Najah Awadallah: Sad Song

Another beautiful piece from Najah Awadallah, whose short story appeared on Tuesday.

SAD SONG
(Five days under Attack)


First day-
The violin bow is completely taut, conversing with its strings, while a gigantic bird delivers its first blows, and the residential high-rise trembles…with a shudder the violin’s bow snaps backwards, though quickly I retune it in order to control the fear in my music teacher’s eyes. I lead her to the safest spot in the house.

I smile to ease her tension. They’re working and demolishing upstairs while we play music.

Hysterical thoughts overwhelm me: What if we went outside and played a little over the rubble? Will this bird chirp and flap its wings away from us? She smiles a sad smile, we restart playing a piece from Tchaikovsky’s “Sad Song,” the bow falls in sorrow on the violin, while wrath pours from the sky.

I say goodbye to my teacher before the lesson is over. I fear for her safety. I say goodbye until the next lesson.


Second day-
While the violin is frightened in its box, the metal birds play their music from the score of Gaza’s remains.

In a book I find shelter from a death I see and smell, a book in which I don’t want to be the heroine or the narrator, or even a street corner, just a period or a comma, a question or an exclamation mark at most.

I ask myself: Is it fear for life or escape from it into paper where I alone hold the decision to end the sentence or turn the page?!


Third day-
I look out of my forlorn window at the street that pedestrian feet have abandoned. It is empty of the noisy vendors who had often annoyed me and I had often assailed them with a thousand curses. Now I implore a single sound so I can feel alive and so the city can feel the living are still ringing the bells of life within it.

I spot a herd of goats whose shepherd risked his life in order to feed them what remains of grass untouched by rain. Joy ululates in me like a child when I hear the little goats bleat. I delight in them as I hide behind the curtains.


Fourth day-
The sun wakes me from my sleep and I wash my face with its light. I feel pleasure in the notion that humans are unable to invent a devilish idea and conceal it from those they war with and hate. Exhausted, dark Gaza has had enough night.


Fifth day-
The molten bullets are still pouring over the city. They grant the foreigners the right to leave and exempt them from war. I call my teacher and her husband tells me she has already left. The violin has left the city. Music raises its arms up, in surrender, to the bullets.

I get my violin out of its coffin and play “Sad Song.” My lids are swollen. I am ashamed to tell my husband I’m crying over my teacher’s departure and my violin’s aloneness.

Only now has Gaza become orphaned.

Translated by Fady Joudah.

Najah Awadallah: A Story

Najah Awadallah is an experienced storyteller, having worked in television design, documentary filmmaking and as a writer.

---

She woke up in the morning to the usual screaming and commotion of her five children. She wished she could remain in bed, even just for a few minutes, to let herself feel that it was actually a holiday for her. It was not to be, however, as her children’s screaming in the salon adjacent to her bedroom scattered this tiny desire. She feared that the echoes of their quarrel might reach her husband’s bed and deprive him of the satisfaction of sleeping in the morning.

She wondered why was it that every time the morning opened its box of tricks and took out light and the sun to illuminate the world, it did not remember to illuminate the hearts of those around her and spread peace and quiet through them. She put this query aside and began to think about what awaited her on this holiday that was not going to finish before it finished her. When she went back over what awaited her, she sighed so deeply from her heart that she frightened the birds taking refuge by her bedroom window. How she wished, in that instant, that she had wings like theirs that could take her to the sea to wash her feet and refresh her soul. To steal from time an hour that would be for herself only.

Ever since she had opened her eyes to the world, she could see the sea but had never enjoyed its water. She saw it as if it were a portrait she was forbidden to touch. Mere footsteps separated her from it, yet she would only go with her family to clean its salty sand and water off her children’s bodies. She would clean them with joy, smelling the odor of the sea ion them. More footsteps separated her from the sea, yet she could not embrace it. And even if she wanted to, she would have to put on all the clothes in her closet to hide anything possibly scandalous. So she cut short the whole matter and muted her desire whenever the sea enticed her with its vigor and blueness. It saddened her to the point of madness that her sea was not like the ones she saw on television screens. She had heard that her sea’s beach was one of the cleanest in the world. Maybe. But she was searching for the happiness that shows all over people’s faces.

The screams of the little ones shook her awake from her daydream. She had a long laugh, as her eyes welled up with tears.

Translated by Suneela Mubayi.

More Writing from Gaza

I hope you've been enjoying this past week's pieces by Atef Abu Said and Soumaya Susi.

The process of collating this portfolio has been exhilarating, but abstract, circulating through the myriad loops of the web, with poems and stories flying to and fro between Gaza, London, the US, and the ether. The 'net creates the illusion of a nationless globe in which information, emotion and creativity can flow -- and yet it also reinforces national boundaries. Issues of censorship, access, language, and politics all delimit and define individuals' roles in the worldwide web -- we are not equal netizens. And as in nations, so online: in the last few weeks I've read about teams of Israeli and Zionist hackers working to take down Palestinian websites, and vice-versa. Blogs boil over: too often, they serve as mouthpieces preaching to the converted and provoking the unconvertable, rather than fora for the kinds of discussion that can change minds and create alliances.

There are also amazing sites online like Poetry International Web that use the network of global connections to increase the flow of creativity between readers and writers around the world, and to give hope to the argument that the internet can provide a voice for those who would otherwise be silenced. In doing so, it's an extension of what poetry and song have always done: like a news ballad circulating from mouth to ear, the web has come to provide us with globally common expressions (such as shoe-throwing) that speak truth to power, as well as a place to gather (virtually) and speak them. Many writers are eager for any space that allows their words to enlarge, to echo back from readers.

The next two upcoming writers are no exception: Nasr Jamil Shaath is, at 29, not only a widely-published and award-winning poet, but also a critic and editor who promotes the work of other writers of his generation in international journals, while Najah Awadallah has the experience of reaching out to large audiences as a documentary filmmaker and programme designer for the Palestinian Television and Broadcasting Authority.

There's still work to come from Khaled Jumaa, Fatena al-Gharra, Khaled Abedallah, Yousef Alqedra and Naser Rabah, from translators including Sarah Maguire, Isis Nusair, Ali Issa, Fady Joudah, and Randa Jarrar. Keep checking iN.