“A Naguib Mahfouz character arrives in Havana”: Maru Pabón Translates Rogelio Riverón for Valentine’s

Grey Dust Covers the Eyelids *

Nikos Economopoulos, Havana, 2017. Source: magnumphotos.com

A Naguib Mahfouz character arrives in Havana on a Turkish Airlines flight. He had escaped Cairo three months earlier and bounced around until he landed in Istanbul, where he was able to find work as a bellboy in The Seagull’s Nest hotel in the ancient part of the city. It was a three-story house with four rooms per floor. Lacking an elevator, the man – skinny, with a turbulent gaze matched by a discerning tongue – had to carry the luggage up a narrow and badly illuminated stairway, which multiplied the demands on his body. He felt safe at first, far away from where he had presumably committed the crime that had sent him into exile. He tolerated the excessive labor in silence, knowing that such was the lot of an undocumented immigrant.

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Maged Zaher: Five Untitled Poems

Maged Zaher by Youssef Rakha, Oldish Cafe, 12 August 2021

*

To Youssef Rakha

Revolution is a brand

Come again in proper clothes

And say that you love me

Do this before I die

.

*

My body is good for figure drawing

It is dark enough

And it has unusual curves

I’ve never used the word “adhesion” in my poems

I am tired

I am actually dead

But having dinner

I don’t exist here

I arrived earlier

To have coffee

And read literature

Early on

I loved everyone

I also

Hated myself

The good part

Is that all of us will perish

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Bola Opaleke: Three Poems

Nun raising Ra, from Book of the Dead of Anhai, BC 1050. Source: Wikipedia

 

A metaphor for darkness

 

A people seized the sun, somewhere 

in Africa. They sprinkle it into the sea

& there, let it simmer into ordinary sizzles,

coiled with bones of broken men; 

burnt men who, at first, refused to be boiled. 

The sweat & the green tears of cuffed women,

at dawn, rise & roar into different images

not known to the purple sky above. It becomes

Niger & Nile. So it seems: the sun that left never left.

 

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