A translation collaboration by Jennifer Jean, Dr. Hanaa Ahmed, and Tamara Al-attiya

Where do you live? أين تعيش؟

4 Poems in Arabic and English

A Translation Collaboration by Jennifer Jean, Dr. Hanaa Ahmed, and Tamara Al-attiya

In 2017, Iraqi and American members of the Her Story Is (HSI) collective traveled to Dubai for our first meet-up. Soon after our group gathered, we received a phone call from one of the Iraqi poets, Hanaa Ahmed. She was put on speaker phone and we could hear her weeping, telling us she was still in Mosul and unable to fly in because her travel was restricted at the last minute. Since then, Hanaa has remained a vital contributor to HSI, which promotes projects aimed at expanding linguistic, artistic,and cultural boundaries in response to global conflict, with a focus on centralizing the experience of women. We believe our process fundamentally transforms our art, roots us in our commonality, creates new grounds for learning, and builds a community of equals across borders. In 2020 Hana and I began to meet via Zoom and to correspond via WhatsApp—oftentimes without our regular translator Tamara Al-attiya, since Hanaa wanted to practice her English. We—with Tamara’s assistance—began to share and co-translate each other’s poems, as well as to write poems in response to each other’s work and our conversations. The following “poem responses” are excerpted from our ongoing, explorative collaboration which is titled: Where do you live? أين تعيش؟ The “where” isn’t limited to a physical space but to the places our minds and souls linger or reside. 

Dr. Hanaa Ahmed is a prize-winning poet and short story writer. She is the author of several poetry collections about women’s issues, including Zahr (Flowers) and she teaches Arabic literature at the University of Mosul and online poetry workshops to women writers in the Arabic diaspora.

Tamara Al-attiya is a freelance writer and translator; she teaches Translation at Almaaqal University in Basra, Iraq. As well, Tamara is a coordinator of cultural heritage projects.

Jennifer Jean is a co-translator and poet; her recent poetry collections include VOZ, and Object Lesson which is about sex-trafficking in America. She’s also the author of Object Lesson: a Guide to Writing Poetry. As well, Jennifer is the senior program manager of the Fine Arts Work Center’s online writing program, 24PearlStreet.

11 July 2023