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This week we return to the Druze village of Maghar in the upper Galilee, with the poetry of Salman Masalha. He was born there in 1953, three years after his fellow villager, the poet Naim Araidi, featured in our October 13 podcast. Host Marcela Sulak reads Masalha’s elemental sequence of poems on Water, Fire, Earth, and the Ark.

“Fire is a young body.
The winds of doubt will not touch it.
It refuses to dress in anything
but black garments.
It exists since the beginning
on the fruit of the waters.”

Masalha has been living in Jerusalem since 1972, where he taught Arabic language (at Hebrew University) and served as co-editor of the Concordance of Early Arabic Poetry. Marcela also reads an excerpt from an essay about his adopted city of Jerusalem, called “The City of the Walking Flower.”

Texts:
“Water,” “Fire,” “Earth,” “The Ark” – The Virginia Quarterly

Music written by Salman Masalha:
Kamilya Jubran – Lafz
Marwan Abado Ensemble – Ya Sahib Al Dann

Producer: Laragh Widdess
Technical producer: Alex Benish