Literature

My Country - by Nizar Qabbani, - translated by Norma Medawar From the lisp of the blackbird… From the saddening huskiness of the flute… From the flickering sounds of the folk songs From the sighs of the minaret… From a cloud at sunset woven by a chimney and by the wound of the bricks of the decorated and widespread villages… From the whispers of a star settled in our east From a story between a rose and a...

By Brigid Keenan, Thames & Hudson Review by Charles Newton, ESL teacher and artist  My husband, a diplomat, was posted to Syria in 1993, and I went with him. Very soon, like Isabel, the wife of the famous British Consul Richard Burton, a hundred and twenty-odd years before me, I found myself in love with Damascus. (Long after she left Syria,...

"To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man"  -Aristotle* Ahlan wa sahlan A warm welcome** This post is dedicated to Syrian writer Ms Muna Imady (1962 - 2016) and the country and people she loved.   In an interview for ‘Beloved Syria’ (September 2019), Muna’s mother, Elaine, spoke about 'Kan Ya Ma Kan: Folktales and Recipes...

I have no power By Nizar Qabbani translated by Norma Medawar I have no power to change you Or explain your ways… Don’t believe a man can change a woman and the claims of men fancying that woman comes from one of their ribs are false… Woman never emerges from a man’s rib…. It’s he who emerges from her pelvis like a fish rising from a basin of water he...