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Lamia Abbas Amara (1929-2021): Pillar of Iraqi Poetry, Famed for Tenderness, Seductiveness, and Power

By Elie Chalala

Lamia Abbas Amara rose to prominence among a group of poets who ushered in the free verse movement in Arabic poetry. She was not only a major cultural figure and freethinker, but also a pillar of contemporary poetry in Iraq alongside great poets like Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and Nazik al-Malaika. After years in exile, the poet died at 92 in a California hospital due to illness. In the words of Farouk Youssef of al-Arab newspaper, Lamia is best known for her “poetic tenderness, female seduction, and strong presence on stage,” becoming an important icon of Iraqi poetry.

Essays and Features

On Translated Arabic Books: Novelist Hoda Barakat’s ‘Voices of the Lost’ Catches a Glimpse of the World Refugee Crisis

By Naomi Pham

Millions of people risk life and limb to escape their countries through the sea and other means as a global refugee crisis unfolds. The 2019 winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Hoda Barakat’s “Voices of the Lost” (Yale University Press, 2021), recently translated from Arabic into English by Marilyn Booth, paints a complex picture of displacement, war, and hope in the bleakest moments among immigrants and refugees.

Books

Revisiting Youssef al-Sayigh: Poet of Sorrows and Master of Contradictions

By Naomi Pham

Iraqi poet Youssef al-Sayigh is one of the many poets who lived and died as a stranger, regardless of his important contributions, which were mostly neglected until after his death in Damascus on December 12, 2005. Al-Sayigh led a life riddled with contradiction, abandoned by his peers, friends, and his government, effectively forced out of the public cultural scene. A poet, novelist, playwright, essayist and painter, he lived a life filled with political and personal tragedy. He was a contemporary of Saadi Yusuf, Abdul Razzaq Abdul Wahed, Musa al-Naqdi and others. This generation followed Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Nazik al-Malaika and Abdul-Wahhab al-Bayati, the founders of the free verse movement of modern Iraqi poetry. Although al-Sayigh’s biography was published post-humously in Egypt in 2005 by his friend Atheer Muhammad Shehab through Dar al Shorouk, much of the poet’s impact during his life was neglected by Iraqi cultural associations because of his affiliation with the Baath party.

Essays and Features

On New Books: Navigating 'Silence': Syrian Refugee Woman Contends with Trauma and Memory as an Immigrant

Trauma changes people. For the unnamed narrator of Layla AlAmmar’s second novel, trauma pushes her to choose silence. “Silence is a Sense” (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2021) follows a Syrian woman who escaped from Syria to the United Kingdom, settling into a quiet English town. She spends her days observing the traumas of her neighbors: from the man who barely ever turns on his lights, to another obsessed with exercising, to an abusive man who beats his wife and children. Her voyeurism feeds into her writing — her only form of expressing herself. She submits essays to a “newsmagazine with a big name” under the pseudonym “the Voiceless,” often discussing the refugee crisis. But as her editor Josie increasingly probes the narrator for intimate details and memories of her experiences in Syria, she begins to question herself: how much of her mind’s ability to make sense of what happened does she trust?

Books

On New Arabic Books: Shocking “Disclosures” Put Focus on Suffering of Syrian Women Inside and Outside of Assad’s Prisons

By Elie Chalala

“Bawh al- Dahaya” (“The Disclosures of Victims”) is not available in English to the best of my knowledge, though its subject matter ranks at the top of human rights violations in war zones. Thus any contribution from historians, research analysts, or journalists on the victims of war are telling about the crimes committed by the Syrian regime against its people. One should not exclude the various attempts to address these stories, whether through films, press interviews, or coverage by other mediums. These stories could enrich the documentation of these crimes regardless of the religious and cultural taboos surrounding them.

Books

Habermas vs. the Sheikh Zayed Book Award: An Intellectual or Soft Power Conflict!

By 
Michael Teague

Jürgen Habermas's decision to reject the Sheikh Zayed Book Award's "Cultural Personality of the Year" prize set off a heated debate in the Arab press. The most famous remaining representative of the second generation of the Frankfurt school, despite his considerable bibliography, Habermas was not well-known at the popular level in the Arab world. After his initial acceptance and then rejection of the Sheikh Zayed award, however, intellectuals in the employ of the United Arab Emirates criticized the German philosopher vociferously. 

Can a Nation Plagued by Mass Corruption, Decaying Institutions, and Rabid Sectarianism Deliver Justice For those Lost and Victimized by the August Explosion?

By 
Elie Chalala

One cannot miss the irony of the Lebanese officials allegedly responsible for what is possibly the third or fourth largest non-nuclear explosion in the world hiding behind “immunity” from a crime that claimed over 207 people and injured 6,000, while devastating large parts of the Lebanese capital. The Beirut Port explosion in August 2020 measured about one-twentieth the size of Hiroshima’s atomic bomb, according to the BBC. As its one-year anniversary approaches, many Lebanese are still struggling to hold accountable those responsible for the blast.

Important, Sometimes Controversial Iraqi Poet Saadi Youssef (1934 - 2021) Requests a ‘Funeral Without Mourners’

By 
Elie Chalala
 
The legendary and controversial Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef died at 87 in his Harefield home outside of London on June 12 from lung cancer. The poet, whose multitude of works encompassed poetry, prose, literary criticism, translation, and memoir, leaves decades’ worth of work penned in exile and translated into several languages, among them English, French, German, and Italian.

Controversy Over Mohammad Shukri’s Literary Legacy Outlives the Author

By 
Al Jadid Staff
Many students and scholars of Arabic literature would recall the debates on the books of Mohammad Shukri (1935-2003) late last century and a part of the early 21st century. The debates centered primarily on Shukri’s picaresque approach, which included harsh depictions of repression, marginalization, deprivation, morality, breaching taboos and censorship, and of course, the banning of his books in most Arab countries. We can categorize many of his books as autobiographical, and the opposition was not to this type of literature but to the language and details he used. His spontaneity violated all technical and artistic norms in both Moroccan and Arab literature, especially in “The Bare Bread,” “Age of Mistakes,” and “Faces,” his autobiographical trilogy.
 

The Judiciary, Latest Indicator of Lebanon’s Impending Collapse:

A Judge Runs Amok
By 
Elie Chalala
The collapse of the Lebanese state grows imminent as news of different sectors unraveling emerges every day. The latest crisis reached the judiciary, which — though already known for its politicization and sectarianism — currently deals with a judge whose erratic, politicized personality violates all the norms of judicial behaviors and traditions. This controversial judge is Mount Lebanon state prosecutor, Ghada Aoun.
 

In a Statistical Vacuum, Speculating on the Arab-American Vote, 2016 vs. 2020

By 
Elie Chalala
 
While much of the country — and even the world — focused on the last U.S. election and remained engrossed even after its results and consequences, the picture of this historic event in the Arab world was unlike anything that was happening here. Regrettably, the distorted analysis and coverage by Arab media influenced to some extent the attitudes and electoral choices of many Arab immigrants in the U.S.

Beirut’s People Still Waiting: The Government That Left a Bomb on Their Doorstep Now Leaves Them Out in the Cold

By 
Al Jadid Staff
 
The never-ending reports from Lebanon on its social and economic crises are perplexing. Despite the gravity of the situation, officials sitting at the top refuse to relinquish or even reform the system. Recent news reports reveal a collapsing banking sector, a threatened educational system, and an impoverished and broken health system, all while the country watches a judiciary circus played daily on TV and social media, demolishing whatever legitimacy the courts still hold.

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