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“Yesterday I dreamt how the Nile rolled over its banks
and I saw the Delta inscribed upon the waters.
As I was still looking for other estuaries I suddenly beheld
interpretations on my palms
and between furrow and furrow
a white line of snow stood out
and the Delta was trampled by the running.”

Host Marcela Sulak reads an excerpt from the poem “We’re Children of Atlantis,” by Baghdad-born poet Amira Hess. Its allusions to Noah’s ark are fitting for the immanent season of rain, as well as for the parsha of Noah that was recently read in synagogue.

Hess, not to be confused with journalist Amira Hass, was born in Baghdad, Iraq, and arrived in Israel in 1951, first living in an immigrant transit camp, and then moving to Jerusalem, where she still lives today.

Her translator, Ammiel Alcalay, says of her poetry that it is often written in an almost hallucinatory language of the Prophets, but the demons that have come to inhabit their figures of speech reflect and refract other realities, like in a hall of mirrors. Sudden shifts in tone cut across thousands of years.

Text:
Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing. Edited by Ammiel Alcalay, City Lights, 1996.

Music:
Toshiro Mayuzumi – Abraham, The Alliance with God
Tarabband – Baghdad Choby (Live)
Ramin Djawadi – House Of Black And White

Producer: Laragh Widdess
Technical producer: Alex Benish