While a strong, expansive culture can afford to be tolerant, a culture that feels beleaguered, like that of the Arab world today, tends to close in on itself, to narrow its own boundaries. As paranoia grows, an ever-shrinking cultural space is defended with increasing ferocity. Not only does it become difficult for artists and writers to be receptive to the work of other cultures-it becomes hard for them to acknowledge some of the most interesting elements in their own.
The two most exciting books I have read this year, both published some time ago by small publishers, are by Abdullah al-Udhari. A poet and translator of Arabic verse, born in Yemen in 1941, he has long resisted these pressures. Now, as the words Islam and terrorism become almost inseparable in many people’s imagination, al-Udhari’s work seems still more important. I know of no other books that so vividly convey the richness and diversity of a culture more closely related to our own than most of us realise.
Al-Udhari’s Classical Poems by Arab Women (Saqi Books, 1999) includes the original Arabic and his own English translations of poetry as witty and sensual as the surviving fragments of Sappho. Many of these poets lived in Arab Andalucia, one of the most tolerant cultures ever to have existed in Europe. Hafsa, who lived in 12th-century Granada, has lines like:
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