ALAA HASANIN – Translated by: Ibrahim Al-Sharif To Ashraf Fayad When we were young God would sneak in every night to our toy boxes to tidy them so that our mothers won’t scold us when we woke up in the morning, we shared our sandwiches with him took him with us on our…
ALAA HASANIN – Translated by: Ibrahim Al-Sharif It’s not necessary to witness a war, to follow with youreyes iron planes and wave to them as if they’re made of paper, to lift the rubble from your body every morning as if lifting the blankets, to bury your little kitten smiling saying: tomorrow it will grow…
ALAA HASANIN – Translated by:Ibrahim Ala-Sharif For Syria, all of the Syria this time There is always time to count your losses, even when you’re running scared to hide like a rat at some dump hoping that the bomb would land at the opposite side. No one wishes for the missile to…
ALAA HASANIN – Translated by: Ibrahim Al-Sharif To Rita Graham And at last here we are on the edge of the world sitting and watching dangling our feet, swollen because of how much we walked barefoot on the roads and used them to sweep the pains of the whole country. At…
ALAA HASANIN – Translated by: Ibrahim AL-Sharif In a hundred years none of us will exist none of our big dreams our small ones our nightmares our sleeping pills the hours of long insomnia nor the depression bouts our morning anxiety our old alarm clocks that don’t work the traffic jams and pouting people nor…
ALAA HASANIN – Translated by: Ibrahim Al- Sharif Like a good dog tame your heart for the distances between life and yourself, for the emptiness beside you in bed in the bus seat and in the café, for your quick lunch that you eat standing up in a hurry, for love you drink in…
ALAA HASANIN – Translated by:Ibrahim Al-Sharif Every evening the night puts its soft hand in mine and cries, shivering like a little child, and I listen to the night that is crying because the morning always leaves before it can get to it. The night says, with overwhelming sadness: morning seems like a…
ALAA HASANIN – Translated by: Ibrahim Al-Sharif Take an axe and strike deep into my heart cut out the root of this sadness. Take a bigger axe and strike the root of the lord of the house displace these sad birds let these branches collapse and let me be wander homelss. Let me…
ALAA HASANIN – Translated by: Ibrahim Al-Sharif. Such a sad thing it is for a person to have five fingers, a heart that looks like a lump in an old shirt and friends like toothache. Everyday the sun rises, pale, food turns to ash in my mouth and how hard it becomes to…
ALAA HASANIN – Translated by: Ibrahim Al- Sharif As for me, out of all the children, the moon never followed me home butterflies never woke me whenever I would doze off on the grass to get up and chase after them, and my baby teeth never became stars that would wave at me from afar….
ALAA HASANIN – Translated by: Ibrahim Al-Sharif. When I die I want to become a boat and sail in blueness. I want, I, the dryness made out of the sadness of the pavements mothers’ rough slaps and lonely steps, to become a sunset and sail towards myself. Fathers reserved our marble graves and…
ALAA HASANIN -Translated by: Ibrahim Al-sharif We don’t have mothers we have sins, gravel over the pathways and salt in the old wounds we don’t have friends we have a long echo after our long call, ghosts that leave and don’t return, seats we lend to passers by and empty endings for the…