Arabic Poems in Translation, Part 2

Selections from Other Paths for Shahrazad (Tupelo Press, 2026).



تفاصيل يوم عابر \ خولة جاسم الناهي - العراق
  
 
:كنتُ أوّد أن أُخبرك عن تفاصيل يومي
!عن شمس بلادي الدافئة في هذا التوقيت من العام
.عن خضرة الأشجار وعناقيد الثمار فيها
.عن فراشات الربيع وأزاهيره
,أود أن أحدثك عن أصوات الباعة المتجولين المارين في شارعنا
!وعن موسيقى عرباتهم وأنغام ناياتهم الحزينة
واسعار الطماطم
التي أصبحت عشرة كيلوات بسعر أقل من دولار
وحسرة قلبي على زارعها
..وفرحتي لكونها تطعم الفقير
أريد الحديث لك مطولا عن تفاصيل لقاءات يوم الجمعة العائلية
وشاي أمي الذي تهدره على الفحم
!ودجاجها وسمكها الذي أنضجته نيران المحبة
أرغب أيضا بالشكوى من نزلات برد نهاية العام وبداية العام الآخر
.والحمى التي لم تفارقني منذ أربعة أيام
وعن الألم الذي يتزايد في مفاصلي كلما شعرت ببعض الراحة او الاسترخاء
هناك تفاصيل أخرى أود الخوض فيها كرائحة الغسيل في مناشره
,والعطور والملابس الشفيفة في خزائنها
..وكتاباتي التي أهملتها.. وتلك الكتب التي تراكمت على طاولتي بانتظار وقت فراغ لها
,وعن تهاني بداية العام التي لا أجد وقتا للرد عليها
..وتلك لأغاني الرائعة التي أتظاهر بسماعها
!وعن فيلم لم أكمل مشاهدته خشية نهاية غير سعيدة
تفاصيل وتفاصيل وتفاصيل
أحتفظ بها لك
لكن للأسف أنك لست موجودا!
:أتساءل دائما
هل يعرف الرجال أنهم يولدون في خيالنا
قبل أن تلدهم أمهاتهم
!وقبل أن يحلم آبائهم بوجودهم
.وأننا معشر النساء سبب وجودهم على الأرض
!لأن الله لا يرد دعاء امرأة تعشق بكل هذا الشغف

Details of My Passing Days 
by Khawla Jasim Alnahi

co-translated by Abeer Abdulkareem and Cindy Veach


I want to tell you:
About warm sunshine in my country this time of year.
About the greenness of trees, how the fruit clusters 
About spring’s butterflies and flowers.
I want to tell you about the voices of street venders, 
The music of their carriages, the sad melody of their flutes
And the price of tomatoes, less than a dollar for ten kilos,
And my heartbreak for the tomato farmers 
And my joy for the poor feasting on tomatoes.
I want to talk about my family’s Friday gatherings, 
My mother’s tea that she brews on coal
And her chicken and fish cooked with the fire of affection.
I want to complain about common colds at the end of the year 
A fever that lasted four days 
And the pain increasing in my joints whenever I relax
Now, let me tell you about the laundry’s spreading smell,
Perfumes and sheer clothes in my closet
And my writings that I’ve neglected and the books 
That accumulate on my table, waiting. 
And about the new year greetings I can’t find time to answer 
And those wonderful songs I pretend to listen to
And a movie I didn’t finish for fear of an unhappy ending.
I keep these details for you though you’re not there.
I wonder: Do men know they were born in our imaginations?
Before their mother gave birth to them.
Before their father dreamt of them.
And that we, women, are the reason for their existence. 
God listens to the prayers of a woman who loves passionately.

 




Khawla Jasim Alnahi is from Iraq. She is a journalist, translator, and news editor. Her writings include two story collections: laa’iha bi-asmaa’ almalaa’ika (A List of Angels’ Names), in 2013, and jinuub khat 33 (Line 33 South), in 2019. Her story sahib almizan (The Scale Owner) was published in laa’ibu as-sard (Players of Narration) in Basra in 2015. She is a member of the Iraq Writers Union.

Abeer Abdulkareem is a translator, researcher, foreign language instructor and linguist. She is the managing editor of Other Paths for Shahrazad: a Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Arab Women (Tupelo, 2026). Prior to joining the Her Story Is collective, Abeer worked as a Senior Language Researcher at Language Research Center in Maryland, where she wrote several books on Arabic language and its dialects. Prior to this role, she taught Arabic language at Dartmouth College. She holds a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. A recipient of Fulbright Scholarship, she speaks Arabic (MSA, Iraqi, Levantine, and Egyptian).

Cindy Veach is the author of three poetry collections: Monster Galaxy (MoonPath Press) a finalist for the Sally Albiso Award; Her Kind (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal; and Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a Massachusetts Center for the Book “Must Read.” Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, North American Review, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Philip Booth Poetry Prize and the Samuel Allen Washington Prize. Cindy is poetry co-editor of MER.

الفقد \ نسرين أكرم خوري - سوريا


,الفَقد جعلها أُمًّا أكثر ممّا يجب
.جعلها أُمًّا بشكلٍ لا يطاق
في بداية اليوم الثامن والعشرين من كلّ شهرٍ
تمرّر يدها برفقٍ على بطنها
كما لو أنّها تمسح دمعةً عن خدّ بَتلة
تنظّف خزانتها من السّجائر وقناني البيرة والجينزات الضيقة والهواجس
تنام على جنبها الأيسر
..وتنتظر
في نهاية اليوم الثامن والعشرين
تعاود نحيبها
تسقي فقدها كما يليق بوردة
تحتفظ بأشواكها عميقًا في قلبها
.بينما الدماء تسيل بالقرب

The Loss 
by Nesrin Ekram Khoury 

co-translated by Abeer Abdulkareem and Martha Collins

The loss made her a mother 
Made her a mother in an impossible way

At the start of the 28th day of each month
She gently pats her belly
As if wiping a tear from a petal
She cleans her closet of cigarettes, beer bottles, tight jeans, fears
She sleeps on her left side
And waits…

At the end of the 28th day
She cries again
Watering her loss as it were a flower
Keeping its thorns deep in her heart
While blood flows nearby

Nesrin Ekram Khoury is from Syria. She holds a degree in civil engineering. Her publications include bi-jarrat harb waahida (With the Stroke of One War), published by Dar altakwiin, in 2015; waadi qandiil (Qandil Valley), published by Almutawassit in 2017; and arkul albayt wa akhruj (I Kick Off the House and Go), published by Dar Ninevah in 2019. She contributed to several publications including a Syrian Poets anthology, The Love and War, translated into French by Dar; Le Temps Des Cerises, the 5th edition of the American periodical Life and Legends, published in 2017; Amaravati Poetic Prism, published in India in 2017; World Healing, World Peace Anthology, published by Inner Child Press, USA, in 2018;  anna allathi anntum (I Am Who You Are); and a bilingual Arabic-Catalonian publication of six Syrian poets, published in Barcelona in 2019. She is a former writer-in-residence at Casa Mediterraneo, Alicante, Spain (2018) and contributed to the Arabic Language Festival at Catholic University of Milano (2019).

Abeer Abdulkareem is a translator, researcher, foreign language instructor and linguist. She is the managing editor of Other Paths for Shahrazad: a Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Arab Women (Tupelo, 2026). Prior to joining the Her Story Is collective, Abeer worked as a Senior Language Researcher at Language Research Center in Maryland, where she wrote several books on Arabic language and its dialects. Prior to this role, she taught Arabic language at Dartmouth College. She holds a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. A recipient of Fulbright Scholarship, she speaks Arabic (MSA, Iraqi, Levantine, and Egyptian).

Martha Collins’s eleventh book of poetry is Casualty Reports (Pittsburgh, 2022); her tenth, Because What Else Could I Do (Pittsburgh, 2019), won the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. Her fifth volume of co-translated Vietnamese poetry, Dreaming the Mountain by Tuệ Sỹ (with Nguyen Ba Chung; Milkweed, 2023), was a PEN America award finalist. She has also published several co-edited anthologies, including Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries (with Kevin Prufer; Graywolf, 2017).  Collins founded the U.Mass. Boston creative writing program and later taught at Oberlin College. 

نجاة \ نسرين أكرم خوري – سوريا


أخبرتكَ أنني
لا أخشى النّحل في حضرةِ الأزهار البرّيّة
ولا أتهيّب الوقوعَ في الحبّ طالما نهايته وشيكة
لم أعد أتوجّس من أن يجرحني ورقُ الكتب الجديدة
.مُذ تعلّمت كيف أمصّ نقطة الدّم عن إصبَعي قبل أن تُغرقَ وجه شخصيّةٍ يهمّ الكاتب بقتلها
.قلق التّقدم في السنّ تجاوزته بتحطيم ساعةٍ والتهام ديكٍ مشويّ
صرتُ أكشف عن ساقيّ كلّما مررتُ بزقاق المتحرّشين
وأفتح النّوافذ حين يشتدّ القصف
أعزّي القريبة بوحيدها وأنا أنفخ بالون العلكة
أشتم المتسوّلين إن لمحت الصّدق يتكسّر مع نظراتهم
.وكلّما تعالى بكاءُ ابن الصديقة، قبّلتُ زوجَها
..لذا لا تستغرب حين تراني هكذا
,ممدّدةً على طاولة غسيل الموتى
.أنتظرك

Salvation 
by Nesrin Ekram Khoury

co-translated by Abeer Abdulkareem and Cindy Veach


I told you 
I’m not afraid of bees in the presence of wild flowers
Nor do I fear falling in love as long as the end is near.
I no longer have qualms about being cut by the page of a book. 
I’ve learned how to suck a drop of blood from my finger before it drowns 
The character about to be killed.
I’ve overcome fears of aging by destroying clocks and devouring grilled roosters.
I’ve started showing my legs when I walk down the molester’s alley
And opening windows as the bombing intensifies. 
I console a relative over her only child while blowing gum balloons. 
I curse beggars when honesty breaks with their looks.
When the wailing of my friend’s son starts up, I kiss her husband.
So, don’t be surprised if you see me 
Laid down on the mortuary washing table
Waiting for you.

Nesrin Ekram Khoury is from Syria. She holds a degree in civil engineering. Her publications include bi-jarrat harb waahida (With the Stroke of One War), published by Dar altakwiin, in 2015; waadi qandiil (Qandil Valley), published by Almutawassit in 2017; and arkul albayt wa akhruj (I Kick Off the House and Go), published by Dar Ninevah in 2019. She contributed to several publications including a Syrian Poets anthology, The Love and War, translated into French by Dar; Le Temps Des Cerises, the 5th edition of the American periodical Life and Legends, published in 2017; Amaravati Poetic Prism, published in India in 2017; World Healing, World Peace Anthology, published by Inner Child Press, USA, in 2018;  anna allathi anntum (I Am Who You Are); and a bilingual Arabic-Catalonian publication of six Syrian poets, published in Barcelona in 2019. She is a former writer-in-residence at Casa Mediterraneo, Alicante, Spain (2018) and contributed to the Arabic Language Festival at Catholic University of Milano (2019).

Abeer Abdulkareem is a translator, researcher, foreign language instructor and linguist. She is the managing editor of Other Paths for Shahrazad: a Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Arab Women (Tupelo, 2026). Prior to joining the Her Story Is collective, Abeer worked as a Senior Language Researcher at Language Research Center in Maryland, where she wrote several books on Arabic language and its dialects. Prior to this role, she taught Arabic language at Dartmouth College. She holds a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. A recipient of Fulbright Scholarship, she speaks Arabic (MSA, Iraqi, Levantine, and Egyptian).

Cindy Veach is the author of three poetry collections: Monster Galaxy (MoonPath Press) a finalist for the Sally Albiso Award; Her Kind (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal; and Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a Massachusetts Center for the Book “Must Read.” Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, North American Review, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Philip Booth Poetry Prize and the Samuel Allen Washington Prize. Cindy is poetry co-editor of MER.

27 August 2025