NO PARENTS, NO POWER LEFT IN JABALYA
by NADI ALI, TRANS. BY L.F. KHOURI
Sitty strikes a match and feeds the taboon’s mouth: tree trimmings, fall leaves, crushed bitter
biscuit cartons, tattered textbooks, shriveled roots of sage. The clay crackles tangerine and
charcoal into her creases, the folds of her smoke-blue dress. She croons ayats as she waits for the
clay to cough crimson cherries into my cheeks. She slaps the dough on the taboon’s wall and
bakes me something fleeting of the morning, something sweet and sour of the sun and the sea,
something fragile of a filament that flames into the nightfall, into the moonlit blue.
“What else should I bake you, Rami?” she asks.
Anything firm of a father to soften the flapping of my feathers. Anything round of a mother to
latch onto in the dark.
author pic here
Nadi Ali is a Palestinian writer whose work centers on war, loss, inherited trauma, and the quiet forms of resistance that persist in daily life. His poetry has circulated in few Arabic literary circles such as: Al-Hilal, Arabicon, and DarsFan and elsewhere, but remains unpublished internationally and in English until now.
L.F. Khoyri is a Palestinian writer, poet, and translator. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in literary journals such as The Offing, SmokeLong Quarterly, scaffold, Another Chicago Magazine, You Impossible Voice, miniMAG, Literally Stories, and Eunoia Review.He translates Ali’s work as part of a lifelong commitment to carrying Palestinian voices across borders and languages.
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