We'll shift gears a little bit and read a what
I tend to call a love poem.
Taha tends to disagree.
It's not a love poem.
But it is a poem about a beloved and it's
called "Meeting at an Airport."
Yes.
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
OK.
Do you mind if--
[INAUDIBLE]
Should we move-- You're up.
You want to stand for this?
[INAUDIBLE]
About the last two poems.
[INAUDIBLE] and I [INAUDIBLE] My head
with thoughts about poetry.
First, poetry is something personal.
The second thing, poetry have to be indirect.
Because poetry with many metaphors and but that
[INAUDIBLE] You see, [INAUDIBLE]
Abd el-Hadi fights a superpower.
You see two kinds people of the United States.
Very good people.
Very nice.
You actually where [INAUDIBLE] But the Yellow House
in the United States.
The Yellow House, that would be in Washington DC.
[LAUGHTER]
[INAUDIBLE] Freedom and progress as a gift
to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Iran now.
Good.
You understand that?
I'm not sure everybody understood.
He said that the Yellow House has
brought democracy and freedom as a gift to the Middle East.
To the people of Iraq and Iran.
To like the nicest people in the street and people
in the Yellow House.
[INAUDIBLE] as well [INAUDIBLE] with about only four people
killed in Iraq.
Only about four people were killed so far in Iraq.
Why to kill four people.
You really didn't quite hear.
We hear.
But he insists and insists that there is a brokenness in Iraq.
My poetry hadn't been pretty.
It's not to take lightly what happened but to say what I said
and this would be somehow wrong.
The loyalty to our childhood, to our life in our family really
pushed me some way to say something indirect and
Indirectly opposed to directly.
What we took the entire world for the cost
of a Bible for instance to reach heaven
[INAUDIBLE] me to be in both.
What if we took the entirety of Shakespeare.
Could I-- Should--
I could-- [INAUDIBLE]
Speak into the microphone.
To ask about the old music.
If the music is for the wrong player something unbelievable.
And this is my way, my humble way of understanding the poetry
and how to try to write these things which--