The concept of a house/home in the poetry of the Nineties Poets – Ḥattā atakhallā ʿan fikrat al-buyūt by Īmān Mirsāl as a model

ABSTRACT

The article presents readings of two poems by Īmān Mirsāl, “Jaras al-ṣabāḥ” (Morning Bell) and “Fikrat al-buyūt” (The Idea of Houses), from her collection Ḥattā atakhallā ʿan fikrat al-buyūt (Until I Give Up the Idea of Houses). These serve as samples of the poetry of the Nineties Poets who rebelled against societal systems using the home as a symbol. The poems clarify the difference and conflict between the traditional definition of a house, handed down through the generations, and the newer understanding challenging societal norms. This struggle is at the center of the poems in which Mirsāl boldly experiments with new conceptualizations of old motifs.

KEYWORDS:

• Īmān Mirsāl
• house
• home
• the Nineties Poets
• Arabic prose poem
• modern poetry

Introduction

Place is considered an important component of individual and societal identity. It carries within its symbolism the events experienced by different people.¹ A place serves more than an individual’s need for physical shelter; it is a memory tape that is preserved from generation to generation. Furthermore, a house/home, with its many different definitions, is more than an individual’s specific living place, it is also an individual's neighborhood, state or country.

Places are not only geographical locations, but also social structures. Representations of places are transmitted culturally, encoded through processes shaped by collective and individual memory. Memory includes many variables, such as social values, norms, political conditions, interests, biographical data, and much more. These variables are dynamic, heterogeneous, and sometimes even conflicting. Therefore, memory is not a true mirror of the past, rather, it is evidence of the needs and aspirations of the one who remembers.²

In literary works where place is strongly connected to the identity of characters, the meaning of place is expanded. In such texts, an individual’s position and behavior in a location or place is determined by the expectations and memory of the place.³ Since the human experience with places is based on sensations and feelings that are as varied as the number of individuals and their differences, even when all the individuals belong to one community, the experiences of human beings with places are subjective and not fixed; they change with the circumstances. The concept of place is also linked to the concept of freedom because attachment and commitment to a place limits an individual's freedom of movement.⁴

From this perspective, the house, as a limited place, further restricts this freedom. And, it is with freedom that conflict arises, especially in traditional societies, between the desire for liberation/self-actualization and adherence to societal customs.⁵ The house belongs to archetypal places, which are linked to the identity and spirit of the community, the extent of communal unity as well as the ability of people to thrive in it.⁶ With time, a place becomes the shelter of individual subjective memories.

Bachelard says that a house is our first possessive place and looks beautiful to us “but our adult life is so dispossessed of the essential benefits, its anthropocosmic ties have become so slack, that we do not feel their first attachment in the universe of the house.”⁷

Contrary to what is prevalent in traditional societies, the house appears in modern writings as a symbol and a sign of a changing, unstable order. It is reinvented each time anew, according to an individual’s needs. According to this view, the house is a subjective matter.⁸ It is a symbol that indicates belonging, a sense of respect and satisfaction with one's place.⁹

In this context, we cannot fail to mention the understanding of place and what is associated with it in pre-modern Arabic literature. It is a topic that has occupied many ancient scholars. We find, for example, the book Al-Manāzil wa-l-diyār by Usāma ibn Munqidh (d. 584/1188), which he composed to console himself when returning to his native country after a long journey and finding only traces of his house ruined after a horrific earthquake.¹⁰ His book is a collection of his own poetry to which he has added the thoughts of other poets who cry over their houses (diyār), standing on their ruins (aṭlāl). Another example is the book Al-Ḥanīn ilā al-awṭān by al-Jaḥiẓ (d. 255/775), in which the author mentions the akhbār of Arabs as revealed through lamentably distant kings and others who still feel connected to their homelands. Modern scholars have also addressed the subject of place, whether by addressing its geographical nature or its poetic mirror, the latter being the subject of this article.¹¹ This poetic mirror is understood by describing the literary, psychological, and imaginary aspects of a place; it describes a place as a poetic space, not a geographical one. One of these prominent studies in this area is Jaroslav Stetkevych's The Zephyrs of Najd, in which he presents the concept of place in literature as a subject of poetics and nostalgia. He points out that Najd, as a geographical place, turns into a poetic metaphorical Najd thus becoming a tool available to all poets without distinction of time and country.

In fact, many researchers have dealt with the concept of home as a motif that fulfills an emotional need for the poet to restore or protect one's reality.¹² For this reason, many researchers call for understanding a place, not through geography, but from within a deep belief in the poetic devices of poetry with reference to self, feeling and memory.¹³ Therefore, the house/home appears in classical Arab culture as a central motif that acquires a symbolic value,¹⁴ starting with the naming of the poetic line with bayt (house) as the place in which the poet uses one's own words. This is a clear indication of the status and importance of the house for Arabs since the classical period. The structure of the classical poem and its beginning with the nasīb, standing on the aṭlāl (ruins), and mentioning words meaning house such as “bayt,” “manzil,” “dār” and “diyār,” are essential in the traditional building of the classical poem. That past recalls the poet’s memories. There, the poet stands in front of the “ruins” of the past, waxes nostalgically for that past, recalls memories, and mentions the desolate diyār with details that reflect one's personal experience in the place.¹⁵ Standing on the ruins with these memories, the poet experiences a bleak psychological state that comes from a feeling of nostalgia.¹⁶ The dār or manzil turns from a place of residence to the lost paradise which held good times, beautiful memories and lost love; it is an understanding of lost time as lost happiness. According to Stetkevych, a place displays its ruins at the beginning of a poem reflective of both individual and collective times. These times, resulting from the loss of a place in the past, are spent reflecting the gathering and belonging that re-emerge as a memory or recall of the past.¹⁷

Stetkevych cites two verses attributed to Majnūn Laylā (d. 68/688), which show the poet's true distance from his home, but nonetheless imply a symbolically sympathetic understanding of home:

نَظَرْتُ كَأَنّي مِن وراءِ زُجاجَةٍ    إلى الدارِ مِنْ ماءِ الصبابَةِ أَنْظُرُ

فَعَيْنايَ طَوْرًا تَغْرَقانٍ مٍنَ الْبُكا    فَأَعْشى وَحينًا تَحْسُرانِ فَأُبْصِرُ ¹⁸

I looked as through a bottle's glass

  At the abode that faded as drops of water fade.

My eyes at times in tears drowned,

  I stood blind, then again, too faint to see, too spent to cry, I had sight.¹⁹

This desolate ṭalal has a quality that is both visual and symbolic at the same time. The poet describes a place as a paradise that has approached the original archetypal memory by being a “lost paradise” or a paradise of the poetic imagination.

This does not negate that the house, in addition to its place in the collective memory, is also a home that is a personal and emotional place. To some extent at times, it might not be the poet’s home, but the home of one's beloved. Furthermore, there is no description of home in the poem, but only a description of the distance from home and the impact of nostalgia on the poet.²⁰

In this context, some scholars attribute the use of the word “bayt” instead of “manzil” and “dār” to the analogy with the kaʿba – the ancient house, as a place whose sanctity and religious-communal importance are undisputed.²¹ From here, the poet's nostalgia for a lost home reflects the desire to return to that past. That home in the past, that place, is better than the present reality and has stronger foundations and pillars than the present place.

The matter becomes more complicated when the house appears in modern poetry in the works of Arab writers, in which all the previous meanings, related to the position of one in a society in general, in a traditional society in particular, are overturned. These poets seek to revolutionize their heritage, draw inspiration, and reformulate it for their time.

Īmān Mirsāl and the Nineties Poets

Īmān Mirsāl (born 1966) is an Egyptian poet, translator, and researcher. She immigrated to Canada and works at the University of Alberta. Her latest texts are examples of the diaspora experience and the obsession with recovering the lost past by photographing, documenting and condensing its connotations in details, as well as portraying one's struggle to find one's place.²² Her work also presents aspects of one's experiences outside prevailing values. She often portrays women boldly in a way that contradicts the image of women within the prevailing social and religious values that frame society; she does so by pointing to the ironic and destructive contradictions in these values and expectations.²³

In fact, Īmān Mirsāl belonged to a movement that emerged in the mid 1990s in Egypt²⁴ that is called “the Nineties Poets.”²⁵ The voices of these young people represented a radical change in the literary values and cultural foundations of Egyptian society.²⁶ They also recognized the need to both challenge patriarchal aspects of their lives, including political dictatorships, and to equally celebrate the voices of women and men.²⁷

The poets of this generation followed the achievements of their Lebanese and Syrian predecessors, such as al-Khāl, Adūnīs, and al-Māghūṭ, who challenged and divested from traditional concepts and poetic structures through prose poems. They wrote poems distinguished by their simplicity of language, about non-poetic details of everyday life and shunning the flowery language of exaggeration and heroism.²⁸ These young people expressed their openness to Western popular culture and technology, and its impact on the images and pressures of daily life. They boldly expressed their positions in the wake of changes initiated by modern economics and political policies and used direct images without regard to taboos when dealing with truth. They wrote about the void left by the failure of Arab unity, the collapse of leftist ideologies, and the ineffectiveness of democracy.²⁹ Nevertheless, these poets sought to distance themselves from everything that was traditional along with its ready-made templates while claiming that they did not belong to any political party. They professed that they did not seek to gain anything from their writing and that their aim was solely to transmit their ideas through their own definition of poetry; they were not concerned whether others viewed their works as poetry or prose or translation because they were not interested in defining literary genres.³⁰ They were also not interested in interrogating language or re-imagining history or defining heritage anew.³¹ Among these poets were: Aḥmad Ṭāha, Muḥammad Mitwallī, Usāma al-Dināṣūrī, Majdī al-Jābirī, Aḥmad Yamānī and others. Unlike previous movements, this period was distinguished by women poets moving from the margins to the center of the movement. Among these Nineties Poets were Īmān Mirsāl, Fāṭima Qandīl, Najāt ʿAlī and Hudā Ḥusayn.³²

The mention of place in general and the house in particular appears in the poems of this group of poets in a way that is different from that of their predecessors. They reformulated the concept of the house, in accordance with their reality. Aḥmad Ṭāha says in his poem “Dec 31st.”³³

هكذا

يتجوّل المصريّون كما تتجوّل أفراس

الماء

جنب مقابرهم

ينسون بلادًا خلف النّهر

فيقتربون

ويقتربون

لا هم أفراس تنطلق بقلب

الصحراء

ولا هم أسماك تفتح بابًا للبحر

وأبوابًا للنسيان

فلماذا تحمل في الغربة خرجًا

مِن أطلال

تتصعلك في العالَم منفردًا

تبحث عن شارع يشبه شبرا

ومقهى تشبه مقهى البستان

[…]

ها أنت تحدّثهم نثرا

فتضيع معالمك الأولى

[…] ³⁴

Egyptians wander like hippopotamuses

next to their tombs.

They forget the cities behind the river.

and they get closer.

closer.

They’re neither horses dashing off

in the middle of the desert

nor are they fish that open one door to the sea

and several doors to oblivion.

So why then, do you carry in this foreign land

a knapsack of ruins?

You bum around in the world

looking for a street that looks like “Shobra”

and coffee shops that look like the “Bostan”.

[…]

You talk with them in prose

your original features fade

[…]³⁵

The poem begins by describing the Egyptians as creatures roaming beside their tombs, meaning that they carry the past with them wherever they go, no matter how mythical this past may have been. Then he inserts the phrase “they forget the cities behind the river” as a symbol of the Islamic conquests of the country beyond the river in the era of the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates.

They are approaching, but like horses not “dashing off in the middle of the desert.” They neither live in the past environment nor do they achieve something extraordinary with the forces and heroics of the past. Still, they do not abandon this memory, no matter their current surroundings. The speaker asks a rhetorical question about the feasibility of carrying the ruins of the past in exile, an indication of the absurdity and futility of this act. Then the speaker addresses the individual and notes that each person reflects on loneliness as he wanders through life and cannot rely on his inherited collective memory to overcome that sense of isolation. Therefore, the search for the effects of this past in exile, whether near or far, is incomprehensible yet unavoidable.

The speaker then refers to the structure of the prose poem which originally undermines the past because it contradicts the structure of classical poetry. He talks about the present with modern tools and methods that parallel reality, far from the past and its ruins.

In “Naṣṣ al-mīlād” [Birth Text] Majdī al-Jābirī talks about his poetic project, through which he wants to transform even the most monotonous characters into symbols. These characters change the world into a place where everyone speaks whenever they want and where silence exists when there is nothing left to say. Thus, he becomes a revolutionary poet with a “project for human liberation”:

[…] واتحوّل المشروع ده لهاجس طاردني طوال الوقت واتحكّم في كلّ أفكاري وسلوكيّاتي حتّى الشّخصي منها بدأت أقمعه أو أأجّله عشان ممارستي للحاجات الشّخصيّة مالهاش معنى إلّا جوّه المشروع المنتظر اللّي هو (هناك وبعد زمن ما) أمّا اللّي (هنا والآن) فلازم يتأجّل، لازم أرفض الدّخول في كلّ العلاقات اللّي ضدّ المشروع ده أو أدخلها وأنا واعي بإن تغييرها مرهون بإنجاز المشروع ده وبكده فضلت أتأخّر عن الحياة سنة ورا سنة […] ³⁶

[…] This project turned into an obsession that haunted me all the time and controlled all my thoughts and behaviors, even the personal ones I started suppressing or delaying because practicing those personal matters had no meaning except when they were within the expected project which is out there and not yet, but what is here and now must be postponed. I have to reject entering any relationships that are against this project, or enter them knowing that changing them depends on completing this project. So I kept falling behind on life year after year […]³⁷

This sarcastic way of describing the project with which the speaker wants to change the world indicates the absurdity of his idea. Chasing the future and striving to change the present freezes one’s life with the result being that he neither lives with what was made available to him nor does he achieve what he wanted to achieve. Later in this text, he describes how the characters in the expected “text of birth,” the project to which he dedicated himself, turn into beings without features or history. Despite the feeling that the expected text is absurd, he is driven to complete it. It is a symbol of inherited societal ideas that lie in the consciousness and unconsciousness of the individual, and he finds it difficult to arrange the events of his life, so he leaves them:

[…] وأقعد أركّز جهدي وطاقتي في الحفاظ على شويّة السخونة اللّي سادد بينهم المدخل، وفتجريب طرق جديدة لتحويل السخونة دي لمعادِل هدم […] لرفع أنقاض التّلج […] بعد ما حتتهدم التّضاريس وتختفي الخريطة تدريجيًّا ساعتها باحس بجسمي […] خارج […] من أرض قديمة لأرض جديدة وباتابعه وهو بيتلمس لنفسه مكان فيها، فيتحرّك بوعي اللّحظة اللّي بتتكوّن فيها خبرات جديدة وتتحرّر خبرات قديمة من النّسيان . ³⁸

[…] And I focused my effort and energy on preserving some of the heat that blocked the entrance between them, experimenting with new ways to convert this heat into a demolition equivalent […] to raise the rubble of snow […] after the terrain collapses and the map gradually disappears at that time, as I feel my body […] emerging […] from an old land to a new one, and I follow it as it gropes for its own place in it, so it moves with an awareness of the moment when new experiences are formed and old ones are liberated from oblivion.³⁹

The failure to link the events and scenes from the panorama of life indicates the inadequacy of correlating past scenes with the lived present; the map, so to speak, becomes distorted and gradually disappears. A person's abandonment of restoring past glories and his search for a lost paradise through which he will liberate his people allows the individual to feel his present being leaving the old land which was the foundation for everything he lives in the present; this abandonment stems from the strangeness of the old scenes when juxtaposed with the new. Letting go of controlling reality through the past allows the individual to gain new experiences. He makes the moves through awareness of the present moment and abandons past experiences that are no longer serve in addressing and reforming immediate conditions. It is worth noting the Egyptian colloquial dialect used in the text. This is a distinguishing feature for some of the writings of the Nineties Poets who do not write in formal classical Arabic and choose to write without formal, contextual and linguistic restrictions.

In this article, I analyze two poems from a collection by Īmān Mirsāl as models of the Nineties Poets who speak about place and belonging while wrestling with their meanings.

The collection, Ḥattā atakhallā ʿan fikrat al-buyūt (2013), is Mirsāl’s fifth book and the third that makes “place” the focus of its title. The other two titles are Mamarr muʿtim yaṣluḥ li-taʿallum al-raqṣ (A Dark Hallway Suitable for Learning to Dance) (1995)⁴⁰ and Jughrāfyā badīla (Alternative Geography) (2006).⁴¹ From a hallway’s narrowness and limitation of place to the word “geography” with its implications and breadth of meanings, Mirsāl moves on in Ḥattā atakhallā ʿan fikrat al-buyūt to examine “house” and understands it through the two-fold definition cited above. It includes both specificity as well as emotional and material implications for the individual. Hence, this article aims to discuss the privacy of a house as well as the meaning of “house” for the Nineties Poets and their attitude towards it. It does so by taking two poems by Īmān Mirsāl as examples in which a house appears as an essential element and reflects a particular revolutionary thought. It proposes to read these poems and their meanings through that lens.

This article considers the two poems to be discussed as prose poems, without addressing the potentially contradictory nature of this term.⁴² The prose poem, however, is the ideal framework for presenting a revolutionary thought, because the form and nature of this type of poetry are revolutionary in and of themselves;⁴³ opposing and odd forces meet in this type of poem.⁴⁴ The prose poem “is a shift in itself, from definiteness and technicality to taste and opinion.”⁴⁵ It seems logical that the development of poetry coincides with changes of content and terminology in literature. This confirms the dynamism of literature side by side or supplements the dynamism of life in its various aspects. We can see that the Nineties Poets resorted to this poetic form seeking a simple language that relates to and is available to people. They wanted to communicate their immediate thoughts using tools that while revolting against the old did not trample on it either. The use of the old recalls the past and is an extension of it, but one does not depend on it and the tools that had been previously used.

In other words, when we look at the idea of the collection, the challenge to the prevailing and recognized social political systems, and the failure to comply with the laws of the past and the role and expectations imposed on one in society, it is natural that these ideas are molded within a revolutionary poetic form as well, leaving behind the concepts of poetry that were transmitted generations ago. Therefore, this literary genre is appropriate in form and content to present a struggle such as the one discussed in this article. Nevertheless, this poetic form obliges the poet to replace the meter and structure of the classical poem, with the poetics that are associated with the intensification of meaning and the realization of thought.

The methodology of the article relies solely on the close reading of the selected poems without addressing any external factors. It considers the text as the property of the reader who has a unique reading. However, the reader should note that insisting on a complete and integrated reading of the literary text is impossible and contradicts the idea that reading is a subjective matter that differs from one reader to another;⁴⁶ the text, according to this perspective, is merely a perception.⁴⁷

Nevertheless, a quick look at Mirsāl's work and its development contributes to a better understanding of the poems selected in the article.

Imān Mirsāl: early collections, titles, and poetic structures

Idwār al-Kharrāṭ says of her first collection, Ittiṣāfāt (Characterizations) in an article he wrote in the London newspaper al-Hayāt in 1991: “It is not difficult to find in part of this poetry the traces of beginnings, the imprints of the predecessors, and the stumbling blocks that touch the road. It is not difficult to feel the echoes of the monotonous lyrical rhythm that we have become accustomed to – and should I say we are about to find it boring or repetitive – the usual sweet rhythm of romance.”⁴⁸ Al-Kharrāṭ also refers to the Sufi features in Mirsāl's collection: “[There is] a real and creative interaction between the active forces in the Sufi tradition and this new poetic voice, an interaction that permeates the entire fabric of the book.”⁴⁹ Al-Kharrāṭ points out that the poetic talent appears clearly in this collection, even if the beginning is not completely separate from the past. He considers this beginning as a foreshadowing of the future of a creative poet who will leave her imprint into the poetic arena.

In her second collection Mamarr muʿtim yaṣluḥ li-taʿallum al-raqṣ Mirsāl is somewhat freed from the monotonous lyrical echoes that al – Kharrāṭ referred to previously, and begins to form her own poetic personality, while an atmosphere of sadness prevails in the collection. Then comes her third collection al-Mashī aṭwal waqt mumkin, which consolidates her distinctive style, vocabulary, and poetic approach.

These three collections, while foretelling the rise of a distinguished poet, reflect the poet's own experiences, focusing on seemingly fleeting details that catch the reader’s attention. They make one understand that details, no matter how small, build an individual's identity, thoughts, and personality. These collections also relativize facts, making them subject to change, and very often portray reality as miserable and dark.

“The voice of the poet's private house appears through darkened windows.”⁵⁰ This feeling of being lost even at home leads her, in her third collection, to walk alone “as long as possible” until she reaches the age of thirty.

The fourth collection, Jughrāfyā badīla, notes a shift in Mirsāl's writings. It is her first book after moving to Canada, published it more than a year after the move. While she relies on prose as a basis for building poetic discourse, this collection sees an expansion of her vocabulary and images as well as her moving on to a preoccupation with the details and concerns of exile. This begins mainly with the title of the collection. Immigrant or exilic diction appears like: muhājirūn [immigrants], jawāz safar [passport], al-mughtarib [expat], al-ghurabāʾ al-fashala [failing strangers] and others. It is used throughout the collection's poems, foreshadowing new preoccupations and other thoughts and is different from what was in her previous works. However, despite this, there is no indication of yearning nostalgically for her birthplace, as was common in the works of the ancient poets. Rather, there is a recurring portrayal of the absurdity of both external facts and events alongside a return to the past, with its good and bad times, without embellishment and without a rose-colored imaginary picture of this past.

The next collection Ḥattā atakhallā ʿan fikrat al-buyūt from its very title declaims the need for giving up on the idea of houses. In the prose book that followed this collection, Kayfa taltaʾim: ʿan al-umūma wa-ashbāḥihā, Mirsāl moves away from the mask of idealism and holiness through which mothers are seen. She touches on aspects that distance mothers from their aura of holiness and highlights feelings of inadequacy, failure, guilt, depression, and illness that make mothers seem more human and real.

In her last prose book, Fī athar ʿInāyāt al-Zayyāt, Mirsāl follows a project of al-Zayyāt that never came to fruition because of oppressive circumstances and laws. She conducts field research, looks at case archives and newspapers, and holds intensive meetings with al-Zayyāt's relatives, acquaintances and friends, in order to bring color and realism to an idealized, nostalgic, black and white version of the “Golden Age.”

The bottom line is that Mirsāl, in her writings, does not believe in big pretentious slogans. Mirsāl presents human moments that seem ordinary and fleeting but describes those moments philosophically making us pause to think deeply. She resists the mechanism of nostalgia which idealize the place of belonging and homeland. She does not negate one’s national identity but presents the homeland as it is; it is not an ideal place filled with illusory advantages and free of defects.

In the collection, Ḥattā atakhallā ʿan fikrat al-buyūt, “giving up,” as previously mentioned, is a central idea that is reflected within the texts of the collection. This is true whether this abandonment is large and going back in time, such as national slogans and major issues, or whether it is individual personal abandonment.

But the conflict between keeping ideas, especially regarding a place, or giving them up is not a new one In the text, “wa-fātatnī ashyāʾ”⁵¹ [I missed things], for example, Mirsāl says:

أمام البيت الّذي كان لسنوات بيتي

سأعبر يومًا

مجرّبة ألّا أقيس منه المسافةَ إلى بيوت أصدقائي،

[…]

هذا البيت، كان لسنوات بيتي

لم يكن معسكرًا طلّابيًّا

حتّى أترك فستان الحفلات

على مسمار خلف الباب،

وألصق صوري القديمة بصمغ مؤقّت .‏

أظنّ أنّ الجمل العاطفيّة

الّتي أخرجتها من ”الحبّ في زمن الكوليرا“

قد اختلطت هناك

أصبحت نصًّا بالغ الكوميديا .‏⁵²

One day I will pass in front of the house

that was mine for years

and try not to measure how far it is from my friends’ homes.

[…]

This house was my home for years.

It wasn’t a student hostel

where I would leave an evening gown

on a nail behind the door

or paste old pictures with temporary glue.

The romantic sentences

I extracted from Love in the Time of Cholera

must be jumbled up now

making an altogether comic text.⁵³

The speaker points to an old house of hers, and says that when she will pass by it one day, she will have already tried to give up the habits that accompanied her when she lived in it. Then, with veiled sarcasm, she indicates that it was a house she lived in and not a student hostel, ending the text with a reference to the famous Spanish novel Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. She says that her emotional sentences are inspired by this novel, and they do not fit the context of the conversation, which makes the speech look comical. This indicates that each place has its own framework, and the burden of different ideas and cultures should not be carried outside of their natural environment.

Therefore, my selection of the collection and poems was intentional. The title declares the major idea and invites the reader to explore the details that contain a particular ideology.

Although the notion of place was used by many writers for a variety of reasons, the abandonment of place and the declaration of it as revealed in the title is considered revolutionary and unfamiliar. Employing the “idea of the house” as a private and concrete place, and then abandoning this place, contains many condensed ideas and thoughts. It also includes a summons to the “house” in the ancient tradition, the abandonment of a “lost paradise” and the dream of returning to it as well as the cessation of considering the past as the ideal reality.⁵⁴

The title raises questions as it is not a complete sentence. It calls upon the reader to complete the sentence by reading the poems of the collection. When doing so, we find that the poem “Fikrat al-buyūt” is the most prominent of the poems as it is the basis for the title of the collection itself. In addition, the poem “Jaras al-ṣabāḥ” paves the way for the idea presented in “Fikrat al-buyūt.”

The collection itself is divided into three sections, each of which contains several poems. The first section, entitled “wa-fātatnī ashyāʾ” (Things Passed Me By), consists of nine poems. The second section, entitled “wa-naṣnaʿ wahman wa-nutqinuh” (And We Fabricate Delusion and Perfect It), also includes nine poems, while the third and final part, entitled “al-ḥayā fī shawāriʿihā al-jānibiyya” (Life on Its Side Streets), includes eleven poems. It is worth noting that while we find the poem “Jaras al-ṣabāḥ” in the second section, the third part is the only one in which we see a place mentioned in the title and this part contains the “Fikrat al-buyūt” poem.

When reading the poems of the collection, we feel the weakness and fragility of the human being who is distant from the center of things and far removed from heroism. Everything in these poems, whether people, things, places or feelings, appears to be transient. Conditions randomly change. Hence, in keeping with the spirit of the collection, it is not surprising to understand that “the idea of houses” is an illusory and ephemeral idea imprinted on the mind of man; like many other concepts and activities associated with being human, it does not last long. The morning bell rings and refers to waking up from sleep at the house.

Dissociating place from its materiality is further bolstered by the title of the collection, Ḥattā atakhallā ʿan fikrat al-buyūt which is repeated in one of the poems to be discussed, thus dispensing with the symbolism of the Arab house in particular. This idea of disconnecting place and materiality is also supported by the subtitle of the second group of poems, “wa-naṣnaʿu wahman wa-nutqinuhu.” This indicates that the connection with material things is constructed in the first place, because material things like houses are artificial as are the memories of one's own making and actions as well. This idea is also supported by the subtitle of the third group of the collection’s poems “al-ḥayā fī shawāriʿihā al-jānibiyya,” which refers to the idea that attachment to a fixed place is not the basis of life; rather the attachment is in the margins of life, in the unnoticed areas, in the insignificant shadows, and forgotten over time. One is reminded to leave one’s safe place in order to search for the basic meaning of one’s life in the present rather than searching for the past. One should not miss the opportunity to live one’s life and dreams because one is attached to the material things of life.

If we try to link these three subtitles together, we see that the collection’s message is explicit. The self is missing out on life because it has adopted and mastered the illusion that society offers. By sticking to the stereotypical image of life connecting individuals to their houses, individuals then become stymied in their progress in life. They are bound by their spaces. They do not venture out onto the side streets of life. Those who do break this imaginary connection and walk on the side streets eventually connect with main streets that take individuals to that which is truly important.

The invitation to reflect on these ideas is thought-provoking, especially since they come from a poet in a traditional society that links one to a place in general and to a specific house in particular. This, in turn, is linked to building a stable family life. This rebellion against never-changing societal roles is a revolt against the roles imposed upon individuals from time immemorial.

The poem – “Jaras al-ṣabāḥ” (morning bell)⁵⁵

تنفتحُ العين مثل ستارةِ مَسرح

في الظّلام، تلمِس قدمان الواقِع

لا يحدثُ صحوٌ وخشبُ الأرضيّة له نفس حرارةِ الجِلد

تكرارٌ طازج وهذا يومٌ يُضاف إليه أو يؤخَذُ منه

سيبدأ عرضٌ ارتجاليّ عند الوصول إلى مطبخِ العائلة

ربّما تكون تلك القهوةُ السّوداء هي جرسُ الصّباح،

هكذا يستلم الواحدُ جائزة العودةِ سالِمًا مِن النّوم .⁵⁶

The eye opens like a stage curtain.

In the dark, two feet touch reality.

Waking does not happen and the floor's wood has the same temperature as the skin.

Fresh repetition and this is a day added to it or taken from it.

An impromptu show will start when reaching the family kitchen.

Maybe that black coffee is the morning bell.

This is how one receives the prize of returning safely from sleep.⁵⁷

This poem is a prose poem. What makes it poetry are the deep thoughts, symbols, and indirect language that give rise to feelings which are not necessarily monolithic.⁵⁸ The choice of this poetic form to express a revolutionary idea is not spontaneous, as it is an expression of a different intellectual and ideological system – colored by the reality experienced by individuals in traditional societies in general and in Arab society in particular. Since these ideas are revolutionary in content, the poetic form is also revolutionary, leaving behind the elements of the old definitions of poetry such as the commitment to specific fixed features like shape and meter.⁵⁹

The poem is a single unit, but it is divided here into subtitles for the purpose of analysis and clarification of the gradual structure: waking up, the family kitchen, and morning bell and the prize.

Waking up

The subject of the poem revolves around the routines of life, with strange descriptions of these routines. On one hand, the eye has been opened, as if the eye is opening by itself, indicating an unwanted awakening. On the other hand, this opening of the eyes upon awakening is likened to a theater curtain indicating that the speaker considers life a play. Then the feet descend from the bed towards the ground in darkness; this indicates a joining of the dark life which is not good. These two feet touch reality, instead of touching the floor. This is a sign of the transformation from the free world of dreams in which one soars in the skies of beautiful dreams to a realistic world that propels one to the ground and makes one confront the events of one's day.

However, despite opening one’s eyes and lowering one’s feet, awakening does not occur, indicating the difficulty of accepting the return to reality. The temperature of the wood is similar to the temperature of the skin. Perhaps this is a sign for the stagnation of feelings about the new day. Due to the frequent occurrence of waking up in the same place, the speaker no longer feels the cold or heat of the wood floor. It is as if she does not really wake up from her sleep, so the floor fuses with her skin – as if they are one at the same temperature and both inanimate.

The days continually repeat, and there is a dualistic view of each new day. It adds to life on the one hand, but it decreases from age on the other; added days seemingly have no value, for in any case, this repetition will eventually end a person’s life. This confirms the absurdity of the facts of life and life events.

The family kitchen

After awakening, the speaker goes to the family kitchen and envisions what will happen there; this is a scripted show. It is as if this life and these days have a predictable theatricality. From constantly reliving the expected reality, everyone has acquired the craft of routinization in his/her living. From the moment one is awake, one’s eye serves as a theater curtain. The acting starts according to expected roles which fit the expectations of the viewers’/characters’ environment. The kitchen is a theater in which roles are played. It is the place where people gather in the morning to have breakfast or coffee. Even this occurs because of the routine and expectations from the environment. There is a necessary physical need that is food and it is as if roles are drawn for the characters.

Morning bell and the prize

The morning bell is the way to wake up, and this is seen through the image of black coffee. Black coffee has meanings that take us to the core of Arab family life and drinking it is one of life’s monotonous habits; this indicates that the speaker bears in her mind the traces of societal customs, whether in her homeland or abroad.

The poem ends in sarcastic tone. It describes the bitter black coffee as the prize for a safe return from sleep, as if one should be wary of dreams and flying in the sky because of the dangers they represent.

The concept of house in the poem

Therefore, the idea of the houses mentioned in the title of the collection is that which the community sees as necessary to build a stable, family life. A family settles into a house and the events of its day are repetitive, familiar and even boring. The speaker describes waking up from her point of view. Her duty, reflected in the need to carry out the monotonous tasks of life, snatches her from her sleep, from the only place she is allowed to dream and achieve what she wants without obstacles.

This reading is supported by the title of the second group of poems: “wa-naṣnaʿu wahman wa-nutqinuhu,” as if a materialistic lifestyle is an illusion that people in the community adopt as their own. They master it because of its repetition and the intensity of its monotony. That is why we see that people do not oppose or fight, but rather adopt the role imposed on them without discussion or attempt to rebel. The only place to rebel is in their dreams.

As for the title of the poem, it shows the fate of dreams and the flying that takes place in them. These dreams end with the morning bell ringing and awakening the dreamer to come back down to the ground and play the role chosen for her – a role that society expects to be performed faithfully and permanently.

A bell does not ring in the poem, because the soul of the speaker does not wake up from sleep. Only the body awakens while the feelings are in a deep sleep, waiting for a bell to wake her. Perhaps this bell is the black coffee with its bitterness and sharpness of taste that will force the speaker to wake up and face life’s reality.

The poem – “Fikrat al-buyūt” (the idea of houses)

بعتُ أقراطي في محلّ الذّهب لأشتري خاتمًا من سوق الفضّة . استبدلتُه بحِبر قديم وكُرّاس أسود . حدث ذلك قبل

أن أنسى الصفحات على مقعد قطار كان من المفروض أن يوصلني إلى البيت . وكان كلما وصلتُ إلى مدينة بدا

لي أن بيتي في مدينة أخرى .

تقولُ أولجا من دون أن أحكي لها ما سبق: ”البيتُ لا يصبح بيتًا إلّا لحظة بيعِه، تكتشِفُ احتمالات حديقتِه

وغرَفِه الواسعة في عيون السّمسار، تحتفظ بكوابيسك تحت السّقف نفسِه لنفسِك، وسيكون عليك أن تَخرج بها في

حقيبة أو اثنتين على أحسن الفروض“. أولجا تصمتُ فجأة ثمّ تبتسمُ، مثل ملكة تَتَباسَط مع رعاياها، بين ماكينة

القهوة في مطبخِها وشبّاك يطلّ على زهور .

زوج أولجا لم يرَ مشهدَ الملكةِ، وربّما لهذا لا يزال يظنّ أنّ البيت هو الصّديقُ الوفيّ عندما يصبح أعمى،

أركانُه تحفظ خطواتِه وسُلّماتُه ستحميه برحمَتِها من السّقوط في العتمة .

أبحث عن مفتاح يضيعُ دائمًا في قعرِ الحقيبة، حيث لا تراني أولجا ولا زوجُها، حيثُ أتدرّبُ في الحقيقةِ حتّى

أتخلّى عن فكرةِ البيوت .

كلُّ مرّة تعود إليه وتُراب العالَم على أطراف أصابِعك، تحشرُ ما استطعتَ حملَه في خزائِنه . مع ذلك ترفضُ

أن تُعرِّف البيت بأنّه مستقبل الكَراكيب، حيثُ أشياء ميتة كانت قد بدَت في لحظة ما تفاوُضًا مع الأمل . ليكن

البيت هو المكانُ الّذي لا تلاحِظ البتّة إضاءَته السّيّئة، جدارٌ تتّسع شروخُه حتّى تظنَّها يومًا بديلًا للأبواب . ⁶⁰

I sold my earrings in a gold shop to buy a ring in the silver market, and then replaced it with old ink and a black notebook. This happened before I forgot the pages on the seat of a train that was supposed to take me home. Whenever I reached a city, it seemed that my house was in another.

Olga says, without my telling her all of the above, “A house only becomes home the moment it's being sold. You discover the potential of the garden and the spacious rooms through the eyes of the realtor. You keep your nightmares under the same roof for yourself, and when you leave, you pack them in a suitcase or two at best.” Olga suddenly falls silent, then smiles like a queen mingling with her subjects, between the coffee machine in her kitchen and a window overlooking flowers.

Olga's husband did not see the queen's scene, and maybe that's why he still thinks the house will be his trusted friend when he becomes blind. Its corners will recognize his steps and its stairs will mercifully protect him from falling in the dark.

I look for a key that always gets lost in the bottom of my handbag, while Olga and her husband cannot see me, and where, in truth, I practice giving up the idea of houses.

Every time you return to it with the dust of the world on your fingertips, you stuff what you've brought in its closet. Nonetheless, you refuse to recognize the house as the future of clutter, where dead things had seemed for a moment to be a negotiation with hope. Let a house be a place whose bad lighting you do not notice, a wall whose cracks widen until one day you begin to think of them as a substitute for doors.⁶¹

Despite the appearance of some narrative elements in the poem, the entire story is somewhat missing; events and characters are suddenly cut off without further mention. The reader need not know nor think about the fate of the characters and their conditions. The reader is busy decoding textual codes and not the characters themselves.

In order to make it easier to understand the reading of the poem, we will divide it into three parts, and then reconnect all the parts back together. These three parts are: “Home and place,” “Olga and her husband,” and “The concept of house and its reformulation.”

Home and place

Mirsāl begins her poem in a gold shop where the speaker sells her earrings. This scene engages us, because the place of a gold shop in Arab society has connotations and symbols related to rituals of engagement and marriage.⁶² In a festive scene, the groom and bride, accompanied by female family members from both sides, go to buy pieces of gold for the bride. A gold shop symbolizes the beginnings of a life of stability and entry into the marital house with the aim of building a new family.

The speaker in the poem, however, does not buy gold. She sells it, thereby abandoning these symbolic values. This speaker is not satisfied however with selling her gold. She first replaces it with a silver ring of lesser value and then another item of even lesser value – old ink and a black notebook. According to this reading, Mirsāl depicts societal reality in a bitter, sarcastic tone. The speaker in the poem abandons materialism in order to achieve her true goal – an old ink and a black notebook in order to record and publicize her thoughts and ideas.

The old ink indicates two ideas. The first is that she is not interested in material things and the second is that the ideas which she wishes to put on paper are those which she has had for a very long time. The blackness of the notebook refers to societal disapproval of her very different ideas; her society condemns her without trying to understand or dialogue. It is as if the speaker understands that writing about her beliefs will not change society. She therefore forgets her writing on the train and that train moves her pages and thoughts from one place to another including her “home.” She no longer cares about keeping her thoughts to herself or the possible reactions as a result of her departure from the customary societal system.

Yet, the train that was supposed to take her home never reaches there. In the last sentence of this section, she reveals that she feels a lack of belonging whenever she reaches a place and that her home must be elsewhere. Apparently, she cannot find what she wants there. But belonging elsewhere is never achieved. This declaration of abandoning both materialism and the stability/ belonging to a home/ place as well as abandoning the societal systems imposed on her, is followed by a statement that the feeling of belonging is not felt anywhere else as well. It is as if the home is something that changes according to the aspirations and feelings of the person at a given moment. The soul of man is free and is not held captive by any place. In this way, Mirsāl overturns the concept of a home and of the stability, continuity and security it represents.

Olga and her Husband

After overturning the concept of home in Arab society, the speaker moves on to shed light on whether this is a broader, world-wide issue. Two additional foreign characters appear, Olga and her husband. The name Olga itself and Olga’s own personal experiences seem to indicate the widespread confirmation of the speaker’s point of view. Olga is a foreigner and is outside the regular society of the speaker. Yet, the speaker expresses similar concerns about houses. The speaker emphasizes that Olga defines a house and does so without any awareness of the speaker’s thoughts or experiences on the train.

After she explains the nature of a house, Olga is presented as a queen, confident in herself and her situation that allows her the freedom to think, speak and act. This is the opposite of the mental confusion and conflict that the speaker is experiencing. Queen Olga walks self-assuredly among her subjects, the household and kitchen utensils represented by both the coffee machine as well as the flowers outside. Her role is one that allows her to walk where she wants. She moves around her kitchen and looks outside her kitchen with a smile and satisfaction.

This contrast between inside and outside the house refers to Olga's satisfaction in her life both outside and inside the house; she lives her life as she really wants it to be. She is not confined solely to the framework and boundaries of the house, or of the kitchen. Olga does not confine herself to the inside, and casts her eyes out forcefully, thus showing that her stay inside is voluntary, not forced. Olga's definition emphasizes not giving in to things and making those ideas an integral part of an individual’s identity. She further says that one clings to and fully appreciates one's house only when there is a wish to sell it. It is then that a person starts thinking about the potential of the house's components. She says, in effect, that things become dearer to a person the moment they are abandoned. Just as a person carries many memories, including very bitter ones, in quantities that one did not think existed until the moment of departure, the abandoned house is a witness in time to the scars of the soul which do not pass as easily as happy times. However, despite the many memories and the desire to keep them for oneself and not leave them to strangers, the individual leaves the house with only a small part of them. The corners of the house remind the poet of the events and experiences that occurred inside this house; by moving away, the memory also leaves. Olga does not seem to have the idea of houses in her mind. She seems to have given up on them a long time ago, as she lives the moment without being preoccupied with the past or the future.

Olga’s husband does not share his wife’s view. In fact, in not witnessing the queen's previous scene, it seems that Olga has never shared her thoughts with him. The husband believes that the house is a trusted friend that does not forget its residents. It takes care of him in times of weakness, even as his senses and strength betray him. Keeping the body in the corners of the house will protect the body from stumbling. The house’s ability to protect is an action of giving back; it will return the beautiful care and adherence given to it over the years. Olga's husband attributes to the house imaginary miraculous abilities, based on a past that robs him of the ability to put material things within their normal framework. He exaggerates their size so that the past suddenly becomes capable of creating a safe and good future.

The duality of attitudes towards the house, between Olga and her husband, shows Olga in a more open and realistic way. She is looking at things in their natural condition and is not afraid to live in the moment. She enjoys it and controls her reality and things, as if she were a queen. As for Olga's husband, he links his fate to things and matters that will not actually help him in times of crisis, so he does not live comfortably in the moment, nor does he feel comfortable in the future when he discovers that what he built in his mind is nothing but a set of illusions. The speaker seems to be watching all this, fascinated by Olga and her royal nature, as if she wishes to be like her.

The concept of house and its reformulation

In the next scene, the speaker searches for her key, a symbol of belonging to a place and a house. She defines the self and imprisons it in a framework that does not exist in reality except in human consciousness. This key is lying at the bottom of the bag, lost among things. This scene is repetitive and permanent; the speaker deliberately loses the key by throwing it into the bag and is constantly searching for it. She is trying to dispense with a certain thing or idea, but hesitation and doubts about her ability to do so keeps this thing or idea close by; in the event regret occurs, she will easily be able to retrieve it. The speaker calls this repetitive process an exercise in giving up on the idea of houses. In the sense of abandoning self-restriction and thinking, she restricts the ability to launch and be open to a broad life.

Neither Olga nor her husband sees the bottom of the bag. The speaker's confusing thoughts, which she keeps close by and does not want to lose, are thoughts that she keeps for herself, because she does not know if she will have enough courage to actually abandon the house. The bag is a material object in which other material items are placed. Generally accompanying people throughout the day or travels, the bag has within it things that may not often be used but whose presence is reassuring. The bag could be a symbol of leaving, but the key is also there as a guarantee that one can return to the same place. The key, and thus the house, are part of this group of items to which the speaker is attached but with which she ultimately wants to dispense. After this description of the speaker’s internal conflict, between abandoning or not abandoning the house, she declares her definition of the house and addresses the readers by trying to have them go through the same experience. This reveals that her experiences are not unique and that she is not alone in them. In describing the permanent return to the house, the speaker says that returning to one’s house is always done with dust on our fingertips. This means that the one returning to the house carries parts of the places that were visited. These include carrying the psychological, intellectual and material burdens from these places which are then stuffed into the closets of the house.⁶³ The verb “stuff” indicates that the house is basically filled with material matters and that there is either no need for more or an inability to absorb more. Despite this, the one returning home with these loads refuses to admit that these things will turn into unused clutter and will merely occupy space to no one’s benefit. This clutter is a list of things that seemed to have been used once but, while preserved, have since died in memory. The house is the future of the clutter which preserves it, and in time, will turn into a shelter for the clutter. If we look at clutter as a symbol of all things from the past heritage that are no longer valid in the present, we see that the speaking tone is bitterly sarcastic regarding this subject. We insist on carrying these things, although they have no real benefit at this moment in time. Rather, they burden us by occupying a space that could have been occupied by what really benefits us.

The house, according to the speaker, is the place where one does not notice bad lighting, large cracks or any other defects. The defects of the place are noticed in the event of dissatisfaction, and sometimes all the feelings of frustration and lack of self-realization are blamed on the defects. From this new perspective, the house is where one feels good about oneself and finds inner peace. It is the place that allows one to fulfill oneself in other than material matters. In this way, material things become a side and subsidiary matter that fulfills a specific need; it is, “life on its side streets.”

Conclusion

Mirsāl is a poet whose writings have attracted greater interest in recent years with many of her poems translated into other languages. She has had an increasing influence on the Arab and non-Arab literary scene.

In her collection, and especially in the poems discussed in this article, Mirsāl breaks down the accepted societal concepts and dares the reader to discuss the assumptions in Arab and other traditional societies. This questioning of societal norms is different from the concept of a house. A house is a specific, subjective place that bears many features of an individual’s identity, lifestyle and memories. It is filled with internal conflict and a reluctance to share ideas with the outside.

According to Mirsāl, giving up one’s house means giving up the burdens of the past as well as imaginary attachments, even though this liberation from the house may lead to exposure to criticism. Leaving one’s roots, one pays the price of isolation.⁶⁴ It is the struggle between the desire for liberation from the emotional, spatial constraint of that which is called a house, and an unknown path, shrouded in ambiguity, leading to either success or failure. Therefore, these texts upend the norms imposed by society.⁶⁵

Both of Mirsāl's poems reflect the belief that liberation from a place and its material past is an intellectual emancipation from that which is the most private and closest to the soul; this liberation is what frees the soul from its chains and allows people to dream and grow. According to this vision, a place gives a person a feeling of peace, contentment and freedom. It is from where one can depart and develop – without expectations or roles being imposed from the outside. Finally, and most importantly, it is a place which gives individual contentment and happiness in the present.

The negation of the place is not at odds with preserving identity. The past, whether good or bad, is part of an individual's identity and its effects remain in the soul forever. For this reason, Mirsāl does not call for the destruction of the past and the creation of a completely new present. Rather, she relies on this past to build a reality suitable for the lived experience in the present. The speaker does not want to restore a “lost paradise,” but rather seeks to build a new paradise, whose foundations are based on that past paradise. The speaker replaces the preoccupation with belonging to a place with belonging to the dream and self-realization wherever the body is. This vision is consistent with the “poetics” approach, which looks at place in literature as a psychological imaginary place and not a geography.⁶⁶

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Casy, “Between Geography and Philosophy”, 623.

2 Tramontini, “Constructing Home,” 53.

3 Bieger, “No Place Like Home; or, Dwelling in Narrative,” 20.

4 Bachelard, La Poétique de l'Espace, 5; Noorani, “Estrangement and Selfhood in the Classical Concept of Waṭan,”16, 18. We point out here that the home in the ancient Arab society was not a fixed matter. When changing the location of the house and moving the individual to another place, the individual often felt lonely and alienated in his home, because of the new strange environment around him (Gruendler, “Longing for Home,”18).

5 Gruendler, “Longing for Home,” 2.

6 Spivack, “Archetypal Place,” 287–88.

7 Bachelard, La Poétique de l'Espace, 4.

8 Stern, “No Place Like Home,” 395–96.

9 Gruendler, “Longing for Home,” 2.

10 Ibn Munqidh, Al-Manāzil wa-l-diyār, 4.

11 See in this context for example: Al-Ḥamdān, Ṣabā Najd: Najd fī al-shiʿr al-ʿArabī; Bachelard, La Poétique de l'Espace, and many other studies in Arabic and other languages.

12 Gruendler, “Longing for Home,” 6.

13 Al-Fayfī, Mafātīḥ al-qaṣīda al-jāhiliyya, 40–41.

14 Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Najd, 62.

15 Ibid., 24, 50; Sells, “Return to the Flash Rock Plain of Thahmad,” 207.

16 Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Najd, 25, 54, 103.

17 Ibid., 26–29, 106; Gruendler, “Longing for Home,” 17.

18 Al-Qālī, Kitāb al-amālī, 206.

19 Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Najd, 31.

20 Gruendler, “Longing for Home,” 17.

21 Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Najd, 33.

22 Al-Ṭaḥāwī, “Al-Baḥth ʿan al-zaman al-mafqūd fī kitābat al-shatāt al-maṣrī; May al-Tilmisānī wa-Īmān Mirsāl namūdhajan,” 37; Lennon, “Assembling a Revolution: Graffiti, Cairo and the Arab Spring,” 245; Fakhreddine, The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice, 127.

23 Burt, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” 147; Fakhreddine, The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice, 127.

24 Fakhreddine, The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice, 123.

25 Burt, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” 142.

26 Ibid., 143.

27 Zaher, “Three Egyptian Poets.”

28 Burt, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” 143; Fakhreddine, The Arabic Prose Poem, 127.

29 Burt, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” 143, 146.

30 Ibid., 143–44; Fakhreddine, The Arabic Prose Poem, 124.

31 Fakhreddine, The Arabic Prose Poem, 124.

32 Zaher, “Three Egyptian Poets.” ; Burt, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” 146.

33 I am aware that cutting out parts of the poems harms their overall unity, but the aim behind this is to focus on the central issues mentioned in the article and to represent them.

34 Ṭāha, Imbrāṭūriyyat al-ḥawāʾiṭ, 19–20.

35 Zaher, “Three Egyptian Poets.”

36 Al-Jābirī, Al-Ḥayā mish brūfa.

37 This translation is mine.

38 Al-Jābirī, Al-Ḥayā mish brūfa.

39 This translation is mine.

40 Mirsāl, Mamarr Muʿtim Yaṣluḥ li-Taʿallum al-Raqṣ.

41 Mirsāl, Jughrāfyā Badīla. See the analysis of this book in Mzhavia, Textheterotopien von Sabah al-Kharrat Zwayn, Iman Mirsal und Suzanne Alaywan.

42 Fakhreddine, “The Prose Poem and the Arabic Literary Tradition,” 243.

43 Snir, Modern Arabic Literature: A Theoretical Framework, 204.

44 Fakhreddine, “The Prose Poem and the Arabic Literary Tradition,” 255.

45 Fakhreddine, The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice, 16.

46 Sliman-Baraky, “The Definition and Mechanisms of Condensation (Takṯīf) in Modern Arabic Poetry. Muqāṭaʿa by Ḫalīl Muṭrān and Raʾs by Sinān Anṭūn as Examples,” 3.

47 Bannīs, al-Shiʿr al-ʿArabī al-Ḥadīth - Bunyātuh wa-Ibdālātuhā: al-Taqlīdiyya, 61.

48 Al-Kharraṭ, “Īmān Mirsāl shāʿirat al-ittiṣāfāt.”

49 Ibid.

50 Karmūn, “Fī 'al-mashī aṭwal waqt mumkin' li-Īmān Mirsāl.”

51 It is noted that this title is also one of the subtitles in collection Ḥattā atakhallā ʿan fikrat al-buyūt, which indicates that sometimes Mirsāl refers to her works in other works.

52 Mirsāl, Mamarr Muʿtim Yaṣluḥ li-Taʿallum al-Raqṣ, 5.

53 Mersal, “Things Elude me (Khaled Mattawa translation).”

54 See the previous longer discussion in the previous section about the writings of the Nineties Poets and their position on the past and places.

55 Parts of the analysis of this poem are taken from my doctoral thesis under the guidance of Professor Reuven Snir (Sliman-Baraky, Al-Takthīf fī al-shiʿr al-ʿarabī ʿʿalā marr al-ʿuṣūr: Dirāsa tanẓīriyya taṭbīqiyya).

56 Mirsāl, Ḥatta atakhallā ʿan fikrat al-buyūt, 39.

57 The translation of the poem is mine.

58 Haidar, The Prose Poem and the Journal Shiʿr: A Comparative Study of Literature, Literary Theory and Journalism, 42.

59 Taha, “'Swimming Against the Current'. Towards an Arab Feminist Poetic Strategy,” 217; Moreh, Studies in Modern Arabic Prose and Poetry, 7; 16; 57.

60 Mirsāl, Ḥatta atakhallā ʿan fikrat al-buyūt, 83–84.

61 This poem was translated by Khaled Mattawa. See Mersal, “The Idea of Houses (Khaled Mattawa's translation),” 176. There is another translation of this poem by Robyn Creswell (The Idea of Houses (Robyn Creswell's translation),” 34). A comparison between these two excellent translations raises the issue of how one conveys both the poet's voice and the translator's personal reading of the poetry. For example, while Mattawa sometimes uses the word “house” as a translation of the word “bayt”, Creswell uses the broader term “home.” In this context, see endnote no. 1.

62 It is worth mentioning that marriage is one of the meanings of the word bayt in Lisān al-ʿArab.

63 Bachelard says that the closet, since it is a space not available to everyone, is a concealment of chaos (Bachelard, La Poétique de l'Espace, 78) and this reflects the chaos of feelings and thoughts within the personality.

64 Gruendler, “Longing for Home,” 22.

65 Taha, Swimming Against the Current, 213.

66 Stetkevych, Ṣabā Najd: Shiʿriyyat al-Ḥanīn fī al-Nasīb al-ʿArabī al-Klāsīkī, 17.