Morocco, 1359. The people of Fes are living in deprivation under the rule of an unjust sultan. Zakaria is a young Muslim scholar trying to sustain his family while committing to a rigid moral code. To provide for his sickly daughter, he sacrifices his principles and seeks a job at the palace, where he gradually becomes entangled in a web of intrigue, his conscience tormented by serving the sultan. In the hope of fleeing from the constraints of his world, he joins the quest of Muhammad ibn Yusuf, the exiled king of Granada, and his enchanting sister, Aisha, to reclaim their throne. Together, they set out to Andalusia on a journey that will call into question all of Zakaria’s beliefs and change the history of the Iberian Peninsula for decades to come.
Then He Sent Prophets is a story about the suffering of young idealists in a world of inevitable compromise. Throughout his journey, Zakaria faces internal struggles that are timeless and universal, strives to reconcile his faith with the world, doubts the motives behind his desire to live morally, and ends up wondering whether a life consisting of one compromise after another is one worth living.
Then He Sent Prophets is a novel for our moment. Set around the political struggles of fourteenth-century Granada, it is a deeply sympathetic and passionately human look at how one might make—or fail to make—moral, decent choices when living in a violent, indecent world.
— Marcia Lynx Qualey, founding editor of ArabLit
Circumstances present Zakaria with a position at the palace. […] Can someone critical of the sultan and conscious of his corruption maintain integrity while serving at the palace? And what’s the line between complete innocence and partial complicity? These are the questions at the crux of his ethical dilemma. […] It’s easy to make connections between Zakaria’s inner dilemmas and those many of us grapple with today.
— Hafsa Lodi in The New Arab
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Mohamed Seif El Nasr grew up in Cairo, Egypt, attended the Collège de la Sainte Famille du Caire, received his bachelor’s degree in history and political science from the American University in Cairo, and worked for over a decade in…
Table of Contents 4
Epigraph 6
Introduction 7
1 The Eyebrow 10
2 Blamed for Everything 15
3 The Cursed Child 19
4 The Slippers 23
5 The Enemy of Horses 28
6 Tamima’s Stone 33
7 Except the Sultan 39
8 The Piece of Cloth 44
9 Muslims and Mujrims 49
10 No Musicians or White Storks 55
11 The Royal Chancery 61
12 Are We Not All Muslims? 66
13 On Ethics and Rituals 71
14 The Voice of Fes 75
15 The Rift 78
16 A Cup of Milk 83
17 A Year to Forget 89
18 The Bad Smell 93
19 A Sultan’s Verdict 98
20 Um al-Wazir 103
21 The Journey 111
22 The Caravan 114
23 The Race 118
24 The Princess 121
25 The Savior 125
26 An Eye Without an Eyebrow 130
27 The Sword Verse 135
28 The Philosopher King 138
29 The Mad Scholar 143
30 Jahannam 148
31 The Crow 153
32 The Fall 158
33 The Frying Pan 163
34 The Hypocrite 166
35 Reunion 172
36 A Knight Without a Horse 175
37 An Innocent Soul 179
38 The Mirror 183
39 Gold and Diamonds 189
40 The Red Prophet 193
Author’s Note 196
About the Author 197
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This was Tariq Mehmood’s first novel, published by Penguin Books in 1983, charting the experience of the second generation migrants to the UK. Set in the declining textile industry of the North of England, it is a raw story of pain and anger at the relentlessness of British racism, from the street to the state – a story of an unquenchable desire for justice, and reclaiming human dignity. A dignity that is wrapped around new questions of Identity, a crossroad between religion, language, history and resistance. It is a little big story, that talks to the extremities of social, political and literary issues today? Can stories of a generation be appropriated? How important is religion in identity? If all you have is a story to tell, who should you tell it? Are the issues of today, just the issues of today or can we learn something from the past? In these stories, friendship is not defined by religion or colour, but by humanity. And racism is much more than skin deep. It is an exhilarating read that bears witness to the urgent 80’s battles against state and popular racism. As important now as then. In this new edition, Mehmood provides a Foreword that describes how the novel came to be written and the lives of real people on whom the characters were created. In the Afterword, Mehmood revisits some of the characters who are now 40-years older, and reflects on how the book would have been written today where the conditions of mass mobilizations no longer exist in neoliberal Britain.
These poems by Issa Shivji, lawyer, activist and Tanzanian public intellectual, were written at different times in different circumstances. They give vent to personal anguish and political anger. Mostly originally written in Kiswahili, here accompanied by English translations, and they are intensely personal and political.
Poems are clustered under several headings to provide a context. The first combines personal agony at the loss of comrades and friends with poems about love and affection for living ones. The second is about robberies of freedom, resources, and dignity and the loss of justice under neoliberalism. The third section, entitled Hopes and Fears, comprises short poems tweeted over the last five years expressing despair, fear and hope in the human capacity for freedom.
The last section are poems, concerned with Shivji’s period in South Africa in 2018, reflect on the emergence of neo-apartheid with its wanton and shameless exploitation of the majority.
Wonderfully translated by Ida Hadjivayanis.
Renowned aphorist Yahia Lababidi’s Palestine Wail writes alongside a catastrophe beyond words, trying to shelter in words what remains of our humanity. To be a Minister of Loneliness and Lightkeeper, tending to the light. — Philip Metres, author of Fugitive/Refuge
Palestine is personal for writer, Yahia Lababidi. His Palestinian grandmother, Rabiha Dajani — educator, activist & social worker — was forced to flee her ancestral home in Jerusalem, at gunpoint, some eighty years ago.
As an Arab-American, Lababidi feels deeply betrayed by the USA’s blind support of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
In Palestine Wail, he reminds us that religion is not politics, Judaism is not Zionism, and to criticize the immoral, illegal actions of Israel is not antisemitism — especially since, as an Arab, Lababidi is a Semite, himself.
Using both poetry and prose, Lababidi reflects on how we are neither our corrupt governments, nor our compromised media. Rather, we are partners in humanity, members of one human family. Not in Our Name will the unholy massacres of innocent Palestinians be committed (two-thirds of whom are women and children) nor in the false name of ‘self-defense’.
In turn, Lababidi reminds us that starvation as a weapon of war is both cruel and criminal, as is collective punishment.
Palestine Wail invites us to bear witness to this historical humanitarian crisis, unfolding in real-time, while not allowing ourselves to be deceived, intimidated or silenced. We are made aware of the basic human truths that no lasting peace can be founded upon profound injustice and that the jailor is never Free…
Yahia Lababidi, an Arab-American writer of Palestinian background, has crafted a poignant collection which serves as a heartfelt tribute to the Palestinian people, their struggles, and their resilience in the face of an ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing.
The collection, described as a love letter to Gaza, draws inspiration from the rich literary tradition of Palestinian resistance literature. Lababidi, known for his critically-acclaimed books of aphorisms, essays, and poetry, brings his unique voice to this personal, political and spiritual work.
Palestine Wail addresses us in a variety of voices: outrage, lamentation and pity, in attempting to honor the pain of the oppressed Palestinian people, while also celebrating their enduring spirit.
Lababidi’s Wail, ultimately, is a prayerful work seeking peace, healing and reconciliation—a testament to the transformative power of literature to keep hope alive in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
These are necessary and truthful poems. Yahia Lababidi powerfully illuminates this heartbreaking time and terrible season in the history of our world. This book, like a lantern in darkness, brings to light the truth of lives we must learn to honor and remember. — James Crews, author of Unlocking the Heart: Writing for Mindfulness, Creativity, and Self-Compassion
Yahia Lababidi’s stunning and resonant collection, Palestine Wail, addresses the outrage felt by many of the oppressed Palestinian supporters and more. He also speaks of the lamentations of his people and the show of pity, compassion, and empathy from many members of the human family from all around the world. — The Indefatigable Longing For Peace And Rapprochement In Yahia Lababidi’s Palestine Wail By Michael Parker.
Truth be told, I never thought I would write another volume of poetry after the last, I will not Dance to Your Beat (2011). The reason was that my previous volumes were reactive to the circumstances of the times. Patriots and Cockroaches (1992) was a reaction to the socio-political corruption that had engulfed Africa and dimmed the enthusiasm that had been built by the years of struggle for independence. Whereas we thought we were stepping into a post-colonial era, what we stepped into was a vicious neo-colonial times. The next collection, Poems on the Run (1995) was a reaction to military autocracy and the repression that followed. The volume was literally written underground. This was followed by Intercepted (1998) all written while detained at Kalakuta Republic of Alagbon Close. We Thought it was Oil But it was Blood (2002) responded to two things primarily – extractivism and the accompanying human and environmental rights abuses in the Niger Delta and elsewhere. The massive erosion of biodiversity and attacks on food sovereignty through the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into our agricultural system inspired I Will not Dance to your Beat.
What you have in your hands, or on your screens, is a compilation that is largely more meditative than the previous collections. There are moments of reflection on the colonial and neoliberal foundations that permit a willful disconnection from nature and the resultant destructive extractivism.
Some of the poems came through conversations and poetry writing sessions with Peter Molnar, Maryam al-Khawaja — Rafto Human Rights laureates and Salil Tripathi, a member of the board of PEN International, in August 2017. The sessions held at a beautifully rustic location in Celleno, Italy, were documented on celluloid by the duo of Maria Galliana Dyrvik and Anita Jonsterhaug Vedå of SMAU, a multimedia firm in Norway. Poetic relationship with Maria and Anita has continued over the years and their work continues to inspire more and more poems.
Dispossessed is a poetic representation of life in three stages through the eyes of a poet. It shows, from the thematic interests of the poet; what he considers the crucial stages in life – Innocence, Transgression and Atonement.
Innocence offers a racy view of the picture gallery of the poet’s life as a child. The sensibilities of the poet shine through the foliage of his mind as he pines for self-definition; seeking open ears for his verses. But it is also a period of apprenticeship as the poet hones his skills for the artistic long journey that is inevitable. Clothed in the innocence of childhood, he learns to talk in metaphors and search for himself in the community of imaginative people. This search lights up the path into the poet’s aesthetic mindscape and the silent questions that keep him awake. Innocence is therefore a thirst for sunlight; a quest for utterance.
The unwary reader is beckoned into the quest through poems that evoke memories of their own childhood and conscript them into the ensuing communal experience. However, the human condition abhors inertia. But for any form of natural or artistic growth to occur, the poet must lose his innocence. So, Innocence and its poems of idyllic childhood soon give way to the unexpected — Transgression. Transgression is the coming of age segment of the collection. The poet discovers love. And slowly, he finds himself taking a dip in a pool of emotion that appears to serve as the ultimate sparkplug for his songs.
In essence, Transgression eases the reader into a rare observatory; from where the poet could be seen falling in and out of love and celebrating one of the most profound experiences known to man. It must be noted that in some instances, the love poems of Transgression are also not what they seem on the surface. In some instances, the poet addresses his troubled relationship with his country through poetry; mirroring his personal frustrations and disappointment in verses that come off as a voice of disenchantment. Caught in the firm grip of emotions, the poet changes like the English weather.
But after waves of emotional whirlwinds in Transgression, the poet faces the next logical step — Atonement. Atonement presents a poet who has undergone the rites of passage and weaned himself of self-doubts. He has washed his hands clean and must settle down to a fireside dinner with the elders. But as it turns out, the poet is not only seeking the ears of his genealogical ancestors and elders; he is also seeking the counsel of serious poets, past and present whose nod he needs to take on the weighty issues of his time. So, he comes with a “fistful of kolanuts” as is customary with his people who supplicate their elders and ancestors with kolanuts. In gaining entry into this conclave of his biological and artistic ancestors, he acquires the aesthetic authority to ask weighty questions about the world around him. He is incensed by what assails his sensibilities; a world that turns a blind eye to injustice and a humanity that needs an open heart surgery.
Atonement could also be seen as the poet’s personal admission that serious poetry ought to speak to the dominant issues of the day; the anxieties and insomnia of the age. He muses about these issues; posing rhetorical questions in about them in some instances.
In the end, dispossessed is one man’s journey that finally assumes all the attributes of a communal voyage. Treading in the imagined interstices between the personal and the communal, dispossessed leads us to a clearing in the woods where our awareness of our world heightens with the turning of every page.
James Eze was born in Enugu, southeast Nigeria, shortly after the Biafran War. He was the pioneer Literary Editor of Sunday Sun. As Head of External Communications at Fidelity Bank, he worked in partnership with the novelist Chimamanda Adichie to begin her popular International Creative Writing Workshop series. He is the curator of Under African Skies which hosts A Flutter in the Woods; a yearly evening of poetry and songs in Awka, Anambra State. He also co-founded The Return to Idoto, a poetry festival in honour of Christopher Okigbo. His poems have appeared in Camouflage: Best of Contemporary Writing from Nigeria.
The Banana Girls chronicles 2003 days in the lives of two bosom friends, Rehema and Fatuma, and millions of days in the existence of the banana, the fruit which, eaten either ripe or cooked, the girls at some point determine will be the only solid component of their daily diets. The banana becomes not only the symbol of ideal nutrition but also, by turns, of social engineering and neo-imperialist exploitation. …Rehema and Fatuma are Tanzanians by nationality and brainboxes by genetic coding, with an enduring monopoly of either the first or second position in any examination for which they sit. They excel in Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics particularly and are always the first two to solve any mathematical or scientific challenges that are presented to their successive year groups and, by extension, to readers of the book.
… As the days go by, Rehema and Fatuma abandon junk food forever, they also adopt wholesome tastes in what they watch and what they listen to, and they make a good friend, Alice, who, unlike them, is from a rich family but who is adequately informed to join them as committed activists in the BLF, the Banana Liberation Front. Their activism lands them in jail. All three girls see through the machinations of their own government to oppress their own people and of global capitalism to bring about régime change, the better to sustain a stranglehold over poorer economies and to prop up aptly named ‘banana republics’. One malevolent operator is pointed out by name: he is President Ronald Grump of the United States of America.
Nikesha Breeze has taken pages from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, taken his words, and forced them to leave his colonized mind. She has made the words her own in poetic form. She illuminates the invisible Black voices inside, a radical, surgical, and unapologetic Black appropriation, at the same time as a careful birthing and spiritual road map. The resulting poems are sizzling purifications, violent restorations of integrity, pain, wound, bewilderment, rage, and, sometimes, luminous generosity. This is a work of Reclamation. The author, Nikesha Breeze, has slowly, page by page, reclaimed the text of the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. This racist turn-of-the-19th-century book was pivotal in the continued dehumanization of Black people and in particular of African people, as it painted an image of bestiality on the Congo people and the continent. It is laced with racist imagery and language. The author has reappropriated the book, page by page, making “BlackOut” poetry for each page, isolating methodically the words to create new poems of power and black voice within the text —stealing the language and reappropriating the power.
Pius Adesanmi died in the doomed Ethiopian Airline flight 302 on March 10, 2019. Wreaths for a Wayfarer: An Anthology in Honour of Pius Adesanmi is an assemblage of 267 original poems written by 127 established and emerging African writers. While some of the poets celebrate Adesanmi, others reflect philosophically on existence, mortality, immortality and/or offer hope for the living. In this memorably textured collection, the poets – some who knew, and some who did not know Adesanmi – exorcise the pains of loss through provocative poems that pour out their beating hearts with passion.
Pius Adesanmi died in the doomed Ethiopian Airline flight 302 on March 10, 2019. Wreaths for a Wayfarer: An Anthology in Honour of Pius Adesanmi is an assemblage of 267 original poems written by 127 established and emerging African writers. While some of the poets celebrate Adesanmi, others reflect philosophically on existence, mortality, immortality and/or offer hope for the living. In this memorably textured collection, the poets – some who knew, and some who did not know Adesanmi – exorcise the pains of loss through provocative poems that pour out their beating hearts with passion.
ArabLit
I want to start by saying I really enjoyed reading this novel. When I was away from it, I wanted to get back to this world, to re-immerse myself. A large part of that drive was Zakaria, who wants so much to do right in the world (even as he sometimes gets in a muddle, can be jealous and short-tempered). Was Zakaria based on a historical figure or historical sources? Or is he built from inspirations nearer to us in time?
Mohamed Seif El Nasr: Concerning Zakaria’s character, I believe it is a blend of what you mentioned. The critical thinking and rationality part of his character is based historically on Muhammad al-Abili, Ibn Khaldun’s tutor. Al-Abili, who was known throughout the Maghreb as the great master of the rational sciences, was a fascinating figure with unconventional views. He actively tried to avoid official posts throughout his life, famously refused to write books, and was heavily critical of the schooling (madaress) system at the time of the Marinid dynasty, which followed a curriculum imposed by the authorities and which, he believed, created restrained mentalities.
As for the morality part of Zakaria’s personality, his desire to do right in the world, and his struggle to understand the motives behind his desire to be moral, I believe my main inspiration was my own experience and that of my close friends. On the one hand, many of our generation here in Egypt had our moral compass sharpened during the Arab Spring, became driven by the desire to do right in the world, and tried to identify ourselves within the global political spectrum (which would naturally lead anyone to lean left). On the other hand, and this is heavily alluded to in the novel as part of Zakaria’s character development, once you try to associate yourself with people who are supposedly doing right in the world, there’s always the sad discovery, which would come sooner or later, that many of them are more motivated by egoism rather than love for the people and a genuine desire to help others—that depressing realization that social activism is oftentimes a mask for personal egoism—and then you find yourself questioning your own motives. ArabLit
Usman Butt
Then He Sent Prophets cuts across many issues that would be all too familiar to us today, but it also illuminates the past. Zakaria’s ideals and ambitions are both naive and relatable, wanting to remake the world and being weighed down by family and social obligations could be the tale of much university or college graduates the world over. The concerns that religiosity is lax, declining and those charged with educating people of their religious obligations are corrupt and distort the true message, is certainly a message that will resonate with many religious believers today. In some ways, it reminds us that our concerns are not new and are, in fact, as old as religion itself, these are the key themes that make the novel feel contemporaneous. Those seeking a book that speaks to present concerns will certainly find this novel to be just that, but it is also rooted in the past and so there are many elements that are so very different from our times. What made this novel fascinating to read was the blend of the two, while being firmly set in the past. Then He Sent Prophets is a fun, enjoyable, relatable and intriguing read and excellent work of historical fiction. — Usman Butt TheUsmanButt.
Sherine Elbanhawy
Mohamed Seif El Nasr’s debut novel, Then He Sent Prophets, is a sweeping historical narrative set in the 14th century, a period marked by the decline of the Marinid dynasty in Morocco and the tumultuous Emirate of Granada in Islamic Spain. It is a masterful blend of historical fiction, philosophical inquiry, and human drama featuring real historical figures like Ibn Khaldun, Pedro I, and Muhammad V. For example, Ibn Khaldun’s observation that “when a ruler makes his people too weak to keep their affairs going, their weakness recoils on him and weakens him” critiques Sultan Abu Salem’s governance, reinforcing the cyclical nature of oppression. This insight is paired with vivid depictions of medieval society, such as the fleeting legacy of Sultan Abu Salem: “Of the short reign of Sultan Abu Salem, people have a recollection of only two events: the giraffe from Mali and the day the overthrown king of Granada departed to reclaim his throne.” — Sherine Elbanhawy, Rowayat.org