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The Language of God
To learn Arabic is to learn to speak of the divine. God enters every conversation, whether you intend Him to or not. Thanks be to God. If God wills. God’s blessings upon you. May God give you health. Thank God for your safety. God be with you. God forbid. Only God knows.
To learn Arabic is to enter a world of formulas, expressions of the sacred, which frame life, its events and actions. Everything is rooted in His will. Formulas give every interaction a reassuring structure. Their repetition bestows power, reminds you that God is ever-present, central to all. Yet repetition can also remove meaning — for these are words it is impossible not to say.
To learn Arabic is to learn to introduce these formulas of the divine into your speech. And after Arabic has become part of your thoughts, has carved new patterns of language in your mind, when you speak English those formulas leave an echo in your conversations. Imagine sneezing, and not hearing ‘Bless you.’ It is that absence, magnified.
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As I look at a copy of the Qur’an, the Arabic accompanied by the English ‘interpretation’ — for God’s words are believed to be a miracle, inimitable, and impossible to translate — I see the Arabic words tightly curled, compact and potent. The English words sprawl loosely beside them. A word in the Qur’an can become two, three, four, five words, even a sentence, in English.
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The recitation of a single letter of the Qur’an is considered a form of worship, and worthy of reward.
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Twenty-nine of the Qur’an’s chapters start with short sequences of letters, called muqatta’at. If their meaning was ever known to humankind, that knowledge has been lost, and scholars over the centuries have put forward various theories with no consensus reached. The one point of agreement is that only God knows the exact meaning of the muqatta’at.
Alif Lam Ra. Alif Lam Mim. Ha Mim. Ta Sin. Ya Sin. Ta Ha.
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Baha’u’llah, founder of the Baha’i faith, which has its roots in Islam, wrote a commentary on the muqatta’at. In it he described God’s creation of the Eternal Alif by the Primordial Pen. After being called by God to set down the mysteries of pre-existence upon the Perspicuous, Snow-White Tablet, the Pen was first stupefied by intense yearning for 70,000 years, then wept crimson tears for 70,000 years. Then, as it stood erect between the hands of God, a black teardrop fell from it upon the Tablet — and the Divine Point took on the form of the Eternal Alif.
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In the beginning was —
Ayesha Saldanha is a writer and translator based in Bahrain who blogs as Bint Battuta. She has requested no audio for this post.
For Tom W.—Eyes Only
by Linda Umans
I never identified with the straight back L
or the manuscript loops too girly maybe
(I’m way more loopy now)
the erectile i was a better fit
definite and pointing away
hanging on the dromedary n
riding slow rhythmic
the d dropped stomach about to birth
(the late births knock me out)
enclosed sometimes pampered in the space of the a
a place for a round girl to curl
the open-topped U a way up and out but challenging
the m a human purr
another a when I need it again
the n this time connecting to the final s
my sign in China
an all-time hissing favorite.
I’d like my ashes
carried to the ocean
in Townes’ flying shoes (you know)
(I’ve imagined it already
been there already
so if it’s inconvenient…)
my true remains are yours.
by Linda Umans
Download the MP3
Linda Umans has had work published on- and off-line, recently in Beauty/Truth: Journal of Ekphrastic Poetry, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, Big Apple Short Radio Drama Festival and upcoming in Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments. She is a traveler but a native of New York City where she lives and works.
Toxic Cylinder
Mom, they want to bomb
holes in my aura,
they fucked our men at war:
your husband, my father,
your brother, my uncle.
They’re bombing Iraqi children with plutonium.
Bumblebees can’t hardly kiss nectar,
the world is awry.
I came a long way
from bearing a child
my two-time denial scream
then the ultimate screech,
No way Jose,
we live in a toxic cylinder
where martyrs have
no good reason to live.
Not complacent, but I sit,
sip tea in my condo in America,
I have a man, a passport, a beater car.
A single white woman hanging onto a job
my nails scrape cement, but I carry on.
It’s enough already, enough
it’s good, good enough
I breathe, pay my bills, stand on my head,
have caller ID.
An all American white girl
not complacent being fucked
so they better leave me the fuck alone.
Julene Tripp Weaver (website) has a chapbook, Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues, based on her work in HIV Services. A poem from this chapbook was featured on The Writer’s Almanac. Her poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies, including Main Street Rag, The Healing Muse, Knock, Arabesques Review, Nerve Cowboy, Arnazella, Crab Creek Review, Pilgrimage and Letters to the World: Poems from the Wom-Po LISTSERV.
Lullaby
by Sarah Burke
Say goodnight to the wind and the trees,
apples flinching on the branch; say goodnight
to yourself. Let me lead you back to the well,
the origin, quiet dark you knew once
and forgot. Let me show you the first night
on earth, still happening, still haunting
old star charts buried in the dust, insects
trapped in bottles, embryonic jungles
pulsing under highways, whispering,
let’s rebuild remake stand up in our joy
let’s dance the dream our feet remember
sing the dream our throats carried back
from the dead There comes a memory
of thorns, berry juice deep in the summer.
There comes a memory of letting go,
washing ankles under the cold white moon.
Remember I began in silence, star my mother
carried through peace and war as a child,
star among millions, chosen by chance
to twin without end, carry stars of my own.
I want a beginning deeper than birth,
deeper than history, to search my bones
for one syllable trembling with cosmic storms.
Forgive me. I’ve been terrible and sweet.
Let me forgive you. Let fall your curtains,
your clothes. Let in the wind and the trees again,
apples and branch again, let in the night.
Sarah Burke is a poet and preschool teacher living in Vermont, where the milkman delivers Ben & Jerry’s to her doorstep every Monday. This is her first publication.
qarrtsiluni 