Translations

[suddenly my friend]

by Rania Mamoun
Translated from Arabic by Yasmine Seale

suddenly my friend
fell silent
and went
leaving open
before me the gate of doubt
why—
what—
why another—
no answer

in my next life I hope to be
an evergreen somewhere remote
my friends the earth
and birds and squirrels
sun wind stars
I would stay up with God
each night
by the moon’s glow
and we’d slip
between galaxies
unobstructed

by day I would extend
my shadow to a passerby
to lie down in and ease
the strain of being
and when he turns his back to go
I will not suffer pain
nor disappointment
I will not be afraid
of weightlessness
of floating in the void
not even
of the questions
no,
people will pass
and just as easily
move on
see,
when I am a tree
oh then,
there will be no risk
no room for doubt

Rania Mamoun is a Sudanese writer and human rights activist. She has published two novels in Arabic—Green Flash (2006) and Son of the Sun (2013)—as well as a short story collection, Thirteen Months of Sunrise, which was translated into English by Elisabeth Jaquette and published by Comma Press in 2018. Her stories and articles have been widely published and she has also worked as an editor on the culture pages of Al-Thaqafi magazine.

Yasmine Seale is a British-Syrian writer living in Paris. Her essays, poetry, visual art, and translations from Arabic and French appear widely, including in Harper’s, the Paris Review, and the Times Literary Supplement. She is currently working on a new translation of One Thousand and One Nights for W. W. Norton. Agitated Air: Poems after Ibn Arabi, a collaborative project with Robin Moger, is forthcoming from Tenement Press.

FROM Volume 70, Number 2

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