from the “Diwan Ifrikiya” anthology: Salah Garmadi

Salah Garmadi (1933 – 1982)

OUR ANCESTORS THE BEDUINS
they are here
no one can deny them
no slogan can efface them
they are the inherited majority
depth coiled in maghrebian palms leaves
untamable root

the Moroccans still keep watch over the Tunisian street
the Tunisians still fry doughnuts for the children of Bejaïa
in Constantine a man of the people offered a sheep’s
head and declared we are one single people

our fresh air children make themselves siamese
our naked legged women will produce princesses
our adolescence will cry out
go ahead little guy go straight ahead
our mouths are modest yet want to say it all already
and our Einsteins will be majestic in their djellabas

the African snow is holding back man’s foot
the march-exile back of wanderers gives shape to the hubbub-instinct wave
in quest of subsistence
and Ghardaïa eyes delight in the ochres
and the blues in shadow earth Ghardaïa with nocturnal gaze of
tutelary owl caress and commerce like Jerba adulated Ber-
ber sister
and Roufi has balconies
lost image mirage found again in the hollow of the palmed oued
Hassi-Messaoud
dune from which tumbles the friend at Allah’s call
stony ground where man persists and acts

 

Translated by P.J.

 

Salah Garmadi was born in Tunis, Tunisia in 1933, and died in a car crash in 1982. He was a novelist and poet who write both in Arabic and French. This poem is the tile poem of the 1975 volume Nos ancêtres les Bédouins.

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