issue 31: monsoon 2025
ROBIN MOGER
Indebted
for Golan Haji
A selection of texts and poems about and by Dhul Rumma (c.696 — c.735 AD), thought to have lived in the southeastern Najd, in what is now Saudi Arabia, and one poem by Golan Haji, (b.1977), a Syrian-Kurdish poet, essayist and translator who lives in Paris.
[come undone]
by Dhul Rumma
You know that home is come undone
to nothing? Now,
soft dips and hollows,
pieced in an unbroken plain,
with Spica’s rise receive its rains,
first falls that pass and circle,
fall again.
*rise*: nau’ (pl. anwaa’)
Mohammed Ibn Haroun al-Zanjani told me that ‘Ali Ibn ‘Abdel ‘Aziz had told him that Abu ‘Ubayd had said to him: I have heard tell from a number of the learned, that anwaa’ refers to twenty eight stars and constellations whose risings are fixed across the four seasons of the year. Every thirteen nights, at dawn, one of these named stars can seen setting in the west as another rises, facing it, in the east, and when the cycle of twenty-eight is completed a year has passed and the new year begins when the first reappears. The Arabs of the Jahiliyya would say, whenever one star began to set and another rose, “this will bring rain and wind”, and would attribute each rainfall that came to the star in the ascendant. They would say: “This is the rain of the Pleiades’ rising, or Aldebaran’s, or Spica’s.” — The Meanings of the Reports by al-Sheikh al-Sadouq (d.991 AD)
The translator of romance novels in Athens
(to Robin Moger)
by Golan Haji
[The title of this poem dedicated to Robin Moger was inspired by something the Lebanese poet Wadih Saadeh mentioned to me during a brief encounter in Damascus, the summer of 2010. He told me that when they were both penniless in Athens, he and the Iraqi poet Sargon Boulos used to translate romance novels for the Abeer, or “Perfume”, series. It was anonymous piecework and his name never appeared on the covers of the books — GH]
My regret here is what I said there:
“My weeping is what saves me.
Between I and they lies this horizon
and their dream is killing me.”
Indebted in a land indebted
I leant against a boat’s wreck and did not go on;
did not leave Greece then God left me
once my penitence was done
and this archipelago took me in;
its low white walls, blue doors
like small skies planted in the snow by winds,
made me their friend.
The eye clears in the islands’ air
like a monk’s mind after fasting days,
and no fear clouds the morning clear,
no lightning sears the collars of the clouds.
My eye was emptied of what it saw,
the clean air with that sun of calm
flooding my gaze.
A few paces are enough to
have my shadow and the pine’s shade fuse,
to see beneath my lids
a girl let down her lids upon her lover.
She wears a light green shirt that lets show through
the aureole, dark like wine like Homer’s sea,
her nipples lifting, lengthen gradually
like snail’s horns
in the close damp air
between two thunderstorms.
[the lovers]
Names of those lovers who loved in the Jahiliyya and under Islam, whose reports have been written down—
The books of those we mention in this work were composed out of their reports by the likes of ‘Isa Ibn Da’b, al-Sharqi Ibn al-Qataami, Hisham al-Kalbi, al-Haytham Ibn ‘Adi and others:
The Book of Muraqqish and Asmaa, the Book of ‘Amr Ibn ‘Ajlan and Hind, the Book of ‘Urwa and ‘Afraa, the Book of Jameel and Buthayna, the Book of Kuthayyir and ‘Azza, the Book of Qais and Lubnaa, the Book of Majnoun and Layla, the Book of Tawba and Layla, the Book of al-Simma Ibn ‘Abdallah and Rayya, the Book of Ibn al-Tathriya and Wahshiya, the Book of Distraction and Attachment, the Book of Yazeed and Habaaba, the Book of Qabous and Munya, the Book of As‘ad and Layla, the Book of Waddaah al-Yaman and Umm al-Baneen, the Book of ‘Ameem Ibn ‘Amraan and Hind, the Book of Mohammed Ibn al-Salt and Jannat al-Khuld, the Book of al-‘Umar Ibn Diraar and Juml, the Book of Sa‘d and Asmaa, the Book of ‘Umar Ibn Abi Rabee‘a and a Multitude of Women, the Book of al-Mustahall and Hind, the Book of Baakir and Lahza, the Book of Mulayka, Nu’m and the Vizier’s Son, the Book of Ahmad and Daaha, the Book of the Kufan Youth, student of Muslima, and His Mistress, the Book of ‘Ammaar, Juml and Sawaab, the Book of al-Ghamr Ibn Malik and Qaboul, the Book of ‘Amr Ibn Zayd al-Taa’i and Layla, the Book of ‘Ali Ibn Ishaaq and Sumna, the Book of al-Ahwas and ‘Abda, the Book of Bishr and Hind, the Book of the Lover of the Hand, the Book of the Lover of the Image, the Book of ‘Abqar and Sahaam, the Book of Iyaas and Safwa, the Book of Ibn Mat‘oun, Rateela and Sa‘aada, the Book of Khuraafa and ‘Ishriq, the Book of al-Makhzoumi and al-Hudhailiya, the Book of ‘Amr Ibn al-‘Inqafeer and Nahd Ibn Zayd Manaa, the Book of Murra and Layla, the Book of Dhul Rumma and Mayy.
— From The Catalogue by Ibn al-Nadeem (d.998)
It was said that as a boy he suffered from terrors, so a charm was written for him which he hung round his neck from a cord.
— From The Book of Songs by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani (d.967)
Ibn Salam said his name was Ghailaan Ibn ‘Uqba Ibn Baheesh Ibn Mas‘oud Ibn Haaritha Ibn ‘Amr Ibn Malkaan, also called Abu al-Haaritha, and that Dhul Rumma was a nickname, and that it had been given to him by Mayy. Once, crossing the desert he chanced upon their tents. Mayy was sitting beside her mother and he asked them for water, so Mayy’s mother told her, “Get up and fetch him water,” but when he saw her he punctured his water skins, saying, “And stitch these for me, too…” but Mayy said, “That I can’t do well; I am clumsy.” “This clumsy woman does no work with her hands because her people hold her dear,” he said, then turned to her mother: “Tell her to go and fetch that water.” So her mother said, “Rise, clumsy girl, and fetch his water.” Mayy got up and returned with water, and seeing that over his shoulder ran a rumma, which is to say a length of rope or cord, said, “Drink, Dhul Rumma…” which is to say, “Drink, you with the length of cord…” and so he took that name.
— From The Book of Songs by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani
Mayy spent many years without laying eyes on Dhul Rumma, though she heard his poetry about her, and she pledged to Allah that she would slaughter a camel the day she saw him. And when at last she saw him, what she saw was a man at once ugly and swarthy, while she was among the most beautiful of women, and she exclaimed, “How awful he is! How wretched!”
— From The Book of Poetry and the Poets by Ibn Qutayba (d.889)
Abu al-Muhalhil al-Hadaa’i said: I travelled into the desert in search of Mayy, the mistress of Dhul Rumma, asking directions until I found my way to where she stayed, and there I found a great tent at whose entrance was a broken-toothed old woman, so I greeted her and asked, “Where is Mayy’s home?” “I am Mayy,” she replied. I was astonished and said, “I wonder at Dhul Rumma, that he spoke of you so often…” “Do not be so surprised,” she said, “I shall explain…” and then she called out a woman’s name, and from the tent emerged a buxom servant-girl wearing a burqa. “Show yourself,” said Mayy, and the woman removed her burqa, and at the sight of such beauty and perfection I was stupefied. “Dhul Rumma fell in love with me when I was her age,” said Mayy, and I said, “May Allah pardon him and have mercy upon him,” then I asked her to recite what poetry of his she remembered and as she recited I wrote it down.
— From The Best of the Reports by Ibn Qutayba
[no land a home]
by Dhul Rumma
As though their camps at Azzurq were a tract
of pristine earth or writ in ink. Effaced
I said, yet what marks could be traced
stirred up in me a love at once long felt and new
and never, stood where Mayy once stopped, can you
stand there unmoved, nor is your eye inanimate.
That day she left she left in you
a burning thirst and an infirmity
from both of which your heart’s complained
so long, so much it’s seen of parting company
and paths:
flats blank as the sky
and I was riding there not knowing where I went.
The night had stained the gravel black
and in wind’s soughing was a voice like
sounds of song, of calling back and forth.
We were halfway over it and running
and it was time to stop, to set
our camels loose and put them out to graze
among the winds of that bare steppe,
yet we did not,
being borne on sleek snake backs that strained towards
high ground that was a distant rim
at the horizon all around
until
a rose split the night,
as though behind the darknesses
there was a horse head, blazed,
and no thigh broke its clamp
on any white-furred flank,
as tirelessly, long-legged mares spat foam,
and how we drove wild cows and bulls before us,
this being the land of those who make
no land a home,
their ranges,
by the heat of Betelgeuse’s rein,
being cleared of all safe pasture,
and the ostriches, too,
green-plumed by their spring feeding,
like camel calves that travelling by night
will scatter from the pack beasts
burdened by black tents:
we drove them from their white eggs, pristine on rough ground,
whose dust in banks had gathered, hemmed them round
The greatest similist of the Jahiliyya was Imrul Qais and Dhul Rumma was the finest under Islam. — The Book of Songs
I heard Dhul Rumma say: “If I ever say ‘as though it were’ and cannot finish the image, may Allah cut off my tongue.” — The Book of Songs
Jareer, asked what he thought of his poetry, said, “Gazelle dung and glib blandishments.” — The Book of Poets and Poetry
One day he was reciting his poetry in the camel market when al-Farazdaq came by and he asked him, “What do you think of what you heard?” “Your poetry is wonderful” al-Farazdaq replied. “So why am not mentioned amongst the foremost poets?” he asked. “What sets you back from their level,” said al-Farazdaq, “is your weeping over abandoned campsites and your descriptions of camel dung and watering holes.” — The Book of Poetry and the Poets
Al-Farazdaq and Jareer envied Dhul Rumma and the Bedouin admired his poetry. — The Book of Songs
Salih Ibn Sulayman was a transmitter of Dhul Rumma’s poetry and one day he was reciting a poem of his when a Bedouin of the Bani ‘Uday overheard him and said, “You must be a carrier of the Book, so well do you recite,” for he had thought it was the Quran. — The Book of Songs
Isa Ibn ‘Amr said, “Dhul Rumma once told me, ‘Erase that letter.’ ‘You know how to read and write?’ I asked him, and he placed a finger over his lips and said, ‘Don’t tell anyone; where I am from, we consider it a sin.’” He also said, “I was returned from travelling, and Dhul Rumma came to see me, and when I offered to give him something, he told me, ‘You and I, we take, we do not give.’” — The Book of Poetry and the Poets
Dhul Rumma often took lines from others. — The Book of Songs
And it seems that among these poets were those who could not bear to refer their mistresses using sobriquets, preferring, when they could, to call them directly by their true names, delighting in repeating them, an example of which we find in Dhul Rumma: The desert plain’s the place most dear to me / for I can sing her name there openly — The Book of Rhetoric by Abdel Aziz Ateeq (d.1976)
Golan Haji is a Kurdish translator and poet. Born in Amuda, in Syrian-Kurdistan in 1977, he currently lives in Paris. He has published five collections of poetry in Arabic, including The Word Rejected (Khan al-Janoub, 2023). A selection of his poetry, translated in collaboration with Stephen Watts, was published as A Tree Whose Name I Don't Know (A Midsummer Night's Press, 2017). Most recently, Marilyn Hacker's English translations of his poems have appeared in Another Room to Live In (Litmus Press, 2024), a multilingual collection of poetry by fifteen contemporary Arab poets.
His poems and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies and publications in translations by Fady Joudah, Marilyn Hacker, Stephen Watts, and Huda Fakhreddine, among others.
Dhul Rumma (or Dhu ar-Rumma, or Dhu l’Rumma) is a poet thought to have lived in the southeastern part of the Najd in the early eighth century (AD). Of his life, one 13th commentator wrote: “Reports of Dhul Rumma are numerous, so concision is of the essence. He died in 117 AH, and when his end was upon him, he said, I am grown halfway old; I have forty years.”
Robin Moger is a translator of Arabic to English who lives in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Catalunya. His translations of prose and poetry have appeared widely. His most recent publications include Sleep Phase (Two Lines Press, 2025), a novel by Mohammed Kheir, a curated selection of poems by Wadih Saadeh entitled A Horse at the Door (Tenement Press, 2024), Strangers in Light Coats (Seagull Press, 2023), which is a collection of poems by Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan, Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal (And Other Stories Press, 2023), a joint winner of the 2024 James Tait Black Prize for Biography, and Agitated Air: Poems After Ibn Arabi (Tenement Press, 2022), in collaboration with Yasmine Seale.
His translation of Samer Abu Hawwash’s collection From The River To The Sea is forthcoming from Banipal Books in July 2025.