A Fair Deal Poem by Fatima Naoot

She was in my place
Burning her hands when cooking,
Dandling the dolls,
Feeding the cats,
Waiting for children to come.
She was in my room
Tearing up gospels,
Scratching a cross on her chest
To let the woman out
Spread her own blue sheets
And fluff up pillows.
Every day she visited the graveyard
To steal two flowers
From her mother's and her brother's grave
And put them on her father's stone,
Where no flowers would grow.
She returned
With sacks of bread and potatoes,
And burned her fingers in the kitchen
Once more.
She was in my bed
Dripping oil in dry pipes,
Reading a book
With faded lettering,
Lightened by a crippled scream.
She used to be in love.
When she knew that hatred
Is an art,
She slept with al-Hutaya
And gave birth to an army of children,
Headless,
In baggy trousers.
Satan
Is a nice old man,
Who suffered a million years for our sake
And but once spat
In our faces.
Therefore,
It was a fair deal
When she exchanged the children's flesh
For a blank notebook,
Seventy five pencils
And a book by Goethe.
A left-handed, lame woman
Was in my cocoon
Then she flew away.

Translated by Kees Nijland