Osama Al Danasouri

Four poems by, and three pieces on, the late Alexandrian poet Osama Al Danasouri who passed away in January 2007. Al Danasouri has four collections of poetry to his name: حراشف الجهم [The Scowler’s Scales, 1991], مثل ذئب أعمى [Like a Blind Wolf, 1999], على هيئة واحد شبهي [In the Semblance of One Resembling Me, 2001], and  عين سارحة، عين مندهشة [One Eye Wandering, One Eye Amazed, 2003]. All these poems can be found in his complete works, published by Merit. His prose work, كلبي الهرم، كلبي الحبيب (Dar Merit, 2007) [My Decrepit Dog, My Darling Dog] published posthumously.

The three short pieces on Al Danasouri are by Hamdi Abu Golayyel and Yasser Abdel Latif.

A Moment

By demand and inclination a translation of the excerpt by Hamdi Abu Golayyel linked to below  from his forthcoming novel الشخص المعزوز في شوارع تولوز [The Person of Repute in the Streets of Toulouse]. This will be Abu Golayyel’s third novel after لصوص متقاعدون (Merit, 2002) [Thieves in Retirement] (translated by Marilyn Booth) and الفاعل (Merit, 2009) [A Dog with No Tail], which won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature awarded by the American University in Cairo. Along with his many short stories, both these books deserve to be more widely read.

A note: the Abu Tahoun in the song is the local nickname for the village of Daniel

Worth reading (a link): لحظة لن تسمح الأيام بمثلها

An excerpt (in Arabic) from Hamdi Abu Golayyel‘s forthcoming novel  الشخص المعزوز في شوارع تولوز  in Al Hayat, translated above.

My Mother

A short story by Hamdi Abu Golayyel originally from his collection أشياء مطوية بعناية فائقة (GEBO, 2000) [Things Folded With Great Care] reviewed here and included in a later compilation entitled طي الخيام (Merit, 2010) [The Folding Of The Tents], reviewed here.