Asylum Papers

Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi

Translated from the Arabic

I spent twenty-five years in exile’s bar, all in cash
Examining time’s skull on a rusty table
The saxophone screeched at me from eternity’s throat
From an old regret I’ve challenged to a race
For screeching my wasted day:

What is exile?!

In the past:
A house of mud — the smell of tobacco permitting the morning to rise —
A cup of tea, the neighbours’s chatter and the newspaper
Raising hope on the mast of determination
Forgetting yesterday’s massacre
Simmering our separation or anticipating a new day.

Bureaucracy ruined your day
Your capital is time in the landfill

A fifth drink or five in the morning
My companion in the hotel room
Devours time
You don’t grasp for the cup but bow your head in respect
Nor do you grasp for a kiss with an empty cup
Between me and the cigarette something comes to mind
Between the cigarette and the bedcover something that wouldn’t occur to you
But the morning emerges
Between the sign and its name
Or between the pillows and their cotton
The sun goes down but yesterday has yet to set

Exile is a void — I remember its ecstasy when I make my home
Or when the only thing to make its home is the taste of remembrance
I remember the names of those who departed, one by one
I was one of them
I remember the names of those who were buried
I remember your name or the names of those yet to be born
This was exile
With its countless nights

You need roots to establish yourself in the soil
Esoteric knowledge of petrology and the taxonomy of plants
Reptilian species and the nature of the seasons
The phyla of birds, etc.

You need so much to be someone else

أوراق اللجوءْ

خمسة وعشرون عاماً أَنْفَقتُها نَقْدَاً في حانة المنفى
أَدرسُ جمجمةَ الوقتِ على طاولةٍ صدئةٍ
هتف لي عنصرُ الساكسفون من حنجرةِ الأبديةْ
من ندمٍ أَسْبُقُ
هتفت بي خسارةُ اليومْ

ما المنفى؟!

السابقُ بيتُ الطِّينِ، رائحةُ التَّبغِ تأذنُ للصباحِ أن يطلَّ
كوبُ الشايِّ، لغو الجيرانِ والصحيفةْ
نَصبُ الأملِ على ساريةِ العَزْمِ
نسيانُ مجزرةَ الأَمْسِ
طهو المسافاتِ أو توقُّع يومٍ جديدْ

النِّظامُ أتلفَ يومَكَ
رأسُمَالَكُ وقتٌ على مقلبِ النفاياتْ

الكأسُ الخامسةُ أو الخامسةُ صباحاً
في غرفةِ الفندقِ
ثمة مَنْ تشربُ الوقتَ
لا تَعْبُرُ الكأسَ حاسرةَ الرأسِ
أو تَعْبُرُ القُبْلَةَ فارغةَ الكأسِ
بيني وبين السجارة ثمة ما يخطرُ على البال
بينها وغطاء السرير ما لا يخطرُ على البال
بيدَ أن الصباحَ يُطلُّ
بين الإشارةِ واسمها
أو بين الوسائدِ والقطن
تمرقُ الشمسُ ولا يغربُ الأمسُ

المنفى جَوَّافَةٌ أتذكرُ نشوتَها حين أسكنُ
أو حين لا يسكنُ إلاِّ مذاقُ التذُّكرِ
أذكرُ أسماءَ من غادروا واحداً- واحدةً
كنتُ واحدهمْ
أذكرُ أسماءَ من قُبِروا
أذكرُ اسمكِ أو اسمَ من يُولدُ
كان منفى
ولياليكِ بلا حسابْ

تحتاجُ إلى جِذْرٍ لتَسْكُنَ التُرْبَةَ
معرفةً باطنيّةً بأُمَمِ الحَجَرِ وفصائلَ النَبَاتِ
بخصائصِ الفصولِ وأنواع الزَّواحفِ
بشعوبِ الطِّيرِ..إلخ.

تحتاجُ الكثيرَ لتكونَ غَيركْ!

Read Shook's essay on translating Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi's poetry.

Feature Date

January 29, 2024

Series

Translation, What Sparks Poetry

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“Asylum Papers” from A FRIEND’S KITCHEN: by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi.
Published by Poetry Translation Centre on 15th June 2023.
English Copyright © 2023 by Bryar Bajalan & Shook.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

Featured Poet

Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi is one of the leading African poets writing in Arabic today. He has gained a wide audience in his native Sudan for his imaginative approach to poetry and for the delicacy and emotional frankness of his lyrics. His poetry has always been concerned with the rich cultural and linguistic diversity of Sudan and its complex history.

Saddiq was born in 1969 and grew up in Omdurman Khartoum where he lived until forced into exile in 2012. From 2006, he was the cultural editor of Al-Sudani newspaper until he was sacked from his position for political reasons (along with 22 other colleagues) in July 2012 during the uprising against the dictatorship of Omar Al-Bashir. Saddiq only escaped imprisonment because, thanks to the miraculous timing of Poetry Parnassus (the world’s largest-ever gathering of international poets at which Saddiq represented Sudan), he was in the UK when a series of mass arrests took place. He successfully applied for asylum and is now living in London.

Saddiq’s first poetry collection Songs of Solitude was published in 1996 (second edition, 1999). He has also published The Sultan’s Labyrinth (1996) and The Far Reaches of the Screen… (1999 & 2000); all three collections were published in one volume as Saddiq’s collected poems in Cairo in 2009.

In 2010 he was invited to take part in the prestigious Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam. He then travelled to the UK for a series of readings alongside Corsino Fortes from Cape Verde. Whilst in London, a party was organised for him at The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology which holds a significant collection of ancient Sudanese artefacts. As a result of the success of this event (and earlier visits to the Petrie in 2005 and 2006), the Petrie Museum made a successful application to ACE for Saddiq to spend time working in the Museum as their poet in residence during the summer of 2012.

Featured Translators

Bryar Bajalan is a doctoral candidate at the University of Exeter, where he researches depictions of eroticism in the poetry of Mosul, before and after Daesh’s occupation of the city. His work has been published Hyperallergic, Modern Poetry in Translation, World Literature Today, and on the Poetry Foundation website. He recently completed a short documentary about early twentieth century Baghdadi poet al-Zahawi. Together with Shook, he is translating a book of poetry by contemporary Sudanese poet Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, forthcoming from the Poetry Translation Centre in 2023.

Shook is a poet and translator who lives in Northern California. Their recent translations include Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi’s A Friend’s Kitchen, cotranslated from Arabic with Bryar Bajalan, Mikeas Sánchez’ How to Be a Good Savage and Other Poems, cotranslated from Zoque and Spanish with Wendy Call, and Conceição Lima’s No Gods Live Here, translated from Portuguese. Shook’s film A Barcode Scanner, based on Zêdan Xelef’s poem by the same name, won the 2020 Best Film for Tolerance Prize at the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin.

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A Friend's Kitchen

Poetry Translation Center

London
England

Featured book

"One of the most revered poets currently writing in Arabic."
—Poetry London

"Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi’s new book manages to be several things at once. It’s certainly a political protestation, an act of resistance of the spirit to oppression in Sudan and to the pressures the UK places on political exiles. But it is at the same time an ecstatic, disorienting celebration of language and the imagination, and a raw, grieving set of eulogies to the loss of love, friendship and imaginative freedom … We owe his translators a great debt, in that they manage successfully to convey what anyone who has heard him read knows is the dizzying rhetorical power and force of his Arabic."
— W.N. Herbert, author of The Wreck of the Fathership

"A Friend's Kitchen is a book to be entered rather than read. Emerging from a Dadaist-inspired stream-of-consciousness process of writing, these poems capture a mind moving through the lived moment, illuminated as though by a struck match. The lucid translation by Bajalan and Shook retains the beauty and integrity of the original, with poems that are clear-eyed, alive to grief and wonderment. Al-Raddi holds a mirror to the experience of living apart from family and home, and in doing so shows us we are not alone in our loneliness."
— Shazea Qureishi, author of The Glimmer

"A Friend’s Kitchen by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi is a dazzling gem. This poetry collection sheds light on what it means to be a poet of the diaspora, being forced into exile from his native Sudan to his new home in London as a refugee. His powerful poetry of protest and hope, skillfully translated from Arabic by Bryar Bajalan with the poet Shook, offers the reader a unique view of the land and people that have suffered so much under the regime of Omar al-Bashir. It is a book filled with grief, beauty and love, enhanced by its power of denouncement. Al-Raddi's voice is an outstanding contribution not only to African poetry but to world poetry. An extraordinary achievement."
— Leo Boix, author of Ballad of a Happy Immigrant

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