New World
interview

Libya’s Hope is My Hope
The Arab-American poet, Khaled Mattawa, tells what he has seen happening in the Libyan revolution and how it has inspired his personal and literary life–from working as an educator in America to bringing what he has to offer to the Libyan situation. His secret weapon? “I don’t have the cynicism and nonchalance that have taken root in the culture.”

by Madeleine Tanzi

Renowned Arab-American writer and leading literary translator, Khaled Mattawa is the author of four books of poetry and recipient of an Academy of American Poets Award, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and many other prizes coveted on the U.S. literary scene.  Drawn to the clarity and profound visceral impact of his expression, as well as his incessant desire to explore the value of historical roots in the day-to-day (“No, I haven’t outgrown my tongue. It’s a coat your mother gives you...”), Traces caught up with Dr. Mattawa, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Michigan, at a recent writers’ conference in Boston, to gain insight into a recurrent and motivating theme of much of his work: hope. As a U.S. citizen who hails from Benghazi, Libya, Mattawa offers his original, deeply personal, and timely perspective during a time of questioning “religious” and political alliances.
Your poem, “Now that We Have Tasted Hope,” published first in the Atlantic in 2011, ends with: “Now that we have tasted the hope, / This hard-earned crust, / We would sooner die than seek any other taste to life, / Any other way of being human.”Can you comment on your certainty that the people would never again compromise “being human,” which was inspiring your creativity at the time?
This poem is very political, written during the beginning of the Libyan revolution, the Arab Spring. In Benghazi, once that brutal 42-year regime had gone, hope was really being enacted: people were in the streets, they started civil organizations and a free press, they slept well, they were beside themselves with happiness. But the challenges came very quickly with the threat that perhaps the regime could come back and re-take the city. Yet we Libyans were so changed by this event, by the potential for hope, we couldn’t go back. It’s a poem that speaks to the aspirations of a people–much better to hope and die (and some did) than to live in wretchedness.

I understand you left Libya as a teenager. What did you envision for the future and how did it pan out?
Even at the age of 15, I felt that what the regime was doing to my life and to my family’s life was awful. What I wanted to do concerned moving back to Libya, working constructively maybe in business or architecture... But my stay in the U.S. as an exile forced me to read and think about identity and survival and what religion meant and if it’s possible to be a Muslim in the modern world–all these issues that are not work-related questions. I realized I could not go back to Libya, and after three years in college, I chose to focus on the humanities.

What made you choose poetry, specifically ?
When I finished my undergrad degrees in political science and economics, I decided to give writing poetry a chance because it seemed to bring everything together. I went on for advanced degrees in Creative Writing. During these decisive transition moments, poetry helped me read my past and to root myself by understanding my background; it prepared me to be a citizen or a person of the world.

So your origins have greatly influenced all your decisions and your poetry as well...
It is very clear that my life has been shaped by the dictatorship in Libya, by craziness, by madness. When you are an ant and there is a big stone in the way, you don’t whine about it, you just try to walk around it. That was how so many of us faced the regime.  When I think of all the things given to me, having Libya back, Libya without Gadhafi, may be the biggest gift. Regarding that poem you mentioned, I wanted a poem that would last, acknowledging all of my personal hopes and doubts as well as all of my hopes for Libya–but I also know human nature and that my Libyan people don’t have a tradition of democracy and they may not be the most tolerant people in the world. I didn’t want to write propaganda–just any kind of idiotic piece of commentary–but a poem that is true. That poem is something I must hold on to–if it’s no longer a hopeful situation, does that mean I wrote a bad poem?  Yet I still carry hope; I want my poem to remain true.

In addition to writing, you have been a political commentator for American media channels. How else have you been able to participate in enacting this hope you write about?
Well actually, we spent all of 2012 in Libya. My wife and I started an artist’s organization, and helped with an international poetry festival. We also started a cinema club and did a video art show in the old city. This is a country that has been robbed of culture; the cinema had been shut down for 30 years. The young people have been ill-educated, the institutions are floundering... I have no idea how people study with so many holidays–in a sixteen-week semester they only teach for six weeks. I teach English Language and Literature there. I asked how much I can assign to my grad students. The answer: almost nothing. Grad students in English, and they can’t even finish a book! But the machinery of education continues because they all want to get their undergraduate and masters’ degrees, as they’ll get extra pay from the government. It’s frustrating, and you wonder, ‘What can I do?’ Maybe my teaching there for a while can help things–if only because I don’t have the cynicism or the nonchalance that have taken root in the culture of the country.

Starting just with your students...
It makes a difference. This is the thing about hope. You begin small and it may end up affecting others. And when I get results, I become more hopeful. Looking at the big picture is harder, but there is no big picture when you don’t have small outcomes.

As a dual citizen going back and forth to the Middle East, how do you view the potential for dialogue?
I think the potential for dialogue is very important, but there is so much mutual suspicion revolving around political power plays and shifts. For example, Qatar is an autocratic society that just sent a poet to jail for critiquing the government. They were supportive of the Arab revolutions and then two years later they send someone to jail for critiquing! Such shifts are making an academic pro-democracy revolution into a religious sectarian revolution. The revolution was for democracy in which there is real freedom and religion is not used as a bludgeon to silence people. The Western governments want to figure out who’s likely to win, and what sort of deal we can cut with them. I don’t know what kind of dialogue is possible in this milieu.

Are there none of the eternals you’re exploring in your poetry, no justice?
I think the people want justice. Hope is work–it means moving toward a thing you think will affect the world. There’s a phrase that I heard from a mentor of mine, George Thoreau: “damaged by the million, healed one by one.” You can drop a bomb and kill ten thousand people but you can’t heal them collectively; you have to re-teach each one according to their needs. So hope is much harder than despair and destruction. How much time is needed to destroy a house?  It took them years to build it, and they have memories there, but it only takes minutes to bring it all down. You have to hope and keep working, and be small.

What does this mean for you?
Personally, I like details. I cannot rip myself out of details. So that keeps me small-minded–I can never really do a huge project. I feel things. For me, it’s all about being precise with the little things. Perhaps I can create an awareness of the responsibility that each one of us has. You can understand this in a work of art in which every little thing is taken care of, making it beautiful.  A microcosm of the small work of art and the infinites within it can help us to understand that our societies are like that. If we want our situation to be beautiful, then everything needs to be thought of; working with the small can affect the big picture.

Within this big picture, what is the inspiration for the poetry you’re writing now?
Right now I’m thinking a lot about history, Libya, mythology. I would like to do a book of small poems that suggests that the land has more to it and in it than meets the eye. In my other book, love is the eternal theme. I’m thinking about heartbreak and love and death. I’m looking at the phoenix as connected to this. The phoenix, burning to the end, to the last ember, is saying, “When is this going to be ash so I can begin again?” Maybe things have to get worse–the finest ash–before the phoenix rises again.