Poems from Instructions Within

Randee Silv
February 2016

Ashraf Fayadh

mostlydamaged450Damage, video projection on the ceiling © photo from Mostly Visible

A Space in the Void

Everything has weight.
Your weight is well known to the back walls
because your heavy shadow doesn’t give the asphalt, the paint, or the writings stuck on the windows a chance to appear.
You also have space, significant space,
in the void.

The air is polluted, and the dumpsters are too,
and your soul, too, ever since it got mixed up with carbon.
And your heart, ever since the arteries were blocked
and it refused to grant citizenship
to the blood coming back from your head.

Without your memory, you’d lose much of your weight.
You need to follow a proper diet
to lose more of you.

Make up your mind quickly,
because the earth’s gravity
doesn’t wait long.
Hint: replace the time factor with your name
so that you find the right way to throw the last page
of your diary
right into the rubbish bin.

You consume enough air for two new-born babies
if the screaming was equal,
given that the air molecules around you
carry sound badly, and your throat
needs repairing.

A beggar woman of more than fifty displays her dignity in
a rag studded with coins. She prays that you, and that
pretty woman who happens to be walking beside you,
will soon be blessed with a child,
to fill another part of the void
in return for a coin.

The time has come for you to pick up the pace, not sexually,
and for you to change your smelly socks.

A scientific fact: bacteria grow rapidly.

Succumb to sleep.
because the time has come for you to melt, and dissolve,
to take the shape agreed for the alienation into which you’re have been poured.
Evaporate, condense,
and go back to your void,
to occupy your usual space
in the You.

Equal opportunities

A son and a daughter.
The mother prefers the son to the daughter.
The son will stand by his mother through the vicissitudes of life.
The daughter will produce another son to stand by her side.

An aphorism 

To be in love is not to be a bird in the hand of the one you love,
better for them than ten in the bush.
A bird in the bush is better than ten in the hand,
from the birds’ point of view.

Conclusions

Sometimes love is like a meal to someone who’s been fasting
at other times it’s like a new pair of sports shoes given
to a disabled child.
Love, in general, is a deal that brings much loss
to all parties.

Logic 

The old door applauds the wind by clapping
for the dance it has performed, accompanied by the trees.
The old door doesn’t have hands
and the trees haven’t been to dancing school.
And the wind is an invisible creature,
even when it’s dancing with the trees.

Poems from Ashraf Fayadh’s Instructions Within (2008) translated by Jonathan Wright

Disputed

1
petroleum is harmless, except for the trace of poverty it leaves behind

on that day, when the faces of those who discover another oil well go dark,
when life is blown into your heart to extract more oil off your soul
for public use..
That.. is.. the promise of oil, a true promise.

the end..

2
it was said: settle there..
but some of you are enemies for all
so leave it now

look up to yourselves from the bottom of the river;
hose of you on top should provide some pity for those underneath..
the displaced is helpless,
like blood that no one wants to buy in the oil market!

3
pardon me, forgive me
for not being able to pump more tears for you
for not mumbling your name in nostalgia.
I directed my face at the warmth of your arms
I got no love but you, you alone, and am the first of your seekers.

4
night,
you are inexperienced with Time
lacking rain drops
that could wash away all the remains of your past
and liberate you of what you had called piety..
of that heart.. capable of love,
of play,
and of intersecting with your obscene withdrawal from that flabby religion
from that fake Tanzeel
from gods that had lost their pride..

5
you burp, more than you used to..
as the bars bless their visitors
with recitations and seductive dancers..

accompanied with the DJ
you recite your hallucinations
and speak your praise for these bodies swinging to the verses of exile.

6
he’s got no right to walk however
or to swing however or to cry however.

he’s got no right to open the window of his soul,
to renew his air, his waste, and his tears..

you too tend to forget that you are
a piece of bread

7
on the day of banishment, they stand naked,
while you swim in the rusty pipes of sewage, barefoot..

this could be healthy for the feet
but not for earth

8
prophets have retired
so do not wait for yours to come to you

and for you,
for you the monitors bring their daily reports
and get their high salaries..

how important money is
for a life of dignity

9
my grandfather stands naked everyday,
without banishment, without divine creation..
I have already been resuscitated without a godly blow in my image.
I am the experience of hell on earth..

earth
is the hell prepared for refugees.

10
your mute blood will not speak up
as long as you pride yourself in death
as long as you keep announcing -secretly- that you have put your soul
at the hands of those who do not know much..

losing your soul will cost time,
much longer than what it takes to calm
your eyes that have cried tears of oil

Poems from Instructions Within (2008) translated by Mona Kareem later banned from distribution in Saudi Arabia

Ashraf Fayadh, Palestinian poet, artist & curator living in Saudi Arabia, was first arrested in 2013 after a complaint was filed accusing him of voicing blasphemous remarks during a dispute in a café. He was released then rearrested on charges of apostasy as well as for violating the Saudi anti-cyber crime law because photos of himself posing with women at art events were found on his phone. After being sentenced to four years in prison, his case went back to court, where he was then given the death penalty. This set into motion an international campaign supported by writers, actors and artists in an appeal for his release. Fayadh explained to The Guardian that the poems in his book, Instructions Within, were “just about me being [a] Palestinian refugee … about cultural and philosophical issues. But the religious extremists explained it as destructive ideas against God.”  As of February 2nd, his death sentence has been overturned, but Fayadh is still being charged with apostasy and now faces eight years in prison along with 800 lashes over 16 sessions. Another appeal on his behalf has been filed. For more information about Fayadh’s case and that of other poets & writers with similar struggles go to PEN’s website, the leading international literary and human rights organization.

As a member of the British-Saudi art group Edge of Arabia, Fayadh has curated Rhizoma at the Venice Biennale (2013) and the exhibition Mostly Visible in Jeddah that featured 24 contemporary Saudi artists.

We aim to provide a clear vision of the radical transformation in Saudi art, which is now more affiliated with its roots, to the real culture represented by the awareness of the different living conditions in Saudi Arabia. This awareness is creating a strong message from a new generation of artists to formulate art in their own way.– Ashraf Fayadh

 

http://www.pen.org/press-release/2016/02/02/death-penalty-replaced-jail-time-flogging-poet-ashraf-fayadh

 


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