The primary few strains of the Arabic authentic of “The Conflict Is Over.”

For our collection Making of a Poem, we’re asking poets and translators to dissect the poems they’ve printed in our pages. Nasser Rabah’s poem “The Conflict Is Over,” translated from the Arabic by Wiam El-Tamami, seems in our new Spring challenge, no. 251. Right here, we requested each Rabah and El-Tamami to replicate on their work.

1. Nasser Rabah

How did this poem begin for you? Was it with a picture, an thought, a phrase, or one thing else?

I reside in Gaza. Within the early months of the battle, we weren’t anticipating it to final for thus lengthy. I saved telling my kids that it will all be over in a number of days, in per week—and each time, I used to be dissatisfied. It’s a tragic factor, to be proved mistaken in entrance of your kids. However in some way, out of stubbornness or self-protection, I began denying actuality, believing in my very own optimism. I mentioned to myself, The battle is over. I jotted that sentence down within the Notes app on my telephone, and left it there.

The subsequent day, I requested myself, What would I do if the battle was over? I believed, I might go to the graveyard to go to my mates whose funerals I hadn’t been in a position to attend. So I wrote down yet one more sentence—“I’ll go to the graveyard.” I nonetheless wasn’t pondering of it as a poem. However then poetry overtook me, and I wrote, “I’ll take bread, a whole lot of bread, one loaf for every buddy.” When the stanza was completed, I felt a rush of adrenaline, that nervous power that accompanies the start of a brand new poem. And I saved going.

How did writing the primary draft really feel to you? Did it come simply, or was it tough to jot down? Are there onerous and straightforward poems?

This poem got here to me with the softness and fluidity of a revelation. My thoughts felt prefer it was floating within the air of those phrases. Some poems are exhausting, wrenching. However in uncommon moments, moments of divine grace, a present falls from the sky—this was a type of.

I bear in mind precisely how I felt. I used to be making an attempt to stay composed—to maintain my physique nonetheless, my respiration even, and my thoughts from pondering. My fingers have been recording what I used to be receiving with out the interference of my thoughts. A poem will run away if it senses that you simply’re too keen—that you simply’re chasing it, or excited by its presence. A lovely poem is a shy creature. It’ll flee instantly if it feels you speeding forward. Endurance and calm will help a poet catch a giant fish.

After I wrote the primary eight stanzas of the poem, I ended. Within the following days, the strains saved taking part in in my thoughts, like a music. I requested a number of folks, neighbors, avenue sellers, drivers, “What are you going to do when the battle ends?” One in every of them mentioned, “I’ll sleep for per week.” One other mentioned, “We’ll clear the rubble.” One other mentioned, “I’ll stroll down the road with out being afraid of planes.” I wrote all of it down. The poem turned twelve stanzas lengthy.

When do you know this poem was completed? Had been you proper about that? Is it completed, in spite of everything?

This poem caught my consideration from the primary second. Each time I moved on to a brand new stanza, I used to be nervous that I wouldn’t be capable of attain a full-length poem. After I received to eight stanzas, I ended, and felt that it was completed. However within the coming days, the poem was like a magnet, drawing increasingly more strains to itself. Some poems cease rising on their very own, and there are others that have to be stopped firmly, in order that they don’t fall into pointless, gratuitous chatter. So I despatched it off to be translated—thereby declaring its completion!

What was the problem of this specific poem?

It was tough to condense among the strains, to distill the language, whereas preserving the depth of the poem’s that means. As a result of the poem consists of a collection of unbiased stanzas, I had to verify none of them disrupted the concord of the entire. I didn’t need one stanza to be louder than the others, drowning out the unhappy, quiet ones—irrespective of how indignant I used to be, irrespective of how a lot I used to be screaming on the within.

Do you remorse any revisions?

Remorse is a nihilistic emotion. Possibly we should always remorse issues extra essential than revisions to a poem. Treating a poem like a exact mathematical equation robs it of its inventive spirit. I like poems which have some flaws. There are not any excellent poems, simply as there are not any excellent human beings. So why would I remorse revising a poem?

2. Wiam El-Tamami

How did translating the primary draft really feel to you? Did it come simply, or was it tough? Are there onerous and straightforward translations?

The primary go at a translation is at all times a shock. I by no means know whether or not a textual content will come to life within the new language, the way it will look and sound and really feel. The picture that involves thoughts is that of a magician pulling a string of coloured handkerchiefs out of their ear. On this situation, I’m each the one doing the pulling and the one watching what’s rising.

Typically the voice is there straight away—it simply clicks into place—and I’m jubilant because the phrases emerge, because the sentences unfurl. Sure, sure, sure. In these uncommon cases, translation can really feel nearly like an act of unspooling.

With some items, nevertheless, there’s a whole lot of heavy lifting, slotting issues right here and there, making an attempt this and that after which throwing it out once more—and you continue to find yourself with an awkwardly organized room. Arabic–English literary translation specifically entails a whole lot of deconstruction and inventive reconstruction—of grammatical buildings, for instance.

Most translations are someplace in between. You’re peeling away, paring down, working onerous to come back nearer. If and whenever you tune right into a voice that feels proper, the remainder turns into simpler. I’ve that have when writing my very own work as nicely. I could possibly be engaged on a brand new piece for a while, looking for my approach into it—however as soon as I’ve discovered the primary line, it seems like I’ve discovered the start of the trail.The interpretation of this poem was a type of uncommon cases the place the strains simply fell into place. Easy. Weightless. How beautiful and curious to listen to that it was the identical for Nasser, writing it.

The truth that the poem may be very visible actually made it simpler to translate. It’s a collection of scenes, easy and concrete. It’s less complicated than different poems of Nasser’s—maybe deceptively so. Nasser’s work is usually woven by way of with figurative language—putting, startling imagery—which could be each stunning and difficult to work with in translation. However there’s little of that right here. A few of his poems even have strains that have a tendency towards pathos, which I discover significantly tough to render in a approach that stays trustworthy to the unique however doesn’t sound over-the-top in English. Literary Arabic tends to have extra capability for large statements and large sentiments.

How was the enhancing course of? Do you remorse any revisions?

Nasser and I are good mates. We’ve a really playful friendship, stuffed with banter, and I’m additionally brutally sincere with him about his work. To his credit score, he takes it very nicely, even welcomes it. So I’m very comfy suggesting edits, and he’s very beneficiant in discussing and contemplating them. And typically he jogs my memory (as he has talked about right here) that poems don’t need to be excellent. I nonetheless have so much to find out about that, I feel.

With this poem, for instance, there was a further line on the finish of the eighth stanza within the authentic Arabic:

The battle is over.
The kids return to their faculties, and discover them inhabited by the displaced.
The employees head again to the manufacturing unit, and discover a pile of rubble in its wake.
The medical doctors return to the hospital, and discover it riddled with illness.
Everyone seems to be afraid to return house, for concern they’ll
discover it gone.
After which all of them ascended to God.

The final line felt like overkill to me—one step too far—and I urged we reduce it. Nasser agreed, and the stanza now ends on “discover it gone.”

Srikanth Reddy and different Paris Evaluate editors additionally urged some very useful edits. My favourite adjustments have been to the ninth stanza, which initially learn:

The battle is over.
The birds, who’ve seen the whole lot
—the killing, the destruction—
go on singing.
The troopers additionally proceed to sing.
The birds are usually not involved with any of it,
and neither are the troopers.

There was initially some back-and-forth concerning the wording of the penultimate line—maybe “troubled by” as an alternative of “involved with”?—however then the editors got here again with the good thought of reducing out the final two strains completely. I feel the ninth stanza is now a lot stronger in consequence:

The battle is over.
The birds, who’ve seen
the whole lot, the whole lot,
go on singing.
The troopers additionally proceed to sing.

There’s one revision that I do remorse, although (not like Nasser, I do remorse edits typically). The eleventh stanza initially started:

Fifteen thousand kids within the balconies
raining items down on the passersby:
Eid garments, coloured sneakers, books they now not want,
lifeless smiles, their moms’ tears.

The editors urged “1000’s of kids” as an alternative of “Fifteen thousand,” and we went with that revision. I used to be in favor of it on the time—increasingly more persons are being killed, monstrously, day by day in Gaza, so it appeared to make sense to not identify a specific quantity. However now I want we had pinned that insane determine, documented it on this poem. Now I have a look at the phrase 1000’s with anguish and really feel that it doesn’t even start to do justice to the size of what’s taking place.

Not that any of the figures are fathomable. Greater than fifty thousand Palestinian folks have now been killed over the previous yr and a half, together with seventeen thousand kids. Over 100 thousand Palestinian folks have been wounded, together with twenty-five thousand kids. These figures don’t have in mind the numerous 1000’s nonetheless lacking, these nonetheless buried beneath rubble, and the large numbers  of people that have died of so-called oblique causes, like treatable wounds and preventable diseases, as a result of deliberate decimation of health-care amenities in Gaza. They don’t have in mind the lots of of 1000’s of people that have misplaced properties and limbs and livelihoods. The slaughter of Palestinian civilians continues unabated, together with the destruction of all technique of life. As I write this, in late Might 2025, all meals, gasoline, drugs, and cooking gasoline have been blocked from coming into Gaza for nearly three months. Those that haven’t been killed by the relentless bombardment are being starved to loss of life. By the top of April, sixty-five thousand kids had already been hospitalized for extreme malnutrition.

Nor do the “figures” start to account for the way this feels for each one of many two million Palestinian people who find themselves nonetheless dwelling beneath siege in Gaza, dwelling in concern and horror and dignity, making an attempt to construct and create and save what they’ll day by day, whereas watching their properties, their lives, and the lives of their kids being systematically destroyed. The battle—the genocide—is just not over.

Nasser Rabah’s debut assortment in English translation is Gaza: The Poem Mentioned Its Piece.

Wiam El-Tamami is a Harvill Secker Younger Translators’ Prize–successful author, translator, and editor whose work has been featured in Granta and The Frequent.