Selections

Tahar Ben Jelloun
The Raising of the Ashes

This corpse that was a body will no more stroll along the Tigris or the Euphrates
scooped up on a shovel that will recollect none of its pain
shoved in a black plastic trash bag
this corpse that was a soul, a name and a face
returns to the earth of the sands
detritus and absence.

This earth avid for water has had only blood to irrigate the great silence
this desert of affliction has laid open the trenches of sleep and men in their thousands have been engulfed by them in a flash of torn skin
a lighted candle kept vigil within the defunct rib cage.
A shred of sky inhabited these corpses destined to oblivion.

A coverlet of sand has been disposed on these black bags by a hand of iron.
No more movement. Not even the fulgurant memories of first loves.
Nor the unknown bird flown from far-off day to the prayer for the dead. It is black, unmoving, eyes scorched, eternal.

This body that was a word will no longer thinking of Homer gazing upon the sea.
It has not been extinguished. It has been touched by a flash of sky smashing word and breath.
These crystals mingling with the sand are the last words pronounced by those unarmed men.

Faces blackened by a flame that does not waver.
Page of a life charred to impenetrable secrecy.
The gaze, slowly torn from the face – is a thin sheet of paper,
beautiful but tough, disturbingly light; a veil between our life, our death; a silence harbouring a few grains of sand.

Faces washed by the same brief, effective fire are no longer faces.
The sketch of a remembered face is dumped in the same black sacks.
Disorder and defeat have muddled days and appearances.

This body that was all laughter
is now burning.
Ashes carried away by wind to the river
and the water receives them like the ghosts of happy tears.
Ashes of memory adorned by a very simple little life, a life
with no history, with a garden, a fountain and a few books.
Ashes of a corpse reprieved from an unmarked grave that are offered to the tempests of sand.

When the wind rises, the ashes will go and lay themselves upon the eyes of the survivors.
Who will know nothing of them and
they shall walk in triumph with the touch of death on their faces.
Innumerable are the signs releasing their waters
in extremities of tumult
there, at the edge of a moving cemetery.

•

In this country the dead travel
like statues and like flames,
they wear eyeglasses
and hold out their fire-scorched arms to fly away.
We say they became invisible
and go to offer the living the years left them to live.
Thus the desert is strewn with so many years: a century or more.
Lives to be taken like stuffed jackals
lives that tremble as they say:
“Death is not as fatal as is night and shadow to the sun.”

This body that was a dream is a devastated dwelling.
It has neither door nor window
just a lacerated mattress, a pan, stale bread, a coat
hung up, walls blown out, grey dust and last year’s calendar.
Eyes are holes where the flies are nesting
the mouth is a wound
and the skin no longer remembers anything.
Guests have arrived, saying: “War is no excuse!”.
But the house is no longer an abode
it is absence and silence.
On a strip of wall
the dictator’s portrait is still intact
flies cover it with their droppings.

The charred trees
go on standing
When the wind shakes them,
shrivelled birds fall out
No child’s hand picks them up.
Covered with dust, they roll among the thorn bushes.

That’s how the desert is.
Suffering brought into a town
or into a mountain village.
From such land comes an ochre rain and a wind bringing bad news:
“Ahmed son of Ali has offered up his soul for his country. A martyr, his body cannot be brought home. He nourishes the earth . . .

He who is wandering today in the sleep of others
is not a martyr.
He is a tree of ashes
a vessel without armour
a blind statue.

A voice rises from a dried-up well
it comes from a century far far away
when Babylon was prayer.
In those times the world could never die
children said: “The world is suffering but it will never die!”

There is beauty melted in earth
a city
the skeleton of a city
seated in an archaic
hospice where straw corpses come to die.

Baghdad has no more stomach
she has opened her veins
for a people who go hungry
On its forehead the portrait of a gravedigger is intact.

From this sky so white
falls a funeral mask
a voice:
It is our destiny at stake even if we wish to remain anonymous.
But the earth compels us; it swallows us then vomits us into the river’s brackish waters.
We float on our backs, bellies inflated
eyes staring at the sun
we no longer have eyes, but empty sockets that hold images captive.

Our skin is no longer our skin.
They fleeced it from us like a stolen robe
like a borrowed shroud.

The scorch marks creep like the memory of our tears
and we are bereft of all that is merciful.

Is it a storm or is it the picture of our defeat that is being drawn in the streets?
Vanquished, we are no longer ourselves
and our heritage is the abyss.
Another voice:
I shall not say we
because I want to vomit
but I no longer have a stomach
I no longer have a body
I am a sack
a jute bag filled with earth
I am a field at the cliff’s edge
I am a field of stones where serpents are sleeping
I feel the cold in my separate limbs
is that what hell is
feeling cold in a phantom body?
Who speaks from the bottom of this grave?
Me?
I no longer exist.

From another grave, another voice:
I fell asleep. Naked.
My feet wearing the army boots of death.
I was expecting glory
and it is words covering our skin
Words
mouldering of unmoving time.
I fell asleep in other bodies emptied of their entrails
they were still warm
the thing moving there is not an arm
it is a famished cat struck by lightning.

Our words have fallen into the grave
they are no longer words
but a gluey sperm in mud and shame.

They tell me: our own mourning is in the look children give us.
Who shall tell them the story of our defeats?
Will they believe us?
I see them spitting on the faces of the dead
so many useless words.
Ah speech, words, the litany of the starving
bitter bread buried in the lowly earth
I see them running to pick up our scuffed shoes
they make a bonfire with the poems written by the generals
and inflame our memory.
They no longer spit
They no longer speak
They forget . . .


Translated by James Kirkup
from ‘La RemontÈe des cendres’
[‘The Raising of the Ashes’], Editions du Seuil, 1991
Ephemeral childhood


They have immense eyes devoured by trachoma. and oblivion
Born out of season, they run through the alleys like shafts of light
who will lend a shadow to these bodies treading scorched earth?

In a paper boat they sail
dressed in palm branches and leaves.

there is a sadness, at evening, that descends the scale of time and covers their brows like sweat.
Do they know?
Their eyes forever widening
they are stamped with the washed sky
they move over the reeds they whip.

With their impatient dreams
they make misfortune tremble.
Beauty lies between their teeth like death
an immense burst of laughter
a tear on the faces of mothers.

Childhood and innocence are left to the world’s fraternity and to the ants
laying ephemeral stars on the cemetery
they speak to the dead and displace the stones whose memory of exile they become.

24 April 1986

•

It is a village beyond time
where men and stones are motionless
where the ewes and the mules stand waiting.
The grass is scorched by the snow
a lame shepherd is looking for a tree on which to hang himself
clouds broken by the rays of a mocking sun
descend and take the place of hills
the mountain lies close to the sky
it will not move.
“You must learn to forget” says a voice.
Men, stones and beasts have nothing to forget.
Here, the first season of silence watches over an old horse with glazed eyes
The days fall like drops of icy rain
suspended between the dry branch and the earth.
Men no longer know how to count
they dream of dying as they say their prayers.


1990

Translated by James Kirkup

from ‘Les Pierres du Temps’, PoÈsie ComplËte 1966-1995