חביבה פדיה

 For Subahi Hadidi

 

A man goes

from Damascus to Paris

if he went through a tunnel

or cut through the air

I would not know

suddenly I saw the East in motion

quivering without a center

I covered the distance of years

from Jerusalem to Beer-sheva

and I did not prepare my things for  an exile

like Ezekiel prostrate

in bed in Babylon

365 days 

his beloved dead and Zion in exile

Abraham went up from Beer-sheva to Moriah

three days

binding and unbinding his son in his mind

three days butchering and weeping

we are still bound and unbound

who are they weeping and butchering

who are they laughing and butchering

how they all go

and there is already one who emerged

and came forward to the city of the dead

is that where we are headed

while I yearn to be dug out of the graves

for how long will there be nothing

but life racing backwards

mask-face and my own face

if I were a man imprisoned in female form

if I were a prayer in tight pants

if the mountains of Jerusalem in the deserts of Beer-sheva

I have walked many a desert

without reaching the Moriah

now I feel in my homeland

for I suddenly perceive how fickle is this land

how disconcerting its tremor

and among my brothers I roam

some going from Iraq to America

some from Lebanon to Nicosia

some from Israel to Palestine

some from Israel to Israel to Israel to Israel

confronting absence for Israel is missing from Israel

you who wanted to be free in your land

prepare your things for an exile

there is no free man who has not been cast out

am I not a girl

am I not a woman

cast out from man

with no mother nor father

am I not a person

dispossessed of words

ousted but not in exile

yet in my own land my people

buried not in the desert

but in a redundancy become my coffin

exiled not in distance

but in this dust

conquering blood and tears

and choking

a man soars and soars

if with weeping or with Vodka

I would not know

will it always be this way in the East

either spirit or soil

in the meantime I prefer to inhabit the word

another home does not yet exist

if it ever did

within my Hebrewness my blindness my arabesqueness

where it is merely music being played

my lips move

but my voice is not heard

the tongue in which the adults cursed and loved

from which I had been banished for salvation

"Hebrew speak Hebrew"

and still the East howls

 

Translated from the Hebrew by Tzvi Howard Cohen