Live Encounters Arab Women Poets & Writers April 2024.
Time machine, poems by Saha Anwar.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
Time machine
Images of the past collide
Strange worlds are being born
Lead me to my destiny.
The time machine takes me
From now on to other lives
Crashed by air waves
Who are you, alien? I asked?
Your companion: she said.
Now I am free
I fled from me
I am resurrected.
No one looks like himself
This morning
I am not me
My body is unable to contain me.
A sun like a snake that writhes every night
Sleeps in the embrace of a new sky.
A moon that does not like fullness;
Except after sleeping with star prostitutes.
How often does my sky change
I do not look like me.
The coffee
Oh coffee
Try to remember me
I am the empty woman
The one who uprooted patience from her skin.
Oh coffee
Do you know how long hope died?
Since they left me a sleeping, dying dream
A blind cat meows in my head
And butterflies trapped behind a broken mirror
Waiting for the glow.
© Sahar Anwar
Sohar Anwar is an Egyptian poet and writer who holds a doctorate in business administration. She began writing poetry many years ago, and has had many articles, poems, and short stories published in many newspapers, forums, and websites since 2003. “Without a Trace of Me” is considered her first collection of poetry. In 2023, she published her book “Women in the Business World… Between Finance and Empowerment.”
Translation by Dr. Salwa Gouda, an Egyptian literary translator, critic, and academic at the English Language and Literature Department at Ain-Shams University. She holds a PhD in English literature and criticism. She received her education at Ain-Shams University and California State University in San Bernardino. She has published several academic books, including “Lectures in English Poetry, and “Introduction to Modern Literary Criticism” and others. She has also contributed to the translation of “The Arab Encyclopedia for Pioneers,” which includes poets and their poetry, philosophers, historians, and men of letters, under the supervision of UNESCO. Additionally, her poetry translations have been published in various international magazines.