"Abd-el-Hadi Fights a Superpower."
This is actually one of the--
I think maybe the first poem, one of the earliest poems
that Taha published.
As Frances mentioned, Taha has now, what?
Four books of poetry, five books of poetry, but he
did not publish a book until he was in his 50s.
He spent his entire late youth, early adulthood, well
into middle age, and he still in fact
runs a souvenir shop next to the Church of the Annunciation
in Nazareth.
I consider-- we've talked about it.
We could say that he had, essentially,
four years of formal schooling, but we
can say that he went to high school, did his BA, MA--
MFA-- and PhD at the souvenir shop,
which became a kind of local gathering place
for Palestinian poets, and where Taha did most of his reading
through most of his life, writing
all along, originally stories, but in time, also poems.
But he didn't publish his first book until he was in his 50s,
and this was one of the first poems in that book,
"Abd-el-Hadi" Fights a Superpower."
Abd-el-Hadi, I should say, is a character who shows up in quite
a bit of Taha's--
in various books, and he's a kind of Palestinian everyman.
He could be anybody.
He's just a sort of simple, average villager, who
is at the mercy of not only his government,
but other governments, and means well but
doesn't really have a great deal of control
over what happens to his life.
"عبد الهادي" يصارع دولة عظمى في حياته ما قرأ ولا كتب في حياته
ما قطع شجرة ولا طعن بقرة في حياته ما جاب سيرة النيويورك
تايمز بغيابهم في حياته ما رفع صوته على أحد إلا بقوله "تفضل...
والله العظيم غير تتفضل" ومع ذلك فهو يحيا قضية خاسرة حالته ميؤوس
منها وحقه ذرات ملح سقطت في المحيط أيها السادة إن موكلي لا
يعرف شيئًا عن عدوه وأؤكد لكم أنه لو رأى بحارة الإنتربرايز لقدم
لهم البيض المقلي مع لبن الكيس.
Let me just try this.
Can you hear me?
Can you hear me or no?
Yes.
That better?
OK?
"Abd-el-Hadi Fights a Superpower."
"In his life, he neither wrote nor read.
In his life, he didn't cut down a single tree,
didn't slit the throat of a single calf.
In his life, he did not speak of the New York Times
behind its back.
He didn't raise his voice to a soul
except in his saying, come in, please, by God,
you can't refuse.
Nevertheless, his case is hopeless.
His situation desperate.
His God-given rights are a grain of salt tossed into the sea.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, about his enemies
my client knows not a thing.
And I can assure you, were he to encounter the entire crew
of the aircraft carrier Enterprise,
he'd serve them eggs sunny side up, and labneh fresh
from the bag.