An Airing, and: Prison Cell
- An Airing, and: Prison Cell
An Airing
This morningafter a long time in the holethey let me outfor a fifteen minute walkinto an empty corridorlittered with rusty cansand bits of broken glassAn ‘officer’ guarded the gatewhile anotherstood at the other sidewith a rifle slung over his shoulderAll this for the sakeof a sick mandrained by two weeks of hunger strikesBut being watched like a wild beastas though I were some gloomy horsewhose mildest movement should be distrusteddoesn’t affect me any moreI’m even aware that those meneyeing my every stepmight even be compassionateor at least indifferentit’s all a question of hunger and miseryThere was a crazy-bright sunand the sky was blue, so blue that when I looked up at itI didn’t know where to turn my headSo I shut my eyesand bathed my hands and my facein that unsettling marriage of elementsthen my heart resumedits regular rhythmhope’s harmonious flow
Kénitra penitentiary, 1975–76 [End Page 13]
Prison Cell
I never wanted to talk about youprison cellyou’re so banaland so bleakly familiarlike the noose they lift and let fallwith every step that we takebut the problem, prison cell,is that todayyou force yourself on me;your craters of chalkspring to life like a carnival’s bestiary,your hopeless doorwith that sniggering jaw through the peep-holeyour window unto a hypothetical skythat calls out to nostalgiasYou’re right hereinside melike a second bodythat pushes me deeper and wanders through meafter blowing the cold windof exile into my chestand I’m not ashamedof being a little down in the dumps todayin this clandestine display case of separationI’m not ashamed to feel my fuming broken hearttumble inside methe unmistakeable tragedythat keeps running alongside methe happiness of final certainties
Kénitra penitentiary, 1975–76 [End Page 14]
Abdellatif Laâbi is a poet, novelist, playwright, translator, and political activist. He was born in Fez, Morocco, in 1942. He began writing in the mid-1960s, publishing his first novel in 1969. In 1966 he founded the renowned literary magazine Souffles, a journal of literature and politics. Laâbi’s peaceful social activism led to his arrest and torture in 1972. Following his trial in 1973, he was sentenced to eight years by the authoritarian regime of Hassan II. He left Morocco in 1985 and has lived in Paris ever since. A prolific novelist, poet, and playwright, he is also the French translator of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, the Moroccan poet Abdallah Zrika, the Iraqi poet Abdelawahab Al Bayati, and the Syrian novelist Hanna Minna. Laâbi received the Prix Goncourt de la Poésie in 2009, the Académie française’s Grand prix de la Francophonie in 2011, and the Prix Ecritures et Spiritualités in 2015.
André Naffis-Sahely is a poet and translator. His poems have been featured in New Poetries VI (Carcanet, 2015) and The Best British Poetry 2014. His translations include Abdellatif Laâbi’s The Bottom of the Jar (Archipelago Books, 2013), Honoré de Balzac’s The Physiology of the Employee (Wakefield Press, 2014), and Émile Zola’s Money (Alma Classics, 2016). His Selected Poems of Abdellatif Laâbi (Carcanet, forthcoming in 2016) was recently selected for a “Writers in Translation” award by English PEN. He reviews for The Nation and the New Statesman.
