LONDON: “It is written. The act of writing is holy. Words are sacred and your breath brings out the Gods in them.” So begins the poem “Talisman” by Palestinian-American poet Suheir Hammad, who has recently been entrancing audiences in the US and the UK with her performances as part of the Tony Award winning show Def Poetry Jam.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Hammad’s voice is unique with its fusion of Hip Hop sensibility with Palestinian and Arab culture and politics. In her poem “On the Brink of …,” composed on the eve of the war in Iraq this year, she writes: “Children are looking toward the night sky with fear, as though there were no stars, only bombs in the cosmos. And they are afraid of the earth because they can count the cancers in their hoods now.”
Her use of the word “hood” is interesting, juxtaposing as it does a term one would normally associate more with the streets of America’s inner cities than the streets of Baghdad, and reveals the extent to which Hammad’s poetic voice is influenced by the cultural melting pot of Brooklyn where she grew up.
Tall and strikingly attractive, the imprint of Palestine and her Levantine ancestry is clear to see, as she says: “All eyelashes and nose and beautiful color and stubborn hair,” describing “the archetypal Arab.”
Politically active from an early age, she is passionate about her Arab roots, despite the political climate in New York and America, particularly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
“I always say I’m Palestinian. I never try to hide it by saying I’m Arab,” she said during an interview.
She talks with great candor about her experiences as a working class “minority within a minority” and having to deal with an education system where “most of my school teachers were European-American Jews. I remember them pointing at the map and saying that there was no such thing as Palestine or whenever there was a hijacking and say that those are your people.”
Going on to talk about the way the current crisis between the Palestinians and Israelis is portrayed in America she explained that “there is no historical accuracy in the covering of the conflict. There is no sense of an occupation. There is absolutely no compassion for Palestinians in the mainstream media in America. There is no sense of there being a culture and a people who deserve to live.”
She accepts the dichotomous nature of her own identity and this sense does inform much of her poetry, most notably in “First writing since,” composed in the aftermath of the attacks on America.
“I have never felt less American and more New Yorker, particularly Brooklyn, than these past days,” she says.
The poem itself is riven with undulating emotions of loss, sorrow and trepidation. Beginning as an elegy to all those who perished in the terrible attacks, the words are haunted by the overshadowing spectre of death and carnage on display.
“No poetry in the ashes south of Canal Street. Sky where once was steel. Smoke where once was flesh,” she writes.
Describing the scene from her kitchen window, which looked straight out on the Twin Towers, Hammad attempts to convey the indescribable grief she feels as a native New Yorker.
“I am looking for peace. I am looking for mercy. I am looking for evidence of compassion. Any evidence of life. I am looking for life,” she writes.
She brilliantly recreates the emotional maelstrom of such a cataclysmic event. However, where the poem is at its most fascinating is with the constant references to the experiences from an Arab-American perspective.
“Please God, after the second plane, please, don’t let it be anyone who looks like my brothers. One more person ask me if I knew the hijackers. One more person assumes no Arabs or Muslims were killed,” she writes, as the rage she feels by the end in the face of ignorance and prejudice betrays the double tragedy of the event’s consequences ­ that life at home, both in New York and Palestine, will never be the same again for her and the countless other Arab-Americans at once cursed to be both victim and perpetrator.
While politics plays an integral part in Hammad’s poetry, there is far more to her than simply heated rhetoric. Her aesthetic style, spoken through with her distinctive voice, is often playful and full of the rhythms associated with New York and Hip Hop, as well as Arab poets, particularly when dealing with issues such as love and longing. She confesses to being a fan of Adonis, particularly with the way he has “serious fun” with his poetry and the African-American poet June Jordan who famously wrote: “I was born a black woman and now I am … a Palestinian” in the wake of the Sabra and Chatila massacres.
In one Hammad poem, “Mama’s Sweet Baklava,” the delicately flaky sweet becomes an appropriate metaphor for Arab women throughout time.
“She is baklava, back bone strong foundation, layers thousand layers upon each other like refugees fleeing or cold children warming each other, holding each other against stiff hungry winds,” she writes.
The vivid use of contrasting imagery between the warm, soothing pastry and the cold, hungry figures adds a resonance to the verse and allows the elemental essence of humanity and compassion, common traits throughout Hammad’s poetry, to shine through. Nor is she averse to writing romantic odes to her lover as the following excerpt from “Talisman” reveals: “May you walk ever loved and in love know the sun for warmth and the moon for direction.”
Hammad has become an increasingly popular figure in America. As part of the Def Poetry Jam show, she was the first Palestinian to ever receive a Tony Award on Broadway. She also revealed how she cried with joy when she found out that fellow Arab-American Tony Shalhoub had recently won an Emmy Award for his performance in the US television show, Monk.
These figures of the Arab diaspora need to be celebrated both in their lands of residences and lands of ancestry. While she regularly receives e-mails and poems from Arab-Americans and other diaspora Arabs, she admitted that unfortunately she doesn’t have anywhere near the same profile in the Middle East itself. When asked about the number of Palestinian-American figures at large in the American media, she said: “As far as Palestinians in America go, its basically Edward Said then me.”
She is however, more downbeat when discussing the current situation in Palestine, stating the endlessly escalating cycle of violence has left her feeling “bereft of any solutions.”
It may be best to leave the last word to Hammad’s poetry and find hope in the fertile landscape of her lyrics: “There is life here, anyone reading this is breathing, maybe hurting, but breathing for sure. And if there is any light to come, it will shine from the eyes of those who look for peace and justice after the rubble and rhetoric are cleared and the phoenix has risen.”