Basrayatha

Mohammed Khudayyir, William Hutchins

Description

A multifaceted fictional recreation of the Iraqi city of Basra
Basrayatha is a literary tribute by author Mohammed Khudayyir to the city of his birth, Basra, on the Shatt al-Arab waterway in southern Iraq. Just as a city's inhabitants differ from outsiders through their knowledge of its streets as well as its stories, so Khudayyir distinguishes between the real city of Basra and Basrayatha, the imagined city he has created through stories, experiences, and folklore.
By turns a memoir, a travelogue, a love letter, and a meditation, Basrayatha summons up images of a city long gone. In loving detail, Khudayyir recounts his discovery of his city as a child, as well as past communal banquets, the public baths, the delights of the Muslim day of rest, the city's flea markets and those who frequent them, a country bumpkin's big day in the city, Hollywood films at the local cinema, daily life during the Iran Iraq War, and the canals and rivers around Basra. Above all, however, the book illuminates the role of the storyteller in creating the cities we inhabit. Evoking the literary modernism of authors like Calvino and Borges, and tinged with nostalgia for a city now disappeared, Basrayatha is a masterful tribute to the power of memory and imagination.

Sujets

• Musulmán
• Musulman
• Islam
• Fiction
• Bassorah
• Basra
• Basora
• Alternative History

Informations

• Publié par: The American University in Cairo Press
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781617974168
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

KhudayyirFinal3.indd 1 2/27/07 1:46:15 PMKhudayyirFinal3.indd 2 2/27/07 1:46:15 PMTranslated by
William M. Hutchins
The American University in Cairo Press
Cairo New York
KhudayyirFinal3.indd 3 2/27/07 1:46:15 PMFirst published in 2007 by
The American University in Cairo Press
113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
www.aucpress.com
Copyright © 1996 by Mohammed Khudayyir
First published in Arabic in 1996 as Basrayatha: surat madina
Protected under the Berne Convention
English translation copyright © 2007 by William M. Hutchins
An earlier version of chapter two appeared in Banipal: Magazine of Modern Arabic
Literature, no. 26 (Summer 2006).
An abridged translation by Shakit Mustafa of the chapter “Friday’s Gifts”
appeared in Muhammad Khudayyir, “Friday’s Bounties,” Edebiyat Journal of Middle
Eastern Literature 13 (1): 69 ff.
Extract from Constantine Cavafy’s “The City” from The Complete Poems of Cavafy,
trans. Rae Dalven, published in North America by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and in
the United Kingdom by Chatto & Windus. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.
and the Random House Group Ltd.
Extract from T.S. Eliot’s “The Dry Salvages” from “Four Quartets” in The Complete
Poems and Plays 1909–1962, published in the United Kingdom by Faber and Faber and
in North America by Harcourt Brace & Company. Reprinted by permission of Faber
and Faber and Harcourt, Inc.
The photographs in this book are from the collection of Mu‘in al-Mudhaffer.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Dar el Kutub No. 15646/06
ISBN 978 977 416 064 6
1 2 3 4 5 6 12 11 10 09 08 07
Designed by Fatiha Bouzidi/AUC Press Design Center
Printed in EgyptTranslator’s Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Mohammed Khudayyir for allowing me to translate
this important book and for answering questions about it. I also thank
Iraqi poet and novelist Fadhil al-Azzawi for answering questions about
some words, phrases, and lines of poetry that perplexed me. Part of
this translation was created while I held a 2005–2006 grant for
literary from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts and an
Off-Campus Scholarly Assignment from Appalachian State University.
I also thank Sarah, Franya, and Kip Hutchins for being good sports
about my translating endeavors.
KhudayyirFinal3.indd 5 2/27/07 1:46:15 PMKhudayyirFinal3.indd 6 2/27/07 1:46:15 PMContents
Four Points of Entry to Basrayatha 1
The Loom and the Rostrum 3
Before I Was Born, If I Truly Was Born 4
Utopias and Heterotopias 6
The Permanent Citizen 11
First Exploration 17
Umm al-Brum: Banquet in a Cemetery 31
Shatt al-Arab: A River’s Dream 47
Abu al-Khasib: Story Road 65
Al-Zubayr: The Camel’s Eye 89
Mobile City 109
Friday’s Gifts 125
The Night Beggar 127
The Day Beggar 128
The Hammam of Happiness 132
A Seat in the Dark 134
House of Names 138
Morning Airs and Nocturnes: A War Diary 141
The Tenth Nocturne 143
Along the Eastern Street 144
Glass Nocturne 146
The Only Choice 147
Familiar Serpents 148
I Should Erase and Draw 149
KhudayyirFinal3.indd 7 2/27/07 1:46:15 PM Alphabet Juice 150
Moons and String Instruments 152
Glossary 155
Note on the Epigraphs 157
viii
KhudayyirFinal3.indd 8 2/27/07 1:46:15 PMFour Points of Entry
to Basrayatha
KhudayyirFinal3.indd 1 2/27/07 1:46:16 PMThe distance between the city and the man was no longer even a wall’s span.
Paul Éluard
You will find no new lands, you will find no other seas.
The city will follow you. You will roam the same
streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods;
and you will grow gray in these same houses.
Always you will arrive in this city. Do not hope for any other—
There is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you have destroyed your life here
in this little corner, you have ruined it in the entire world.
Constantine Cavafy
KhudayyirFinal3.indd 2 2/27/07 1:46:16 PM1
The Loom and the Rostrum
Narrators recount the bygone events and marvels of ancient cities, but
in Basrayatha I recount what is known and recorded in the lines of
destiny. Not everything there is marvelous. What is amazing, though, is
the power of every citizen in it and a veracity that surpasses any other
power. When you are in a mood to marvel, you must inevitably find
that what is widespread and common in the natures and customs of
nations is marvelous, rare, and unparalleled. Al-Asma‘i, for example,
told of a palm tree that rats climbed in order to eat its dates. Al-Jahiz
sketched a scene of crows covering the crowns of palm trees, which
had caught fire, in order to glean culls remaining among the stumps
of branches and the palm’s fibers, even though these birds would not
approach ripening clusters of dates. Al-Nabahani, al-Qazwini, and
Shahrazad narrated other marvels concerning the land and the sea. I
will add to these tales of loving coexistence by tracing the fragmented
destinies of creatures from the past and the present.
Back when these marvels were daily fleeting sights, there was nothing
amazing about them, except for their inevitable transformation in the
telling. The events and scenes of our times have been waiting for that
power of amazement to envelop and take hold of them for our mouths,
ears, and minds. We are no longer satisfied with the limitations of a
fleeting incident or the transient simplicity of a scene. Instead we spread
the wings of doubt and the hand of interpretation to wrap these in the
carpet of magic and disguise. The narrator conceals what was obvious
3
KhudayyirFinal3.indd 3 2/27/07 1:46:16 PMin the scene and reveals what was hidden in it. He turns it upside down
like an expert conjurer who—to seduce his audience—is impelled to ever
greater feats of enticement and bafflement. In the imagination of each
follower is born a storyteller who receives from his predecessor the
ceremonial staff of storytelling and who influences the senses and intellects
of those following him until the matter almost surpasses the bounds of
narration to become literary fiction and goes from commercial
entertainment to the power of amazement. Thus none of us can imagine a
city without a storyteller or a storyteller without a rostrum, which may
resemble the hump of a camel, the prow of a ship, or the edge of a mirage.
This characteristic became so common in Basrayatha that no one could
any longer imagine that a city could develop without a storyteller or a
rostrum, anywhere on earth . . . whether with a single rostrum and many
storytellers or a single storyteller and many rostra . . . for a single scene
with many visages . . . or a single visage with fluctuating scenes. So this
city has no history until time clothes it with the cloak of events. You
begin its history wherever you wish by pulling from its cloak a thread with
which to weave an incident or a narrative. For this reason, its history has
not begun yet. It could have begun at the time the astrologers appointed
for its passing, no matter how it began or ended. I cannot imagine in
Basrayatha a storyteller without a rostrum or a citizen without a loom.
The rostrum and the loom are the secret emblems of this city.
2
Before I Was Born, If I Truly Was Born
Before cities existed, there were stakes and ruins left by foreigners, blind
travelers, and prophets. Before cities, their traces, plans, names, and
passing thoughts were in the air. Then the architects of the cities were
born. Before Troy there was the Iliad, which attracted Homer’s staff
to it, so that he recited his epic narrative to bring Troy into existence.
Before the serpent, there was immortal life. Then came Gilgamesh,
who defended Uruk. Immortality is the origin of Uruk. An epic quest
4 FOUR POINTS OF ENTRY TO BASRAYATHA
KhudayyirFinal3.indd 4 2/27/07 1:46:16 PMattracted Gilgamesh. Uruk was a thought waiting beneath the serpent’s
skin. Before the palm tree, the fruit and the seed existed. Once the date
palm came into existence, it needed an enclosure. The walled
enclosure asked to be filled with houses, and Basrayatha came into existence.
Before Basra, there was Basrayatha. Had it not been for the date palm,
there would have been no baskets for harvesting dates. Had there been
no baskets for harvesting dates, there would have been no date pickers.
Had there been no date pickers, there would have been no ships. Had
there been no ships, there would have been no port. Had there been no
port, no city would have been built. Al-Jahiz roamed through the
markets of the ancient city and stood in front of a bench in a mosque, where
he heard the conversations of East Africans, the South Asian Jats, and
ordinary citizens as a buzz, which he distinguished from the language of
the Arabs. Were it not for the common folk, the ports would not have
come into existence. If it were not for the grammatical errors of diverse
groups of people, the Arabic language would not have come