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BOOK REV I EWS to whose charms we are proud to fall victim, because without him we would be neither feminine nor women”. She quotes approvingly in the book from many male Arab authors. Mosteghanemi makes some sweeping assertions, in a semi-joking manner. For example she states that Arab women of all ages, who have grown up with the idea of the father-leader, “reject younger men and go for others whose grey hairs hold out no hope”. And “what’s truly amazing is that men, on account of their suffering from the Arab rooster complex, have more faith in women who lie . . . the more games she plays, the greater his trust in her.” The book is divided into a dozen sections, with titles such as “advice worth a herd of camels”, “telephone oblivion”, “the ambushes of memory and “the tango of forgetting”. Within the sections are short chapters of typically one to three pages. Readers are invited to sign “the charter of female honour” on page 233 of the book (and at www.nessyane.com). Among the author’s many recommendations is “make your memories into tabbouleh”, drawing inspiration from the giant “memory shredder” set up in Time Square on NewYear’s Eve. “In the absence of a shredder, enter the kitchen of love and shred everything that has become a source of irritation and pain in your life.” Publication of The Art of Forgetting is the first fruit of BQFP’s extensive commitment to publishing Mosteghanemi’s work in English. Raphael Cohen is translating her trilogy: Memory in the Flesh is due to be published by BQFP this July, and Chaos of the Senses and Bed Hopper in 2013.The first two novels in the trilogy were earlier published by American University in Cairo Press (in English translation by Baria Ahmar Sreih); AUC Press subsequently republished Memory in the Flesh with revisions by Peter Clark. The Art of Forgetting mingles the profound with the frivolous.There are chapters on spirituality and prayer: “don’t place your confidence in a man who has turned away from God after being seduced by worldly matters.” On a more indulgent level there is a chapter on “chocolate is your weapon”. The book is itself rather like a box of assorted chocolates to be dipped into; some of its chapters are soft and sweet, others are dark and mysterious, crunchy with a bite, or unexpected like a salted caramel. 208 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES
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BOOK REV I EWS Norbert Hirschhorn reviews Heavenly Life: Selected Poems by Ramsey Nasr Translated from the Dutch by David Colmer. Banipal Books. ISBN 978-0-9549666-9-0. 169 pages. Human Music R amsey Nasr tells a revealing story: in Ramallah he presented a poem about a breakup of a love affair in which the woman “cuts off all his senses one by one until he stands in front of her like a lifeless figurehead and she can rest”. Nasr took his poem to be “domestic and mundane”.The audience, however, heard an allegory of two nations in a throttling embrace, and wept. “The meaning of a poem”, Nasr realized, “depends on the person reading it and much less on the person who wrote it”. Or as Jorge Luis Borges aphorized: “Art happens every time we read a poem”.Thus we read Nasr with care. His lines mostly parse the syntax and most often use little or no punctuation. He presents his work in lower case, which provides a spare Zen look, one that requires the reader to move slowly over the verse, the better to absorb its sound and meaning. (The award-winning translator David Colmer must be applauded for his lyrical rendering.) Nasr was born in Antwerp, son of a Dutch mother and Palestinian father. He is now Poet Laureate of the Netherlands. In his Selected Poems we discover the artistic path that has brought him acclaim and honours from his countrymen. Nasr’s love poetry, for instance, burns with orgasmic fever. In “Silly Juliet” the speaker will “keep ten toes for you/ and both my heels will shoot out light-blue gas . . . my bones explode like hot swamp gas/ I am radiant . . .” In an excerpt from a longer poem about Orpheus “a tender kiss on her little toe” causes a “deep-dark blue/ and cold blue flame” to flare and light the other toes like candles, or sparklers. Orpheus dissects and empties Eurydice’s body, now “a mass of seething magma” and enters it in perfect union: “when I step into your waiting pelvis/ both my legs just melt away at once”.This BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 209

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BOOK REV I EWS

to whose charms we are proud to fall victim, because without him we would be neither feminine nor women”. She quotes approvingly in the book from many male Arab authors. Mosteghanemi makes some sweeping assertions, in a semi-joking manner. For example she states that Arab women of all ages, who have grown up with the idea of the father-leader, “reject younger men and go for others whose grey hairs hold out no hope”. And “what’s truly amazing is that men, on account of their suffering from the Arab rooster complex, have more faith in women who lie . . . the more games she plays, the greater his trust in her.”

The book is divided into a dozen sections, with titles such as “advice worth a herd of camels”, “telephone oblivion”, “the ambushes of memory and “the tango of forgetting”. Within the sections are short chapters of typically one to three pages. Readers are invited to sign “the charter of female honour” on page 233 of the book (and at www.nessyane.com).

Among the author’s many recommendations is “make your memories into tabbouleh”, drawing inspiration from the giant “memory shredder” set up in Time Square on NewYear’s Eve. “In the absence of a shredder, enter the kitchen of love and shred everything that has become a source of irritation and pain in your life.”

Publication of The Art of Forgetting is the first fruit of BQFP’s extensive commitment to publishing Mosteghanemi’s work in English. Raphael Cohen is translating her trilogy: Memory in the Flesh is due to be published by BQFP this July, and Chaos of the Senses and Bed Hopper in 2013.The first two novels in the trilogy were earlier published by American University in Cairo Press (in English translation by Baria Ahmar Sreih); AUC Press subsequently republished Memory in the Flesh with revisions by Peter Clark.

The Art of Forgetting mingles the profound with the frivolous.There are chapters on spirituality and prayer: “don’t place your confidence in a man who has turned away from God after being seduced by worldly matters.” On a more indulgent level there is a chapter on “chocolate is your weapon”. The book is itself rather like a box of assorted chocolates to be dipped into; some of its chapters are soft and sweet, others are dark and mysterious, crunchy with a bite, or unexpected like a salted caramel.

208 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES

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