Birds – الطيور

Ahmed Shafie is the author of the poetry collections 77 (2017), Other Poems (2009), and A Side Street Ending in a Fountain (General Authority for Cultural Palaces, 2000). He also authored the novels The Creator (2013), Sousou’s Journey, and General Authority for Cultural Palaces (2003). He has translated Charles Simic, Billy Collins, Lucille Clifton, Alice Munro, Ha-Joon Chang, Russell Edson, Eka Kurniawan, Andre Brink, Arundhati Roy, and an anthology of Afro-American poems into Arabic among others. Shafie writes for the poetry translation blog Aswat men Honak (Distant Voices), and blogs at Qera’at Ahmed Shafie.

Humphrey Davies (1955-2021) translated some twenty-five works of modern and pre-modern Arabic literature, including five Elias Khoury novels and Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq’s Leg Over Leg (1855), respectively. He read Arabic at the University of Cambridge, received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and -- before publishing his first translation in 2003 -- worked for community development and research organizations in Palestine, Tunisia, Sudan, and Egypt. He lived in Cairo and was affiliated with the American University of Cairo. This photo was taken of him cleaning Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq's grave in Hazmieh, Lebanon.