Dear Reader

This compendium is a disambiguation upon re-examination, unraveling the themes, poetic devices, and approach to reading the poems that disrupt or defy traditional compositions.

The Book Cover

The cover Rain and Embers visually captures the weight of the poetry. There’s a poem hidden in the right-hand side of the cover which is meant to represent the abstract nature of poetry and how lines of verse are camouflaged in experience, quietly pleading to be unveiled. What appears to be an etched Arabic design is actually not Arabic at all; it looks like Arabic but instead is a long-dead ancient language.

The script is written from right to left in the cursive form of Egyptian hieroglyphics in black ink with explanatory glosses in red ink. The words came from a papyrus scroll dating back to the 16th or 17th dynasty of Egypt’s Second Intermediate Period, circa 1600 B.C.E. The vast majority of the scroll is concerned with trauma and surgery, with short sections on gynecology and cosmetics on the verso. This inclusion of the scroll is intended to be an artistic rendering of my roots as I see them—familiar yet still strange, unable to be fully grasped. Dead languages provide an apt vehicle for the disembodying portrayal of roots as a member of a diaspora, for being torn between two cultures consequently makes me alien to myself. Beyond the loss of history and culture, the burns and tears are reminiscent of the more individual conflicts I struggle with: my past as a persecuted refugee, my family, and my journey to find a place to call home.

The arch featured on the cover is La Porte de L’orient: Monument aux Armées d’Afrique (Monument to the Dead of the Army of the East and Distant Lands) located in Marseille, France. The monument was erected in the memory of the fallen soldiers on the Eastern Front of the First World War. The doorway on the cover reflects a new beginning, the start of a poetic adventure, and acts as an invitation to the audience to bear witness to my story. Lastly, the title depicts a duality which is the overarching theme of the collection.

Themes

Duality

The overarching theme explored in this collection is the nuanced tension of duality. Fire and water; creation and destruction; sun and moon; dark and light; East and West; war and peace; the extraneous and the self; humanity and nature; and the annals of history and the uncertainty of the future. For the displaced, writing is a measurement of the metaphysical distance between diaspora and roots, and between diaspora and the fruits of its burgeoning vitality. This collection is an incantation of that fragmentary existence. Mythological imagery of both eastern and western cultures are prominent fixtures populating the work. As a diasporic writer, the lens through which the roots are examined is, in many aspects, warped by the new country’s frame of reference. There is a palpable sense of loss over the scraps of culture that have been eroded and replaced. Throughout the collection, Greek and Roman allusions are counterbalanced by Egyptian and Islamic ones. Helios and the chimeras make their home alongside the feather of truth and Imam Ali’s teachings. State abuses of power and systemic exclusion provide a chilling foil for the American Dream and societal advancements. Here, the modern mythos of the Middle East as appropriated by Western canon is illuminated and deconstructed. For example, genies/jinni/jinn are both wish-granters (Westernization) and eldritch creatures (Middle Eastern mythos). As such, the speaker creates his own system of syncretism, where elements of different belief systems are suffused and intermingled. By mimicking the usage of syncretism as a tool for assimilation under imperialistic expansion, the poet’s scattered remnants are reclaimed through the merging of disparate mythos into a single mosaic of idiosyncratic narration. 

Soul & Body

One of the recurrent themes of the collection is the association between the body; the soul; and earth, soil, and dust. References to clay and soil as parts of the body and mind are scattered amongst references to the body being dust, sand, and a wasteland, the implication here being that what was once full of promise is now in ruins. This originates from the creation myth posed by several ancient mythologies where human beings were shaped from clay. The first recorded instance of this myth dates back to ancient Mesopotamia in the Epic of Gilgamesh when the fertility goddess Aruru made Gilgamesh’s companion, Enkidu, out of clay. In Sumerian mythology, Enki (the god of creation and knowledge) and Ninhursag (a derivation of Aruru) designed humans from clay and blood. In the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the creation of humanity from clay and blood reappears with Ea (a later moniker of Enki) regarded as the creator. Additionally, in Islam, clay plays a crucial role.

Humanity was not only made from clay, but Shi’a Muslims press their foreheads to a small clay tablet (turbah) during their daily prayers (salah) as a representation of the earth on which we stand and our unbreakable connection to it—we came from dust and shall return to dust when we are done. Clay provided us with our first medium to record our stories, history, and the particularities of trade with the most human invention of all—language. As such, clay can be viewed as a sculptor of order from chaos, the means by which we could explore the most human of our endeavors and document them for advancement as a species.

Colors

Color features heavily. Blue, green, and yellow are symbolic of life, representing Earth and the sun. In terms of describing the desert or wasteland, yellow also symbolizes what remains once that life is stripped away. In addition, yellow symbolizes isolation, desolation, ugliness, and rejection. Blue also symbolizes wisdom, sorrow, blues music, and obsession. Red is symbolic of betrayal, rage, destruction, and fire. Purple is symbolic of innocence, childhood, beauty, love, and art. Grey symbolizes a state of being that can be swayed, mystery, and the nothingness of the void. Black symbolizes chaos; gravity; absurdity; consumption; the absorption of everything; and the beginning and the end. White symbolizes divinity, purity (and the lack of it in reality), obscurity, and opacity. Pantone 448-C—regarded as the ugliest color in the world—is painted as the color of the speaker’s skin which is also described, in turns, as brown, tan, golden, and yellow, the descriptions contorting to indicate an outward identity shifting as it’s measured by the eye of the beholder.

Sun & Moon

Lastly, the sun and moon motif acts as a metaphor for East and West. The East and Islam incorporate an abundance of moon and night imagery. The Middle East uses the lunar calendar and the symbol associated most notably with the region is the crescent.

One Thousand and One Nights is arguably the most popular literary export originating from the Middle East and continues to influence the pop culture perception of the region’s history.

On the other hand, the sun has become unintentionally associated with imperialism due to the saying “the sun never sets on the British Empire”. From a more individual standpoint, the migration to the West can be viewed literally and symbolically as chasing the sun.

Poetic Devices