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kikireads's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
I've never had less than a 5 star experience with any ALQ issue and I've yet to be disappointed. For a literary magazine that primarily features translated work, mirrors prove to be rich theme as object and concept.
Any issue that includes the winner and finalists in the ArabLit Short Story Prize is always a particular treat. I have my favourites but never any quarrels with the selected winner which is more than I can state for most lit prizes. The standouts for me included a woman's changing relationship with hersef, a stranger and a Hemingway story (The Hemingway Man), a Morrocan immigrant couple in Turkey (The Baffling Case of the Man Called Ahmet Yilmaz), and a story of femme narrators who share their personal stories of self-realisation and family conflicts (actually is it multiple or a single narrator is a question I must answer through re-reads anyway it is You Can Call Me Velvet).
I could go on to detail every single contribution that delighted and provoked greater curiosity in turns. Instead, I leave you with excerpts from a poem that I cannot read without tears welling: Ash-sha'b Yurid Isqat an-Nizam by Hilal Badr (a pen name for a Syrian poet), translated by Ghada Alatrash.
It begins:
A shout awakens me; someone is yelling, "Ash-sha'b yurid isqat an-nizam [The People want to bring down the regime]." Does anyone believe this? I don't.
And ends:
As for me—a poet who has nothing to do with politics, has never belonged to a political party in his life, and is neither pro or anti-regime—I confess to you that I may not fully grasp the meaning of this cry and whether it came at the right time or if it were a product of mere excitement. But what I do know is that it came following all the other cries, "We love you, Syria," "Freedom, Freedom, Freedom," "The Syrian people will not be humiliated," and "There is no fear after today." One cry that harvested them all; one cry that bundled them all together as one and clenched its fist tight around them; one cry, the mother of all cries, shouted by the people. An outcry, as in the words of those who like poetic metaphors, that darted from the furnace of their hearts, passing through the lining of their larynxes, solidified and hardened by their clenching teeth, anointed with the saliva and oil of their tongues, and shot like a bullet from the nozzle of their mouths. And here I am, standing at my windowsill, hidden in complete darkness, and I can hear an outcry from a man I do not recognize. I stare at his reflection in the glass, but I don't see him, for he is still hiding inside of me; "Ash-sha'b yurid isqat an-nizam [The People want to bring down the regime]."
Any issue that includes the winner and finalists in the ArabLit Short Story Prize is always a particular treat. I have my favourites but never any quarrels with the selected winner which is more than I can state for most lit prizes. The standouts for me included a woman's changing relationship with hersef, a stranger and a Hemingway story (The Hemingway Man), a Morrocan immigrant couple in Turkey (The Baffling Case of the Man Called Ahmet Yilmaz), and a story of femme narrators who share their personal stories of self-realisation and family conflicts (actually is it multiple or a single narrator is a question I must answer through re-reads anyway it is You Can Call Me Velvet).
I could go on to detail every single contribution that delighted and provoked greater curiosity in turns. Instead, I leave you with excerpts from a poem that I cannot read without tears welling: Ash-sha'b Yurid Isqat an-Nizam by Hilal Badr (a pen name for a Syrian poet), translated by Ghada Alatrash.
It begins:
A shout awakens me; someone is yelling, "Ash-sha'b yurid isqat an-nizam [The People want to bring down the regime]." Does anyone believe this? I don't.
And ends:
As for me—a poet who has nothing to do with politics, has never belonged to a political party in his life, and is neither pro or anti-regime—I confess to you that I may not fully grasp the meaning of this cry and whether it came at the right time or if it were a product of mere excitement. But what I do know is that it came following all the other cries, "We love you, Syria," "Freedom, Freedom, Freedom," "The Syrian people will not be humiliated," and "There is no fear after today." One cry that harvested them all; one cry that bundled them all together as one and clenched its fist tight around them; one cry, the mother of all cries, shouted by the people. An outcry, as in the words of those who like poetic metaphors, that darted from the furnace of their hearts, passing through the lining of their larynxes, solidified and hardened by their clenching teeth, anointed with the saliva and oil of their tongues, and shot like a bullet from the nozzle of their mouths. And here I am, standing at my windowsill, hidden in complete darkness, and I can hear an outcry from a man I do not recognize. I stare at his reflection in the glass, but I don't see him, for he is still hiding inside of me; "Ash-sha'b yurid isqat an-nizam [The People want to bring down the regime]."
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