Letters from Jordan I: A Taxi Ride Through Amman
MEA columnist Florence Coumbe explores the social role of poetry in the everyday in Arab societies and reflects on its literary nuances through the lens of a student of Arabic on her year abroad in Amman, Jordan.
Illustration by Georgia Ryan.
My day in Amman begins and ends with a taxi journey.
Each morning and evening as I climb into the back seat of a different car, I try to make a good impression with my initial greeting to demonstrate that I speak a little more Arabic than just the bare minimum. Some days, I stammer and fail, the journey destined to be one of silence. Other days, this brief trip becomes a source of interesting and varied conversations.
After the usual polite small talk about why I speak some Arabic, the joys and difficulties of learning the language, and a quick update on the local football scores, today’s conversation turns to literature - a personal favourite. After trying to impress the driver with the names of as many Arab authors as I can think of, he flummoxes me with a question that tests the true integrity of the interest in Arabic literature I have professed: ‘have you memorised any Arabic poetry?’.
The practice of memorising poetry is perhaps more fundamental to the appreciation of the dīwān al-ʿArab (the body of Arabic poetry) than it is to the study of English poetry, where memorisation in my experience is the preserve of primary school competitions. The frequency of memorisation, particularly of classical Arabic poetry, is in part a reflection of the centrality of a select number of rhythmic meters. These meters recur in such a way that the knowledgeable reader will be able to recognise them within the first hemistich and, from this, predict the patterns of the remainder of the poem. It is as if hidden beneath the words are rhythms to which the poems can be sung, known by many since their school days. It would appear strange for someone to have studied Arabic poetry and not have memorised any, given the way in which the rhythms, and thus the words, embed themselves into one’s mind. The importance of recitation and memorisation of Arabic poetry should also be considered within the context of the place of recitation and memorisation of the Qur’an in Arab Muslim societies.
I desperately search for any glint of poetic composition etched into my brain by my Arabic Literature lectures in second year . Eventually, I remember a singular line of poetry, the opening to a short poem written around the eighth or ninth century, most likely in Baghdad.
The downside is that the poem is an archetypal work of Abū Nuwās, a controversial poet thought of by many as exclusively writing about licentious matters and his great love of wine. The poem itself is an example of the khamriyyāt genre that may be described as none other than a veritable poetic celebration of wine. As in many of the works of the diwan of Abū Nuwās, there is an ineffability to the wine. It is never directly referred to but rather its presence is persistently implied in images of light, water, and women. With the opening bayt (a term referring to a metrical unit of Arabic poetry as well as the Arabic word for house, perhaps within itself revealing of poetry’s status) the poetic persona implores an absent addressee to not reproach them for their love of wine, but rather to bring them more.
And so, a dilemma arises: either I reveal my inability to have memorised poetry or I recite the singular line I can think of with its potentially controversial subject matter. I take the chance, beginning to recite the singular line. I find myself singing rather than reciting, the inherent rhythm irresistible. To my utter relief, I hear the taxi driver join my song before we unify in a chorus of laughter.
That this singular line of poetry written over a thousand years ago is inscribed in both of our minds reinforces all that I had been taught and read about the consequence of poetry in the Arabic language.
The poem is not simply a poem devoted to wine; this expression of apparent hedonistic sin cannot be wholly divorced from a religious idiom. Instead, it is a piece of argumentation for a vision of religion in which sins are forgiven and can be reconciled with religiosity. Within this poem, to sin is a form of piety, a recognition of the magnanimity of divine forgiveness. In this way, the poem anticipates the ‘paradox of faith’ of some mediaeval Christian mystic writings in which God is found through not directly seeking him. Sin is posited as necessary for the realisation of one’s ultimate humanity in relation to divine grace, encapsulated by Julian of Norwich: “Sin is behovely, but all shall be well.”
I get out of the taxi this evening with some homework, names of further poets to read, and of course to memorise, for further material for further journeys.
دَع عَنكَ لَومي فَإِنَّ اللَومَ إِغراءُ وَداوِني بِالَّتي كانَت هِيَ الداءُ
“Censure me not, for censure but tempts me; cure me rather with the cause of my ill”*
*(Translation from Philip F. Kennedy, The Wine Song in Classical Arabic Poetry: Abū Nuwās and the Literary Tradition, (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1997), 267-268. )