Earth Valentine

সবই চোখের আড়াল

বহুদিন  বহুকাল

পা পড়ে নি তো ঘাসে 

এদিকে আলো কমে  আসে।  

চলো  হাতে হাত ধরে

কোনো  উপায় বার  করে

একবার ফিরে যাই

গিয়ে সেখানে দাঁড়াই -

সেই বুক ভরা তৃণভূমি

আর সেই আমি তুমি।  

সেই ধুধু প্রান্তর

আর মাথার ওপর

কোটি তারার আকাশ

নিঝুম চারপাশ

শুধু নিশাচর ডাক

কোনো দূর পাল্লার ট্রাক

যেন বাতাসের ক্ষত 

গড়ানো পুঁজের মতো।   

সেও মাত্র  কিছুক্ষণ 

তারপর রক্তের স্পন্দন 

তোমার হাতের শিরায় 

আর শেষ বাস্তবিকতায়  

আদিবাসী পথহারা 

কোনো রাখালের দোতারা  

অন্য দিগন্তের খোঁজে 

এক চরম আশ্চর্য্যে

সুর গেঁথে বেজে ওঠে 

শীতল ডানার দাপটে 

পেঁচার শিকার  ও খাওয়া 

ঝিঁঝির একঘেঁয়ে গাওয়া 

গাছের গাঢ় অবয়ব 

আর হারানো শৈশব। 

All is hidden from the eye

many days long time

the feet have not touched grass

meanwhile the daylight fades.

Come let's hold hands

and find some way

to return just once

let's go back and stand there -

the same grasslands that make the heart brim

and the same you same me

the same expanse of wilderness

and overhead

the sky of a billion stars

and that deep silence all around

only the call of night creatures

and a long distance truck

a wound of the winds

like a trickle of pus.

But only for an instant

then just the pulsing blood

in the veins of your hand

and in our last reality

a wandering, lost tribal

shepherd's lute

in search of some other horizon

in an acute wonder

composes and bursts into tune

on cool wings of power

an owl hunts and feeds

the crickets chirp monotonous

the dark dense form of the tree

and lost childhood.

This is for all the Naijja alumni and all those who've grown up in Africa or have some other connection of body and/or soul to that beloved continent, my earth valentine.

Hello, 2018!!

Not many photos of the grass

-  so remiss! So remiss, because

the earth there wears a festive lace,

it shimmers when a mild breeze blows.

Not many photos of the grass

as it’s not in the line of sight,

effort’s needed to find the grace

that’s not obviously supersized.

Just one photograph of the grass

to snag memory in a snare.

The small always made even less,

ignored as if it isn’t there.

But the grass underfoot makes me ache,

it’s lace, and longing, and heartbreak.

I was in the African savannahs over the holidays. Got lots of photos of the wildlife, the big 5, the mammals, even the smaller less drooled-over species like dung-beetles and lizards. The variety and the beauty of the grasses blew my mind, the delicacy of their seedpods, the slant of their bending to the winds. I didn’t get too many photographs though, the breeze was always blurring the picture, when I made the effort to focus in the first place, that is. Which is odd when you think of it, because surely the star of the show in the grasslands ought to be the grasses and not befanged and betrunked animals?

But I got a few photos, and one of them is up there for your consumption, for whatever it’s worth. Not every magical moment/thing can be clicked and binary-coded into hard disks and boxed up even if I were to be less remiss – that too is a life lesson in acceptance.

I also had this vague expectation, fully aware it was wrong and therefore duly afraid of being disillusioned as well - this mixed and mixed-up expectation that somehow it would offer me a route to the utter peace, the aching content that the savannahs of my childhood did. It was a thinly veiled attempt to return to lapsed spaces and times. Which of course was doomed to fail from the outset. 

But as it turned out, it wasn’t a failure.  The landscapes of the East are different from the West where I spent my childhood - the acacia species, the missing baobabs, the mango trees laden with a totally different red-magenta fruit. Even some of the grasses felt different. But that heart-stopping hushed feeling when in the savannahs, stretching from where your feet are planted to the horizons? Exactly the same. You breathe deep, and you mentally clasp your hands together in gratitude.

Welcome! to M-i-V in 2018, which is going to be roughly the same as it was in 2017, but hopefully a little wiser, a little less remiss, with a slightly clearer focus on the grasses while keeping an eye out for the betrunked and the befanged in the savannahs of life.

The Sea, the Mountain, and the Old School Route

A couple weeks back I did some collaborative art here – used a friend’s artwork as prompts to my poetry, and the results were amazingly pleasant for both sides.  Read more about that effort here. So today I am back with some more – two of Mira’s delicate watercolours of Mauritian seascapes. 

The first is of Blue Bay – a well-known picnic spot and a popular beach destination.  And the other is of a mountain called Le Morne. Legend has it that slaves under the French colonial rule escaped here (hence the French appellation) - runaways, maroons sheltered in its caves, and hid from their masters. Some also dived from the cliffs high above into the sea when they learnt they had been located, and killed themselves to avoid capture. This mountain has been chosen by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site because of these tragedies. This particular location is also mentioned in Amitav Ghosh's Ibis trilogy as the site of Deeti's cave shrine, which is where I first came across it.

Both of these watercolours took me back in time and place, the Blue Bay to the Blue Beach in the North Coast of Egypt, and the mountain to a much smaller, much less important inselberg parked on the horizons of my school route in Northern Nigeria many years ago. Everything reminds me of something else, deja vu overload. Or maybe I'm just getting old :)  Anyways, here they are - Mira's fingers with the paintbrush, and mine at the keypad -

The Blue Bay, Mauritius by Mira Boolell Khushiram

Wherever I go I can see your face -

in mountains, in cloud forms, in cloudless skies,

in the colours of a sailboat, in the shape

of a triangular sail - the rise

and fall of its movements mirrors my own.

I can still hear your voice in the winds,

suede-soft against the harshness of stone,

calling down years into the labyrinths

of time and memories and joyful verse.

I can still feel your hand right next to mine

a slight tremor, a pulse saying more than words,

your smile transformed into this new shoreline

as if I’d never left, as if you and me

were together still, sailing that same jade sea.

Le Morne by Mira Boolell Khushiram

Everything calls to me, as though it’s a sign

to turn and face the way I came again -

a certain mountain brings back a lost terrain

an inselberg that wore the same outline

in thick sunlight poured on the horizon

beyond the vanishing point, where the road

hid behind distant trees, silken winds rode

acacias, deep grass, Fulani herdsmen.

Too many miles have lapsed, too many autumns

fallen in heaps of leaves. And when I look

closely it’s just something else I mistook -

different mountains, different outcomes.

The track itself turns to mud as I glance

behind, there’s no option but to advance.

I have loved working with Mira's art, so proud to have her paintings lift up my 'walls' to an altogether different level here! Thank you, Mira! Hope the readers will enjoy the colours and words as much as we both have.

Since I'm travelling, my posts through July and August are scheduled, but I will check in whenever I can and respond. Meanwhile, have the happiest summer/season!

N is for...Nourhanne... and... Nasri... and... Nomads...

is for

Nourhanne

is a singer from Lebanon, with Min Zaman, a pop number:  

Welcome back everyone after the big weekend, hope you have had a great time relaxing or catching up, and those celebrating Easter have had a great and fulfilling Easter Sunday. My weekend sped by before I had time to draw breath, this whole A-Z is flashing past at a break neck speed somehow. Anyways…

N is also for Assalah Nasri, a Syrian singer based out of Egypt, whose music leans towards traditional Arabic. She has been granted Bahraini nationality after she performed here in Bahrain for the National Day celebrations. Here is one of her shorter songs. (Traditional Arabic songs are long!)

Nomads

The very word ‘Arab’ is etymologically rooted in words like passer-by, nomad, moving around in the various Semitic languages. Think of an Arab and the image that floats into mind is a man in a chequered headgear riding a camel over miles of inhospitable dunes.

Jebeliya Bedouin and camels.  At the foot of Jebel Moussa, Mt
Moses, the mountain of the Decalogue. St Catherine, Egypt.

Arabia had been completely underplayed in the story of human migrations out of Africa…we’re transforming the prehistory of Arabia. ~ Michael Petraglia, Director, Paleodesert Project. 

There is now evidence that Arabia was the first stop when Man initially migrated out of Africa.  Several archaeological sites in Oman, Saudi Arabia and UAE have been identified. And some dated to more than 100,000 years.

Geneticists have shown that the modern human family tree began to branch out 60,000 years ago. I’m not questioning when it happened, but where. I suggest the great modern human expansion to the rest of the world was launched from Arabia rather than Africa. ~ Jeffrey Rose, Director, Dhofar Archaeological Project. 

Arabia wasn’t always a desert, it was once a lush, green land with flowing rivers - archeological evidence shows that hippos, elephants, big cats roamed across a savannah like terrain in what is now a formidably arid desert. 

The taxation of caravans and transport of goods 
and people were historical occupations.  Bedouin 
man. Wadi Rum. Jordan.  

So, if that’s the case it automatically begs the question – why didn’t the hunting-gathering populations that came out of Africa stay put in Arabia? What made the Arabs wander? Why were they nomads? 

The answer to that lies in the nature of Arabian climate change. It happened in cycles over many years, alternating between aridity and lushness. And these cycles of life-sustaining greenery and barrenness must be responsible for nomadism in the Arabian peninsula - when things got tough, the tough tribes broke camp and got going. 

Traditionally, Bedouins have raised goats and sheep in addition
to camels. A Bedouin flock crossing somewhere in Sinai. Egypt. 

The nomads in Arablands, generally known as Bedouins (from Bedu in Arabic) range from Oman in the south to Syria in the north, and from Egypt to Morocco in North Africa.  Camel, sheep and goat herding were their livelihood traditionally, and remains important even today.  Over the years, most Bedouins have been settled into purpose–built villages. Many of them work as guides or in other capacities in the tourism sector.

In most countries of the Middle East, they have no title to the lands, only the right to use.  The governments see the land traditionally used by the Bedouins as state property to be developed for the tourism sector, as for example in Egypt.  Predictably this has meant their lands shrinking and a resulting spike in unemployment, poverty and crime.

Bedouin guide in the White Desert, Egypt.
Many Bedouins are now settled in villages in
the desert and serve as tour guides.

They have their own laws and social customs and settle their disputes without recourse to the courts. It was considered completely inappropriate for Bedouins to marry ‘city-dwellers’ from outside the tribes, but it’s no longer unheard of, even if unacceptable.

A Bedouin woman's wealth is in her jewellery, traditionally made of silver and given when she gets married. Some of the designs have been handed down unchanged for thousands of years. However, individual antique pieces are rare, because once a woman dies, her jewellery is not handed down, that's considered unlucky - a bride must have new jewellery custom-made for her - so the dead lady's stuff is resold to the silversmiths who promptly melt it down.



Did you know - Lotfia el Nadi, an Egyptian, was the first female Arab pilot, she received her aviation licence in 1933 at the age of 25 and was the second woman to fly an aircraft solo after Amelia Earhart. The two women were friends and correspondents.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2017