by Jazra Khaleed translated from the Greek by Jason Rigas
10.
now you’re tweeting the coast guard’s sinking ships + elytis your aegean stinks like greece
a neverending tragedy in
o amaranth sea I yearn to hear your whispers
how many dead bodies get you the nobel
news: turks insist that coast guard attempting to divert migrants in the aegean
replying to @primeministergr let’s not forget how many people drowned in the aegean because of when you said that there are no borders at sea not to mention how many people got stuck here even though they wanted to get to europe
basking in the locals’ genuine hospitality
frontex documents confirm what refugees have long since claimed: the coast guard fired at boats carrying #refugeesgr
if we just let a bunch of sharks loose in the aegean they’d sink their boats for sure
die maggots die
the local hospitality and the breathtaking scenery are what memories are made of
if there’s love in your heart you can only give love #refugeesgr
RevolvingDoors, a poem in 36 parts, follows, with some deviations, the structure of Nanni Balestrini’s Blackout (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2001).
Barricade is publishing the first 16 poems in the series on our web forum Ramparts throughout the month of August; the full 36-poem sequence will be available as a print zine in September 2024.
Revolving Doors will be also be featured in THE LIGHT THAT BURNS US, an expanded anthology of Khaleed’s work forthcoming from World Poetry Books on October 10. Pre-order at worldpoetrybooks.com.
Below is a list of sources used in this cut-up and the pattern of their usage.
A) Odysseas Elytis, The first sun (Athens: Ikaros, 1996).
B) Giorgos Stamatopoulos, “Aegean sea,” www.efsyn.gr, 2 February 2020; Heinrich Hall, “Winds blowing,” www.kathimerini.gr, 30 June 2018; “The islands of the Northwestern Aegean,” www.ελληνικανησια.com; Peris Halatsis “Aegean: the beauty of the islands on the non profit line,” www.now24.gr; “Eastern Aegean,” www.athinorama.gr; “Maritime tourism,” www.aegeanislands.gr; “Poetry about the Aegean,” www.aegeanislands.gr
C) Articles from www.kathimerini.gr. Giannis Souliotis, “Patrols block off Aegean,” 6 May 2020; Giannis Souliotis “Concerns of migrants ‘disembarking’ on the islands,” 14 April 2020; Giannis Souliotis, “Migrant crisis: Interceptions curtailing entries,” 14 March 2020; Giannis Souliotis, “Turkish border patrol announces it will ban migrants from attempting to cross the Aegean,” 7 March 2020; Giannis Souliotis, “A culture of ‘aggressive surveillance’ in the Coast Guard,” 4 March 2020; Giannis Souliotis, “As of yesterday, Coast Guard and Police on alert,” 29 February 2020; Giannis Souliotis, “Migrants causing chaos on the islands,” 11 August 2015; Giorgos S. Bourdaras, “Coast Guard apologizes for Farmakonisi,” 30 January 2014; Giannis Elafros, “Shocking accounts from refugees regarding Farmakonisi,” 24 January 2014.
D) Tweets posted between 1 March 2015 and 1 September 2018 with the keywords “Aegean” and “immigrants.”
E) All poems by Arab-American poets published in Teflon. Zeina Alsous, “In Paris, an Arab Girl Enters the Museum,” no. 24, 2021, p. 61. Safia Elhillo, “Application for the Position of Abdelhalim Hafez’s Girl”, no. 22, 2020, p. 92; Hala Alyan, “Maktoub,” no. 14, 2016, pp. 86-87; Safia Elhillo, “Vocabulary,” ibid., p. 97; Lisa Suhair Majaj, “Reunion,” no. 10, 2014, p. 89; Lisa Suhair Majaj, “Shards,” ibid., pp. 92-93; Lisa Suhair Majaj, “Olive Trees,” ibid., pp. 92-93; Lisa Suhair Majaj, “This Is Not a Massacre,” ibid., p. 96; Lisa Suhair Majaj, “Arguments,” ibid., p. 97; Lisa Suhair Majaj, “These Words,” ibid., pp. 98-99; Lisa Suhair Majaj, “The Coffin Maker Speaks,” ibid., pp. 100-101; Lisa Suhair Majaj, “Practicing Loving Kindness,” ibid., pp.102-103; Mohja Kahf, “Voyager Dust,” no. 9, 2013, p. 9; Mohja Kahf, “The Cherries,” ibid., pp. 10-12; Mohja Kahf, “The Fires Have Begun,” ibid., p. 15; Mohja Kahf, “The Marvelous Women” ibid., pp. 20-21; Mohja Kahf, “Men Kill Me,” ibid., p. 24; Suheir Hammad, “First Writing Since,” no. 8, 2013, p. 8; Suheir Hammad, “Dead Woman,” ibid., p.10; Suheir Hammad, “Children of Stone,” ibid., p. 15; Suheir Hammad, “Broken and Beirut,” ibid., pp. 16-17; Hind Shoufani, “Headlines,” no. 6, 2012, pp. 92-93.
F) Tweets posted between 1 March 2015 and 1 September 2018 with the keywords “Syria” and “immigrants.”
G) Various, Nearly invisible: the illegalization of labor as official immigration policy, Athens: Antifa Scripta, 2013.
Greece’s Aegean Sea, dotted with islands, is one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations. It is also a maritime mass grave. Over the last two decades, thousands of migrants have drowned attempting to sail across the border into Greece. Indeed, it is the Greek state, always attuned to geopolitical fluctuations and largely motivated by European Union funding, that controls the flow of migration, often opening up the border, ever so slightly, before tightly sealing it again.
“Pushbacks” are common. This is when the Hellenic Coast Guard, or groups of non-state actors who patrol the Aegean, intercept migrant boats approaching island beaches, often sinking them. Any migrant who does manage to reach the shores of Greece is incarcerated, forced to live in appalling conditions—in what are, essentially, concentration camps—beaten, and used as cheap labor. Every year, Greece receives hundreds of millions of Euros from the European Union for the express purpose of continued border surveillance and migrant-camp upkeep. These funds are dispersed throughout Greece and trickle down into every corner of Greek society, from the military, to police, to camp staff and provisioners, to local employers who exploit migrant labor.
In the 1990s, the Eastern Bloc collapsed and Greece became a host country for migrants, mostly from within Europe. Today, most of the migrants who arrive in Greece are from the Middle East and Africa. Since then, however, Greece has maintained a “revolving door” policy toward migration, a policy that dictates that migrants are illegal and thus devalues their labor. Migrants in Greece are deliberately left undocumented and work for meager wages in dehumanizing workplaces until they are eventually rounded up by police, beaten, incarcerated, and deported. Many deportees return, and the process of illegalization and exploitation begins anew.
This is what these poems are about. They are from a longer piece of mine titled Revolving Doors, a cut-up in which excerpts from poems, tweets, journalistic articles, and an antifascist publication about the illegalization of migrant labor are spliced together, following a specific sequence/structure that is outlined at the end, alongside a list of the texts that were used for the construction of the work. The verses sometimes complement and sometimes contradict one another. They sometimes embrace and sometimes push back against one another. Without warning, the prosodic flow is halted, exposing the violence of Greek state policy and the culpability of Greek society.
As a whole, Revolving Doors consists of thirty-six poems of fifteen lines each. The first sixteen are presented here in Barricade’s Ramparts web forum.* The remaining twenty poems are about migrant revolts in the camps, a proud multiethnic proletariat, antifascist demonstrations, and the actions of locals and migrants alike against the state and the bosses:
without a moment’s notice the new proletarian barbarians might appear at the city’s main gate
after a long, terrible, historic travail
creating something entirely novel and unpredictable
because the future, from the working class point of view, does not exist
Revolving Doors is also featured in my 2020 book But Is This Poetry?, published in Greece by Teflon Press. The English translation will be included in The Light That Burns Us, another book of my poems that will be published in November 2024 by World Poetry Books. I am grateful to Jason Rigas for his translation and to Barricade for publishing the English version.
Jazra Khaleed June 2024
translated from the Greek by Jason Rigas
*The first 16 poems will be published serially on Ramparts throughout the month of August; the complete 36-poem sequence will be available as a print zine in September 2024.
INFECTIOUS INSANITY AMONG TODAY’S MEN AND WOMEN SORROWFREE FARMERS ENTWINE THEMSELVES WITH FARM CATTLE AND SERFWIVES NEPOTISM AND INBREEDING GO HAND IN HAND BEYOND JUST THE IMPERIAL POLICE RECRUITING OFFICERS AND MARINE MINISTERS AND CORVETTE CAPTAINS AND FIELD MARSHALS AND FIELD MISTRESSES REQUISITIONED FROM THE RESERVES MISERABLE SOULS DIG THEIR OWN GRAVES ALL FOR A GUN SALUTE AND LULLABY SLEEP AND HUNGER PREVAIL THE MONARCH LOSES TRACK OF TIME AND IS OVERRUN BY HIS OWN COURT THE MANSIONS AND PALACES ARE PERFORATED THE VATICAN FALTERS THE CHINESE EMPEROR’S DAUGHTERS SMUGGLE THEIR VIRGINITY OUT OF THE EMPEROR’S GROUNDS ACCOMPANIED BY SILK BUTTERFLIES THE STRONGEST TREES BREAK FREE FROM THE UNDERGROWTH SWELLS OF CLOUDS BILLOW SKYWARD THE SEA SWALLOWS THE CONTINENTS WHILE BIRDS NAVIGATE THE HORIZON LINE THE SKIFFS ARE OVERTAKEN BY A STORM THAT FORCES THEM OFF THEIR SMUGGLING ROUTES THE QUARTERDECKS ARE CLEARED OF SAILORS AND LOADED WITH PIGS AND FAIR MAIDENS THE CHILDREN OF THE NATIVES ARE CAST OUT AND SKINNED ON THE STERN WITH THE BIRDS AND FISH THEIR FATHERS GET THEIR HEADS CAVED IN IF THEY ARE TOO STUPID OR TOO CLEVER A BLOODBATH SOUNDS BEST AT SEA HER MAJESTY COULD SHARPEN A KNIFE AND START SOME SHIT BREWING POISON AND TRANSMOGRIFYING A LIFE THE MOATS ARE OVERFLOWING WITH COLD SWEAT PESSIMISM REIGNS FROM THE STABLES ALL THE WAY TO THE HAY BALES MECHANICAL WARFARE DISRUPTS FRIENDS AND FOES ALIKE NOW JUST ABOUT ANYONE CAN GO TO WAR ON A WILD HORSE AND DEFEAT A WHOLE REGIMENT ALL TO BE STABBED IN THE BACK BY A CHAPLAIN ANYONE CAN TAKE UP THE CROSS EVEN JESUS STICKS HIMSELF UP THERE AND PEACES OUT ACROSS THE SKY THE TITANIC WAS PACKED WITH REFUGEES THE ARISTOCRATS’ CHILDREN FLOATED TOPSIDE BUT THEIR FORTUNES SANK THE WEARIEST WIDOWS FOUND ROOM IN THE LIFEBOATS TRAVELLERS CHECKS AND LAND DEEDS STICKING OUT OF THEIR TITS PROUD FRIGATES LAY SIDEWAYS ON THE WAVES LEASE ME A CESSPOOL IN DENMARK SINCE THAT’S WHERE YOU WANT ME TO LIVE THE QUEEN HAS YET TO LEAVE HER OWN HEIR SO MUCH AS A BARREL OF SAND MERCENARIES AND DAY LABORERS CROSS THE CHANNEL FEELINGS OF SOLIDARITY AND SUB-ZERO TEMPERATURES MASQUERADES AND TIRADES CRYING TRAITORS ON THE ROYAL STAGE THIS TIME WE’LL COMPETE ON BEAUTY AND WIT OR RAW POWER AND PERVERSITY I SHALL OUTDO ALL MY KIND AND FORCE THEM TO LIVE A HUMBLE AND RELIGIOUS LIFE I’M CAUGHT BETWEEN TWO MEN WITH BAD BREATH THERE IS A DEVILISH AURA AROUND ME WHIRRING AND BAROQUE IN THE BACKGROUND WE DRANK WINE WITH THE SAME URGENCY THAT SOBER PEOPLE DRINK WATER UNTIL I FELT PURSUED BY MY OWN PAST IT WON’T BE THE COMMON MAN’S CENTURY ANYWAY SO GET OUT OF THE WAY AND DON’T RUN OUT INTO THE FIELDS RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF HARVEST
In speaking of a “documentary nakba,” we are likewise speaking of the physical, social, political and cultural ills that accrue from a sustained campaign of theft and destruction by Israeli belligerents of records . . .
João Melo’s poem “Urgent: News of the Death of Hiba Abu Nada” illuminates that moment between the act and the narration of the act, in which forces conspire to distort, deny, and erase; to establish discursive control. As archivists, scholars of the archive, we know that problem well. Historically, the destruction of records, the theft of cultural property, the denigration of languages, memory practices and epistemologies have been key tools of colonialism, and we are seeing those same tactics in use in Palestine today. Accompanying the massacres of Palestinians, the cultural dimension of genocide is also at work: European settlers adopt nativized names, they speak a resurrected language in place of their European tongues, and as the texts listed in this syllabus attest, they steal, obfuscate, and destroy the archives that tell the history of Palestine and its people.
When Constantin Zurayk used the term “nakba” to describe the Zionist horrors of 1948, he was speaking expansively of a catastrophe that was physical, social, political, and cultural. 2 In speaking of a “documentary nakba,” we are likewise speaking of the physical, social, political and cultural ills that accrue from a sustained campaign of theft and destruction by Israeli belligerents of records, with all their historical and juridical force, and other artifacts of culture with all of their affordances.
It is with an understanding of the powerful work that culture does in the project of genocide that we offer a syllabus for the study of the Palestinian archive under Zionist aggression. Scholars, students, activists, archivists, and others are meeting to study these texts together between February and May 2024. We study the Palestinian archive to perpetuate it: Zionist ambitions will not be fully realized if the knowledge in these texts—the knowledge of what has been lost, documented in these texts—is repeated from one of us to another.
This is no substitute for action against the bloodshed, but the texts listed here inform such action and impel us to it.
The basis of unity for our reading group is the 2023 Statement on Gaza issued by Librarians and Archivists for Palestine, and endorsed by the Middle East Librarians Association and other organizations. The readings have been selected from the Librarians and Archivists with Palestine archive syllabus, Under Pressure: Representation, Information, and The Archive in Palestine (n.d.) and the annotated bibliography, On the Systematic Destruction, Plunder, Theft and Erasure of Palestinian Archives, Libraries & Cultural Heritage by the Israeli State through its National Archives, Library, Heritage, Military & Educational Systems (January 2, 2024) compiled by Dr. Jamila J. Ghaddar, Mariam Kariam, and Lisa Nussey for the International Council on Archives.
The texts in our syllabus trace the physical, discursive, and epistemological violence suffered by the Palestinians and their documentary heritage. Taken together, they reveal the relationships between the archive, the land, and the supremacist settler colonial logic that have bloodied our screens since 8th October 2023, and Western hands since the inception of Zionism in 19th century Europe and the founding of the Zionist state in 1948.
With this reading group, we invite you to:
read, study, cite and teach these texts
if approaching this syllabus without historical or political context, to read the texts in consultation with Salman H. Abu-Sitta’s Atlas of Palestine or alongside Richard Becker’s Palestine, Israel, and the U.S. Empire, or Ilan Pappé’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
to develop discussion prompts for each text, and share them here
and to keep reading, studying, citing and teaching these texts until liberation is achieved.
Barricade is working in collaboration with Four Way Reviewto uplift Palestinian voices and projects in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. View the rest of our Solidarity with Palestine series here and Four Way Review‘s publication here. View more details on the series and our call for contributions here.
Barricade is pleased to announce that Four Way Review‘s monthly special, featuring submissions originally published on Ramparts, has been released online!
We’d like to thank everyone who submitted to our call and Four Way Review for collaborating with us. Watch this space in the coming days for more contributions to the series.
Submissions for our Solidarity with Palestine series will continue to be accepted on a rolling basis, with publication resuming in the fall. Send all submissions and inquiries to submissions@barricadejournal.org. See more details here.
