{"id":34251,"date":"2024-08-23T08:59:10","date_gmt":"2024-08-23T06:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/?p=34251"},"modified":"2024-08-26T09:54:12","modified_gmt":"2024-08-26T07:54:12","slug":"birth-in-a-poem-maram-al-masris-the-abduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/birth-in-a-poem-maram-al-masris-the-abduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Birth in a Poem: Maram Al-Masri\u2019s The Abduction<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Abduction<\/em>, poems by Maram Al-Masri
\nTranslated by H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Cardona
\nWhite Pine Press<\/a> 2023
\nISBN 9781945680618<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Eman Quotah<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Abduction <\/em>\u2014 Syrian-born Maram Al-Masri\u2019s slim volume of poetry about her young son\u2019s kidnapping by his Syrian father and her 13-year separation from him \u2014 begins like many books do, with an epigraph. The chosen quote is a well-known and perhaps well-worn maxim from Lebanese-American Mahjari<\/a> poet Kahlil Gibran\u2019s The Prophet<\/em>, one of the bestselling books<\/a> of all time:<\/p>\n

\u201cYour children are not yours. They are the children of life. And life does not reside in yesterday\u2019s house.\u201d*<\/p>\n

Gibran\u2019s words ring at once true and trite, deep and hollow; they show up on greeting cards and on posters and watercolors, framed and hung on the walls of homes (including in my parents\u2019 house, for decades now). Al-Masri does not explain, but knowing the subject of her book, I imagine the substance of the quote may not only have given her solace but also, perhaps, incited her rage. When a child is taken away from a parent, whether by kidnapping, the state, or death, the truisms of parenthood are cold comfort. By making the reader confront Gibran\u2019s made-up wisdom before even reading her words, Al-Masri may be saying, from the get-go: \u201cYou can understand. But you can never understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Abduction<\/em>\u00a0is published by White Pine Press.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At their heart, Gibran\u2019s words are about time. Life moves forward, and takes our children with it. Likewise, Al-Masri creates a sense of time in this moving and often gutting series of poems, as a way to show us the joys and loss of her motherhood. She brings us in before her son\u2019s birth in France, with the opening poem \u201cNine months,\u201d in which he grows in the womb \u201clike a poem grows in imagination \u2026 like a loaf of bread rising\/or round moon\/reaching fullness.\u201d We may not fully think through these images on first reading, but poems are forgotten, bread eaten. The moon wanes and leaves us, month after month. Potential loss hides everywhere.<\/p>\n

In the next poem, the child is born, both in Al-Masri\u2019s poetry (\u201cshe gives birth\/to an infant in a poem\u201d) and in life (\u201cHe cries,\/I am here<\/em>). For the next few poems, we follow along as Al-Masri\u2019s son grows from infant to toddler, like we\u2019re turning the pages of a photo album or memory book: tiny teeth, first steps, getting into drawers, sitting on his mother\u2019s lap, going for walks, dancing. We feel the joys of early parenthood, and its hopes for the future. In \u201cDance, dance,\u201d the poet tells her son, \u201cdance, dance\/my son\/that you may learn to fly.\u201d In another poem, she writes, \u201cI talk to him\/as to a friend\/converse with him\/as one would with grown ups.\u201d A future in which her son leaves as an adult is always there, anticipated joyfully, not with fear.<\/p>\n

And then, a rupture \u2014 one the poet is not expecting and yet can\u2019t help but see herself as complicit in. She writes:<\/p>\n

With these two hands
\nI prepare your suitcase
\nyour father tells me
\nhe\u2019s going to take you on a short trip
\nto a city by the sea
\n\u2026
\nI place you in your stroller
\nhappy
\nfor my little one goes for a walk by the sea<\/p>\n

the first night passed
\nand to this day
\nmy little one\u2019s stroller has not returned<\/p>\n

Al-Masri is in France, her son in Syria. Together, they were happy. But now \u2026<\/p>\n

From here, we leave behind the sense of time passing as a child grows happily older. Instead, we are stuck with Al-Masri in a repetitive loop of grief, guilt, and longing. She stops singing. She dreads sleep and dreams. She apologizes to her far-away son for not being with him. She swears she hears his breathing in his empty room. She recalls another boy, named Salim, kidnapped from his mother by his father, and realizes that her tears for him were her first tears for her son. (Back then, she could understand, but she could not understand.)<\/p>\n

Any parent may sometimes wish for time to slow down or stop, to be able to enjoy a moment with their child forever; for Al-Masri, this futile desire comes tragically true. In \u201cFar from my arms,\u201d she writes to her son of the life he\u2019s living without her while, \u201cYou\u2019ll remain in my memory\/an eighteen-month-old child\/kidnapped from me.\u201d Yet she cannot stop the passage of time in her own life, thinking, \u201cI don\u2019t want to grow old\/so my child recognizes me\/the day he comes back.\u201d<\/p>\n

We learn, eventually, that Al-Masri long ago lost her mother, to whom she speaks and promises \u201call is well\u201d \u2014 though it\u2019s not. Most heartbreakingly, she tells her mother:<\/p>\n

Me, I\u2019m divorced
\nDon\u2019t panic
\nit\u2019s not so bad
\nexcept if you\u2019d been there [in Syria]
\nmy child wouldn\u2019t have been taken from me<\/p>\n

In a matter of pages, 13 years pass. All through that time, the poet waits:<\/p>\n

I wait for you when I\u2019m awake
\nI wait for you when I\u2019m asleep
\nI wait for you when I smile
\nI wait for you when I breathe
\n\u2026
\nI wait for you
\nlike a mother<\/p>\n

When mother and child are finally reunited, the years that have passed are lost forever, and the son has, of course, grown. Unlike the toddler child Al-Masri lost years ago, this older child\u2019s \u201cmouth\/is full of teeth.\u201d The clothes and shoes his mother kept for him are too small, and she wonders if they would have recognized each other in a chance meeting. Five years after their reunion, they are still afraid to love each other. Her tears and pain continue.<\/p>\n

Then her son immigrates to France \u2014 where she still lives \u2014 with two suitcases. In this moment, she sees him return, in a way, to his infancy. In \u201cThe world is hard, my son,\u201d she writes,<\/p>\n

Immigrant
\nyou will always be in the crosshairs of suspicion
\nI didn\u2019t warn you, immigrants arrive fragile as infants.<\/p>\n

Al-Masri\u2019s language is spare and clear, the result of a collaborative process with her translator, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Cardona. In the introduction, Cardona writes, \u201cWe\u2019ve \u2026 shared numerous phone and email conversations and met in person in Paris to work closely fine-tuning this manuscript. [Al-Masri] wrote the original in both Arabic and French and it was important to discuss the nuances.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have another Kahlil Gibran quote, in Arabic, framed above my desk:<\/p>\n

\u0627\u0644\u0634\u0627\u0639\u0631 \u0623\u0628\u0648 \u0627\u0644\u0644\u063a\u0629 \u0648\u0623\u0645\u0647\u0627<\/p>\n

The poet is both the father and the mother of language
\n(translation by Adnan Haydar)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure exactly what it means, but it points to the deep connection we make between language and parenthood \u2014 it is our parents who most often teach us our words, after all. In an interview<\/a> with the Syrian arts and culture website Qisetna, Al-Masri says that for a time (presumably the years she was separated from her son), she made a decision not to use Arabic and not to write \u201cbecause I was angry against my culture, against my religion. \u2026 for me, the way to show my anger was to be silent.\u201d<\/p>\n

This suggests the poems in The Abduction<\/em> were written following her son\u2019s return, many years after the original trauma of his abduction, to convey her experiences as a mother and to reclaim language and her poet\u2019s role as \u201cfather and mother\u201d of language. But the grief she shares with us has lasted two lifetimes: hers and her son\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, given its civil war and woes, Syria remains among the countries that do not follow international protocols<\/a> when parents abduct their children across international borders. To those who think parental abduction is a mild crime or one justified by culture or religion \u2014 as well as those who believe Arab women do not have the power to speak\u2014Al-Masri\u2019s collection stands as a powerful rebuke.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* This is the epigraph from the book\u2014it\u2019s not exactly word for word what appears in the American version of The Prophet<\/em> (or my parents\u2019 watercolor), which is here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When a mother loses her child she can become inconsolable, living a desolate life, as she works for his return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":34253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,34,51],"tags":[627,3418,3033,1638],"coauthors":[1938],"class_list":["post-34251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-poetry","category-tmr-weekly","tag-family","tag-language-of-grief","tag-motherhood","tag-syria","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBirth in a Poem: Maram Al-Masri\u2019s The Abduction - The Markaz Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When a mother loses her child she can become inconsolable, living a desolate life, as she works for his return.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/birth-in-a-poem-maram-al-masris-the-abduction\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Birth in a Poem: Maram Al-Masri\u2019s The Abduction\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When a mother loses her child she can become inconsolable, living a desolate life, as she works for his return.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/birth-in-a-poem-maram-al-masris-the-abduction\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Markaz Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-08-23T06:59:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-08-26T07:54:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Nasser-Hussein-b.-Aleppo-Untitled-2018.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1125\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Eman Quotah\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Eman Quotah\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/birth-in-a-poem-maram-al-masris-the-abduction\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/birth-in-a-poem-maram-al-masris-the-abduction\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Eman Quotah\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/1e20816ec0d376989f36a5c334d836c1\"},\"headline\":\"Birth in a Poem: Maram Al-Masri\u2019s The Abduction\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-08-23T06:59:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-08-26T07:54:12+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/birth-in-a-poem-maram-al-masris-the-abduction\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1389,\"commentCount\":1,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/birth-in-a-poem-maram-al-masris-the-abduction\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2024\\\/08\\\/Nasser-Hussein-b.-Aleppo-Untitled-2018.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"family\",\"language of grief\",\"motherhood\",\"Syria\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Book Reviews\",\"Poetry\",\"TMR Weekly\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/birth-in-a-poem-maram-al-masris-the-abduction\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/birth-in-a-poem-maram-al-masris-the-abduction\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/themarkaz.org\\\/oldsite\\\/birth-in-a-poem-maram-al-masris-the-abduction\\\/\",\"name\":\"Birth in a Poem: Maram Al-Masri\u2019s The Abduction - 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