In the Net

by Hawad, Christopher Wise (Translation), Helene Hawad (Preface)

In the face of amnesia, how does one exist? In this poem, Hawad speaks directly to Azawad, a silent figure whose name designates a portion of Tuareg lands divided among five nation-states created in the 1960s. This evanescent being, situated on the edge of the abyss and deprived of speech, space, and the right to exist, has reached such a stage of suffering, misery, and oppression that it acquiesces to the erasure implicit in the labels attached to it.

Through an avalanche of words, sounds, and gestures, Hawad attempts to free this creature from the net that ensnares it, to patch together a silhouette that is capable of standing up again, to transform pain into a breeding ground for resistance—a resistance requiring a return to the self, the imagination, and ways of thinking about the world differently. The road will be long.

Hawad uses poetry, “cartridges of old words, / a thousand and one misfires, botched, reloaded,” as a weapon of resistance.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Hawad, sometimes Mahmoudan Hawad, (born 1950) is a Tuareg poet and author born in the Aïr region of Niger and who currently lives and publishes from Aix-en-Provence, France. Hawad deploys a method he calls furigraphy (a play on the word calligraphy) to create space in his poetry and to illuminate certain themes. Common themes of his work include thirst, movement, wandering, anarchy, and political themes related to Tuareg politics in the region. He is married to Hélène Claudot-Hawad, a Tuareg scholar and translator of Hawad's poetry into French. He has published a number of poems, epics, and other literary works primarily in French, but translations have increased in recent years with an Arabic translation of Testament nomade by prominent Syrian poet Adunis.

Reviews

[leynes · Rating 4 out of 5]

REREAD (November 2022):

I decided to reread this book only a few months after first reading it to see if it'll make it onto my favorite's list for 2022. It won't but it's still one heck of a poetry collection. Definitely give it a go! Hawad's words will shake you.

"Writing is a gesture resituating the margin at the center of the world's matrix."

This reread also provided new insight into his craft and how to read and understand some of the stanzas. Hawad, as a Tuareg writing about Azawad, writes outside my comfort zone and outside my knowledge. Therefore he is the teacher and I am the recipient. I did a lot of research on the Tuareg rebellion when I first read his poem to understand the context from which he was writing at the time a bit better. I remember having trouble with the first stanza during my first read:

Z, T, alpha.
Oh Azawad!
Where is Air, Ahaggar, Azawagh,
Adghagh of the Idemakan, and Ajjer,
mountains rocks spines
basis of our endurance?

During my reread I had an epiphany. This first stanza is absolutely terrific. It shatters the/my eurocentric/Western illusion/lens completely. Hawad writes from an African/Tuareg lens. As a European you have to look up half the words of that first stanza. You won't know that Ahaggar and Azawagh are mountains, you might not even realise that Hawad tells you that himself. You have to learn that letters ("Z, T, alpha") are pillars for the Tuareg, pillars that are stronger than mountains. Their language stays, their landscapes shift. Not just because they are nomad people who therefore move around a lot, also because the land they move on is constantly under attack. Hawad finds strength in letters, his language, his poetry.

Another thing I became more aware of during my reread is how Hawad calls out the fight for natural resources, how capitalism and making money off of them is one of the main reasons for wanting to uproot the Tuareg. The land has become valuable, therefore the people must go. It's a struggle that comes from without (= European (former) colonizers) as well as from within (= Malian government), and "no one gives a damn / about the cries of destruction / for museums libraries art / and tifinagh writing of a thousand millennia, / as they lie in ruins."

All in all, I am super happy to have reread this poem. I am sure I will come back to it in future years. Knowing how "hard" it was to understand I'm not sure if I'll check out Hawad in French (most of his poetry is available in French, In the Net is, thus far, the only collection available in English) but I'm definitely interested in reading more from him. Truly an underhyped and unrecognised writer!

REVIEW (March 2022):
This was phenomenal! I love discovering poets who weave together the lyrical and political. And Hawad does it in a unique way. In the Net, originally published as Dans la nasse in 2014 by Non Lieu, is totally a must read; and definitely my favorite instalment in the African Poetry Book Series by the University of Nebraska Press!

In this collection (which reads more like one narrative poem), Hawad, a Tuareg poet born in 1950 in the Aïr region, cries out to his homeland Azawad as it is ravaged by war and rebellion as the Tuareg people try to gain independence from Mali in the early 2010s.

Your land has become your tomb … sole witness of your death.

Although born in what is now Niger, Hawad refuses to identify with this state. He was born into a family of the Ikazkazan Tuareg, who are part of the larger Kel Ayr Tuareg group. Like many nomad people, Hawad recalls many crossings over the Sahara and the Sahel on camel back while he was growing up with his brothers and father.

In his early adult life, he was part of a growing number of Tuareg who moved away from Tuareg lands to work as a day laborer with stretches of unemployment which first introduced him to Tuareg politics. He married Hélène Claudot-Hawad and relocated, in "chosen exile", to France before the Tuareg revolutions in the early 1990s.

Hawad deploys a method he calls furigraphy (a play on the word calligraphy) to create space in his poetry and to illuminate certain themes. A unique component of the written poems is the inclusion of altered Tifinagh, the written form of Tamazight, characters in a form of calligraphy. (Many examples are printed in this collection—which was a nice touch!) Although the characters are rooted in Tifinagh writing, Hawad changes them to remove any specific meaning and simply to create space within the poems. His experiments with furigraphy in his poetry led Hawad to produce a number of art works building from the altered characters. Hawad's furigraphy locates him within a wider movement to maintain and protect Tifinagh characters in the Tuareg diaspora communities.

Azawad, don’t ask me for the key
or bullet to liberation.
I have only cartridges of old words,
a thousand and one misfires, botches, reloaded.
Cough, rage, bitterness.
Ugh! I vomit the strangled flight of furigraphic revolt.

To compose his poetry, he delivers the poems aloud in his native tongue of Tamazight and records the presentation before he and his wife translate the poems into French for publication. This process is aimed to capture the transition in literature from oral recitations of the nomadic lifestyle into the individualized ideas of modern authorship.

While retaining the themes of thirst, hunger, and constantly moving from his earlier works, his later work—to whom In the Net belongs—began to directly engage with the politics of Tuareg nationalism and oppression by the governments of Mali and Niger. Chaos and wandering are also themes which run throughout his work and he uses these themes to connect Tuareg nomad life with other struggles around the world.

Although Hawad identifies with the Tuareg people, his poetry and politics embrace anarchy and are focused primarily on resistance to oppressive forces. Christopher Wise, Hawad's translator into English, writes that "his poetry, like his politics, militates against political affiliations of any sort, with the possible exception of Western anarchist traditions as well as military movements like the Zapatistas in Mexico." The politics of his poems are interpreted as a response to attempts in the French media to make the Tuareg exotic or efforts to make the area a site for tourism.

In the foreword, Hélène Claudot-Hawad asks "In face of so much amnesia, how to live?" In the Net, completed in March 2013, was written at the height of the Azawad revolt that began early in 2012 and during France’s military intervention in 2014. These events culminated in the violent reinstallation of Mali’s crumbling army and its failed state in the Sahara, assuring the oblivion of the Tuareg people. How to make an alternative voice heard amid the cacophony of media-generated accounts of terrorism, fear-mongering, the roar of the fighter jets, the proliferation of drones in the Sahara, the massacre of civilians, state-monitored terminology, and unchecked imperialist discourse clarifying the good and evil parties in this conflict?

Death’s whistle has sounded,
genocide, extermination.
The goal is already achieved.
Let’s talk instead about resurrection.

For Hawad, the emergence of Azawad obliterated what was most essential about a century-old fight, the struggle of a people to liberate themselves from colonial and neocolonial rule. If he speaks directly to Azawad in this text, it is as a part of of himself—that is, as the Tuareg that he is–but a part that has endured so much suffering, misery, oppression that it no longer contests the erasure that is inherent in the labels assigned to it. Is is by way of his evanescent character, hovering on the brink of the abyss, deprived of speech, room for movement, the right to exist, that Hawaii seeks to piece back together a silhouette figure. Hawaii uses poetry as a weapon for resistance.

Favorite quote (on writing): "I see writing not only as a weapon but as an anchor to drag along a black trail giving weight and consistency to the march of the resistance, as it pursues its own goals. In sum, writing is memory but without being confined to the past: It is a tether unwound from the abyss, an act that nourishes, like the well animal that draws water from the ground to irrigate the thirsty deserts of the unknown. Writing is a gesture restating the margins at the center of the world's matrix."

[Sara Louise West · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man får bakoversveis av denne poesien. Diktene ryster, ordene er fulle av krutt, men også en ømhet og dyp omsorg for liv i alle former (spesielt de formene som koloniseres og utryddes gjennom økologisk terror og folkemord). Leste HOF sin utgave, i norsk språkdrakt ved Erlend Winche - noe av det mest enestående gjendiktningsarbeidet eg har lest. «Som deg er jeg forbrent, jeg ulmer. / La oss krysse helvete.»

[Floris Meertens]

Terugpratend-hert-in-de-koplampenpoëzie!

Vurige gedichten over het verlies van het leefgebied Azawad, gecombineerd met schitterende kalligrafie. Niet even begrijpelijk voor de lekenlezer, maar de toon is meeslepend. Van die poëzie waarvan je hoopt meer en meer te begrijpen. Ik heb mijn twijfels over de vertaling; de vertaler heeft nauw samengewerkt met Hawad, maar het is vanuit het Tamajaght naar het Frans en daarna weer naar het Engels vertaald. Sommige woordkeuzes en met name zinsconstructies voelen wat onhandig aan. Maar er is ook genoeg moois:

"Azawad,
to be defeated is an art
mastered in solitude
in the dark of night.
Defeat is a status apart,
a gaze that ignites thinking,
a vigorous mental faculty
endowed with its own manner of thought
aimed at an ideal with strict demands.
It's an elevated station
situated much higher
than the level of conquerors."

Dan nog wat gemijmer over de achterflap! Daar staat: 'Hawad uses poetry "cartridges of old words, / a thousand and one misfires, botched, reloaded," as a weapon of resistance.' Ik vind deze zin fascinerend. De uitgever en vertaler willen een heldhaftig beeld scheppen van Hawad, en het maken van verzetskunst portretteren als een moedige en zinvolle daad. Terwijl het citaat juist de vergeefsheid van de doorzetting benadrukt. Het zijn missers, het zijn oude woorden, het is zwakheid. Dat geeft ons wellicht een hoger bewustzijn, zoals het andere citaat hierboven beweert. Maar of het helpt in de strijd?

Ik vind het onterecht om kunst te zien als wapen. Het getuigen van onrecht is belangrijk, en de hoop is dat het mensen overtuigt. Maar dan is de politieke waarde van kunst juist diens machteloosheid. Hawad, de kunstenaar in ballingschap, de wanhopige man met enkel pen en penseel, heeft geen wapens. De pen bevindt zich niet in het domein van de macht. De pen zoekt het gelijk, en gelijk is geen synoniem van succes. De pen wint, ook als het de strijd verliest.

[Lauren Milewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poem itself is beautifully written and translated, even better when read aloud. I also liked that they included some of the Tamajaght words written in the tifinagh alphabet in the book, which is beautifully painted in a kind of calligraphy style. This book inspired me to do a little reading about Hawad and the Tuareg rebellion, which I knew nothing about previously. I’d like to learn more about the Sahel, I know very little about it.

Tentatively counting this as Read the World - Niger.
However, Hawad identifies as Tuareg, although he was born in the state of Niger, since the Tuareg people and land were divided across multiple state borders in the 1960s. I’ll eventually find a Nigerien (yes, I had to look that up) author to read.

[Ben Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful poem brimming with energy and life. This is a very political poem but although I know little about this part of the world it was still very accessible for all that.

Similarly I often struggle with long poems, preferring more easily managed and contained shorter poems but this manages to remain accessible and compelling.

I look forward to reading more by Hawad as well as more books in this series.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

"And one of the edicts of the United Nations
for the people without a state
is the whip.
The whip that lacerates you,
erasing every mark
of your people and your land."