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Home2021 (Page 5)

September 2021

Rusty metal tubing sprouts up, out of the rubble, above the waste haphazardly pushed into piles along the sidewalk, and into a radial array of welded steel members. Where roots should dig into soil, metal frames are anchored into asphalt. Branches of synthetic, evergreen fibers twist their way up towards tree toppers - stars, a pair of doves, a fallen firefighter's helmet. Bells and baubles still decorate the trees this Christmas, but so too are the names and notes nestled gently into the ribbon and tinsel. Furiously lettered scraps of paper are pushed into the branches in apology - victims not

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Non-Fiction
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قبوٌ في رأسياجلس أنا في رأسي، الظلمة حالكة. وحدي. لا أحد سواي. يتكشّفُ قبوٌ مظلم أم أفتحه أنا. لا أدري. يخرج الكثير من الذبابُ اللزجُ من داخلي، مني، أنا الكلب الميت. تلتصق بوجهي الذبابات فأهشُّها. أهشُّ الواحدة تلو الأخرى. أقول للذباب: اليوم لن تلتهميني. اليوم لن تلتهميني. يزعجني ملمس الذباب الزلق على وجهي. ويزعجني أنني لا استطيع أن أرى الذباب جيداً في الظلمة. تلتصق إحداها بوجهي دون أن أشعر… تغمرني الريبة، دون أن أعرف السبب. وبعد ساعات، بلا قصد، أحرّك عضلة ما بوجهي، فتطير الذبابة. أصيح بها: أما آن لك أن تختاري جيفة بدلاً مني؟     الأنبوبة والغرقأراهُ كلّ يوم من نافذتي.

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arabic, Poetry
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During one of the great lockdowns of 2020, I finally convinced my mother to sit down after a long day of Zoom-ing to watch a movie with bowls full of bizr and a vodka 7UP for each of us. But my grandmother stood smack-dab in front of the TV and asked me to thread not one but four sewing needles. Her eyesight isn't as strong as it used to be. Since my grandmother moved back from Vancouver to live with us, she has always asked me to play her music from old cassette tapes she's hoarded over the years. I

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Non-Fiction
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you spend years wondering if thisis the soil you want to shoulder,the soil you want to be shouldered by. the paroxysm of wanting a deathdoes not come to you as pinprick but onestretched out into idiosyncrasy foran entire people.your entire peoplewanting      death.  theirs                   or                                 theirs.   to kill or                                                       to die.  you            know something                       must                  die. the emotion rises within youlike a biting pledge. you want to

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Poetry
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  [video m4v="https://www.rustedradishes.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/sarah-safieddine-.m4v" poster="" ][/video] البحر لوحةٌ، واسع وهادئ كأنّ لا موج فيه. كل شيء يتحرّك من حوله إلّا هو. لكنّي أشعر بكل نسمة هواء. ببرودة المياه. أشمّ رائحة الملح، وأتذوّقه على شفتَي. أقف في وسط هذا البحر، كأنّ لا عمق فيه. أنظر إلى رجليّ، فأرى السمك يسبح حولهما، ثم أرى انعكاسي، مبعثرة الوجه. جامدة. أتيتَ من الخلف، وضعتَ يدك على كتفي. نظرتُ إليك. وجهك هادئ تماماً كهدوء هذا البحر. سألتُك: متى آخر مرة بكيتَ؟ أخرجتَ من جيبك قطعة من الزجاج، أمسكت يدي ووضعتها فيها. هربَ السمك، ثمّ انفجر البحر. استيقظتُ. في حلمي انفجر البحر. بل بيروت، مجدّداً. لكنّها في حلمي كانت

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Short Film Essay
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Photograph by Margaux Chalancon i. We're picking out a name for you again. Shamsah, Badiʿat Al-Jameel, Ashaʿ, Siʿlat. We tussle with the name, looking for something grated, a song that scratches the throat. Ruqaya, Zawʿabah, Sughal. We finish and start again, feeling for a name that slices like a blade, a razor to the tongue. Rayḥāna, Ruwaha, Tiamat. But nothing hits and we need to find a name for you because the jinn, like most things, are impossible without one.  We had one name before. Hashem, from Al-Hashm, meaning to crush, or crumble. It's the nickname of the prophet's grandfather who broke

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Non-Fiction
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  There's a blackhead on my chin. I probe it every morning. I poke; I prod; I nudge; it won't budge. It's been there for a month. By now, I have given it a name. I call it Charlotte, mostly because it rhymes with harlot. I see it several times a day. It sees me, too. Sometimes, I catch its unsightly gaze staring back at me shamelessly, defiantly. "I'm here to stay." It's a lesson in coexistence. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger-and every so often, uglier. It's Tuesday, and I think, today is the day. It has to go. It's almost

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Non-Fiction
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I was 20-days-old when my Lebanese parents wrapped me in a basket and moved us back to Beirut having intelligently blessed me with a Canadian birth. I grew up around my dad's war-collected records and my mom's ethnic cooking.  My childhood was spent rollerblading, climbing trees, and playing Legos in a space that at the time hadn't registered to me as my city. The older and older I got, the more I observed Beirut grow from memory blocks classified as  this-is-where-my-grandma-lives and this-is-where-my-school-is to the intrinsically complex, polluted and unbecoming purgatory it is. But who I am is far from

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Q & A
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I grew up in Germany in between the Protestantism of my mom's family and the Shiism of my father, with Germanized customs picked up from Huguenots and Ashura at my father's preferred mosque. When we moved to Beirut three years after the 2006 war, it was the first time that I got a visceral understanding of what it means for politics to cross a life. A nauseating, never-ending line of lives crossed or crossed out. I am very attached to my family and to landscapes I inhabit or grew up with, but I feel detached from context. Apart from relating

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Q & A
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About Us
Rusted Radishes: Beirut Literary and Art Journal was founded in the English Department of the American University of Beirut in 2012 with the intention of creating a space for both emerging and established writers who have a connection to Lebanon.
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