Inna:
If you were to write the first few lines of that snippet folks see on Google when they search your name, what would YOU say about you by way of an intro?
Yahia:
Oh my goodness. excellent question.
(Takes a breath, or that’s what I imagine)
Ex-writer, groper in the dark. Believes in serious play and abiding by the laws of Beauty, in thought, word, and deed.
let me relocate, gals talking here, need to go deeper.
Okay, it’s darker here and quieter, easy to tease out slippery thoughts
Inna:
“Ex-writer” – explain, if you would
Yahia
I feel I’m dying to myself as I knew it
enamored of life of the mind
maddened by my own music
I’m being schooled, crawling, again, learning to speak, differently
not sure how else to put it
probe if you like
Inna:
You said in one of your comments somewhere that you can’t NOT write poetry. That it’s how you breathe…. What is THAT, if not being a writer, even an unwilling one?
Yahia:
I believe in contradictions, deeply. Paradox. Unwritten poetry, some of which finds its way on the page unwilling, perhaps. Ashamed of all the noise I’ve made when after decades of exploration, I’m beginning to realize I stand on the shore of a vast Sea…
Inna:
Ashamed is a rather strong way to put it.
Yahia:
Too weak for me
I feel, Inna, that I’m being hushed
Inna:
Hushed by whom? By what?
Yahia:
Hushed by The One Who Feeds Me Words
Inna:
Fair enough. Let’s go through a bit of your life’s journey.
When did you move to the US and how did that come about?
Yahia:
My soul rewritten, prepared for fresh utterance.
(sighs, or that’s what I think he does)
12 years ago. This is tricky territory
Inna:
(I consider backing off here, but ask anyway) Why, if you don’t mind the question?
Yahia:
Who can say these things, who can give them a name?
Inna:
Let me rephrase: was it a have to or want to?
Yahia:
After nearly a decade working for the United Nations, as editor and speechwriter….
(then a bit later, and I think reluctantly)
No want to for me. At the risk of sounding grandiose, I’ve been carried along, by an inner imperative since my late teens. Rimbaud’s: “one should not say I think, I am thought, I is another. Too bad for the wood that finds itself a violin.” Writing has been a calling, saving my life, no less.
Sorry were you talking about Egypt, being want or have to…
Inna:
You could almost pass for a Russian here
Yahia:
It was need to (answers, at last, and I don’t push for more)
Then: I’m totally Russian. Mad, fatalistic
Inna:
Diaghilev mad?
Yahia:
Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky spoke to me deeper than any living soul.
I try not to flirt with danger anymore, literary or otherwise. I try to listen, better and do as I am told. I’m aware there is not much time left
(I’m starting to feel that I am making him sad, so I change the subject, a bit)
Inna:
So where is home now?
Yahia:
I’m based between Florida and Washington DC
where is home, now
Huge question
Who am I
massive
who can say?
Inna:
Ok, where is emotionally home now? Do you have one?
Yahia:
Sufism. Mystical branch of Islam. But I’m bad at that, shamefully so.
Inna:
How can one be bad at something like that?
Yahia:
Well… I don’t do what I know. I repay the gift, poorly
Inna:
Oh, don’t we all. Fair enough
Yahia:
I’m sorry if this is a frustrating exchange
(the exchange is fascinating to me, and not the least bit frustrating. I tell him as much. We chat about our past lives, work-wise, which brings us here:)
Inna:
Too rebellious for government work
Yahia:
Likewise. That’s why I left Egypt. I fled. Overthrew everything to start, again. With nothing. And now I’m in a different sense doing it, again, in a new town, starting all over again, where no one knows my name on Steemit.
Inna:
Some do know your name, I’m told. Ashamed to say I didn’t before.
Yahia:
What’s in a name, I meant body of work. But what’s in a body of work. All clearing my throat, all marginalia, so far. Maybe the new book. Tough to say
Inna:
Let me ask you this: Do you consider yourself a political person?
Yahia:
Essentially, no. But one cannot afford in this day and age…. but I think it coarse, vulgar, just necessary.
Inna:
A public intellectual?
Yahia:
Sounds like a pompous ass of a title. I have been called that…. But deeply suspicious of Intellectuality. Much as I admire a few still, long dead.
Inna:
So one cannot afford not to be political?
Yahia:
No, because we live in foolish times where we must stoop to address this murderous silliness. I’m an Arab and Muslim in Trump’s America, how could I not
Inna:
What’s it like to be a Muslim and an immigrant in this country? – was gonna be my next question
Yahia:
Do what you do more as play than as work, which does not mean that it is not serious … That is the real tragedy of war and weapons: the tragic false seriousness. —Thomas Merton, Letters.
This means the world to me
Inna:
Do you feel it a sacrifice of your gift, of your humanity, the “stooping”?
Yahia:
Embarrassing, a major nuisance. One has to state the obvious to otherwise decent people. I was at a party the other day, boozing, dancing, having fun; the host a gentle delicate soul. His daughter, a precocious 12-year-old, asks me in all earnestness after goofing around with me all afternoon, seeing me, knowing me: “So, do Muslims express their faith by bombing/killing others? That’s what I thought… or that’s what they told me in school.”
(he curses, takes a moment. I don’t know how to respond to something like this. He goes on)
Then, again, I get it. Because I am human and nothing human is alien to me.
This was in Peru, but I get that in DC, and in Florida. From people who should know better. Journalists, artists, doctors, at the end of the night, after a long heart to heart, soul to soul exchanges. (quotes: “There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim” Curses.)
Inna:
And that right there I can’t wrap my poor addled brain around. It was so much easier when we could attribute it to Middle Earthers.
Yahia:
The Middle Earthers….
Of course, what I do not say, is how deeply disappointed I am in my own people; my own community; members of my so-called faith for their lack of imagination, lack of grace, their own murderous ignorance. But then pity kicks in and I play apologist. Ah, the humanity!
Inna:
I’m an atheist and burdened by all kinds of guilt, though none of it should be mine.
Yahia:
But Muslim community has some serious housekeeping to do. And it’s bringing out the ugliest face in Western societies. I might’ve been an atheist or agnostic one day. This is no longer possible for me. My guilt is mine and theirs. Ours, really
Inna:
Agreed, though I’d say there is a no-win way to do that at the moment… Not sure. But I think if all the car bombings and murders of that kind stopped, hell, if nobody killed anybody anymore, the nationalists, the isolationists would still blame all brown people, the farther away from where they reside, the better, for all their misfortunes.
Yahia:
Brown People. Sand nigger, that’s what I was told I was when I came to University in the US, and I was cool with that b/c it meant I could join brothers marching for million man march. “Sure, you can, brother,” they answered when I asked if I could march. “You a sand nigger!” I’m cool with that.
deep breath
Where were we?
There are trivial truths and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.–Niels Bohr
More words I live by, that speak me better than I speak myself.
(we chat a bit about heritage and whatnot, then)
Yahia:
Here’s another quote that means the world to me: my head is full of them:
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.–Walt Whitman
(I try to bring this back to Yahia and give him one of his own quotes)
Inna:
Some days it’s especially hard not to think
the milk of human kindness has curdled–From I’m Learning to Speak American
Yahia:
mmhmm
sing it
and yet, and yet
I cannot remain in that sour mood for long
Inna:
And yet, looking through your comments, your words, thrown around so generously, how do you do THAT?
Yahia:
Do what? Comment, generously?
Inna:
Carry so much light with you.
Yahia:
I love people. And life. In person, I’m like a puppy. High energy, light. It’s the dark that surprises me.
Inna:
Do you feel like this country will ever be home in the way it was meant to for so many?
In that “green towering statue” every NYC tourist flocks to way?
Yahia:
Yes. Because this too shall pass. This sour, reactionary mood. This dangerous clown…. They’re better than that. We All Are.
Inna:
Even the Middle Earthers?
Yahia:
Haha. Poor poor Middle Earthers. Give them an education. How will they recover their ancient wisdom? I cannot speak for the Gulf Arabs
(I am glad I made him laugh. This was getting heavy. We move on to his writing again, or try to)
Inna:
…I was finally able to see, with the 20/20 vision of hindsight, that what I was attracted to in these dark thinkers was an anguished yearning, a longing to utter what’s ineffable: in short, the Light.–From Books Like Ex Lovers
Yahia:
YES!
Inna:
Is that still true for you?
Yahia:
I did not know….Yes. Balance of Light is now what matters. I no longer can (afford to) play with shadows. Did for too long, this Nihilist dance.
If you gaze for long, the abyss also gazes into you.–Nietzsche
Inna:
“Poetry is a form of prayer,” you told me… Can you expound on it?
Yahia:
Well, I attempted to answer this question in a recent essay…
The human heart abhors a vacuum. With organized religion losing ground, all sorts of substitutes rush in to fill the god-shaped hole. One particularly effective and time-honored balm for the aching human heart is literature. For some, poetry is how we pray now. In these skeptical times, there still exists an Absolute Literature (in the coinage of Italian writer Roberto Calasso) where we might discern the divine voice. Such pre- and postreligious literature shares aims and concerns similar to belief systems: sharpening our attention, cultivating a sense of awe, offering us examples of how to better live and die—even granting us a chance at transcendence.–
Read That Essay in World Literature Today Here. (It is fantastic and rather short for what it is. So go. Read it.)
Inna:
What’s on your nightstand now?
Are there poets who are still living who speak to you, the way Baudelaire and Eliot and Auden had?
Yahia:
More Nietzsche, who I’m done with, finally, mercifully: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster….”. My night table…. still Rilke, Auden, Sufis.
Inna:
Any contemporaries?
Yahia:
I respect, admire many good writers, of course; some who are friends, but, that caliber? At some point when I was a juror for the Neustadt prize, The American Nobel Prize they call it, I recommended John Banville, novelist. I think he might be a matchless prose stylist, but is he as profound as the great dead? I dunno. Tough question. I don’t wish to come across as a pompous ass, but as an “ex-writer” less enamored by writing, alone. It’s the mystics, the nameless ones, whose life is a work of art. My forthcoming book is dedicated to them, the invisible ones who hold our world together.
Inna:
Well – maybe just a tiny part of it has to do with the fact that most of us read ‘the great dead’ when still working on our growing up, impressionable, young, foolish, and idealistic in the best of ways. I dread revisiting most of it for fear I have changed too much to enjoy it now….
Yahia:
Yes, Yes, yes. You said it.
Inna:
Ashamed to admit I know nothing of the Mystics
Yahia:
Hamza Yusuf I admire. Never mind; it’s experiential. Hardly withstands translation into words.
Inna:
I believe you…
Yahia
Thank you
Inna:
What’s in your Netflix/HBO watch lists, if you do that sort of thing?
Yahia:
Haha, I have neither. Love movies though and was mad for foreign films; kinky complex things
(tempted to probe about that “kinky bit” but I reign it in. Yahia keeps going:)
Now, dunno. Want to watch Churchill. Gary Oldman, Daniel Day-Lewis, those guys, Jeremy Irons….
Inna:
Oh, the almost dead
Yahia:
There you go. haha
(I wish this were in person, so I could actually hear him laugh, but alas)
Inna:
I think you and I are the same age, by the way
Yahia:
Still laughing out loud, in the dark.
I’d never ask a lady her age
I’m 44, for what it’s worth
Inna:
I am too, in the dark. On a deck. Smelling stinky irrigation water, and my cigarette. And 44.
Yahia:
Haha; you’re funny, in a wild way. In a deadly serious familiar dramatic kinda way.
(we laugh briefly, then he says, random-like:)
I love Mexican music. The excessive dramatic stuff. I’ll cut you up and feed you to your mother.
The heartache, the tears, the pain, the excessive expenditure of emotion….
Inna:
I guess by Mexican music you don’t mean Santana, right?
Yahia:
I’m Egyptian that way.
Haha (I guess at my Santana reference. But I am ill-educated on most non-western music, sadly)
Inna:
Sorry…
Yahia:
Still chuckling
Inna:
Oooooh – the Gypsy Kings? No, probably not
Yahia:
lol
Inna:
I’m asking something serious now:
worse, is when I seem to lose you
and pick at the earth like a scab
frantic, and faithful, like a dog.–[From A Love Letter to Cairo]](https://steemit.com/poetry/@yahialababidi/a-love-letter-to-cairo-egypt-where-i-was-born-and-raised-plus-arabic-translation)
What do you miss the most?
Yahia:
I don’t know that I miss anything anymore. As Sartre said in Nausea, “I’m outliving myself.” What’s to miss?
Inna:
Do you ever go back?
Yahia:
After 12 years of drama
not being able to fathom it
I went back a few months ago
light as light could be
ghosting through my life
one party after another
easy as dying
and returning, no strings attached
but how exquisite the dying was
while it lasted
Pity…
Inna:
So was it the old you that you saw and drank and danced with? Or is that person gone?
Yahia:
Nah, he shimmies in and out
it was doing a scene
a practiced scene
that you no longer cared for
like breaking up
after you broke up
12 years ago
showing up, now, to go through the motions
then go out dancing together and talking about the happy memories
and even believing it, some of the time
having forgiven, and forgotten everything
having died
who cared
cares
why not
this too is now possible
more salt on the wound, please, I feel nothing
(I share a bit of my last trip home. Misery loves company and all. Then Yahia share this:)
Do you know this poem? No one leaves home unless… by Warsan Shire, read by Yahia Lababidi
(and then this)
Here’s Cairo, if you can take more, for later: Cairo, Words Without Borders
(And I feel heartbroken and yet lighter somehow. So naturally, I make a drink, and tell him so.)
Yahia:
I’d make a drink, too, but still nursing a 2-day hangover – best to save myself for tomorrow (get together)
Inna:
And almost forgot, my last question: What would you want on your tombstone?
(but then he tells me about his love of Leonard Cohen, and we have a lovely chat about everything and nothing, but it’s an oddly intimate one, and I’m glad we can do so for a bit. I tell him about my rescue pits and a kitteh, he tells me about his birds – who love him, and you can read all about that For the Love of Birds; we talk about the different parts of Florida we live in, North for me, South for him. He calls me a falcon for a reason I no longer recall and I feel like I must tell him something important. Because that last question – it’s alright for that one to go unanswered I think.)
Inna:
I have to tell you something
Yahia:
Tell me
Inna:
You’re never an ex-writer. It’s your heart.
Yahia:
I know that
Inna:
I know that too…..
Yahia:
haha
touche
I didn’t know I knew that
Inna:
So suck it up, and make brilliant brilliant words
Yahia:
I’m trying
modestly
starting again, small
good blows to ego
cut it down to size
You Know Nothing, y’hear
Nothing
okay, okay
I get it
Inna:
You know, that gift you have, it’s on loan. You owe the universe to use it for good, and that means write you must.
Yahia:
I know that. I think Cohen, That Don’t Make IT Junk:
took my diamond to the pawn shop, but guess you can’t exchange the gift that you were meant to keep.
Humbling stuff.
–And it was. Lovely, and humbling. Thank you, so much @yahialababidi for taking the time. For humouring me. For being you. And for generously letting us publish a few of your poems in our upcoming anthology.