PUBLISHER / EDITOR Margaret Obank ASSISTANT EDITOR Samuel Shimon COVER ARTIST Azzawi CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Khaled Mattawa Saadi Youssef Peter Clark Fadhil al-Azzawi Issa J Boullata Mona Zaki Sinan Antoon CONSULTING EDITORS Naguib Mahfouz Etel Adnan Roger Allen Mohammed Bennis Gamal el-Ghitani Marilyn Hacker Erdmute Heller Herbert Mason Yasir Suleiman Susannah Tarbush Sargon Boulus EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Jackie Haig COPY EDITOR Deborah Horton LAYOUT Ben Branagan
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Tel: +44 (0)20 8568 9747 Fax: +44 (0)20 8568 8509 e-mail: editor@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 21, Autumn 2004
2 EDITORIAL – 21 ISSUES OF DIALOGUE AND EXCHANGE 0 8 Hoda Barakat – Chapters from Disciples of Passion 016 Fadhil al-Azzawi – Chapters from The Dead City 28 Mohammed Achaari – Eight Poems 35 Emad Fouad – Two Poems 38 Akram al-Katreb – A poem My Father
40 Vénus Khoury-Ghata – A poem The Sailors Without a Ship 44 Faisal Darraj – Mamdouh Adwan and the freedom of the prolific creator
50 Sinan Antoon – Five Poems 52 Tarek Eltayeb – A Short Story
The Sweetest Tea with the Most Beautiful Woman 056 Amina Saïd – Five Poems 060 Eskandar Habache – Poem I Suffer from Autumn 066 Shimon Ballas – Excerpts from the novel Outcast 80 Ammiel Alcalay on A Unique Chronicle of Iraqi History 74 Mahmood Abdel Wahab – Two Short Stories
A Different Kind of Woman and An Exceptional Passer-by 76 Mahdi Issa al-Saqr on Mahmood Abdel Wahab 78 Faraj Bayraqdar – Eight Poems 83 Maher Menzalji – A Short Story The Grand Plan 88 Jalil al-Qaisi – A Short Story Zulaikha 92 Fadhil al-Azzawi on Jalil al-Qaisi 96 Haifa Bitar – From the novel A Woman of this Modern Age 105 Ashur Twebi – Six Poems 110 Qassim Haddad – Five Poems 116 Gamal el-Ghitani – A Short Story The Crop 122 Samuel Shimon – The Assyrian Bear, a chapter from a novel 126 Mohammad al-Abbas – Women Novelists in Saudi Arabia
BOOK REVIEWS 131 Stephen Watts She Says by Vénus Khoury-Ghata 135 Maudie Bitar A Woman of this Modern Age of Haifa Bitar 139 Guy Bennett Poems of Maram al-Massri
A Red Cherry on a White-Tiled Floor
142 Stephen Watts Poems of Mourid Barghouti A Small Sun 144 Mona Zaki Novel of Youssef al-Mohaimeed Traps of Scent
LITERARY INFLUENCES 146 Abbas Beydhoun The Stranger, The Outsider and the Foreigner 158 RABAT MEDITERRANEAN POETRY FESTIVAL 159 CONTRIBUTORS AND TRANSLATORS
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BANIPAL NO 21, AUTUMN 2004
