PUBLISHER / EDITOR Margaret Obank ASSISTANT EDITOR Samuel Shimon COVER ARTIST Ahmad Moualla CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Khaled Mattawa Saadi Youssef Anton Shammas Peter Clark Fadhil al-Azzawi Sinan Antoon Paul Starkey Issa J Boullata Mona Zaki CONSULTING EDITORS Etel Adnan Roger Allen Mohammed Bennis Gamal el-Ghitani Marilyn Hacker Erdmute Heller Herbert Mason Yasir Suleiman Susannah Tarbush Sargon Boulus Saif al-Rahbi COPY EDITING Corinne Sklar LAYOUT Banipal Publishing

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Tel: +44 (0)20 8568 9747 Fax: +44 (0)20 8568 8509 editorial email: editor@banipal.co.uk subscriptions: subscribe@banipal.co.uk website: www.banipal.co.uk PRINTED BY Short Run Press Ltd Bittern Road, Sowton Ind. Est. EXETER EX2 7LW ISSN: 1461-5363 Photographs not accredited have been donated, photographers unknown © All material: Banipal, authors, translators and artists. All rights reserved.

Banipal takes its name from Ashurbanipal, last great king of Assyria and patron of the arts, whose outstanding achievement was to assemble in Nineveh, from all over his empire, the first systematically organised library in the ancient Middle East. The thousands of clay tablets of Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian writings included the famous Mesopotamian epics of the Creation, the Flood, and Gilgamesh, many folk tales, fables, proverbs, prayers and omen texts. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica

CONTENTS No 29, Summer 2007

2 EDITORIAL 3 Nazik al-Malaika ( 1922 – 20 June 2007) – A Tribute 4 Hassan Daoud – Excerpt from the novel

Year of the Revolutionary New Bread-Making Machine 12 Sargon Boulus – Eight Poems 18 Yousef al-Mohaimeed – Excerpt fromThe Bottle [Al-Qarura] 26 Issa Makhlouf – Selected Poems 30 D H Melhem – Two Poems

LITERARY INFLUENCES 34 Issa J Boullata – Books and I

FEATURE ON GHAIBTU‘MA FARMAN 44 Salih Altoma – Introduction 46 Excerpt from the novel Five Voices [Khamsat Aswat] 63 Excerpt from Mr Ma‘ruf ’s Woes [Alaam al-Sayyid Ma‘ruf] 64 William M Hutchins Introduction to Mr Ma‘ruf ’s Woes 78 Nabil Abu Hamad – Excerpt from the novel The Cripple 85 Abbas Beydoun – Excerpt from the novel Blood Test 94 Duna Ghali – Excerpt from the novel When the Scent Awakens 100 Amira Abul Husn – Fifteen Poems 103 Salah al-Hamdani – Six Poems 107 Sinan Antoon – A Poem Necropolis 110 Wafa Malih – A short story NO!

FEATURE ON MOHAMMED BENNIS 114 Introduction and interview by Camilo Gomez-Rivas 124 Poems from the collections Gift of the Void and Over There You Stay 139 Driss Chraïbi (1926 – 1 April 2007) – A Tribute

BOOK REVIEWS 140 Mona Zaki Thieves in Retirement by Hamdi Abu Golayyel 142 Peter Clark My Name is Salma by Fadia Faqir 144 Judith Kazantzis I‘jaam – An Iraqi Rhapsody by Sinan Antoon 146 Tarek el-Ariss The Illusion of Return by Samir el-Youssef 148 Zuzana Kratka Cairo Stories by Anne-Marie Drosso 149 BOOKS IN BRIEF

EVENTS 154 Dearborn, USA: RAWI Arab-American Writers Conference 156 New York: Celebrating Lebanese Poets with Banipal 157 Amman: Next Page Foundation at Arab Thought Conference 158 Abu Dhabi: International Book Fair 159 CONTRIBUTORS ANDTRANSLATORS

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BANIPAL NO 29, SUMMER 2007 1