Lebanese poet Nadia Tueni also uses the desert as an image of war, destruction, and the death of fertility. And as in Jabra, the desert is empty:
What more does war need?
A road, someone living, someone dead,
a river of sacred mud,
and the devouring heat of June.
A clock, a wall, an old saber,
a head forgotten at the top of the stairway,
a Bedouin white against the background of sand,
and the double noise of fear.
(Tueni 1978, 108)
Tueni's desert image of the Bedouin "white against the background of sand" comes at the end of a list of other fragmented images, the result of the fragmentation brought by war. The road she mentions, like Jabra's "ceaseless wandering," does not promise to lead anywhere.
Publicado por resistencia em outubro 16, 2003 04:02 PM