At the Israeli Checkpoint:
Palestine
(for Mahmoud Darwish, in memory of the greatest of Arab Poets)
by Sam Hamod
At the checkpoint, the
Israeli private asked me my name, I told
her, my name is
Zaitoun, she asked, what does that mean,
I told her 4,000 year old trees, she laughed,
asked for my real name, I told her, "Dumm," what?
i said, it means blood, she said, that's no name, I told her
blood of my grandfather, my father, my uncle
and even mine if necessary, she bridled, called the corporal,
he came running up, said, what kind of threat is that,
I said, it's no threat, it's just a fact,
he called the sergeant, he came up and hit me before he spoke,
my mouth bled, I told him, this is the blood I mean, that same
blood, you are afraid of, it's over 4000 years old, see how dark it
is
he called the lieutenant, who asked why my mouth was bleeding,
the sergeant said I had threatened him, the lieutant asked me
if that was the truth, I told him, I had only stated facts, that
they would be true, after they conferred, he called the
colonel, the colonel came over and asked why I'd been provocative,
I said,all I was doing was stating facts; he asked what I did,
I told him, I was a farmer, he asked what kind, I told him
a farmer with words, what some call a poet—
he asked me if I knew the work of Amichai, I told him yes,
that I'd met him, that he knew what I meant, that Amichai was
sorry for what he'd felt he "had to do"—the colonel shrugged
dismissed the others and told me, "pass on,
I understand, but they don't, they are not Jews, I am Jew,
not a Zionist"
I pulled the qhubz arabi from my pocket, pulled some zaitoun
from another, some jibbin from my bag and gave it to him--
we laughed, he split the bread in half—
we ate together, we cried and laughed at how sad and foolish all this
was
*qhubz arabi: bread of the Arabs
zaitoun: olives
jibbin: Arab style yogurt cheese
Mourning Muezzin: Mogadishu
by Sam Hamod
Each day
Afternoon
Gives us hot sun and
Mogadishu-- trees we’ve cut
Return, ghosts we wish still were green,
Each day centuries of barren
Afternoons hot
Sun dry mouth
Drying
Our skin
Burns in slash of wind whipping sand
Out of the dry eddies and dry
River beds-- here we have built our
Houses thick against the sun
Here we have found ways
To make music
From our old
Skins empty pots and
Left over gut -- lean
Air even the pliant sounds
Of our mourning muezzin
Is no less painful, even his voice calling
For Allah is no
Balm I remember
A Palestinian woman, a
Wrinkled desert
Woman, sitting in her mottled clay
Hut
Without windows
Without water
Without……...
Saying, “Sometimes
I think even Allah
Has forgotten us” sometimes here
In Mogadishu when blowing wind harshes
Against the few remaining trees, when
Wheat parches white against brown earth shredding,
when
Aideed’s men rattle streets
With 50 calibre shells when
Even those who
Came to save us
Explode flares and rockets into our
Night -- even then, the burn of
Phosphorus
Is nothing
Compared to the burning
Dryness
In our hearts
Sam Hamod has his PhD. from The Writers' Workshop of the University of Iowa
and has taught in the Workshop; he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry,
has published 10 books of poems, and has appeared in dozens of anthologies in the U.S. and abroad.
He has also taught creative writing at the University of Iowa, Princeton, Michigan, Wisconsin,
Howard and overseas as well. His most recent books were, JUST LOVE POEMS FOR YOU (2006),
Ishmael Reed Pub. Co/Contemporary Poetry Press and THE ARAB POEMS, THE MUSLIM POEMS (2000),
Contemporary Poetry Press/Cedar Creek; he has two more books of poems under contract and his memoirs as well.
He has won many awards over the years, and in addition has read with such poets as Kinnell, Ginsberg, Merwin,
Wright, Knight, Baraka and others, and has had praise from Neruda, Borges and such American poets as Ishmael Reed,
James Wright, Dick Hugo, Jack Marshall, Amiri Baraka and E. Ethelbert Miller among others.