Kuwait

25 February marks Kuwait’s National Day, though the day of their independence from the UK came on 19 June, 1961. While most people associate Kuwait with the first Gulf War follow its invasion by Iraq in 1990 (oil: its all about oil), the history of Kuwait goes back to the 17th century, and the country used to be known as Qurain. Kuwait is a constitutional hereditary emirate with a parliamentary system of government—it has the oldest directly elected parliament of the Persian Gulf Arab countries.

Kuwait is one of the smallest countries in the world in terms of its physical area, and is largely a desert country. From a population of between 3 and 3.5 million people, more that half of those residing in Kuwait are non-nationals. 4 percent of the population are classified as bidoons—a group of stateless Arab expatriates.

As a matter of interest, Kuwait has both Girl Guides and Boy Scouts associations—and Girl Guides by far outnumber Boy Scouts.

Today’s poem is from the anthology A Crack in the Wall: New Arab Poetry, which came out in 2001 through Saqi books. The poem is by Saadia Mufarreh, who has been a poet, critic and writer in Kuwait for some time. She writes for many Arabic newspaper and magazines. It addresses Mahmoud Darwish, a Palestinian poet. This poem is translated by Nay Hannawi.


To Mahmoud Darwish

Where incidents walk the same road
and the words ride together along the banks of first questions,
where there are many declared attempts
at suicide by linguists and grammarians,
and the children on the boring school chairs
learn how to draw poetry
and pride themselves in words and sounds
and sometimes succeed.
Where “The Lonely Horse…” stands
lonely… to a certain extent,
enemies of poetry bad-mouth it behind its back
and the last poet becomes
as if he has never been!

Oh… God!


—Saadia Mufarreh
translated by Nay Hannawi
from A Crack in the Wall: New Arab Poetry