Egyptian poet Sahar Anwar’s romantic prayers; which oscillate between expressing oneself and addressing others, in honesty, and with linguistically beautiful expressions
By Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
In a text titled ‘The Journey of the Final Resting Place’, from her poetry book ‘Without a Trace but Me’, the Egyptian poet Sahar Anwar writes:
“There is nothing new under the sun, my friend / Nothing but imperfection / No love, no hate./ Resentment is still in the wind of sadness; / It does not care about the withering of tears / Torment is a tent of the illusion of healing / Or at least a thirst from loss./ Patience is still rewarded / It quenches its thirst from our obedience / For a life whose refuge is illusion / Its mirage is a measure of the evil of toil. / Its joy is infatuated with a sadness whose taste has not changed / It ignites in our eyes / The journey of the final resting place.”
This text is only an example of what I have considered as a poetic prayer, where confession, internal dialogue, and supplication are qualities that these poetic prayers combine and the writer spreads them in sixty prayers distributed over more than a hundred pages.
These romantic prayers; which oscillate between expressing oneself and addressing others, in honesty, and with linguistically beautiful expressions, do not hide the surging emotion and sincere feeling.
The poems in the collection are full and overflowing the poetess Sahar Anwar, with mirrors of images, and with more imagination, you can follow the traces of traditional classical readings
Perhaps the precision of linguistic expression is the daughter of the research aspect represented by Sahar Anwar, as she is the author of a work far from the world of poetry, her book Women in the Business World – Between Financing and Empowerment, in which she spoke about entrepreneurship as one of the factors influencing sustainable development indicators, which countries seek to provide the appropriate climate for in order to achieve the desired goals through financing and empowerment, so that the poet’s first collection of poems comes, as if it were the other face, indicating linguistic maturity, waiting to explode into poetry that does not lack music.
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The sand on the cover may be a reference to a beach that we will walk on, leaving traces of our steps that will be erased by the waters after a while when the sea rages, or perhaps the sand refers to the poet’s name derived from the desert, in Arabic, and in both cases, there is no trace of any woman other than her, or of any person other than the poetess…
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The poetess addresses her readers weekly in articles in the magazine ‘Nosul Donia’, and this weekly address contributed to the poetess reaching a clear language that attracts many readers, this blogging exercise supports the writer’s approach to also elevate the language of her weekly columns, as if they were an extension of her poetic prayers as well…
“In the House of My Soul
The days have slipped through my fingers
Every night fear guards my door
The cactus tree extends its hand to me
Embracing my ribs
At the table of the past”
The poems in the collection are full and overflowing the poetess Sahar Anwar, with mirrors of images, and with more imagination, you can follow the traces of traditional classical readings. Doesn’t the poem (How can a dead person feel the fire?) connect with a question: Does it harm the sheep to be skinned after slaughtering it? And look at the surreal image when she writes:
“I released my naked clothes
Empty wine bottles devour me”
As if the clothes were lined up like bottles, a comparison in which you can find wine equivalent to the woman’s body, and to the naked clothes, with the transparent glass that you see what is underneath, and she, as she says in another poetic prayer, “A woman melted into a woman”, and in her prayer she always turns to the sky:
“I come out of my cocoon
I steal from the sky a flame of light
I wear it”.
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Ashraf Aboul-Yazid is a renowned Egyptian poet, journalist, novelist, travelogue writer and translator. He is author of around three dozen books and Editor-in-Chief of Silk Road Literature Series.
