HUSSEIN HABASCH

 

 

I Want To Travel To Tirana!

 

I want to travel to Tirana,

The magician city that blazes in my imagination for thirty years

and I have not delighted myself in seeing her yet!

I want to go there to follow the traces of that marvelous poet that I came across her by chance in a fast train forty dreams ago from now and fifty pains in the heart since then!

I want to stroll in the parks where she strolls, to walk down in the streets where she walks, to sit in the coffee shops where she sits, and to get drunk in the bars where she does so.

I want to know the markets where she wanders, the shops she buys from, the clubs where she works out, the libraries where she reads.

I want to get to know the routes to her house, the trees that casts their shadow on her alley, the fence that encloses her garden, and the flowers that lead me to the traces of her footsteps.

I want to enter her house that I drew in my imagination stone after stone and corner after corner.

I want to come in from everywhere!

Though the walls as swift as a magician wants to lay his destiny in the palms of her hands, from the ceiling with the image in the mind of an angel that descended from the sky intending to grant her with a moon or a star, from chimney like a sparrow shivers of the cold and demands for the warmth of her coat, from the door like a man seeks for her acceptance, though the window like a rainy cloud intends to make her hair wet,  through the balcony like the smell of basil intends to fragrance her mirror, also through a luminous path leads me to her heart!

I want to enter her kitchen to taste the delicious food she prepared with her blessed hands.

I want to go in her bathroom to smell her herbs, perfumes, powders and creams that she applies on her freckles and classy moles a mole after mole.

I want to come into her bedroom, to stretch in her bed and to wrap myself in the sheets that scent with her breaths. I want to open her wardrobe that smells of her sexy garments also!

I want to see her library and the books lined up there. I want to see her papers and the last poems she wrote. I want to see her vases and their young red roses. I want to contemplate in her garden and the yellow dandelion flowers, which coquette under the warmth of her sun. I want to see her swing, her rocking chair, her wooden table and the poems she drips on the grass like dew drops here and there.

I want to see the traces of her cigarettes, to press my lips against hers and to inhale the smoke straight from her lung.  I want to kiss her eyes and to whisper the yearning in her ears.

I want to look attentively at her from the highest hair on the tip of her head down to the last nail in her toe.

I want to lay her head on my knee and to cuddle the lobe of her ear.

I want to grab her fingers and apply the polish on her nails.

I want to comb her golden hair and to trim her eyebrows with the experience of an old gardener.

I want to line her eyes and to apply my “blood” as a lipstick on her lips.

I want to choose what she is wearing today, tomorrow and the day after as well.

I want to get on a fast train and to meet her by chance again forty dreams ago from now and fifty pains in the heart since then!

Yet, I will not let her go this time, and I will not get my heart wounded with the razors of losing her.

I will be a crazy guest by her craziness,

and a fully authorized citizen in her heart!

 

Translated By Azad Akkash

 

HUSSEIN HABASCH

 

HUSSEIN HABASCH is a poet from Afrin, Kurdistan, born in 1970. He currently lives in Bonn, Germany. His poems have been translated into English, German, Spanish, French, Persian, Uzbek, Albanian, Russian, Romanian, Italian, Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Polish, Slovenian, Lithuanian, Vietnamese, Nepali, Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Tajik, Bengali, Turkish, Berber (Amazigh), Bosnian, Portuguese, Hungarian, Chinese, Greek, Mandarin (the language of Taiwan), Tzotzil (the language of the Mayan peoples of Mexico), Dutch. His poetry has been published in more than 200 International Poetry Anthologies and his books include: Drowning in Roses, Fugitives across Evros River, Higher than Desire and more Delicious than the Gazelle's Flank, Delusions to Salim Barakat, A Flying Angel, No pasarán (in Spanish), Copaci Cu Chef (in Romanian), Dos Árboles (in Spanish), Tiempos de Guerra (in Spanish), Fever of Quince (in Kurdish), Peace for Afrin, Peace for Kurdistan (in English and Spanish), The Red Snow (in Chinese), Dead arguing in the corridors (in Arabic) Drunken trees (in Kurdish), Boredom of a tired statue (in Kurdish), Flor del Espinillo (in Spanish) A Rose for the Heart of Life, selected Poems (in English), Olvido (in Spanish), La harde de cerfs meurt de soif (in French), Jibîrkirin (in Kurdish), Los Kurdos Y Dios (in Spanish), A Rose for the Heart of Life (in English and Bengali) and Stones in Exile (in English). He has participated in many International Poetry Festivals including: Colombia, Nicaragua, France, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Germany, Romania, Lithuania, Morocco, Ecuador, El Salvador, Kosovo, Macedonia, Costa Rica, Slovenia, China, Taiwan, Cuba, Sweden, New York City, Sarajevo, Greece, Albania, Cyprus, Uruguay, India, Rockport (USA), Indonesia, Italy, Poland and Serbia. He has won several awards: The International Best Poet Prize 2016 awarded in China by the International Poetry Translation and Research Centre, the Journal of the World Poets Quarterly (Multilingual) and the Editorial Board of the Chinese Poetry International, the Great Kurdish Poet Hamid Bedirkhan Award, awarded by the General Union of Kurdish Writers and Journalists (2022), the International “Bosnian Stećak” Award for Poetry, awarded by the Bosnia and Herzegovina Writers Union (2022), the Bangladesh Kathak International Literary Prize, awarded at the World Thinkers’ and Writers’ Peace Meet in Calcutta, India (2024), he has also been rewarded with a honorific price at the Safi International Poetry Forum in Morocco (2024), he was invited as a featured international poet to read at Walt Whitman's birthplace in Huntington, New York, for the "Walking with Whitman" program (2025) and a special award and honor from the AFRIN Fine Arts Festival 2025 in Germany.