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Iman Mersal's Poems Return to Cairo - Bridge Over Troubled Water?
[ 05.11.2009 ]
The poetry collection Alternative Geography by Egyptian poet Iman Mersal, recently published in Hebrew translation, has become a literary event in Cairo. The daily Al-Masri al-Youm "spotlighted" the book in its culture section, with a lengthy review of the Hebrew edition written by Mohamed Aboud, the paper's Israeli Affairs correspondent. The book was translated by Prof. Sasson Somekh of Tel Aviv University, a renowned scholar and author of some ten studies of Arabic literature.
Iman Mersal was born in 1966 in a village in the northern Nile Delta. Having moved to Cairo after completing her university studies, she worked for the independent feminist journal of literature and criticism Bint al-Ard (Daughter of the Earth) and published articles about women's status in Islam; in 1990, her first collection of poetry was published.
Alternative Geography, her fourth and most recent poetry book, was enthusiastically received, like her previous volumes, both in and outside of Egypt. Here, too, her poetry is "free verse" in a unique literary structure, bound to no rhyme or metre, using a surprising set of similes and parallelisms. Although the poems deal, among others, with the issue of the status of women in Egypt, they keep away from ideology and politics. The collection's centre of gravity is in the relationship between exile and homeland. Iman Mersal left Egypt a decade ago, and currently lives in Canada; the interview with her, published in the newspaper's supplement, was held there.
In this interview the poet notes that Somekh undertook the translation of his own initiative, but sought her permission for its publication before the book went to press. "An American friend from Cornell," says Mersal, "told me years ago that Somekh has been translating and publishing [in Israeli literary publications] my poems since 1995. When Somekh told me of his wish to publish a version of Alternative Geography, I didn't refuse, for I believe it is the right of a language, any language, to translate whatever it wants, and to present it to its readers". Is it really the "right" of a language, or is this a latent political statement, further enhanced by the poet's place of exile?
Two Egyptian poets were asked to comment on the Hebrew translation. One, Yasser Shaaban, held a negative view, adding that in any case Israeli readership was limited. The other, Mahmoud Khairalla, expressed a more positive view; Iman Mersal, he said, is one of the best poets writing in prose, and her Hebrew translation is of great service to the advancement of poetry-in-prose in Egypt.
In Israel, incidentally, the translation was enthusiastically received. Critic Nissim Calderon, for example, said in the daily Haaretz that he thought "the Egyptian sister of [Polish poet and Nobel literature laureate] Szymborska" had been found. Aboud, too, reviews the translation and notes it to have preserved well the original Arabic's aesthetic effects.
The newspaper's recent weekly supplement devotes another article to the controversy surrounding poet Iman Mersal. This time, several prominent Egyptian authors are quoted, supporting in one way or another the translation of literary works from Hebrew to Arabic and vice versa. The well-known story-teller Ibrahim Aslan, recounting his friendship with Mersal and appreciation of her work, believes she should not be judged for allowing her books to be published in Israel, whereas the author Nabil Abdel Fatah explicitly demanded more translations of Hebrew literature into Arabic, adding that Israel was entitled to translate as much Arabic and Egyptian literature as it saw fit. According to him, translation was not part of the "normalization" - that word which still serves like a red rag in Egyptian discourse concerning relations with Israel. In this context, it is surprising to note the opinion of Dr Jaber Asfour, supervisor of translation matters at the Ministry of Culture, who said it was better for authors to be translated into Hebrew without granting their permission. An author should not, he claimed, maintain relations with Israel, nor grant permission for such translations.
Thus, it seems, the rope may be held at both ends: on the one hand, acknowledging literature to be an "inter-cultural bridge", while on the other hand using translation rights as political weapons in international relations.
Sagy Maayan, Jerusalem
