Four Poems by Alaa Hassanien from The Love That Doubles Loneliness
Emotions of modern romance are found in Alaa Hasanin’s "The Love That Doubles Loneliness," translated from Arabic by Salma Moustafa Khalil.
Alaa Hassanien
Poet Alaa Hassanien was born in Saudi Arabia, in 1996, to Egyptian parents. At 22 she moved to Egypt where she graduated from the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts. She currently resides in France. Her poetry collections include He Emerges Trembling from His Depths (The Mediterranean, 2018), The Completely New Testament (Takween, 2019), The Love That Doubles Loneliness (Waziz, 2019), and a short story collection entitled Tales of Boredom (The Egyptian General Authority For the Book, 2021). In 2015, she won the UNESCO Prize for Classical Poetry. She works in journalism and filmmaking.
Salma Moustafa Khalil is an Egyptian translator and social and political researcher based in London. Her translation and research work is focused on gender and minority issues, both in the Arabic-speaking world and among the diaspora across Europe. She is a research associate at the University of Birmingham and the University of Pennsylvania and translator at the Middle East Centre, LSE. Her literary work and interests are aligned with her academic research, where she focuses on empowering the voices of young Arabs everywhere through editorial guidance and translation.