Live Encounters Arab Women Poets & Writers June 2026
Nothing left but cold ash, poems Zaynab Laouedj.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
Nothing left but cold ash
You who watched all this loss
who’s going to defuse the landmines of illusion?
Who’s going to dive into the dew
of mirrors that keep vanishing
until they pass out?
Who set up all this tiny blossom-dust
so that light slides down its back?
Shadows tangle with shadows.
We have no shadow, alive or dead.
Dead or alive, no shadow.
Faces and pupils flip inside out,
mutter out loud
the songs the grandmothers used to sing
back in the good old days
all tenderness and heartache.
What’s left for this earth to tell
to the children of some blurry future,
in a time when joy gets shoved back in its sheath
like a beaten sword?
We’re drowning in words worm-eaten from the inside.
We’re making alphabets with no spark in them
except cold ash.
And a life running from its own fate,
digging in forgotten corners,
hiding seeds and cuttings,
a language, a light, voices, features,
a memory that hasn’t gone skinny yet—
calling out: who’s going to say the prayer over us?
Someone was out there,
spinning in the empty sky.
No sound.
No echo.
No mirrors.
The Apple of Temptation
Adam
forgotten father,
seduced by exile,
stranger with no grave, no country
gather your dust, pack your bags.
Come back to where you sprouted.
This isn’t clay anymore.
This isn’t soil.
This isn’t air.
Even crazy isn’t crazy.
Eve, her wound naked,
drags your broken rib.
She carves into it the roar she’s been hiding
all longing and absence
stitches sea to sea,
and warns us: water will tempt you too.
Come back to where you came from.
If you ever really came.
Listen, my lord
paradise is still open
to its own people.
Ever since you left its gardens, its streams,
the dirt still smells like saffron,
the gravel is still pearl and ruby.
No one’s going to hold the past against you.
Your room is exactly as you left it.
And the apple of temptation?
Newton put it back on the branch.
And the devil who disobeyed God?
There he is, still bragging about embers and hellfire
but in the end, he ended up where he started:
in his ivory tower,
right in the middle of the angels of the Merciful.
Come home, Adam. Back to your first place.
You won’t find any sand,
or stones, or people there.
And you can grow
a little bigger every day.
And who knows?
Maybe the throne of God will take your side.
Maybe you’ll become light, swimming in light,
as if you’d always been a sun or a moon,
or a star too big for any sky,
no cloud big enough to hide you,
no fire hot enough to burn you.
Because you are the moon, the fire, the sun.
Don’t be afraid, Adam.
You’re almost there
like a throne in the highest heavens,
angels all around you,
and a few devils doing your dirty work
whenever an angel starts nagging you.
Between noise and dust
Between once and once upon a time,
and whatever could still be
light lost its compass.
The song wanders
in the hands of women who won’t break
tender, ready,
tired, drifting,
calm, wise,
carrying something that feels like fate,
watching
the sea get lost inside its own wave,
a sky wrapping itself in clouds like a shroud.
The cloud that left home, deep in the unknown,
waves the rags of everyone who’s gone.
In the eye of a splinter,
in the belly of a whale softer than any homeland
the wind throws its doors open
to a sky that’s given up on everything,
handing out its stars for free.
Two ghosts… two mountains… two shadows
in the forest of forgetting.
They lean out of emptiness.
They stand in front of the fire.
Volcano? Meteors?
Or just noise, dust, ash?
On the edge of wedding cries,
horses made of wood are dancing.
Straw sparrows.
A blur of dreaming butterflies.
Faces leaking into other faces,
moving in.
Borrowed features
measuring the rivers of time
stolen from their own time.
The silence that screams
strips the huddled ghosts
on a single strand of spider silk.
It sews a crumbling time with it.
And gloves for rusty hands.
Bells ring
at the door of the very first leaving.
They gather up the crumbs of speech.
Plains fold a dream
between the pages of a book no one ever opened.
We’re drowning in a dream thick with questions,
choked with symbols, encrypted messages.
Eyes stuck in meaninglessness.
And between once and once upon a time,
and whatever could still be
sickness moves in.
Who’s going to open the doors
and scrape the rust
off the hidden parts of the locks?
© Zaynab Laouedj
Dr Salwa Gouda is an accomplished Egyptian literary translator, critic, and academic affiliated with the English Language and Literature Department at Ain Shams University. Holding a PhD in English literature and criticism, Dr. Gouda pursued her education at both Ain Shams University and California State University, San Bernardino. She has authored several academic works, including Lectures in English Poetry and Introduction to Modern Literary Criticism, among others. Dr. Gouda also played a significant role in translating The Arab Encyclopedia for Pioneers, a comprehensive project featuring poets, philosophers, historians, and literary figures, conducted under the auspices of UNESCO. Recently, her poetry translations have been featured in a poetry anthology published by Alien Buddha Press in Arizona, USA. Her work has also appeared in numerous international literary magazines, further solidifying her contributions to the field of literary translation and criticism.
Zaynab Laouedj is one of the distinguished voices in Algerian poetry. She earned her master’s degree in Damascus in 1985 and later obtained her Doctorate of State in 1990. She taught as a professor at the Institute of Arabic Literature at the University of Algiers before moving in 1994 to teach at the University of Paris VIII.