Amal Awwad Radwan (Palestine) Autobiography

  • Written by:

Translated by: Nazih Kassis, Ph.D.
Amal is only a green girl who emerged from the ashes of a homeland in a Phoenician nest a long time ago. Fates brought her onto a slope of a moment that burns with impossible dreams in a tumult of darkness that flourishes with tragedies. She is still devoting her life to chastity, playing on the flute of her hoarse sadness her cloudy radiances, and still swaying on the edges of a holy drop that is brimful with the pulse of a beam that is called “life!”

She fell in love with music and singing; she learned how to play the violin when the fingers of her childhood bloomed on the strings and musical scales. The school songs and hymns dallied with her throat, which chanted with the school chorus till her presence was donned with compulsory absence for years only to reappear in the choral of the Palestinian Jawqat al-Karawan / The Cuckoo Chorus!

Her matured feet fell deeply in love with the heritage of folk dancing; her sea steps had a watery flavor that dance with the shadows of a youth that is filled with elegance in a Dabka folk dancing group, in addition to scout activities and many other activities that fill a soul of a young girl that jumps voraciously to life!

As for the taste of extensive reading and stories and novels, there have been flights of desire that land on her breaths to the level of Sufism and worship since her eyes were connected with the ladders of letter decoding; the hidden pen in her pants and under her pillow has had a clank that talks to her whenever the drizzle of its pulse decreased in its whiteness; it would open its fiery mouth, drawling its magic, as if it urged her to embrace it whenever the places became narrow for it, and whenever it became thirsty to her wine. She would fly with it in the heavens of her floods; when she sobers up, she would tear what she had written and the threads that she has woven out of her passion to erase every trace that allows the other to realize what is boiling in her soul, and because literature has a lofty place and great awe, she feared to encroach upon it or push herself into a fix, from which she would not have salvation.

After secondary school, the period of her exile from her shining childhood started. The snowy rooms of her university studies robbed her of the fire of her activity, and consequently, the responsibilities of marriage, family and her teaching job occupied her, and her main role became exclusive to a new stage – building another lovable world to her, which is far from her and very close to her- the family in its whole large responsibility, and at the same time, and under the fascination of motherhood, a crazy passion for giving grew in her, despite the tenderness and cruelty of life; the incense of memories was filled with her pride, and saturated her with the perfume of the fleeing childhood.

Between the eyelashes of her days and the pillows of her nights, Amal toured in the depth of a barrenness that has no borders of emptiness; once she is taken by a nap of lethargy in exploring the past, and once she wakes up from the amazed shell of her feelings; soon the age-old gap between the I, the other, and the universe; between the buffoonery of loss that roars disturbance and the unquenched flaming cups of the inns of sins, while homeland is lying in sighs of pain that squeeze a hope from the orchards of the impossible!

The bitter sweetness of the transparency of reality nor did the festivals of life succeed in crucifying her on the pillars of the theatres and stadia of life; she silently and quietly took refuge in the cave of the alphabet, and secluded herself in it like a hermit, possessed by the magic of meditation, where she could select meteors of letters that sparkle with ripeness, and that were about to fall accidentally into the crematory of pain, or the temptations of the roads were likely to throw burning pebbles at her, but she tried to pick with the fingers of her imagination those stinging and burning letters in order to wet the passion of her tattooed aspirations with a sobbing of salvation that might come!

The gleams of faith waved in the purity of her souls frequently, clamouring with seasons of penetration and faces of beauty into a warm future; her breaths inscribed her an engraved and coded sigh onto a gravestone of a lifetime that chases her and escapes in her wakefulness, paying no attention to a side-glance that is crowded with sorrow.

“The Magic of Words” is my borrowed Oldman, the shepherd of my postponed waiting at the mouth of his green cave, guarding by his amulets and torches the arbors of my orchards when the vine leaves of my heart climbed my heart and robbed memory, and my emotional texts, which are accumulated on the shelves of unpicked spaces, and which the clusters of their face lineaments were dissolved onto the plates of innocence through the Net pages, in order to eternalize the wonder of silence that moved like the wind upon the shadows of seasons and lifetime, till a fertile gleam flashed into the laps of a masked cloud from whose gown Amal Awwad drizzled, and since then, Amal’s hopes have been sparkling till now with the following works:

1. Basma Lawziyya Tatawahhaj, (Poetry), 2005
2. Salami Laka Mataran, (Poetry), 2007.
3. Rihla ila Unwan Mafqud (Poetry), 2010
4. Adamawzuki wa Tata’ashtarin (Poetry), 2015
5. Ru’a (Essays) 2015.
6. Hatfi Yatarama ‘al Hudud Nazfi (Poetry readings in Amal Awwad Radwan (Poetry), 2012
7. Sindyanat Nur Abuna Spiridon Awwad. (Prepared) by Amal Radwan. 2014.
8. Amthal Tarweeha Qissas wa Hakaya. (Prepared) by Amal Radwan
9. al-Ishraqa al-Mujannaha/ Lahzat al-Bayt al-Awwal min al-Qassida: Certificates to 131 poets from the Arab world. (Participation). Introduction by Cherbel Dagher. 2007
10. Nawaris min al-Bahr al-Ba’id al-Qarib. Al-Mashhad al-Shi’ri al-Jadeed fi Falastin al-Muhtalla.
11. Mahmoud Darwish / Surat al-Sha’ir bi ‘Uyun Falastiniyya Khadra’ 2008.

Books about Amal’s poetry:
1. Min A’maq al-Qawl – Qira’ah Naqdiyya fi Shi’r Amaal Awwad Radwan. By Critic: Abd al-Majid Amir Atmizah/ Manshurat Mawaqif.2013.
2. Kitab bi al-Lugha al-Farisiyya: Ba’idan ‘an al-Qarib. Beh Dor Az Qaywq. Amal Awwad Radwan. Preparation and Translation by: Kamal al-Nassari. 2014
3. Kitab Istintaq al-Nass al-Shi’ri (Amal Radwan Unmothajan). By Alwan al-Salman. Printed by: al-Jazira, 2105.

• Her poetry has been translated into several languages including: English, Italian, Romanian, French, Persian, and Kurdish.
• Her book Basma Lawziyya Tatawahhaj was translated into French by: Farah Souames, Algeria.

Awards:
2008: She was awarded the title of: The poet of the Year 2008 at Forums that join the group of Poets with no Borders.
2011: She was awarded the Creativity Award in Poetry. Dar Ni’man li al-Thaqafa in its 9th Season.
2001: She was awarded the Shield of Diwan al-‘Arab, for writing a large number of articles and high-level literary texts.
2013: She was granted The Woman’s Award by Mu’assasat al-Muthaqqaf al-Arabi in Sidney, Australia, for her creative writings in the Press, and her press interviews about Palestine.
Forthcoming Books:
• A book about the cultural scene among the Palestinians of 1948.
• Six books that include reports about the literary scene among Palestinians of 1948.
• The Green Cultural Scene: 48. Cultural Reports. (from 2006-2015).
Current Position: Editor of : alwasattoday:
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