A Comment Beneath a Painting by Mahmoud Sabri
I have an appointment with you in the future,
but isn’t that future
the same
as this past we’ve just entered?
***
Women in colors of mourning
emerge from your painting
and sit down
on the sofas in my room.
I’ve often seen their faces
in the Good Friday icons,
and in elevations of color
that sweep their silent lamentations
between two cities that just might be
Baghdad and Jerusalem,
or any two sisters
born beneath the sign of Saturn.
***
The women
came down from the icons
and into the slaughter.
***
I think these cups, brimming with wine,
are poisoned as well.
In the empty spaces
between the lines of exile
I have an appointment
with you.
–Najwan Darwish, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid
Najwan Darwish is a poet from Jerusalem, Palestine. He has published nine poetry books in Arabic and his work has been translated into over twenty languages. New York Review Books, which published the English translation of his books Nothing More to Lose (NYRB Poets, 2014) and Exhausted on the Cross (NYRB Poets, 2021) describes him as, “one of the foremost Arabic-language poets”. He has received several awards, most recently The Sarah Maguire Prize (UK, 2022), the Cilento International Poetry Prize (Italy, 2023), and Le Grand prix de Poésie étrangère (France, 2024). Najwan Darwish co-founded and directed several cultural and artistic projects throughout the Arab world and served as an advisor to several Palestinian and Arab cultural initiatives and literary Festivals. He has held several key positions in cultural journalism and has been the Chief Cultural Editor of the Arabic-language London-based newspaper Al Araby Al Jadeed since 2014.
Kareem James Abu-Zeid, PhD, is an award-winning translator of poets and novelists from across the Arab world. He has received the Sarah Maguire Prize, PEN Center USA's translation prize, Poetry Magazine's translation prize, a Fulbright Fellowship, and an NEA translation grant, and has thrice been a finalist for the PEN America Translation Prize. His translation of Najwan Darwish’s No One Will Know You Tomorrow: Selected Poems 2014 – 2024 (Yale Margellos, 2024) is currently a finalist for the 2025 PEN America Translation Prize in Poetry. He is also the author of the book The Poetics of Adonis and Yves Bonnefoy: Poetry as Spiritual Practice.