Michael Karam

on translating Khaled Juma

This poem haunts me. It was written in 2011 but feels as if it were written yesterday, or tomorrow, or the day after. The speaker is a Gaza that haunts us, that knows we are watching, that knows the words it speaks are unbearable, and that the new words it will speak will be unbearable too. This poem was written in 2011. While Arabic is a more gendered language, gender feels less pronounced to me in Arabic, and it becomes more obvious in English. Death is suddenly male in translation.

Where the English says “echoes of hooves,” the Arabic says “remains of neighs,” but neighs do not seem as loud in English. I also did not want “neigh” to rhyme with “ney,” the wind instrument common to the region. There is one cloud in the original Arabic, and I almost pluralized the cloud in English. The title could have been “an excerpt of what Gaza would soon say,” which more aligns with the true meaning of the original, but I wanted the reader to hear the word “little” twice, the way the word for little is repeated twice in the Arabic. The word for little in Arabic has two “L” sounds too. The speaker prays without an imam and without followers. I did not want the religious connotation to distract from how common, how lonely, it can be to pray.

The first verse was the hardest. The Arabic implies that death was playing with two children, that these two children are in excess of what truth politicians can bear—that these children are too much, that they are extra. The translation, “disposable,” feels harsh. It also feels appropriate.

The line “and his mother’s tragedy was that he died before her by two songs,” is why I picked this poem. I hope it haunts you too.

Thank you to Nick Capri and Professor Taije Silverman for their edits.