Fired Fear And Firing Fruitful Feelings(Oxford Experience) Poem by nadia abduljabbar

To April and all the glitter of Knowledge and Confidence it ignited in my soul and heart 12 years ago. Its sparkle is still gleaming within me and it is a factor in liberating and sustaining me before DISAPPOINTMENT.


April is the cruellest
Month of the year,
So said T.S. Eliot;
It is so severe,
For it brings, in vain,
Life back to his waste land,
Yet, to me, the case is not so;
Nothing is barren,
Nothing is wasted,
In the human heart,
Whatever we meet,
However tiny,
However small,
Deserves our awe.
His hope was lost,
But mine is vigour,
It is about to revive,
Even agony and pain,
Are stored in the brain,
They work like fuel
To an airplane,
Anger and wounds
Push me up high,
Over clouds in the sky.
……
I left my only son,
In my homeland,
I became free
From daily responsibility,
After twenty years
Of continuous suffering,
I threw away my misery,
Now they are far behind,
With my dreams,
I was racing,
My trust was flying
Ahead of me.
……
April of the year
Two thousands and one,
Is firing my soul,
My buds of hope
Flowered before May,
How close is my birthday!
Hope became ripe
With spring hay,
To him spring time,
Is a cause of decline,
To me Spring this year,
Is something I feel, I see,
In everything in every sign,
Though it is not yet,
Clear in the air
Of the land that
Endows creativity;
The Anglo land,
And it never appears
To the Arab desert
In reality not reverie.
……
The first step,
Was a long trip,
To Sunderland,
My hurt heart
Opened warmly,
Like a rose,
To knowledge, to liberty,
I felt united with nature,
I am diverted no more,
The Sun did not
Show his golden face,
In the gray sky,
Yet there was sunshine,
In my heart and mind,
There were
Rainbow colours,
Before and after rain,
The northern cold weather,
Did not cause me to wither,
Against all my fears,
It did not prevent my
Thoughts from glazing
From inside,
There was my professor,
Resurrecting my trust,
In the human heart,
My faith in the intellect,
He was generous
With his effort,
With his time.
……
I left that green land
With a shoulder
Loaded with photo copies,
With some books,
But that was not all,
There was still
More books to find,
To quench my thirst
For learning;
For life to understand,
My direction now
Is to the south,
I did not know,
When and how
Warm was the western
Capital of culture,
Until it received us
Happily and gaily,
Like a child like a baby,
With real sun beams
Spreading all around,
Dancing to meet the spring
That was now stepping
Tiptoe to the southern
English boundary,
I was physically lame,
But who can be tamed
In such a jocund company,
Our ambition was so high,
It made us fly,
My friend and I,
From marble arch
To Leicester Square;
A place full of book stores,
So said my professor,
And he was right
My friend and I
Hunted for books,
In old and new shops:
In Alhuda, in Silver moon,
In the famous Blackwell,
Then we marched to Russell
Square looking for Dillon,
But we found Waterstone
Instead and lost the way
To the other one,
We still wanted to try;
To look for more books,
To gain deeper realization,
But our feet were swollen,
Heavy with books,
The taxi took us
To our hotel room,
Only to fly with birds,
With colourful butterflies,
To the land of my longings,
To the springy little town:
To Oxford.. a city will known
To students.. to scholars
From every corner
Of this big yet small world,
The very next noon,
We were in a train,
To us it had wings,
Just like that of our souls,
The weather was shifting,
My spirit was drifting,
Sailing, hailing,
Every friendly face,
The reception party,
Was warm and kind
With teachers and scholars
From all over the world,
To me it seemed
As tiny as a room,
Yet as great as heaven,
And there was I,
With my loyal friend,
With our covered two heads,
Discussing different issues,
Tossing around ideas,
About our homeland,
About our faith,
Talking, joking,
About the reasons
That make people
Have unfair ideas,
About the Arabs,
About their great creed,
Then I saw again,
The buds of May,
Flowering just as
People’s ideas about our belief.
……
My anguish was finally erased,
My furry was fired,
For my ambition was crowned,
On the fifth day of April,
My dearest month of the year,
When I was asked to read
Some of my English Poems,
In conference number sixteen,
Of the British council,
My poems were received
With wet eyes,
With smiles,
With clapping,
With words like
“Gorgeous” said by
The editor of “Women
and gander” with questions as:
How can you be so frank?
How emotional you are!
How liberal you are!
Words as such
Again restored
My lost hope in the human kind;
In Man’s ability
To give, to lit others
Happily survive.
……
“Firing the canon”,
Was the name
Of that literary session;
It shot at my pain,
And rekindled my thinking,
Today is the end of April,
But certainly not the end
Of my hopes and hard times,
With the help of The Most Merciful,
My spirit will never decline,
He will always be sending
Good people such as Manal
Whose name means:
“Effective fulfillment”,
To help me a lot,
Now I am assured that,
Women are not “to be”
Jealous all the time.

Oxford, April 2001

From my first book: Women with Wings