I agree with you, Mr. Share, about Daisy Fried's interview,
and with your comment about Fady Joudah.

Darwish's narrative/documentary (Memory for Forgetfulness) remains one of the most powerful apprehensions of the brutality of a homeland under siege. Israelis? Palestinians? PLO? Western Powers? Whatever. In that book. One man. A cigarette. Holding it together in the nerve-shattering chaos of nothing holding together. Reminds me of Semezdin Mehmedinovic's extraordinary Sarajevo Blues--a world under siege by, who else, thugs. Anyway, much love in memory of this fine man.

To You Mahmood:

He Had his words
tied in a ribbon;
they came to his life
and cut the wrapping.

Words were left
on the sidewalk of destiny
swept by the bustling wind
like autumn leaves.

For what he said
in what he believed,
was an agony,
but he was too strong with his afflictions.

He wrote his own fate
with his own words,
and his shadow was the reflection
of his own body.

The try to slash his own words,
but they couldn't slaughter his spirit
for his spirit is free,
and his words are "verse libre."

Sam Kuriashi
Chicago, Illinois, U.SA.