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gulala nouri

4/15/2014

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Gulala NOURI (poet, fiction writer, translator; Iraq) has worked as a Kurdish-language teacher and in women’s issues and human rights. Currently, she works in Kurdistan for the High Commission of Erbil Citadel Revitalization (HCECR). Nouri has published four collections of poetry, [While the Dolphin is Sleeping] (1999), [This Crowd is Not Up To You] (2001), [Calendars of Loneliness] (2005), and [Firewood] (2009). Her translations of Vladimir Vysotsky’s poetry from the Russian into Kurdish and Arabic came out in 2011. Nouri has two books forthcoming, a translation of stories on the Halabja massacre, and her first story collection

a definition of date palms and bullets      to father and mike

You will find there

different leaders for each side

but since the early days of god

the dates are still unified







Dates are  the morning key for

a woman who is on her way to vanish.

Dates are anonymous women

or priests from Ur, Assyria, and Babylon.




I inherited the definition of dates from my Kurdish father:

" you are as inviting and sweet as dates,

stubborn as a date palm, as delicious

as the black dates of klecha*




I have learned persistence from bullets

friends have taught me what blank means

and that blocks and obstacles are an absolute violation




Bullets are the unplanned danger

of a small snail squeezing itself

into the shell of the perished and the injured

a newer version of the story says that

a bullet is a path

aiming to shoot the heads of those disagreeing

in Iraq they say" heads which believe in rainbows should be cleaned in the river"




Dates and bullets are

the archive of a woman

who lacks the credit to enter the earthly  or heavenly paradise

or

a story of a mother leaving her sons'  funeral quietly

and lets their coffins face the dirt.

Mothers who lingered motionless

like nails

at the doors of dungeons

some time between god's long absence

and the arrival of men from far away islands




Dates and Bullets are

mothers who waited for so long at the edge of time's sins

they may get a suggestion to keep away the pain

Even just briefly outside the heart cavity

Fulbright women, like airports, always waiting

for pointless brothers

lovers of gravediggers

wives of eunuchs

targets of men in masks




Documents of bitterness are pouring

from eyes fixed on the wall of time

and souls are weary palms

and when palms are weary

they leave the suns without a shadow

making the oranges fatherless

"kill your weary date palms" he advises me







The morning after every nightmare

he refines what he preaches

for he knows the whiteness of snow

and the right love at the right time

and how to kill the past with the right kind of present

But how can he ever understand my father's expressions

or all these unidentified bodies?




klecha: an Iraqi holiday cookie filled with dates or nuts and sugar.




POEM: GULALA NOURI

TRANSLATED FROM ARABIC: DALIA RIYADH

REVISED BY: SARA COOPER





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