Rambler's Notebook - Manchester / Amsterdam Poem by Yassin Adnan

I said, Goodbye, Manchester,
I leave at dawn.
The Ethiopian cab driver was kind
and understanding with me,
with my luggage and
my mood fragile as a cracked marble
and the cotton of my morning.
He proposed Quran, sweet
recitation by an unknown Egyptian
and the whole way called me akhi: brother
- Look, brother…
- You know, brother…
Of Moroccan coucous in the mosques of Amsterdam
he talked to me
(he'd lived there for four years)
of the Casablanca restaurant in Manchester
of the abandoned churches in this country
(What if the Muslims bought them, brother, and turned them into mosques?)
He was proud
of the Prophet's first exile
to his country.
I spoke the name Najashi and he beamed:
- Yes! Yes!
Delighted, he talked to me of his country, of
the history of the Abyssinians,
of Islam's might,
he seemed entranced as though the Message
were just come down,
as though he were in the vanguard
of the Companions with glad tidings.
- Did you pray the dawn prayer? he asked
then not waiting for an answer,
- I prayed, brother,
in the hotel lobby as I waited for you to come down.
I made him happy, a brother from Marrakesh,
and he drove contented
to the airport, the sweet
Egyptian voice reciting a verse from surat Maryam.

Then I departed for the heavenly fires,
I was alone and solitary,
crammed with my remnants,
light,
compelled
by boredom,
unsure amid the flowers, which to choose: The claims of fragrance?
The deceptive revelation of the cacti's silence?

I said:
Leave the cactus to chew at leisure on
the thorns of fragrance
and unfurl your breast to the wind,
to another wind,
and go.



In the station in Amsterdam
my old friend was waiting, a kuffeyah wound around his neck, sharp-featured as though he was just returned from a meeting with Guevara. To his home in the east of the city then to the café where the comrades would breathe slogans, cigarette smoke, and drink koffie verkeed. He explained: "wrong coffee"; the Belgians call it Russian Milk.
I was far from Russia amid the Bolsheviks of the East in this warm café in East Amsterdam
drinking the wrong coffee
in the wrong place.

No Amsterdam here:
Come to me Jacques Brel, Save me
merciful Port d'Amsterdam, O
port drowning between fair Holland's breasts, port moored
to the quay of song.
I took the number 22 bus and crossed Javastraat where the Arabs and Turks reclaimed the stolen names. Got off near the main station not far from the port
close by temptation, there
the light dazzles you, your eyes redden, a shiver runs through your soul and through your body, you cling to equilibrium. Should your gaze fall an Arab lost in the city's east dress your embarrassment in the glance of the startled explorer, as though you hadn't meant to, as thought it were pure chance, as though you were an innocent tourist led by sly curiosity to this garden of lust.
Love here boxed and the boxes see-through and glass. Here
far from my Leftist friend's apartment where the rats at night
prevent you walking
even to the bathroom,
far from the café of comrades where the slogans reek, have sleeves,
here
in Port d'Amsterdam
the sailors sing no longer, Jacques Brel. As for those who dance and rub their bellies against the women's: they aren't built like sailors, they speak other tongues, not that of your northern neighbours, as though they sailed in the small world's boxed flesh only to remain tied to the songline

then humbly you returned to your certainty,
said,
- My double, O
my bad companion who
leaves me when I stay
and tends my absence and the echo of my letters when I travel,
be kind to me and remind me of my names,
pack the ignomy and piety that inspired you in
your suitcase of iniquity,
and travel, gather up
the horses of delight, saddle them, send out
their fiery whinny down the trails and say,
Would you not the road was a white cloud?

Translation: Robin Moger