"To Live in the Arab World, You Need to Shut Up."* Muhammad Al-Maghut is dead! I was most distressed to hear the news that Muhammad Al-Maghut has passed away. Just last summer, I bought his last book of poems, and was most excited. I could not wait to come back and translate some of his poems. For more than 10 years, he was living in total isolation, refusing to meet journalists or even friends. He only came out of his self-imposed isolation in the last two years. Only 2 weeks ago, he traveled to Dubai to receive the `Uways prize (big prize). He was certainly a very interesting poet; the most humorous and ironic, in my opinion. Most irreverent, he was: In 2001, in an interview with An-Nahar (the right-wing sectarian Christian newspaper), he requested at the end of the interview: "Urinate over my tomb". He once said that he never loved or hated anybody except poor people, and was very sensitive to the class situation in society although he never was a Marxist, or anything for that matter by way of ideology. He loved life, as they say, and continued to enjoy cigarettes and alcohol until the end of his life. He mixed whiskey, gin, and wine in one glass--and was always smoking. In poetry, he has a very distinctive style: and he contributed through his poems and his scripts to the worlds of cinema, theatre, novel (one novel), and TV comedies. He was a nihilist: somebody who can't be categorized or classified. Early in his life he was imprisoned for association with SSNP but he did not last, and never read SSNP booklets--he talks about that in this interview which reveals some of his very interesting personality. He could not last in anything; he was beyond control, he was out of control. He was associated with the Shi`r magazine, but he was his own person, always. He was grumpy, but did not act for the cameras or the press coverage. He liked to provoke and push, and in the age of Saudi media or the Ba`th, somebody like Maghut has to be marginalized. This is the age of `Abdur-Rahman Ar-Rashid: the Arab neo-cons or whoever is willing to please the House of Saud, and their American patrons. Ironically, Syria and Iraq produced such talents, and yet they had to operate under the stifling tyranny of the Ba`th Party. Maghut did not study formally: he dropped out of school. He could not sit still, and when his father insisted that he attends some agricultural vocational school, he quickly fled to pursue his dreams in Beirut, where the folks of Shi`r magazine received him. I was quite annoyed today that An-Nahar's literary editor, Jumanah Haddad, could not but say that: "how much he loved Lebanon and how much he loved Beirut." She could not get herself to tell that truth: that he loved SYRIA. He loved Syria, first and foremost. His daughter who lives in the US is named Sham. SHAM, Ms. Haddad, not Lubnan. I always quote Maghut on Adonis (I think that Sinan told me this): when asked about Adonis, Maghut would say: "Baddu Nobel." (He wants Nobel). He once was asked about the best Egyptian poet, and he said: Su`ad Husni. I have translated several poems by Maghut, and you may retrieve them by searching the blog above (above, I said). I will post below my translation of one of his old poems (and the title is also the title of his first book):
Sadness Under the Moonlight
"O spring arriving through her eyes
O canary traveling under the moonlight,
take me to her,
the poem of love, or dagger's stab
I am homeless and wounded
I love rain, and the moaning
of faraway waves
I wake up from the depth of sleep,
to think about the knee of
a delicious woman that I saw one day
to drink wine, and write poetry,
Say to habibti Layla
with the drunk mouth,
and the silk feet,
that I am sick and I miss her.
I glance at the traces of footsteps on my heart.
...
Goodbye o pages, o night,
o red windows,
Mount my gallow high at the sunset,
when my heart is calm like a pigeon..
beautiful like a blue rose on a hill,
I want to die splattered,
and my eyes filled with tears
Let the necks rise for me
even once in a lifetime,
I am filled with letters,
and bloody headlines,
in my childhood,
I used to dream of a garb
lined with gold
and a horse that races with me
through vineyards and rocky hills.
But now
I wonder under the street lamps,
moving like harlots,
from a street to street,
desiring a wide crime,
and a white ship,
taking me between her salty breasts,
to faraway lands,
where a bar and a green tree
are at every step,
and a brown girl,
spending the night
alone with her thirsty breast."
*A saying by Maghut.