Ashraf Fayyad: Solidarity with the poet

Last fall, the poet Ashraf Fayyad, the Palestinian, a native of the Gaza sector, living in Saudi Arabia, was (on the second attempt) sentenced by the Saudi court to the death penalty. The previous, soft, the sentence suggested four years of imprisonment and eight hundred and whips with a whip. During the appeal, the case, however, was returned to the court of the previous instance, where the judge was replaced from the moment the first sentence was issued, and on November 17, Fayyad was sentenced to death. Among his misconduct - “denial of the Day of Day”, “resistance of the divine will”, insulting Islam, “guardians of the two shrines” (i.e. the ruling Saudi dynasty) and the Vahhab sect: the latter’s teaching is the official version of Islam in Saudi Arabia. At both processes, Fayyad was deprived of the right to defense: lawyers were not allowed to be.

Fayyad has always been a consistent and tough opponent of the Saudi orders - from the repressive judicial system to the regime of the distribution of oil profits, but to call it a political activist would be an exaggeration: he is primarily a poet - the poet, openly politically engaged. Another area of work Fayyad is curators. He has long been taking an active part in the activities of the British-Saudi organization “Territory of Arabia”, engaged in the promotion and cultivation of his own contemporary art in Saudi Arabia, and in 2013 he acted as a socurator of one of the projects of the 55th Venetian Biennale.

Before you is one poem from Ashraf Fayyad’s book “Instructions are attached”, prohibited to distribute in his homeland.

Ashraf Fayyad

From the book "Instructions are attached"

There is no special evil from oil - except poverty,
following her on the heels.
On the day when the faces of the drillers turn black

On the day when they get into the pipe, you will hear
call of new oil in your heart and oil
You will resurrect.

For everyone.

Here is the true promise of oil, here is her promise,
What is being done now.

The sky is split.

It was said to them: settled there, but they -.

And then it was said: since you became enemies
To each other, you have to leave.

Look at yourself from the upper
floors, on themselves, flared up to the river bottom.

And let the inhabitant of heights provide
mercy, at least small,
stretching on the ground.

Beggars are restless, no one needs.
The same is blood - it costs nothing, has no price,
It is not traded in the markets of raw materials.

Forgive me, I'm not crying anymore
I no longer conjure your name
Desire and longing.

I was looking for the warmth of your hands.

There is no other love except you.
No one loves you stronger.

Night - she has too rarely
The case over time.
she lacks rain, drops that

would be washed away from you traces of the past
awake, straying from the way.

There are not enough rain drops, water
To give you deliverance
from chastity - you called it so -

And it’s not true that a strong heart can love

so that you call it publicly
false - a book, and imaginary - those
the gods whom she revered for the true ones.

Bodge is stronger than usual.

from bar to bar, and in each of them
Visitors are blessed with recitation
and seductive, black -eyed,
Bajor dancers.

You recite your own hallucinations
Under the DJ set and offer praise
bodies that swing to the beat
poetic size of exile.

He has no right to go wherever he wants
He has no right to hang out idle, where he will have to and cry
Where you want to cry.

His heart is a window, and he has no right
Open it, releasing it
Tears, dust, stagnant air.

You are a piece of bread and you
You try to forget about it too diligently.

On the day the dead get up, they
They get naked. And they will stand naked.

And you will throw off shoes and swim
For thin steward pipes.

A certain benefit could be found here -
But only for the legs, not for the earth.

The prophets retired.
You can no longer wait for the sent to you.

You, for whom analysts daily make reports.
you, from whom they achieve their huge salaries
Through the court.

A worthy life - how much does it cost?

I am resurrecting naked, and get up and stand
day after day, there is no one to make a decision
In my case, and there is no one to put up.
Early, I hurried to resurrect.
I am the embodied experience of the earthly hell.
And the Earth itself is hell, prepared by refugees.

10.

Your blood is numb - and cannot speak,
While you are proud of your own death
Until you betrayed your soul in the hands of
Who cannot understand it.

And then, the loss of the soul -

A long business, it takes time. but also him
don't have enough to forget, calm down, drain
Oil, horror, with tremors spilled from the eyes.

Translation from Arabic: Anastasia Shipulina, Stanislav Lviv

Events in support of Ashraf Fayyad will be held today in the Sakharov Center in Moscow and in the independent store of intellectual literature "Word Order" in St. Petersburg.