Ashur Etwebi, Libya

Por: Ashur Etwebi
Traductor: Ashur Etwebi

Owls on the Trees

Owls on the trees, they lie in wait
For those lost in names,
And those drowning in the deceitful sea.
Owls lie in wait for an easy feast
Or a broken wing.

To know the cunning of the soul, strand by strand,
As you know the difference between a rose and coriander.
Truth resides in the house of confusion,    
Truth is a single grain of sand,
While lies are dunes upon dunes.
Where to flee when we, the birds, cannot endure hunger!
The granaries of truth are empty, truth does not accumulate,
The granaries of lies are full, lies accumulate.

 
To the World, Its Ladder

To the world, its ladder, and to the sky, its ladder,
Steps here and steps there.
Choose which one steadies your foot,
And which one takes you to thorny, rugged hills,
Pushing you into wars where you are both killer and killed.
Choose as you wish, for in your choice, you reside.
This is the path of confusion, tread by sleeping birds,
This is the path taken by seeds in the rain,
This is the architecture of lovers,
This is the ruin of lovers.
Look closely, what do you see?
The mirror will not tell you, nor will your sight.
Do not ask the river how it left its source in its youth,
Nor ask how it came to its mouth, bent with age and frailty.
Faces resemble each other, hands resemble each other, and so do the eyes of creatures.
Your words leave your mouth only to become forgotten,
And your gaze falls upon something only for it to become forgotten.
There is no certainty in a mouth, nor certainty in an eye.

 
How Could He Not Flee

How could he not flee, having seen death face to face!
No more room for wishes on the kitchen table,
No more door for laughter to depart,
No more words for the rain on the doorstep,
No more taste of seasons in the streets.
His heart became blind, his tongue mute.
The door lock opens from two sides,
One safe, the other hiding a wolf or a lion.
Your right hand knows not your left except in the night.
The garment in the closet, a guardian of dust,
The garment on the body, a body with a hundred tongues.
The garment woven of gold and silver threads,
Speaks with the tongue of gold and silver.
Its streets are wide, its hopes have a thousand open doors.
The torn garment, all it offers is a measure of wheat or a meager coin.
Your hand in the water basin cannot distinguish between salty and fresh water,
And your eye in the presence of the king cannot distinguish between a magician’s staff and a prophet’s staff.

 
Woman approaching

Everyone saw the woman and her horse approaching
A beetle limping 
A lizard with many wrinkles around its neck
A jumping mouse whose home is by the dune opposite the high rock
A shiny gum on the trunk of the tamarisk tree
A sand that stretched its body close to the horizon
A bird with black wings and a white belly
A lizard lying near its burrow in the shade of the broom bush
A sun climbing step by step
A cloud walking slowly    

Woman approaches
 Horse approaches
A hum 
A neigh
A hum
A neigh

 
Who Forgot to Hold the Thread of His Soul

Who forgot to hold the thread of his soul,
Was lost, and everything he did turned upside down.
Go to his house, all the threads of weaving are in his hands,
You may choose from them what you wish with your heart, tongue, and soul.
He who was a sun in the heart of the shadow, comes close and moves away,
Like a crescent, like a phantom.
Endless traps and traps,
Your peace is an illusion, your war is an illusion,
Your pride is an illusion, your shame is an illusion.
Water pointed to the thirsty when it saw him,
Wine pointed to the drunk when it saw him—
Come closer, man, look,
The scent of every wood is in its smoke,
And the sun points to the sun,
And the shadow, like a tale, brings sleep.
Come closer, man, look,
How in the house of the sun,
The moon splits lightly like a spider’s thread.
The sun of the world is strange, unlike any other,
The sun of the soul has no yesterday,
And your sun was carried by beetles to the top of the dune.

Ashur Etwebi was born in Libya in 1952. He completed his medical degree in Tripoli and, in 1991, received his doctorate degree from University College Galway, Ireland. Etwebi works as a consultant physician and is a renowned writer, poet, and translator.

His first collection of poetry Qsaed Al-Shorfa (tr.: Balcony poems) appeared in 1993. Since then, Etwebi has published seven more books of poetry, five volumes of translations, and a novel. Several of his works have been translated into English and have been included in international collections and magazines. His poems reflect the culture, landscape, and history of Libya and describe everyday life in his home country. Linguistically, however, he has adopted a very innovative approach. He experiments with syntax and phrases and plays with language, which he composes in ever-new ways by the extensive use of neologisms. He thus combines the traditional Libyan art of poetry with modern elements. His poems are a tightrope walk, a continuous interplay between reality and illusion. The dreams and visions of his characters encounter facts of and references to everyday life, and his works are often characterized by a socio-political dimension. Christopher Merrill, the Director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, where Etwebi was a guest in 2006, describes his poem "A Flute That Voices the Spirit’s Moan and the Body’s Lament" as "a prophetic work, composed not long before the Arab Spring, that is at once a surrealist fable, a meditation on the departed, and a sketch of an escape route from Qaddafi’s nightmarish regime". Some characteristics of his poems can also be found in his novel Dardadeen (2001) about five young boys. From their perspective, the reader gets an idea of life in the old town of Tripoli. The story is told in a single sentence that extends across 113 pages. Since the novel was written in Libyan dialect, rather than in Classical Arabic, it has been celebrated as a turning point in the literature of the country. Conservative guardians of the language, however, criticized it severely. A selection of his poems appeared in English translation in 2011: Poems from Above the Hill.

Etwebi is Senior Lecturer at the Medical Department of the University of Zawia, cofounder of the Libyan National Cancer Institute, Sabratha, and a member of the Alliance of Libyan Writers and Intellectuals. In April 2012, he made one of his dreams come true by organizing the first international festival of literature in Tripoli after the end of the dictatorship. Renowned writers and literary scholars from different parts of the world honored his invitation. In 2015, Ashur Etwebi is a guest author in Trondheim, where he is translating Norwegian poems into Arabic.

Bio by literaturfestival.com