Hida Abu Nada & Mary Leunig
Hiba Abu Nada
Not Just Passing
Yesterday, a star said
to the little light in my heart,
We are not just transients
passing.
Do not die. Beneath this glow
some wanderers go on
walking.
You were first created out of love,
so carry nothing but love
to those who are trembling.
One day, all gardens sprouted
from our names, from what remained
of hearts yearning.
And since it came of age, this ancient language
has taught us how to heal others
with our longing,
how to be a heavenly scent
to relax their tightening lungs: a welcome sigh,
a gasp of oxygen.
Softly, we pass over wounds,
like purposeful gauze, a hint of relief,
an aspirin.
O little light in me, don’t die,
even if all the galaxies of the world
close in.
O little light in me, say:
Enter my heart in peace.
All of you, come in!
-Hiba Abu Nada
Translated by Huda Fakhreddine
This poem was taken from ArabLit ,27th November, 2023 arablit.org
Hiba Abu Nada was a Palestinian poet, novelist, and educator. Her novel الأكسجين ليس للموتى (Oxygen is Not for the Dead) won second place in the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity in 2017. She completed a bachelor degree in biochemistry and a master's degree in clinical nutrition at Al-Azhar University. She was killed in her home in the Gaza Strip by an Israeli airstrike on October 20, 2023. She was 32.
Huda Fakhreddine is Associate Professor of Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a writer, a translator, and the author of several scholarly books.
Mary Leunig
Not Just Passing - Mary Leunig responds
Mary Leunig was born in Melbourne in 1950, and currently lives and works in regional Victoria. She began studying art at Prahran Institute of Technology and later Preston Institute of Technology, where she completed her studies, majoring in drawing and printmaking. Her previous books include There’s No Place like Home (1982), A Piece of Cake (1986), One Big Happy Family(1992), and Black and White and Grey(1993), One Good Turn, (2018).. Her work has featured in such publications as the Age, Meanjin, Nation Review, Heat, AWU Magazine, Time, Penthouse, Der Rabe, and the Meatworkers Journal.
