Story: Hasib Kyali
Drawn by: Hijazi
Wafa is a small, sweet nightingale whose feathers are light brown. Wafa learned to sing from his parents, who are renowned musicians with a famous reputation. Their singing spread throughout the land and beyond.
There were a few difficulties in translating this on account of Arabic being crazy. But the art is amazing. The oud-tree is awesome. The next two pages have a lot of text so it's going to take me a while to translate them, but hopefully it will be soon.
Wafa and his parents and grandparents were born in a beautiful grove on the sea shore. All the people, even those in far-off lands, knew that this grove was the most beautiful grove in the world. Its soil was so fertile that orange, lemon, tangerine, olive and pomegranate trees were very plentiful and were crowded, tangled and wrapped together, as if it were a forest of hugging trees.
The beauty and charm of this grove stretched to its borders, which were made up of Damascus roses, jujubes, windflowers, jasmine, lilies and Arabian jasmine.
I didn't expect to have to do research on botanical terms in Arabic going into this. The "Damascus rose" is something that I got from Wikipedia when I clicked on the English version of the Arabic entry of the actual words in the story ("الورد الجوري"). It is apparently a cross breed of different kinds of roses and it looks pinker than a normal one. Jujubes (not the candy) are some kind of fruit bearing tree. You'll also notice that there are two kinds of jasmine. I debated whether or not to leave off one of them, but in the end I decided to translate it like it was written. Both of the entries ("ياسمين") and ("الفل") came up with "Jasmine" in google translate, but Hans Wehr's dictionary distinguished the two as being jasmine and Arabian jasmine. What the actual difference is, I have no idea.
Also, the last line of the first paragraph was a bitch to translate. The best I could come up with was "a forest of hugging trees." Part of the problem was that I couldn't find an entry for "متعانقه" in Hans Wehr or google. But the root of the word is all about hugging, so I went with that. I don't know if I am missing something or if the book has a misprint. If anyone else has a better translation, please let me know.
I can't wait to see what happens when an actual plot develops ;)
Wafa loved his grove very much and he would wake up every day with the first rays of dawn. A rose near by to his house called to him and said, "Wafa!"
Wafa replied, "Yes, my dear neighbor?"
The rose said, "Before anything... good morning!"
Wafa said, "Morning of roses!"
They both laughed. The rose said, "Wafa, sing a song for us."
So the nightingale said to her, "I'm ready, my sweet-smelling neighbor!"
And so Wafa's voice flowed out into the quiet dawn. It was delicate like the sun, affectionate like a mother's heart and sweet like the fountain water the thirsty drink from.
Most of his songs spoke of the beauty of his homeland and of its trees and flowers and Wafa's love for them.
Once, he sang this song:
Wow! That was a whole lot of translating and not a lot of plot development! I guess this is a children's story after all. There were some difficulties with this page concerning tense. Arabic has a weird way of starting a story (or page or sentence) with a general past tense marker (kaana, كان) and then writing everything else in present tense. This is to let the reader know that the story happened in the past, even though everything is written in the present tense. I chose to stick with the past because everything else I had written was past, and that's the way children stories in English usually are.
Let me explain the small joke in this page. The rose says "good morning" and Wafa replies with "morning of roses" and then they laugh. In Arabic, "good morning" is actually "morning of the good" (SbaaH al-khayr, صباح الخير), and the typical response to it is "morning of the light" (SbaaH an-noor, صباح النور ). However, there are many other options to this response, and they all differ in the adjective you use to describe the morning. One of the options is to say "Morning of roses" (SbaaH al-ward, صباح الورد). It's funny because he's talking to a rose. Hah.
In Arabic, stock phrases, especially greetings, usually have a reply and the reply is usually "better" than the original. There is a lot of "one-upping" involved in greetings and compliments in Arabic. For example, another simple way of answering "morning of the good" is to pluralize "good" so it becomes "morning of the goods" (SbaaH al-khayraat, صباح الخيرات). Another example is that the response to "hello" (marhaba, مرحبا) can simply be "two hellos" (marhabteyn, مرحبتين).
Sorry that this page ended so suddenly. It's a cliffhanger for sure. I swear I'll post the next page soon so you can see the song he once sung. Let me tell you, it is awesome.
Oh, most beautiful homeland!
Oh, my sweet grove!
What do I love in you the most?
Your charming hedges,
or pomegranate blossoms,
or the blueness of the branches
in the olive tree,
or the sprout of the lemons,
or your sweet smell?
Do I love you, oh homeland?
All right! I was hoping that the song had something to do with the picture, but no luck. Let's not worry about my various nitpicking problems I had with the translating, let's look at the AWESOME PICTURE. Oh my God, click on the picture to see a full sized one. Do it. I'll wait.
Back? LOOK AT ALL THE THINGS IN THAT TREE YOU GUYS.
From left to right, we see:
1. A bird farming grains. IN A TREE. Awesome.
2. A bird, I am presuming Wafa, singing onstage. Given all the description of his voice filling the dawn, etc, etc, I don't know why he needs a microphone inside of an enclosed room.
3. A bird holding a wrench bigger than himself near a factory that is spewing leaves from its smokestacks. This begs the question: is he working in the factory or did he build the factory?
4. A bird painting a picture of a heart-flower. Is he an abstract artist? Is this some metaphor for how much he loves flowers? I fear we'll never know.
5. A bird being taught by another bird. Look at the pile of books on that desk. Can he even see past them? And what is he even learning? The board has nothing written on it. Unless the teacher-bird is saying "This is a chalkboard." But then why so many books? I need to lie down.
6. A bird sitting on eggs in a nest.
7. A bird marching by himself, in an empty corner, with a massive flag depicting a bird on top of a giant flower with a sun and a crescent moon surrounding him. Oh, banal forms of patriotism.
So, that's seven things. One of them, birds actually do.
Thanks for tuning in. Spoiler alert: the plot starts on the next page.
The crows were jealous of the nightingale's grove, so the black flocks attacked it and drove the nightingales from their homes, including Wafa and his family. The crows pecked some on the head and they died in the grove, while others sustained serious injuries. As for the remaining ones, they fled and wandered about aimlessly, homeless in every way, without sanctuary.
Finally something happens and it is just awful. I had trouble with the translation (when don't I?) and I'm not sure if I got everything right. Still, close enough I suppose. If it sounds wonky it's because I am trying to keep as close to the translation as possible but still have semi-proper grammar.
Wafa and his family took refuge in a nearby grove that relatives of the family lived in. His relatives met them very well, made room for them and invited them to live there. But they remained sad because they were far from their grove and their home.
One of the roses in the new grove heard about the arrival of Wafa and his family. She whispered in the ear of her neighbor, "Do you know who is staying in our grove?"
The second rose looked at the apricot tree, which had Wafa perched on one of its branches. She said quizzically, "Isn't he the one perched on the branch of the apricot tree not far from here?"
The first rose said, "Yeah, that's him."
The second said, "But he seems sad."
The first said, "How can he not be sad when the crows drove him and his family and everyone living in their grove from their homes!"
Oh snapdragon. Poor Wafa and his family. There is only one page left, so I am wondering how this story is going to resolve. So far it's been pretty depressing. Still, I bought these because the art is so wonderful. The story is just a bonus at this point. Check out that badass crow-tree! As an aside, there are approximately one million crows living right outside the window of my new apartment right now, so I am a little prejudiced right now. God I hope Wafa kills them all. But given the title of the book and the very small amount of text on the last page, I doubt that will happen.
The second rose said, "Let's ask him to sing, perhaps it will console him and make us feel better."
The first rose called to him, "Wafa!"
Wafa replied with a sad voice, "What do you need, O neighbor?"
The first rose said hopefully, "Sing for us a song."
Wafa sighed and said with a sob in his voice, "I don't sing unless I'm in my grove. I don't sing unless it's to my grove!"
Fin. Wow. I must admit, I went into this last page thinking he would sing a song, the roses would applaud and the lesson would be something along the line of "home is where the heart is." I didn't see this for what it is, a commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, until I translated the very last line. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, this was published in Lebanon in the early 80's. Still, I had it in my mind that children's books don't hold such overt political messages, but I was clearly wrong.