		Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 7 - 13 May, 1998 Issue No.376
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Bars, streets, sidewalks

By Abbas Baidoun

Each of us has his own Nizar Qabbani: discovering Qabbani is a part of the process of self-discovery during youth. Collections like "The Dark One Told Me" or "Childhood of a Breast" or "You are for Me" inserted us right into the heart of our youth. Without them we would not have realized that youth has a language proper to itself or that adolescent longing and anxiety have a place in writing. The writing of Nizar Qabbani is of the same age as our youth, and I suppose it will remain so for every new generation. It is like a first dance. Rarely do we remember any of his poems as merely poetry. They are more like a part of days gone by. Once remembered, they bring back with them part of the self that is no longer. It is thus no surprise that each of us has in his life a season of Nizar Qabbani.

One cannot easily shelve Qabbani. He is not a book to be read then put away on a shelf or discarded. The book of Qabbani's poetry is not mere poetry. It is the book that vindicated the older generation in its view of the younger as merely adolescent and immature. It is the book we read to come closer to things other than poetry: Damascene decorations, enclosed gardens with fountains, city streets, neon-lit nights, beautiful fabrics, perfume and nightclubs. Qabbani's book is more closely related to these things than to poetry. In short, he wrote poetry that can easily be borrowed, spoken and considered one's own. It is light, free, fresh and playful. It is not modeled on any other poetry nor does it set itself up as a "masculine" model of poetry. It is even a bit feminine, coquettish, confessional, mannered and elegant -- and always fraught with the colloquial and the daily: young people, bars, streets, sidewalks, staircases, the smell of smoking, drinking and perfumes, passion and restraint.

This is not a testimony or evaluation of Nizar Qabbani. His poetry is a message passed from one generation to the next and the singing of an era. Together with Abdel-Halim Hafiz, Abdel-Nasser and Um Kulthum, he is a pillar of a whole culture which, in turn, is a pillar of an age. Whether his presence in the life of each of us is explicit or hidden, he is undoubtedly there, present in the personal and collective narrative of us all. Every Arab poet knows that without Nizar Qabbani his poetry and the Arabic language would not have been where they are today.