Translation

Translation: Side Entrance to the House

By AMAL AL SAEEDI
Translated from the Arabic by NASHWA NASRELDIN

Piece appears below in English. To view the original Arabic, please click here.

 

Translator’s note:

Amal al Saeedi’s Side Entrance to the House immediately caught my attention. For one, literature that centers the house intrigues me; perhaps it’s the innate mystery held within the brick walls that surrounds us, the way it enfolds us, inhabiting us as much as we inhabit it. Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, The House with Only an Attic and a Cellar, by Kathryn Maris, Laura Scott’s So Many Rooms, Eman Abderahim’s Rooms and Other Stories, have all lured me in by the title first.

Translation: Side Entrance to the House
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Silk Road

By NIEVES GARCÍA BENITO
Translated by CARMELA FERRADÁNS

Piece appears below in English and the original Spanish.

 

Translator’s Note

“Silk Road” is one of twelve short stories in Nieves García Benito’s collection By Way of Tarifa (Por la vía de Tarifa), originally published in 1999.

Forced migration and human trafficking are two of the most pressing humanitarian issues in the world today. In the Mediterranean alone, thousands of people travel across the Straits of Gibraltar every year on their way to Europe, but only a few arrive at their final destinations in France and Germany. Many are stuck working in the fields of Murcia, Spain. Many more drown around the waters of Tarifa, the southernmost point of Europe, a mere nine miles from the coasts of Morocco. This is the location where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic, where Africa and Europe are the closest and at the same time the farthest away for so many people. Nieves García Benito’s stories give voice to these children, men, and women who leave their homes in Africa hoping for a better life, a safer life in Europe.

Silk Road
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Dolors Miquel: Poems

By DOLORS MIQUEL
Translated by MARY ANN NEWMAN

 

Sparrowhearts 

The women of my family family 
hunted hunted birds, sparrows, birds, sparrows, and they made them sing
sing day in day out day in day out day in as the pots boiled, inner courtyards 
wide open,  
washtubs soaked old naked motheaten watery 
          unrinsed firstwashed clothes 
and the windows opened, gave birth, opened 
so beauty would regale them with songs and flowers and flowers and songs, 
buzzing, zigzagging, chirping, whispering,  
not understanding that they understood nothing. Nothing at all. 

Dolors Miquel: Poems
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The Advice

By IRENE PUJADAS
Translated by JULIA SANCHES

 

Spurred by the idea that you are interdependent and would do well to lean on others (on the opinions, advice, and experiences of others), you’re roped into taking part in a general meeting to decide your future. 

Some of your friends bring folders filled with graphs and statistics. One in particular comes bearing the works of authors, philosophers, historians, and psychoanalysts. Relevant passages are marked with Post-it notes.  

Your family and friends only want what’s best for you, or rather, they want you to do something.  

The Advice
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Lunch at the Boqueria

By MERCÈ IBARZ
Translated by MARA FAYE LETHEM

Close, so close he can already taste it. This afternoon he’ll become the owner of a secret. But first he’ll have lunch with his mother, who’s waiting for him at the restaurant in the back of the Boqueria Market, and once he’s got her home safely, he’ll meet up with the current owner of a Picasso engraving and he’ll buy it.

Lunch at the Boqueria
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Forever Red

By TINA VALLÈS
Translated by SAMANTHA MATEO

 

Whenever there’s any discussion of the hunger that marked the years following the Spanish Civil War, I’m reminded of the story about my paternal great-grandmother and the apple. My father says her name, halting at that g that separated her from all the other Annas. Maria Agna. No family dinner passed without mention of that apple. But, after so many years, I can’t quite remember if it’s an apple or a peach. My father always said the basket his grandmother carried back from the field emitted a potent scent, but I don’t think apples smell strongly enough that you could pick them out while driving in a truck a couple of meters away.  

Forever Red
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The Window

By IMMA MONSÓ
Translated by MARLENA GITTLEMAN

 

Lisa

Morning after morning, Lisa would wake up with an easily achievable aspiration: to eat breakfast while contemplating the house at the bottom of the valley, which stood in the distance amidst the fog. When the fog started to fade, she could make out frost-covered shingles and smoke rising from the chimney. She could glimpse the narrow ribbon of water that divided the field behind the house, until it disappeared into the darkness of the impenetrable forest. And she could, above all, train her gaze on a hypnotizing point: the only lit window, the window of an attic room, a room Lisa guessed was a study.

The Window
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Zoraida Burgos: Poems

By ZORAIDA BURGOS
Translated by PETER BUSH

 

OUR VERY OWN EQUILIBRIUM 
Wearily, but firmly, we twisted 
our feeble trunks 
around a stump 
alone but not sad amid other trees, 
entangled roots 
clinging till the last 
to our rough stony ground. 
We grow two shoots 
bringing hope to our landscape  
when a ruddy wing on the bare 
mountain horizon 
heralds a threatening wind downstream.  
Thoughtfully, carefully,   
we’ve been turning our mud, 
our clay, bare-fingered, 
with the strength of truth, 
of harsh truth dead reborn,
our hands tightly clasped.
And nothing, no wind, no clouds, no rain, no threats 
will shake  
the stump, clay or mud, and these shoots, 
for wearily, 
but firmly, 
we’ve made them our own.  

Zoraida Burgos: Poems
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