The Iraqi Nights

by Dunya Mikhail, Kareem James Abu-Zeid (Translator)

A stunning new collection by one of Iraq’s brightest poetic voices The Iraqi Nights is the third collection by the acclaimed Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail. Taking The One Thousand and One Nights as her central theme, Mikhail personifies the role of Scheherazade the storyteller, saving herself through her tales. The nights are endless, seemingly as dark as war in this haunting collection, seemingly as endless as war. Yet the poet cannot stop dreaming of a future beyond the violence of a place where “every moment / something ordinary / will happen under the sun.” Unlike Scheherazade, however, Mikhail is writing, not to escape death, but to summon the strength to endure. Inhabiting the emotive spaces between Iraq and the U.S., Mikhail infuses those harsh realms with a deep poetic intimacy. The author’s vivid illustrations ― inspired by Sumerian tablets ― are threaded throughout this powerful book.

Genres: Poetry, Middle East, 21st Century

112 pages, Paperback

First published May 27, 2014

About the author

Dunya Mikhail is an Iraqi American poet and writer. She is the author of the poetry collections The War Works Hard, shortlisted for the International Griffon Poetry Prize, Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea (winner of the Arab American Book Award), The Iraqi Nights, winner of the Poetry Magazine Translation Award, and In Her Feminine Sign, chosen as one of the ten best poetry books of 2019 by The New York Public Library.

Her nonfiction book The Beekeeper was a finalist for the National Book Award, and her debut novel, The Bird Tattoo, was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

Mikhail is a laureate of the UNESCO Sharja Prize for Arab Culture and has received the UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing, as well as fellowships from the United States Artists, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Kresge Foundation.

She currently teaches Arabic and poetry at Oakland University in Michigan.

Reviews

[Edita]

It’s as if I’m hearing music in the boat’s hull,
as if I can smell the river, the lily, the fish,
as if I’m touching the skies that fall from the words “I love you,”
as if I can see those tiny notes that are read over and over again,
as if I’m living the lives of birds who bear nothing but their feathers.
*
She pressed her ear against the shell:
she wanted to hear everything
he never told her.
*
Whenever you throw stones
into the sea
it sends ripples through me.
*
We cross borders lightly
like clouds.
Nothing carries us,
but as we move on
we carry rain,
and an accent,
and a memory
of another place.
*
After this life
we’ll need a second life
to apply what we learned
in the first.

We make one mistake
after another
and need a second life
to forget.
[...]
Suffering takes time:
we need a second life
to learn to live
without pain.

[Tarneem Maitham]

This book shares the absolute heart and soul of the writer’s suffering and constant pain that lives in her bones even after she left Iraq.
It’s an angry love letter to the land that saw more blood and tears than rain.

Review update:
I’ve given this book extra thought and i’m giving it 4.3 stars

[Fatimah Haider]

While reading those poems I wondered how the experience would’ve been different if I wasn’t Iraqi nor knew what’s al-mutanabi street is.
Nice and short and nostalgic. Totally recommended.

[fridayinapril]

The Iraqi Nights by Dunya Mikhail is a poetry collection that was translated from Arabic into English by Kareem James Abu-Zeid. It is a collection that encompasses poems full of vivid imagery that speak of a country ravaged by war, and how amid the destruction one can still endure and push through. The collection is also pebbled with illustrations inspired by Sumerian tablets that add to its beauty. I felt every poem as an intimate foray into Mikhail's mind. The collection is simply sublime.
•
4/5 ~
#fridayinaprilbookreviews

[Noel نوال]

This poetry collection is full of heart and pain. Dunya writes these poems in the spirit of Scheherazade telling her stories of her Iraqi homeland to keep her alive each night. This collection is heartbreaking and enchanting showing the beauty beneath the pain of occupation, war, death, and loved ones and memories long forgotten. Dunya's words spark magic and life beneath the rubble of heartbreak and loss. This is definitely one of my favorite poetry books I've read this year.
I loved the hand drawn illustrations within the pages.

[Hafsa | حفصہ]

3.5 stars

Reading The World: Iraq

Asian Readathon 2020: First three challenges.

This collection was a mix: there was strong writing and imagery in some poems but in others the language felt dull, immature and bland — I think some of the translations probably didn’t do justice to the actual work. The tablets were beautiful and wish I could understand the Arabic in the handwritten drawings. Overall, a good collection which fell apart sometimes but still had memorable writing!

[Kim]

Poetry by Dunya Mikhail.

[Adam Hasan]

Five stars aren’t enough for this masterpiece!

[Jessie (Zombie_likes_cake)]

The first half was easy 4*, the second more of a 2*. Wonderful first, underwhelming second set of poems. Of course I'd end up on 3*. And that doesn't mean that every poetry collection gets 3*, that's not true, I've had the whole range and I will have more of that range in the future. But sometimes that's the case and this year feels a lot like that's the case for me.

In the first half Mikhail is centered in on this story of a woman losing her husband to violence, of Iraqi people suffering through the war. She ties traditional fairy tales into the poetry, culture and language. Borders, the dissonance and connections between Iraqis and Americans. Again and again the war. There's illustrations here that I could've done without but her words touched me and made me think. In the second half she broadens the scope and touches on more topics, more countries and it felt all a bit more random and less poignant to me. I started to roll through the motions to finish the collection. Ah, well.

Here are some beautiful passages:

"He would cross thousands of miles
for the sake of a single cup of tea
poured by my own hand.
I fear the tea is growing cold:
cold tea is worse than death."

"The sunrise will be the same
for those who wake
and those who never will.
And every moment
something ordinary happens
and will happen
under the sun."

"The shadows the prisoners left on the wall
surrounded the jailer and cast light on his loneliness."

"The Arabic language
loves long sentences
and long wars.
It loves never-ending songs
and late nights
and weeping over ruins."

"We cross borders lightly
like clouds.
Nothing carries us
but as we move on
we carry rain,
and an accent,
and a memory
of another place."

My favorite poem was "Iraqis and other Monsters" which you really should read as a complete.

[Yukti]

This collection of poetry is as much about ache and longing as it is about anger and frustration. The prelude serves as such a beautiful introduction to the magical world inside. The tablet poems, a collection of 24 short poems, accompanied by images with Arabic writing paint a story of love and loss. Some of the most heart-touching poems are about the debate of who owns the land, a topic most relevant to today’s time with the Israel-Palestine conflict. It only makes sense that the poet was forced to flee from Iraq to Jordan and hence had these questions constantly brewing her mind even after she moved to the US eventually. Truly a poignant piece of work!

[Remy]

sometimes you just have to be reminded that on the first morning of the new year all of us will look up at the same sun

[Mariana Moreira]

4.5, simply beautiful

[Nadia]

The good parts are really good but overall it's a bit uneven so 3.5

[Glori Simmons]

These surreal poems are filled with deep emotion and meaning. The language is simple and open, yet the arc of each line is profound. The poems talk about lovers and families, war and displacement. They are filled with loss, longing, and hope. They are gentle and in places remind me of Neruda. Here are some lines: you yawn/so I harvest stars for your sleep/and stick them in your notebook:/may they bring you joy/when I'm not there.

I admire the word play in "Flaw Chart" that also compares falling in love with falling into war.

One last quotation from a series of visual poems: The tree doesn't ask why it's not moving/to some other forest/nor any other pointless questions.

[Wyrd Witch]

3.5 stars.

A good portion of the book is taken up by one poem made of smaller observations on life, and many of those observations were hit or miss. Some of the poems in the general table of contents were to simple for me? Or maybe the translations revealed too much and ruined the subtleties of the original poems. Translating poetry can be a difficult task.

But when the poems are good, they make you feel like a moon princess or a sole, amputated finger left in the rubble and dust of civilization. Mikhail is someone I want to watch in the future.

[Briana Grenert]

Beautiful and intricate. Makes me wish I could read Arabic <3
Would recommend. I loved the tablets.
"The Arabic language loves long sentences and long wars. It loves never-ending songs and late nights and weeping over ruins. It loves working for a long life and a long death". Or "homeland, I am not you mother, so why do you weep in my lap like this everytime something hurts you?"
Picked it off the shelf of my university library au hazard.

[Jacqueline]

I think it might be unfair for me to give a full rating. Honestly, poetry isn't a strong point for me and I think maybe the subject matter was a bit inaccessible. Having said that, there were a few poems that resonated with me like the "A Second Life" and "A Debate". I give it 4 stars as it's clearly good poetry, but maybe some of it was lost on me.

[aseal | اصيل]

3.5 This collection makes me sad that I never learned to read arabic (I can only speak it), I know it probably sounds beautiful in the language it was intended in. There were some poems that stood out even in english, but I really want to get an arabic version so that my mother could read it.

[Rana Tahir]

The poems play with time and space, with dreams and reality. Grief and loss, in all their facets, are turned over and over in this book.

[غبار]

"As if you were a new prophet
lisping and sending signs to all creation
so that I forget my enemies:
they melt together like gentle snow."

—Larsa, p81

[Rajie]

A beautiful collection of poems. I think there may have been a few that didn't quite land in English - I wish I knew Arabic so that I could experience these in their intended glory.

[Sameen Borker]

3.5 stars.

[xiwen]

properly stunning

[أسماء]

قصائد جميلة أحيانًا، وأحيان أخرى كلام مبهم مسَطَّر
أما الرسومات: مدهشة.

[Zina Aldulaimi]

“As I come to you I hurry like the full moon crossing the sky, and as I leave- if I leave- I move as slowly as the stars fixed in the sky”

[Storm Poetry]

The Iraqi Nights, the magic: profound and iconic love poetry.


Byline: Reprint from Subterranean Blue Poetry (www.subterraneanbluepoetry.com)

Title of Book: The Iraqi Nights

Author: Dunya Mikhail

Translator: Kareem James Abu-Zeid

Publisher: New Directions Papberbook

Date of Publication: 2013

Page Count: 112


“I love the rainy night”
- from I Love the Rainy Night by Eddie Rabbitt


The Iraqi Nights, a brilliant read in poetic form and grace . . . enigmatic, of the divine feminine and the goddess Oracle as Poet, by Dunya Mikhail. Poet Mikhail is a journalist from wartorn Iraq, after receiving threats from her government she emigrated to the United States. She has won awards for her writing and lives in Michigan, teaching at Oakland University. This is the third book of poetry she has written, the first two being, The War Works Hard, Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea, and the first I have reviewed. The afternoon is blue with overcast sky writing into evening, a child next door cries, and strains of “I love the rainy night” play through the quiet. The poetry . . . borrowing allusions from ancient Greece, ancient poetry and fairytales, the images of nature are quiet and beautiful with the story of a love affair interwoven in the lost peace of a wartorn land. Exotic, and painting a picture of a lost Mazetlan, the beauty of the life and the people of the Middle East.

This book of poetry begins with an allusion to Scheherazade. The famous story of Scheherazade is about a Persian King, Shahryar who everyday married a virgin wife and then had the previous day’s wife beheaded. He thought the previous wives unfaithful. He had killed 1,000 women by the time he was introduced to Scheherazade. In the Kings chambers at night, the well read Scheherazade spun an exciting story which was only half finished at dawn. The King asked her to finish but she said she would continue the story the next night. This went on for 1,001 nights and 1,000 stories, at the end of which she told him she had no more stories for him. Over all those nights of stories, the King had fallen in love with Scheherazade and he made her his wife.

The magic of the prelude begins, “In the land of Summer, where the houses are packed so closely together that their walls touch, where people sleep on rooftops in the summer and lovers climb the walls to see one another, and where lovers marry young, though their parents always refuse at first …” then the lovers Ishtar and Tammuz are introduced and she is shopping for a gift for her lover and wants to buy him everything. “On her way back, she was kidnapped by some masked men. They dragged her onward, leaving her mothers outstretched hand behind her forever. They brought her down into the underworld through seven gates. These poems Ishtar wrote on the gates suggest that she wasn’t killed at once. Or perhaps her words drew her abductor’s attention away from thoughts of murder.” So the poetry begins in magic despite violence, the metaphors and images of nature are painted into surrealistic landscapes of great beauty, perhaps borrowing from the Symbolist school. Against the backdrop of war a mythos of peace is created in the feminine.

Tablets

1.

She pressed her ear against the shell:

she wanted to hear everything

he never told her.

5.

Water needs no wars

to mix with water

and fill the blank spaces.

7.

He watches TV

While she holds a novel.

On the novel’s cover

there’s a man watching TV

and a woman holding a novel.

20.

Cinderella left her slipper in Iraq

along with the smell of cardamom

wafting from the teapot,

and the huge flower,

its mouth gaping like death.


There is the story of the loss of a lover, the war, the violence of lost love, the story of a lost homeland. Throughout the poetry there is the juxtaposition of a land of peace, a land of love and the lost place, the place of violence. In A Second Life, this life is compared to a prison while the coming life, the second life is that of freedom. Despite the violence, the book ends on the birth of Larsa, fantastical and positive despite great loss. With the writings are black and white pictures of runes or Tablets, perhaps with the Arabic language, illuminating the poetry.

This poetry is the sacred ground of doves, both profound and iconic, I look for more work by this Poet. The Iraqi Nights by Dunya Mikhail.

Available @ Amazon.ca.

Genre: Poetry, New Age, Women's Literature

[Jennifer]

I LOVED this. When I read a collection of poetry I write down the title and page number of any poem that particularly moves me, to make it easier to find when writing a review later, or just to return to to reread. I took note of seven of the poems in this small collection, with a long string of hearts written after the last poem in this book, "Larsa," which is a beautiful love poem to the author's child.

These poems deal with love, and longing, but mostly war, and absence. They begin in Iraq, which remains the collection's heart, but eventually span the world.

If you are looking for a collection of poetry for Women in Translation month, I recommend this one highly.

[a ☕︎]

five centuries have passed
since scheherazade told her tale.
baghdad fell,
and they forced me to the underworld.
i watch the shadows
as they pass behind the wall:
none look like tammuz.
he would cross thousands of miles
for the sake of a single cup of tea
poured by my own hand.
i fear the tea is growing cold:
cold tea is worse than death.

[Cat]

3.5

[R.K. Cowles]

3 1/2 stars