Ghada Al Atrash Janbey The Deeper Meaning of the Arabic Word "Ghurba" [May 15, 2009]
I have found that there are certain words in a language that are simply untranslatable. As I translate from Arabic to English, I have come across several of these words, one of which is the Arabic word ghurba. Ghurba is a derivative of the Arabic word for stranger, and it embodies the meaning of life as a stranger in a far-off land. In Arabic-English dictionaries, the word ghurba is explained with phrases, for the lack of one analogous word in English and its definition according to the Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic is: “absence from the homeland; separation from one’s native country, banishment, exile; life or place away from home.” It is also often translated as “Diaspora.” But it is much more than that. The word ghurba also carries an intense feeling along with it, a melancholic feeling of longing, of nostalgia, of homesickness and separation, of a severe patriotic yearning for a place where one’s heart was not only living, but also dancing to the beat of a father’s or a mother’s voice, to the words in grandmother’s tale, to a melody from a native instrument, to the pounding of feet stamping in a group dance, to a merchant’s voice shouting out the name of his merchandise in the streets of neighbourhoods, or simply, to a place where one’s heart danced to the silence of a homeland’s soil. It is important to make note of the fact that I am not only referring to one’s past, but also one’s past in a far-off land, in another culture, in which his/her present identity is foreign to his/her immediate surroundings. Perhaps one of the reasons the word ghurba does not have a counterpart in Western English is because Westerners (namely Americans and Canadians) have been fortunate to live in a wealthy land where it is only by choice or for pleasure that they leave their land and immigrate, and therefore the intense melancholy of uprooting and separation from one’s native homeland are not part of an average American’s experience. However, there is one exception that comes to mind, and it is that of a soldier. Indeed, soldiers fighting in a foreign land must understand and feel the most severe meaning of ghurba. They are ones whose hearts carry the weight of acute longing, and additionally, the anxiety of possibly of returning to their homeland in a coffin. I have chosen two poems to further illustrate, through poetic imagery, the meaning of ghurba. Many immigrants recite poetry as a form of therapy to soothe the pain of their ghurba. Poetry becomes a means of bringing closer their familiar homeland, and of escaping an estranged reality. The first poem is written by the Palestinian poet, Fadwa Tuqan. What is most ironic about this poem is that not only does it embody the intense feelings of her ghurba, but it also speaks of her native Palestine, a homeland that is no longer her own. Enough For Me It is enough for me to die on her earth Be buried in her to melt and vanish into her soil then sprout forth as a flower Played with by a child from my country. It is enough for me to remain in my country's embrace to be in her as close as a handful of dust a sprig of grass a flower. And, to end my article, I have chosen excerpts from a poem by the Lebanese poet Youssef Abdul Samad who immigrated to New York City in 1969, and whose longing for a mother and a motherland remarkably embodies the poignant meaning of ghurba. To My Mother Who left Me I lost your face, oh, mother. It has been my fate Since childhood to be lost. It is expatriation, Whose heart is harder than a rock. ... Take me back to the jewel of villages. Take me back to Ras El-Matan, my village, ... To where Our house Is about to be forgotten Behind its wide balcony To where I slept With tranquillity in the shade of a tall Buckthorn ... Take me to my lost village, Take me to the house of my mother Take me, Gently, like the shadow of a cloud, So that I would not Frighten The dreams of my mother. Take me to her tomb To wail near her, And sleep lightly on her breast. ... Take me To my paradise, To my village, To my lost paradise. ***