{"id":14249,"date":"2016-03-16T15:54:33","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T19:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=14249"},"modified":"2016-03-16T15:54:33","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T19:54:33","slug":"al-hajayas-elegy-on-rashid-az-zyudi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/al-hajayas-elegy-on-rashid-az-zyudi\/","title":{"rendered":"al-Hajaya’s Elegy on Rashid az-Zyudi"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"al-Hajaya\"<\/a><\/p>\n[audio:https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/audio\/RashidElegy.mp3]\n

Elegy on Rashid az-Zyudi<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Rest in peace, you who sold your life
\nAnd spared it for the homeland\u2019s sake: Zyudi
\n<\/span>Rest in peace, Rashid, as many times as the wind blows
\n<\/span>I hope you\u2019re in heaven\u2019s peace and eternity
\n<\/span>Zyudi, you followed Wasfi, Hazza\u2018,
\n<\/span>Salih Shwe\u2018ir, and all such noble lions
\n<\/span>A brave man, a lion, from a lion\u2019s pride!
\n<\/span>Men of noble origin who keep their pledges
\n<\/span>Your blood brightens our path
\n<\/span>Our borders\u2019 protectors take pride in its glory
\n<\/span>Under Hashemite rule, you\u2019ve proven yourself a man
\n<\/span>Abu al-Hussein! We\u2019re all his soldiers
\n<\/span>It\u2019s a War on Terror\u2014we\u2019re all resolved,
\n<\/span>Our people and our army, to spare no effort
\n<\/span>Jordan\u2019s stronger than evil men\u2019s aims
\n<\/span>With such gallant lads defending its borders
\n<\/span>Rest in peace, Rashid, as many times as the wind blows
\n<\/span>I hope you\u2019re in heaven\u2019s peace and eternity
\n<\/span>We all bleed grief for you, by God
\n<\/span>Oh son of cheetahs, the recompense of God will come!<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

William Tamplin, the translator, comments:<\/strong><\/p>\n

On March 2 in the northern Jordanian city of Irbid, police raided an ISIS cell, and a police captain named Rashid az-Zyudi was killed. Muhammad Fanatil al-Hajaya, a Bedouin poet from a hamlet in the south, started writing poems. His inspiration for writing this poem was twofold. The existence of the ISIS cell and its imminent attack shook Jordan to the core, and as a public figure Hajaya had to respond soon. Moreover, Hajaya saw footage of Jordan\u2019s King Abdullah II burying Zyudi as if he were his own son, and this affected him.
\nWhy did the attack shake Jordan to the core? Hajaya relates that unlike the Palestinians, Iraqis, Syrians, and refugees from 41 other nationalities Jordan has sheltered, Jordanians would have nowhere to flee if ISIS attacked. So all Jordanians feel targeted, and Hajaya believes that Zyudi thus died for all of them. But if Jordanians feel targeted, Hajaya added, they also feel united. Indeed, even the opposition Muslim Brotherhood called for national unity in the aftermath of the raid.
\nHajaya\u2019s elegy on Zyudi follows the conventions of the traditional Bedouin elegy. It calls for God\u2019s peace on Zyudi\u2019s soul, reclaims the manner of Zyudi\u2019s death, promises revenge on Zyudi\u2019s killers, and praises Zyudi for sacrificing his life for his country. Hajaya consequently places Zyudi in the context of fallen Jordanian heroes: Wasfi at-Tal, the Jordanian prime minister assassinated by Black September in 1971; Hazza\u2018 al-Majali, another Jordanian prime minister assassinated in 1960; and Salih Shwe\u2018ir, a lieutenant colonel in the Jordanian army who refused to surrender to Israeli forces in 1967 and fought to the death. The poem also lauds Zyudi\u2019s bravery and lineage, praising his leonine qualities and his descent from a pride of lions (l\u0101bit isb\u0101\u2018). As Hajaya did in his elegies on Saddam Hussein, Muammar al-Qaddafi and Mu\u2018ath al-Kasasbeh, he reclaims the manner of Zyudi\u2019s death by writing that his blood brightens Jordan\u2019s path forward. Moreover, Zyudi was endowed with all the manly virtues (w\u0101f\u012b al-b\u0101\u2018), another praise trope in Bedouin poetry.
\nIn the next line Hajaya refers to Jordan\u2019s war on ISIS as a \u201cWar on Terror,\u201d a phrase often derided in the Arab media for Bush\u2019s use of it to justify the American invasion of Iraq. Hajaya used it ironically in a poem he wrote from Bush\u2019s point of view in 2004, but he has apparently reappropriated the phrase now that Jordan is a major ISIS target. Hajaya also goes out of his way in this poem to praise those guarding Jordan\u2019s \u201cborders,\u201d any weak spots that Jordan\u2019s enemies could exploit. He means not only the border guards in the Desert Patrol guarding Jordan\u2019s borders with Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia but also the intelligence officers working in bunkers in Amman.
\nIt would be a mistake to read this poem purely as poetry. To be sure, Hajaya has written many poems that are beautiful as poems, but he also writes poetry that is nationalist, ideological, and reliant on stock tropes from more prosaic Bedouin poetry. Some detractors from this poetry claim that it is merely a collection of political slogans, and that is not untrue. But these poems are also potent conveyors of ideology on a popular level in a country that needs as much national unity as it can get.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[audio:https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/audio\/RashidElegy.mp3] Elegy on Rashid az-Zyudi Rest in peace, you who sold your life And spared it for the homeland\u2019s sake: Zyudi Rest in peace, Rashid, as many times as the wind blows I hope...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,91,93,103],"tags":[1776,1826],"class_list":["post-14249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-culture","category-arabic","category-poetry","category-poetry-readings","category-translation","tag-muhammad-fanatil-al-hajaya","tag-william-tamplin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14249"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14273,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14249\/revisions\/14273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}