Hagar Before the Occupation / Hagar After the Occupation
This translation of Iraqi author Amal al-Jubouri contextualizes America’s occupation of Iraq through the Qur’an’s story of Hagar. Complementary pairs of poems portray life before and after the war.
This work simultaneously mirrors Hagar’s desperate running between Safa and Marwah, as we pace frantically between pre- and post-occupation Iraq—the poet begging in vain for poetry not to abandon her people.
This Body is Yours, Do Not Fear For My Sake
Amal al-Jubouri says she has looked for inspiration in the hymns of Endehuanna and in the exploits of Ishtar, the goddess of love, war and fertility, as well as in her new home country, for which her symbol is Goethe.
This collection contains her version of the Arabian Nights stories, a version of pain, war, restriction and repression. For the Arab edition she chose the title This Body is Yours, Do Not Fear for My Sake. At the Beirut book fair, this collection was awarded the prize for ‘best Arabic book’.
“[Al Jubouri’s] new poems capture in her richly sonorous lyric voice a blending of personal memories with evocations of historic and mythological Mesopotamian figures, particularly those of Enheduanna…. She hears the ancient voice of pain echoing through the ages in her country’s contemporary suffering and internal and external exiles. She has captured the deep yearning and resonating sadness of the Iraqi soul. She is becoming a major lyric voice in the Arab scene and perhaps, given the cultural wealth of her civilization and its profound themes, a poet for the world stage.”
—Herbert Mason
99 Veils
In 2003 Al Jubouri returned to Baghdad two days after the Ba’ath Party fell from power. She established the Iraqi branch office of the East West Diwan Cultural Foundation, as well as a German language school for orphaned girls. During this time, she also published her fourth collection, 99 Veils, with Al Saqi; edited a special issue of Diwan Magazine on contemporary Iraqi art, The Language of the World; and co-produced the documentary film From Berlin to Baghdad, on the looting of the National Museum of Iraq during the U.S. led invasion.
In 2003, “99 Veil”, the fourth volume of her poetry, received the award for best poetry book of the year in Paris.
Diwan Magazine
East West Publishing was founded under the name Dar Al-Masar in Baghdad in 1989, with the mission to introduce works of international literature into the Iraqi literary scene.
The first publishing program included works by Samuel Beckett, Kazantzaki and Ali Abdel Ameer among others. In 1995 the publishing house was forced to stop its activities because of the economic embargo imposed on Iraq in 1990.
In 2004 it was reopened in Baghdad and Berlin joining forces with the West-Östlicher Diwan e.V., a Berlin-based non-profit cultural organization. Today you can find the publishing house under the name Dar Al-Masar and East West Publishing either on Haifa Street in Baghdad or on Al-Hamrah Street in Beirut.
The Death of Al Hallaj
In 1995 Al Jubouri’s translation of Herbert Mason’s The Death of Al Hallaj, a dramatic play about the martyrdom of the Sufi mystic, was published in Amman, Jordan.
The Body of the Texts
This is the Arabic translation of German poet, Joachim Sartorius.
A Dialogue of Divine Erotics: On the Poetry of Amal Al Jubouri
In 2007, the Iraqi critic and poet Mohammed Saber Obaid published in Beirut a book of criticism about Al Jubouri, A Dialogue of Divine Erotics: On the Poetry of Amal Al Jubouri, with a second edition appearing in Damascus in 2011.
Annemarie Schimmel
In 2000, Amal founded the only Arabic-German poetry magazine, Diwan and translated Annemarie Schimmel, a major German poet, into Arabic. Other noted German poets she translated were Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Joachim Sartorius.
Diwan - The Language of the World, 2004
This edition of the Diwan Magazine contains an edited version of the first German documentary on contemporary Iraqi art, The Language of the World