I’ve been reading a fair bit about the life of Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, after I came across an old book in my parents house, a book whose cover used to scare me when I was a child lol
I went into a bit of a rabbit hole about his work, legacy, and who illustrated that peculiar cover and its connection with the sad and striking poem House of Slaves.
Enjoy.
When I was a child, this book cover gave me nightmares. It was in my parents bookcase, and the illustration of the she-wolf was so terrifying that I never dared read the book.
I thought it was a book of spells. Close enough, it was a poetry collection by the Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab.
Born in 1924 in the village of Jaykur in Iraq, al-Sayyab is considered one of the most important contemporary Arab poets and one of the founders of Arab free-verse poetry.
The name of the collection translates to House of Slaves, which is also the name of a poem in the book. The poem was written in January 1963, London, two years before al-Sayyab’s death.
House of Slaves is a eulogy dedicated to his childhood home. In the poem, Al-Sayyab transforms his childhood home into a ruin, a reflection of his failing health and the struggles of his inner world.
This is not a romantic portrait of childhood, but an ode to a time and place that is both comforting and very painful.
Look at this last line:
“Oh house of slaves,
May life water you with rain filled skies,
Quenching my thirsty grave,
While the clouds kiss and weep for me.”
In this loose translation, we see how al-Sayyab brings together abundance and absence. Rain, clouds, water, all signs of life and renewal, are directed toward a grave.
The natural world continues to give, even as al-Sayyab is no longer part of it. When the clouds “kiss and weep,” it’s as if nature mourns him, yet carries on without him, as she does with all of us.
This brings me back to the cover that I found so disturbing. The illustration, I suspect, is the work of Mustafa al-Hallaj. The Palestinian-Syrian visual artist was a pioneer and considered an icon of contemporary Arab graphic arts.
A central theme in the work of Mustafa al-Hallaj is the continuity of Palestinian identity through myth, memory, and displacement.
He layered ancient mythologies, folklore, and collective memory with the lived reality of exile. Creating a visual language that feels timeless and unsettled.
The cover is an allegory for the poem, where the themes of both artists from exile, displacement, memory, history, politics, and the land, all sit in the same space.
It’s interesting to see this poem in a wider context. At the time Iraq was on the brink of upheaval, marked by political instability and rising tensions that would soon lead to the 1963 coup.
Even internationally, the Arab world was being reframed through a different lens. With the release of Lawrence of Arabia, it was cast as vast, heroic, cinematic, only existing through a western context.
Across the region, postcolonial optimism was giving way to uncertainty, as revolutions, wars, and competing ideologies reshaped the Arab world.
Fiction being published by Arab writers at the time explored how political promises that weren’t kept affected ordinary people many of whom were facing poverty, inequality, displacement.
This is what al-Sayyab was exploring, from a deeply emotional perspective. In House of Slaves he was using his childhood home, his exile, nostalgia, and his love for his nation, to express a regional sense of confusion, loss, and longing.
No matter what is happening socially, culturally, or politically, the land is ultimately a place of memory where the body returns to, a place of which we are from and are slaves to. This painting of Al-Sayyab by Jimaa Alaa illustrates this idea symbolically.
Many Arab artists have been influenced by al-Sayyab’s poetry and life, creating art dedicated to him. Here are a few that I like. Bader Chaker al-Sayyab by Marwan (1965).
Al-Sayyab’s portrait by Kareemu Sadoon
Sculpture of Al-Sayyab by Zaid Al Fekaiki
Al-Sayyab by Alaa Bashir
