inherit ​

the place

The past will fall to the asphalt like bags worn old with wandering

From his shoulders it falls

The names fall​

Then a hole in the wall through which he spies a plain of distant grass ​

and beyond it

grass that will be succeeded by the hills, and then beyond,

beyond the hills,

he will see the old river

A premature fear will fall from the river’s boundaries

Behind the fear, a laugh wilting in the water, the water walking,

the river’s water,

moving bankless along, the banks tripping through

over the low tangles of cane

Beside it, on the dirt, the drowned sun themselves a little in the air

On the side road the voices will hang over the grass and creepers

Their faces turned away, their hands will be taken by a fog; he will not know how it came

Nor how the blood came

The river was roaring. He does not see it

Like a riddle thinking

when he thought that the river’s heart was wounded

by the thoughts of the banks and the sleep of the drowned,

and he thought

again the voice will come. A voice was scolding him

and he was there, near the voice,

summer walking, birds flapping, and he does not see them

as he walks in his maze to forget what he remembered

As events fall from his bags his shadow will fade

Like a cloud he walks and he rises.

The things grow heavy as he grows lighter

They fall and he rises

The things fade, then are no more, save

the river and the drowned who wave his way

The sky is weightless, he will say,

Then time

Then time will descend entire from everything

—Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger

The Statues

—Ghassan Zaqtan

There must be doors to this city

Those who circle its alleys and know its tunnels have yet to find them

rollbit casino

When they dig in the ground they find a dead statue

They knock on a wall and a blind statue steps out

The people who find themselves inside its closed walls

and cramped houses

continue to toil in the markets and knock on the columns

​in the squares and statues

of leaders who never went to war and never won

No one remembers the leaders or their battles

No one can rehearse their feats

There is nothing to buy here

There is no one here to buy or to sell

but the market is full of calls and sellers’ cries

Just voices

The frightened man who has stopped sleeping

tells his nightmares to passers-by

as the statues continue to scale the steps

The statues came here before the people

They were here before the city and before the walls,

says the frightened man

At night we hear the noise of builders we cannot see,

says a woman in the marketplace

In the morning there are new statues, she goes on

The statues climb the steps and pause on the thresholds of the houses

They stare with blind eyes from the windows

First, we must remember,

says the woman in the market

We must remember, she repeats

—Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger

The Seagull Books catalogue is an annual celebration of literature, of design, of writing and reading and unwavering faith in the power of stories to bring people closer, to open hearts and minds to other lives, which on closer inspection prove not to be so ‘other’ after all. This year, publisher Naveen Kishore reached out to 12 people, including Palestinian poet and author Ghassan Zaqtan, inviting them to contribute their writing to the catalogue.

(This appeared in the print as 'The House Of Spirits')55bmw