WEBVTT

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Again, I have to
preface this one.

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There is a famous street in
Baghdad called Al Mutanabbi

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street.

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It's the heart of the cultural
center where the old book

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market is.

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And it's named after a very
famous Arab poet, Al Mutanabbi.

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And a few years ago, there was a
suicide bombing in that street,

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and it killed a lot of
booksellers and people

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buying books.

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And there was actually
an effort in this country

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on the part of some publishers
and owners of bookstores

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to have an anthology of
poems celebrating the book

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culture on this street.

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So my poem is entitled "A
letter to Al Mutanabbi Street."

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It addresses the poet
himself after whose name

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the street is named.

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"You were right.

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Your words are still winds
of light always carrying you

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to us.

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Sometimes, carrying us to you.

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And your name is a green
tattoo on Baghdad's tired face.

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Your street, a forehead of a
body beheaded every morning.

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Just another chapter in
the saga of blood and ink

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you knew so well.

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I cannot lie to you.

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I'm quite pessimistic.

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We are still etching on the
walls of this cave, which

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is thousands of years long.

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Signs we keep reinterpreting,
and myths about a future world

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where we don't
devour one another,

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and where the sun is friendly
and the seas cannot inherit

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our fevers.

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Some of us are digging a deeper
grave about to embrace us all.

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They, too, have their
engravings, maps, philosophers,

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and books.

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We can only keep dreaming
of a shore for the wind,

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and dig wells in the dark with
nails of silence and solitude.

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We will weave an ocean
out of ink for our myths,

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and out of words a sail or a
shroud vast enough for us all.

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Every book is a well around
which we sit and drink

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to your health and
try to live like you

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did with death and after it."