‘Unceasingly I tippled the wine and took my joy / unceasingly I sold and squandered my hoard and my patrimony till all my family deserted me, every one of them / and I sat alone like a lonely camel scabby with mange.”
These lines, composed by the 6th century Arabian poet Tarafa – who is one of the poets of the famous Al Muallaqat, the golden suspended seven odes (or hanging poems) – struck a chord with me as there have been a few fleeting moments in my life when I felt like a rejected and isolated mange-stricken camel.
Tarafa’s ode reflects his life, his insights, his adventures, his disappointment and betrayals, as well as his love of women and wine.
In some ways he died as he had lived – dramatically. It is believed he did not even reach 30 years of age before he drowned in a barrel of wine. It wasn’t quite as poetic as it sounds because, as the story has it, there was some stabbing involved to make sure he did indeed meet his premature end.
In my search for the treasures of Arab literature to highlight in a series for this newspaper, I rediscovered so many works I had taken for granted, having studied them at school and discarded them, and unearthed stories and works I didn’t even know existed.
Too many of the most amazing collections are kept as works to be studied at school, where often the original Arabic is not updated and the translations are either outdated, not that great or out of print.
Thankfully, there is a revived interest in Arab classics and there are some researchers taking it seriously and producing good new translations and revisions.
Taking a step back, one finds everything in Arab literature: from magic to tragedy to comedy to such an elaborate use of language that it becomes a challenge just to pronounce some of the words, all of which also make it a great pleasure to read as one’s imagination wanders.
Arab literary heritage is believed to include the world’s first sci-fi novel, written some time between 1268 and 1277: Ibn Al nafis’s Al Risalah Al Kamiliyyah fil Sira al-Nabawiyyah or Theologus Autodidactus (The Treatise of Kamil on the Prophet’s Biography) imagines a boy on an island who meets a set of castaways and who is then is taken back to the civilised world. The philosophical book explores all sorts of themes, including doomsday. This is just the tip of the buried treasures in manuscripts and books.
I am in awe of some of the raw and brutal honesty of these works. It is quite refreshing because in some ways the kind of literature coming out of the Middle East in recent decades has been typical, predictable, safe and self-censored.
But we all know why that happens, for anyone daring to be different, and say what they truly feel or see, may garner great backlash and hardship.
Then again, Tarafa did end up being killed by his way of life, and so I guess in many ways things haven’t changed that much.
Another interesting literary journey was that of Abul Ala Al Maarri, the 11th-century blind Arab philosopher, poet and writer. When I was a student, our teachers discouraged us from reading him as he is generally viewed as a pessimist and an atheist. But as I read his work, I discovered a lot of wisdom. He opposed all forms of violence, and his The Epistle of Forgiveness is said to have inspired Dante’s Divine Comedy.
In 2013, his statue in Maarat Al Noman, his hometown in northwestern Syria, was beheaded by a terrorist group, reflecting the ongoing demise of cultural respect and appreciation.
Interestingly, Al Maari’s poems on respecting nature – he was a committed vegan – have been making the rounds on social media for years and are often cited by animal rights groups: “Do not unjustly eat fish the water has given up / And do not desire as food the flesh of slaughtered animals / Or the white milk of mothers who intended its pure draught for their young, not noble ladies / And do not grieve the unsuspecting birds by taking eggs; for injustice is the worst of crimes.”
There is something in Arab literature for everyone, and like all great literary heritage, it is something not to be taken for granted.
rghazal@thenational.ae
On Twitter:@arabianmau
