The Flag of Childhood: Poems From the Middle East

nice reading for an open minded person

Palestinian statelet of Gaza, Palestinian State of Israel with its Arab Autonomy and Palestinian Kingdom of JordanNaomi Shihab is not a Palestinian poet, though her father was born in a country of Palestine formed almost a hundred years ago by the British who tried to civilize their new Kingdom of Jerusalem.Her father, a journalist, was not a refugee; he was a free-spirited Arab who didn't want to practice Islam.Naomi acknowledged later that her father was a wanderer. Not a refugee! He could go back and forth to Ramallah or Jerusalem which were part of the Palestinian monarchy even after 1948.Naomi Shihab became a Buddhist.Naomi's mother was a German Lutheran based in Missouriwhere Naomi lived in her formative years.Ms. Shihab is a “profiteer,” she tries to compare her native town of Ferguson to modern Palestine which was long subdivided into Gaza, the Arab Autonomy in Ramallah, Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Eastern Palestine (Jordan) now ruled by half English King Abdullah.Naomi Shihab Nye is a highly educated person and a manipulator:“She was a Palestinian born in Jordan.” What does it mean?The Kingdom of Jordan is located in Palestine, in case you don't know.As for her poetry it is full of question marks (Give us answers, Naomi!) and tritedom.The task of a poet to give us answers.The chimney poem follows. Note that there are no chimneys in the South Levant including the British Palestine.Tip their mouths open to the sky.Turquoise, amber,the deep green with fluted handle,pitcher the size of two thumbs,tiny lip and graceful waist.Here we place the smallest flowerwhich could have lived invisiblyin loose soil beside the road,sprig of succulent rosemary,bowing mint.They grow deeper in the center of the table.Here we entrust the small life,thread, fragment, breath.And it bends. It waits all day.As the bread cools and the childrenopen their gray copybooksto shape the letter that looks likea chimney rising out of a house.And what do the headlines say?Nothing of the smaller petalperfectly arranged inside the larger petalor the way tinted glass filters light.Men and boys, praying when they died,fall out of their skins.The whole alphabet of living,heads and tails of words,sentences, the way they said,“Ya’Allah!” when astonished,or “ya’ani” for “I mean”—a crushed glass under the feetstill shines.But the child of Hebron sleepswith the thud of her brothers fallingand the long sorrow of the color red.How Palestinians [the Arabic speakers in Judean Hevron, Dirah or Samaria] Keep Warm - Poem by Naomi Shihab NyeChoose one word and say it overand over, till it builds a fire inside your mouth.Adhafera, the one who holds out, Alphard, solitary one,the stars were named by people like us.Each night they line up on the long path between worlds.They nod and blink, no right or wrongin their yellow eyes. Dirah, little house,unfold your walls and take us in.My well went dry, my grandfather's grapeshave stopped singing. I stir the coals,my babies cry. How will I teach themthey belong to the stars?They build forts of white stone and say, "This is mine."How will I teach them to love Mizar, veil, cloak,to know that behind it an ancient manis fanning a flame?He stirs the dark wind of our breath.He says the veil will risetill they see us shining, spreading like emberson the blessed hills.Well, I made that up. I'm not so sure about Mizar.But I know we need to keep warm here on earthAnd when your shawl is as thin as mine is, you tell stories.As a native speaker of English, not Arabic, Naomi should educate herself more in American poetry; her brain comes from her mother. And she should stop using poetry for political ends by employing the wrong terminology and to get preferential treatment as a member of a protected class.The Pasts[The template borrowed from Charles Simic, a Poet Laureate of the United States]Our pasts must have causes for hidingTheir many twists and turns from usAnd those causes must have something to do with either pity or spitefulness.I believe that most of us don’t careAnd that surely is the explanation.There's a slim chance of being introducedThough we are still neighborsWho walk away from each other steadily and even break into flight,Speechless and turning deafAccelerated into nothingnessBy an adorable babyOr some sparrows looking for feedOn the paved over archaeological sitesContaining fossils of weirs in lost riversDec 23,2010John Ziemba proofread on the 7th of December, 2012

These 60 poems come from a variety of geographic places. Reading the short biographies about the poets, helped me understand the fluidity of some of these Arab places… many of the authors had moved from their birthplace. Some were written by children, and I think the book is suitable for children. I think its valuable that I couldn’t derive a common “Arab” voice.The book is divided into loose chapters “A Galaxy of Seeds”, “The World is a glass you drink from”, “Pick a sky and name it”, and “There was in our house a river”. Some of my favorite included Adonis beginning Speech “That child I was/ came to me once/ an unfamiliar face”. The Train of our stars by al-Raheem “The night is a train that passes,/carrying moon and stars..” and Shurayh’s untitled “Today I realize/ that my spirit has rusted/ to a degree/ I shall not be able/ to shine it again”. In the final section Serri’s “Thread by Thread/knot by now/ like colonies of ants/ we weave a bridge”

Haunting, thoughtful, challenging poetry that created worlds of human experience in war.