Fadhil Al-Azzawi's Beautiful Creatures

Fadhil Al-Azzawi, Fadhil al-Azzawi

• Publisher: Banipal Publishing
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781913043223
• eBook ISBN: 9781913043117
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Poetry
• Index: Literature

This open work was written in defiance of the "sanctity of genre" and to raise the question of freedom of expression in writing. First published in Arabic in 1969 to great acclaim, it has been variously called a novel or a prose poem, while the author calls it an epic in prose, divided as it is into cantos. In mid-1960s Iraq such an open-ended form, in which different genres could come together and blend into each other, was difficult to even imagine. For Fadhil al-Azzawi it was the core of a new vision of life after the country's tough political experiences, especially the bloody coup of February 1963, and then abysmal defeat in the June 1967 Six-Day War. The preface to the original Arabic edition noted: "Everything in this open novel returns to itself and acquires its own particular innocence, even in language, so that the novel becomes a poem, a play, a film, a painting and a piece of music all at once without ever meaning to [...] It talks about itself in its own very particular way, where it says nothing specific so that it can say everything."

THE CANTOS

1. THE FALL: ALL OF HISTORY BEGAN WITH ME

One morning, when I woke from a deep sleep under the palm trees on the sandy bank of a crystalline river, after a long night beneath a white moon and the countless illuminated candles of remote stars, I found myself lost and alone, staggering and flailing within a huge and endless tunnel between Heaven and Earth, far away from the green meadows and orchards of paradise where I had spent most of my spare time in love with Eve, drinking vintage wine and singing with all my heart. Aghast and filled with dread and thinking about the events of my lifetime, I stumbled around in the dark, not knowing whether to press ahead or retreat. It was only then, once I became sure that I had lost everything and there was nothing more to lose, that I trusted my heart to guide me out of this vast maze.

All what I remember now is that I have passed through this dark valley, knowing that all of history was happening alongside me, leaving my tracks behind on the path of eternity.

2. IN THE STREET

It was life as usual: swirling dust storms merged with the cries of vendors and the honking of motor car horns. Seeing the sun shining over the tops of the buildings and trees, I felt certain that everything would be all right. Nothing had changed. Only, I was no longer myself.

“I don’t need a mirror to see how much I am changed,” I admitted to myself. “I can now see the hollowness of my life in my soul, and the vacuum of the universe in my heart.”

I moved forward, staring at the faces of passers-by to see if they too were changed. As I took everything in, I sat down on the back of one of two marble lions in front of a closed coffee shop. I noted blandly that at the white Armenian church opposite, a young girl with a beatific smile was saying goodbye to the deacon.

Some of the people in the street glanced at me and nodded, but no one spoke. “Without a doubt, something ill has befallen me,” I murmured. Perhaps I would never be able to pinpoint what it was. I was unable to cry, around all these strange people who kept loitering and looking me over before moving away. Suddenly I divined the secret. I was dreaming, and they were seeing me in my dreams. I was dead, carrying my coffin upon my shoulder.

There were eyes everywhere, penetrating me, and speculating. I put down my coffin and began to drag it behind me from place to place. I was in a railway station, from which in the good old days I used to travel to Kirkuk to visit my mother. But what could I do now as a dead man, in a city where there was no one waiting for me?

There was no place to go. I even forgot what time it was. I was a man without a watch. But what of it? I had spent decades of my life here and there, without knowing for certain whether I was dead or alive.

Then I perceived that I had lost my coffin. Had I left it somewhere, or had it simply been stolen from me? Without a doubt it had been just a cheap, badly-made and unpleasant one. I was happy to be rid of it, for there were so many dead people in the world who would surely need it more than me.

May God bless their lost souls!

3. THE CLOWN AND THE GAMBLER

Someone had cheated me the night before. I knew I would be cheated a thousand times more – so long as time snuck into my heart and turned me to dust. But I had to keep running the risk of existing in the world. No choice.

Every day, a splendid young clown would approach me and say: “Do you want to play with me?”

I would turn my face towards him and reply: “But we are playing.”

“You were cheating me all the time.”

“Really!”

“Look, I’ve also hidden some cards in my sleeves.”

“That’s good. It only goes to show that no one is perfect in this world.”

Oh, something is rotten in this city, but I cannot yet say how dangerous it will be.

In the eye of the tempest nothing can be denied.

4. NIETZSCHE’S SERMON

In order to divine the closely guarded secrets of life I sat and read books and books, over and over, about voyagers who had ventured to steer their ships through the world’s most remote oceans, hoping to discover America again. I wanted to know everything about them.

And yet I still do not know who they were. I have probably forgotten a lot of things about them when I should have retained at least a few details of their lives. Usually, to tell the truth, I forget these details. My own overwhelming diseases leave me no time to contemplate the spectres of others; I often spend time confessing my imperfections to myself. I watch them grow, day after day, and they confuse me. In short, I have lost my sense of observation. I look into my interior, see the world inside me and acquire nothing but questions.

In fact, by now, I was eager to play dice with God.

“Who are you to proclaim all this? After all, you are not God.”

No, I am certainly not. The issue at hand is not how to be God – a meaningless question – but how to be yourself in a world without God.

When Zarathustra was alone, as Nietzsche once wrote, he said to his heart: “Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!”

We had all indeed heard of it, but we did not believe it, of course. That way, even if God really had died, we could always invent a new one.

An easy job!

When I withdraw into myself like a genie into his bottle, new illusions and old dreams, which have somehow remained a secret, steal into my heart to console me. And as an out-and-out petit bourgeois, I decide to take the risk of going on booby-trapped expeditions to carve my name into the rocks of my own time, in the hope of existing within what has already been done and in what could be done some day.

5. IN PRAISE OF BEARDS

The world is full of problems, but my problem right now is that I cannot fully conceive of anyone without knowing whether or not he has a beard. As a child, I was taught that all prophets and saints had long beards. So I assumed that God would personally also have a very long beard, due to His protracted time spent living in eternity. Years later, when I was grown-up and wiser, I still could not stop thinking about beards and their lengths. There must, I used to say to myself, be an implicit or undeclared world beard philosophy and ideology. The prophet Mohammad, who was able, for instance, to love a dozen women all at the same time, was in the habit of dying his beard with henna and perfuming it with musk. And I am quite sure that Lenin also acquired a short beard without which he could not be himself. But Karl Marx’s beard was too long and could only be explained dialectically. To write Das Kapital and all his other huge volumes of books on philosophy and economy, Marx had no choice but to leave his beard to grow longer and longer in the manner of a Muslim sophist. Shaving his beard every morning would have meant betraying the just cause of the working class. However, I also admire the beard of His Holiness Pope Paul VI and wonder if Chairman Mao Zedong also permitted his beard to grow (NB: both of these were still alive when last I wrote about them). I beg your pardon, please don’t poke fun at my beard on account of these daring theories of mine. I consider these near-obsolete things to be very important, as a kind of surety for our nature as human beings with wishes and desires. From my own experience as a poet without a beard I cannot express how significant it is for someone to grow a beard or not. I have thought deeply about this old-new phenomenon and reached a certain conclusion: there is no man who has not thought at least once in his lifetime of growing a beard. More than that, the attitude taken towards a given beard is never separate from the political situation and from the individual; it reflects, more or less, the real nature and social essence of class struggle (remember Castro!). All that said, world leaders, but also poets, of the new generation are more and more inclined to shave off their beards. This is most probably due to the tantalising influence of advertisements for Gillette razor blades that are published in newspapers and on television.

I wish that beards were made of hay,

for us to feed to the Muslims’ mounts.

Ibn Mufrigh al-Himyari (… – 689)

6. A SELF-MADE POET

“I know you are a self-made poet, and you will find your way some day,” I heard Layla say to me. My friends, all freelance actors, laughed at her silly notion. But was it really silly? No, not at all. I think they had perceived in Layla’s words the secret that I had assiduously kept hidden from them for a long time. I had spent half my life in their service without letting them know who I was. Then suddenly an ordinary woman, who knew practically nothing about me, had come along and pulled off my mask. Confused, I met their disapproving eyes and smiled. It was as if a voice, coming from somewhere unknown but nevertheless clear, was telling me not to defend my tarnished name. It was as if I wanted to avoid telling them who I was. There was nothing to be lost, even if they were cheating me all the time, for I had never counted on them. They were there and I was here, on the other side of the river, and I cared not for the bridge that we might have crossed together. When I had to chat with them, I did so only as a game. I was not deceiving them, for I had never expected anything from them. I would fulfil what they asked of me, when I chose to do so, and refuse when I thought it migh...

Table of contents

• COVER
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• THE LONESOME TRAVELLER
• THE CANTOS
• HOW I CAME TO WRITE BEAUTIFUL CREATURES
• FADHIL AL-AZZAWI
• EDITOR & INTRODUCER
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• OTHER TITLES BY BANIPAL BOOKS