{"id":7620,"date":"2012-01-14T12:24:32","date_gmt":"2012-01-14T16:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=7620"},"modified":"2012-01-14T16:12:05","modified_gmt":"2012-01-14T20:12:05","slug":"happy-b-day-tunisia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/happy-b-day-tunisia\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy B-Day Tunisia!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It was a year ago today that the Arab Spring saw its first victory when Tunisian President\u00a0<a title=\"Zine El Abidine Ben Ali\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zine_El_Abidine_Ben_Ali\">Zine El Abidine Ben Ali<\/a>\u00a0fled to Saudi Arabia following the\u00a0protests that had broken out on 18 December 2010\u00a0with a people&#8217;s loud &amp; proactive\u00a0<em><strong>chlass,<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<em><strong>ras-le-bol, basta, enough-already!<\/strong><\/em> of revolutionary proportions. Here&#8217;s a poem by Tunisian poet <strong>Tahar Bekri<\/strong> from the forthcoming (November 2012) <strong>Poems for the Millennium IV<\/strong>:<em><strong> The University of California Book of North African Literature<\/strong>,<\/em> edited by Habib Tengour &amp; myself:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>I CALL YOU TUNISIA<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I.<\/p>\n<p>And you live within me earth<br \/>\nBow on the violin\u2019s cheek<br \/>\nIn the untameable sea\u2019s neighing<br \/>\nThe fleeting notes unwound in skeins of foam<br \/>\nEnvying rebellious hair<br \/>\nIts gallop of memories<br \/>\nDown to that waist a mane<br \/>\nThat could free a thousand and one riders<br \/>\nSeason guided by the Milky Way\u00a0why<br \/>\nHave you set my boat adrift<br \/>\nIn absence without an anchor<br \/>\nIts ropes frayed by so much forgetting<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>II.<\/p>\n<p>They opened at dusk<br \/>\nThose flowers mingled with night\u2019s amber<br \/>\nWhere a dream tosses restlessly<br \/>\nIn the hive of insomnia<br \/>\nIts honey going from eye to eye<br \/>\nNectar surprising the bees\u2019 probes<br \/>\nLike a sudden shower<br \/>\nSometimes the storm told you my anger<br \/>\nAt not having been born<br \/>\nA pomegranate tree or a flowering orange tree<br \/>\nTo offer you my fruits<br \/>\nBut is it from thunder\u2019s grumblings<br \/>\nThat orchards are born<\/p>\n<p>[\u2026]<\/p>\n<p>V.<\/p>\n<p>For you I have picked<br \/>\nA bouquet of roses<br \/>\nWith petals of light<br \/>\nPerfumes diffused without fanfare<br \/>\nI am the stem climbing the stake<br \/>\nOf your arms which console my walls<br \/>\nWhen the storks fly off will you tell<br \/>\nOf all the distance they crossed<br \/>\nI am not a summer cloud<br \/>\nThat wanders lightly<br \/>\nBut the heavy sky of its rainstorms<br \/>\nLover of hardened autumns<br \/>\nThe seed that rises<br \/>\nIn blackened earth<br \/>\nFor the best grain<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">( Paris-Tunis 2010)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Translated by Marilyn Hacker<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>COMMENTARY<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0Born in Gab\u00e8s, Tunisia, in 1951, Tahar Bekri \u2014 who writes in French &amp; in Arabic \u2014 has lived in Paris since 1976. He has published some 20 books (poetry, essays, art books), has been translated into a number of languages (Russian, English, Italian, Spanish Turkish) with critical analysis on his work being done in various university settings. In an article in Jeune Afrique from October 1997, the critic Ridha K\u00e9fi describes the poetry of Bekri as \u201call of luminous transparency, in ample murmurs and limpid melodies\u201d evoking \u201cvast crossings of time and space, real or imaginary, where Orient and Occident are continually reinvented.\u201d A specialist of Maghrebi literature, he teaches at the University of Paris X in Nanterre.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was a year ago today that the Arab Spring saw its first victory when Tunisian President\u00a0Zine El Abidine Ben Ali\u00a0fled to Saudi Arabia following the\u00a0protests that had broken out on 18 December 2010\u00a0with&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1012,11,66,91,927],"tags":[1137],"class_list":["post-7620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-spring","category-arab-culture","category-maghrebi-literature","category-poetry","category-tunisia","tag-tahar-bekri"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7620","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=7620"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7623,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7620\/revisions\/7623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}