February: Literature of Love, Heat, & Romance
February is a month to reflect, for better or worse, on love, lust, & romance.
First: As we do every day, we continue to pray, work, and shout for an end to the genocidal decimation of the people and institutions of Gaza. If you have not already seen it, Librarians and Archivists with Palestine have put out an important report detailing the destruction to Gaza’s books, archives, and information workers.
5 We Recommend: Love (& Lust) Stories for Translation
Historical romance: Rimbaud the Abyssinian (رامبو الحبشي), by Haji Jaber. Haji’s Black Foam received strong critical reception in English for its tightly plotted narrative and fresh look at the lives of African migrants in Israel. In this book, Haji tells another story we don’t often hear: the poet Arthur Rimbaud traveling first to Yemen and then Ethiopia, as told through the gaze of his lover, a young Christian Abyssinian woman. Set in the late 1800s, as European colonial powers tighten authoritarian control over East Africa.
Another author of hot and historical romance author we recommend is Reem Bassiouney; her steamy Fatimid Trilogy is forthcoming in Roger Allen’s translation from Dar Arab.
Queer romance: Sadness in my Heart (حزن في قلبي), by Hilal Chouman. I love this visceral, embodied, and tightly paced novel — part literary romance, part family mystery-novel — which shifts between Berlin and Lebanon. Katharine Halls has been awarded a translation grant (Recherchestipendium für Berliner Übersetzerinnen und Übersetzer) by Berlin’s Senatsverwaltung für Kultur to complete an English translation of Hilal’s Sadness In My Heart. You can reach Katharine & Hilal through the 10/11 literary agency. You can read samples in translation both in English and in French.
Bodily explorations: Fig Milk (حليب التين), by Samia Issa. This novel begins in the public toilets in a refugee camp, as Palestinian refugees Rakaad and Fatima are trying to find pleasure in their bodies in neighboring stalls. Although Fatima later finds herself in Dubai, this refugee-camp sex toilet never really leaves her. You can read an except in the anthology on love and lust We Wrote in Symbols, ed. Selma Dabbagh.
Failed romance: Nobody Mourns the City’s Cats (لا أحد يرثي لقطط المدينة), by Muhammad al-Hajj. How has this wry, magical look at love in contemporary Cairo not yet appeared in English translation? It’s a mystery for our times. Read the titular story, on ArabLit, in Yasmine Zohdi’s beautiful translation. Then buy the translation rights! What are you waiting for!
Gulf love stories: Love Stories on al-Asha Street (غراميات شارع الأعشى) by Badriya al-Bishr. There are a lot of fierce and tender love stories set in the Gulf, by Bothayna al-Eissa (Kuwait), Zainab Hefny (Saudi Arabia), Laila Alijohani (Saudi Arabia), and of course Jokha al-Harthi (Oman). Al-Bishr’s quiet Love Stories is compelling for how it braids together love and changes to Saudi society, taking a broad look at Saudis from different economic backgrounds and beliefs. You can read an excerpt, in Sawad Hussain’s translation, on ArabLit.
Famous Writer Couples & Their Love Letters
Ghassan Kanafani & Ghada Samman. The 1992 publication of Ghassan Kanafani’s love letters to Syrian writer Ghada Samman — twenty years after his death — changed the ferociously talented author’s image among Arab readers. You can read one of the letters here, translated by Joseph Schaffer. You can read another translated by Lyne Jraidi. And, if you’re so inclined, you can get the collection of them.
Kahlil Gibran & May Ziadah. This pair, from an earlier generation than Kanafani & Samman, knew each other solely through their romantic letters, which were published in English in 2008.
Radwa Ashour & Mourid Barghouti. Although there is no extant collection of love letters between these two, their work was a constant sending back and forth of affectionate messages, in Radwa’s prose and Mourid’s poetry. Although Radwa’s earlier memoir of her student years (The Journey) has been published in translation, Heavier than Radwa: Biographical Passages has yet to appear.
Alone, between sky
and earth, I think
of Radwa
- Mourid Barghouti A Little Love Poetry: Nizar Qabbani
Nizar Qabbani (1923-1998) was one of the popular twentieth century Arabic love poets.
As Rachel Schine wrote on ArabLit, “Qabbani, who had spent much of his life as a diplomat and ardent Arab nationalist, also spent much of his life as a romantic in more conventional terms, and through verse he brought his world and its muses into vivid, living color. Much of the way in which Qabbani achieved this was by using the language of the everyday, stripped of pretense and elitism. In the plain speech of the two poems presented in translation below (an “Ode to Sadness,” or, Qaṣīdat al-Ḥuzn, and “You Want,” or Turīdīna), one may detect a sort of plaintive hope laced with a countervailing, often tongue-in-cheek cynicism: there is a hope that the narrator can be enough for the woman he adulates, that his words can satisfy, and that she can fulfill him in turn.”
Read:
“The Jasmine Necklace,” tr. Yasmine Seale
“An Ode to Sadness,” tr. Rachel Schine
“You Want,” tr. Rachel Schine
Anti-Love
For the anti-love inclined, Thoraya El-Rayyes has curated a few recommendations.
*The sharp-tongued short stories of Jordanian writer Basma Nsour. For instance, “That Pathetic Woman,” tr. Thoraya El-Rayyes.
Yehia Jaber’s anti-love poem “How I Became a Suicide Bomber,” also tr. El-Rayyes.
Ahmed Taha’s anti-love poem “The Wall of Lost Changes,” also tr. El-Rayyes.
🗓️Upcoming events
The 2024 Muscat International Book Fair is set for February 21 - March 2.
The 2024 Abu Dhabi International Book Fair is set to run April 29 - May 5.
You can find more events on our calendar. Email us at info@arablit.org to add yours.
💰Grants, subsidies, & support
Don’t miss LEILA’s list of grants, subsidies, and support on their new website.
The Sheikh Zayed Book Award offers a translation subsidy for select titles.
If you know if grants or subsidies targeting Arabic literature, please let us know at info@arablit.org.
New issue alert: LSD (Love Sex Desire)
The 36th issue of The Markaz Review focuses on love, sex, and desire, with work by Lebanese erotic writer & politician Joumana Haddad, Palestinian artist Rana Samara, MK Harb, Maryam Haidari, and more.
Find out more at themarkaz.org/review/.
If you can help us…
We are looking for publishers (or other in the literary landscape) interested in taking out paid advertisements in the forthcoming “Gaza! Gaza! Gaza!” issue of ArabLit Quarterly, to help pay our Gazan contributors well. If you have any leads, please contact us at info@arablit.org.