The Iraqi 'Gheera' comes directly from the classical Arabic 'ghayoor', I haven't heard it being used in other Arabic dialects, it stems from the same human feelings of 'pride' and 'honor' but it is also much more than that, perhaps the 'gheera' has its roots in the Beduoin-descendant importance of protecting the family, especially the women. a 'ghayoor' or an 'abu il gheera' is the proud, honorable William Wallace type of person.
The dilemma of translating 'gheera' came to me when I was trying to translate the following poem, I normally consider patriotic Iraqi songs hypocritical, but apparently, everything can be great if it's done well. and this performance have never failed to stir me, even the over-the-top, bullshitty parts, Hussam al-Rassam, currently Iraq's favorite singer, did an especially good job here, somehow I feel every word and actually the first two times it literally brought tears to my eyes on the 'children sleep on their empty stomaches' line, as you can see in the video, I was not the only one feeling this way, not to mention the way he lays down his issues with our Arab countries in a tone that conveys despair, pride, majesty, sadness all at the same time. It's almost flawless, except for the smiling bimbo at 3:30, but oh well.
This performance is actually a medley of three different 'mawaweel', in short a mawal is a small vocal performance of a poem Iraqi (and maybe Arab) singers perform before jumping headlong into a song, the mawal is usually painful and exquisitely worded, but the subject matter of the mawal and the song can be totally unrelated, for example, you can sing a mawal about the pain and suffering you feel when torn away from your country and then jump headlong into a song about stolen chickens.
Other things of note is that translation often fails to preserve the direct essence and brilliance of the mawal, especially if there is wordplay, for example the first verse which ends with 'dates', 'command' and 'pass us by' is in Iraqi-Arabic 'tamurna', 'timurna' and 'tumurna'. a wordplay often used in Iraqi mawaweel. I have tried however to convey its meaning to the best of my humble capability as someone who earns his bread by translation.
Enjoy it, it's really important.
Fair and well for those who our dates they eat
and we obey your wishes when us you command
for entirely the Basra leans when us you pass by
and Shatt al-Arab greets thee heartily...
May the Lord ails you, my country, O the cradle of civillizations...
I embrace you even if thou embrace the knives themselves....
For I wish to speak, and who is he who believes my fables...
and you, O beloved, bear the anecdotes of Sultans..
The Bread-maker, why do you give your neighbors
while your children sleep on empty stomaches?
And your walls are used but for the slogans, many are the
slogans, few are the walls...
and here you cry alone, and no one shares you tears...
For you need not a tear shed without honor (gheera)
When the horses broke into stride, you calmed their fears
and preserved them, their thrones, kings, and tribes.
Who has not quenched from Kirkuk's oil?
but who invites me on his table today?
I address he who drank Irbil's yoghurt
and he who ate the bread of Sowayra
and he who consumed Thi-Qar's masguf
and he who uttered but the single utterance
and I bemoan for Saladdin isn't present
nor is the Qaqa, nor is Ibn al-Mugheira!
O Sa'ad, do you see Rustam, at the doorstep?
On the Euphrates, his rank and file march
I address those who slept by Abu Nuwas
Lo! How the Tigris remains captive today!
O Ali! O Father of al-Hasan! Dulfiqar is sheathen, and of your
dome the cowardly chips a stone?
I remember when they clinged to my clothes
and yesterday when the peninsula preserved its pride
Yesterday, when my helmet rebound a thousand bullets
the Arab Gulf is my sea, and I didn't flee
I hold thee accountable for all that happened to me
and everyone's sin lies in the corner of his eyes
for I am Iraq, and my name shatters the heavens.
*The poet who wrote this, Samir Sabah, was imprisoned by Jordanian authorities shortly after its release, he was only released after human right organizations intervened, ironically, this concert was in Jordan.
47 comments:
"zeal" is a useful, though imperfect, translation of ghira.
The bimbo's eyes are crossed.
I can't understand arabic at all but I certainly could see why you found the "smiling bimbo" out of place.
i liked this post
3ashat eidak
Kid,
Thank you for the translation. I wanted to say something profound, but maybe this is a discussion for others. That is, Iraqis.
do you have allways to ruin our sadness by putting something unexpected and funny in your past.
I hope we will all sing this someday but for now we will enjoy hearing our brothers the (sadrists and badrists) singing "latmiya" while our brother the baathies singing " ya ga3 trabij kafoori" and we can't sing because it's for some reason 7aram. Thanks Iraqi konfused kid.
Well , I think the word ( Noble ) is much closer to Gheera . What do you think ?
thank you all for your suggestions, but i dont think any of them comes close.
zeal doesn't have any protective connotations, and 'noble' is simply a lineage characterization.
it describes a noble, zealous, chivalrous, fowl who is very protective of his chickens and who runs to the rescue of any neighbor.
I think that the expression " taking pride of ... " is close to the word Gheera.
Thanks
it describes a noble, zealous, chivalrous, fowl who is very protective of his chickens and who runs to the rescue of any neighbor.
Any nieghbor?
And is this a bit like the...er... neighborhood policeman?
*whispers softly* That sounds strangely familiar.
(Yes, yes, I know, I wasn't going to put in my 2 cents because I felt it was a personal issue for Iraqis, but I couldn't resist. Sorry.)
Actually, "noble" means much more than "mere lineage". Its like the epitome of all the characteristics that make someone good. Courage, strength, honor, justice, mercy...pretty much any trait you think desirable is included in a concept of someone who is the flower of mankind.
And, at least in the US, it very rarely has anything to do with lineage or whether you're related to an aristocrat or not.
Lynette in Minnesota,
After Allah-knows how many years of obsessing over Iraq like your own personal ant farm, isn't it time you got a life? The entire blogsphere reeks of your simple-minded, condescending, patronizing crap. Seriously, enough already.
The entire blogsphere reeks of your simple-minded, condescending, patronizing crap. Seriously, enough already. Anonymous
Don't waste your breath, Anonymous. I don't respond well to crass boors.
your own personal ant farm
lol! perfect!
your own personal ant farm
lol! perfect!
*sigh*
Indeed, and if the two Anonymous commenters had two little grey cells to rub together they might understand how insulting this is to others rather than me.
how insulting this is to others rather than me
something tells me more people are getting a good laugh out of it at your expense. maybe one of your poodles will come rescue you.
It's probably a good thing that Lynnette doesn't have any "Gheera" or she would feel aqward selling those blowjobs in the back of that small bar off route 35 between Barnum and Moose Lake.
something tells me more people are getting a good laugh out of it at your expense.
*shrug*
Whatever.
It's probably a good thing that Lynnette doesn't have any "Gheera" or she would feel aqward selling those blowjobs...
The opinions of anyone who hangs around with people who sling insults like this are not important to me.
ghira...something not really popluar in england for about one hundred years...
anyayw, interesting blog. peace
Gheera is used in Moroccan and Algerian Arabic , i can assure you .
It seems that Iraqi men lost their gheera after Saddam was overthrown.
THE RETURN OF AN IMAGE
The little boy upon the road,
His head bashed in the cobble,
Remains an image, and a goad
That it is worth the trouble
To strive against all forms of war--
My brethren did excite them
To rapturous folly, while the whore
May not so well requite them.
So she has urged them on to fight:
Today, as calcified
The soul is witness, but new light
Remembers what has died.
Now, nevermore will I forget
That sight that I have seen,
Macabre, red, and oozing yet
The bursting brains between.
It was engaged a kind of lark
As adventitious sold us,
But when the night has gotten dark
My memories but hold thus.
Sweet precious joy, the tarnished dream
Revokes, and I this load
Carry, as traipsing by my team
The dead child on the road.
This might help: موطني
The Iraqi with the most gheera was the one who riddled 3uday with bullets that made him impotent.
Algerian? that's really neat, they finally use one word we can actually understand.
i still remember the time when i met an Algerian reporter, we had to speak in English. It was a real shame.
Hey Kid,
My Arabic-English dictionary gives the following meanings for ghairah: Jealousy; zeal, fervor, earnest concern, vigilant care, solicitude; sense of honor, self-respect. Ghair has many meanings, but "other" seems to be a key concept. I have a feeling that ghairah thus has connotations of care for others, but not depending on the opinion of others, especially when contrasted with 3ir9', another synonym for honor. The meanings for 3ir9' are: honor, good repute; dignity. But the related 3ar9'a means: public performance, presentation, showing. I haven't tried to look it up, but I imagine 3ir9' is associated with the term "honor killings" (English translation). Thus ghairah is probably attributable to a person with self-contained nobility of character, while 3ir9' belongs to someone who is more concerned about how others think of him than actually being noble and personifying honor. Think Salahuddin vs. Saddam.
Aside from "Gheera," my opinion of the whole mawal (or rather the combining of the three mawaweel) was decidedly mixed. Part of that was probably the mixing -- three separate poems with three points of view, i.e., Iraqis addressing whom? in the first part, the poet addressing Iraq in the second, and Iraq apparently addressing Iraqis first and then other Arab countries. Perhaps I'm missing some of the metaphors and allusions too. Didn't find "the Qaqa" or Ibn al-Mugheira (a name from the same root as gheera?). I'm thinking "Rustam, at the doorstep" refers to Persians, but I wonder about "those who slept by (with?) Abu Nuwas," the poet.
A certain tone of patronizing whining comes through, especially in the third part, which also came through in one of Zeyad's posts, some time back, about the treatment of Iraqis at the Amman airport and the Jordanian border, a kind of "How can you treat me like this after all I've done for you?!" There is some, maybe a lot of, validity to the complaint, but I doubt that the shipment of discounted oil to Syria and Jordan was merely a magnanimous gesture of the Iraqi people. It was probably more a matter of compensating Jordan for the trouble it went through, during and after Saddam's Kuwaiti adventure, in not turning against him, and compensating Syria for its enabling him to avoid some of the limits on oil exports. And And I also don't understand the last several lines, which seem to be a rather bellicose claim that Saddam's war against Iran, or his occupation of Kuwait, or both, along with the outcome of that belligerence, somehow constituted a defense of the whole Arab nation (rather than his attempts to shore up his own power by using and abusing the Iraqi people).
Perhaps I've misunderstood a lot, or maybe the music and the singer make the words of the mawal irrelevant (haven't listened to it since my connection is very slow). Um Kulthoum could be singing, "Pick me up an extra large cheeseburger on your way back from the grocery store," and I might think the song was glorious if I didn't know what she was actually saying. On the other hand, it's often even more glorious when I understand what she's singing: "A3tani 7urriyati, a6lik yadaiya." (which Iraq may be singing to the U.S. soon)
i see 2 things, something representing sense of mind, and something representing pecking ordre, we must assume it is up to the individual iraqi to make his ethical picks.(i strangely dont think woman can be accused having gheera in iraq as i understand this story.)
Ofcourse it is again history and tradition that offers a concept of responsability but that you can share such emotion, would obligate you to a modern responsability.
common sense?
(btw i dont see how killing uday(..another anon) wouldn't have been better gheera, so i must assume indeed there are iraqi males with equal balls.)
'Lynette' gained some of my respect in this thread, but also lost a bit, like always , i must say ("kid") i had a laugh over the ant nest, but in 'her' reply over blowjobs 'she' shows gheera.
However i wonder how they come to hold such a strong impression of her all-usian mentality if facts are like that.
One probably thinks, at least we talk about it (not as insults).
I read somewhere that lynette's ip is some fort such and such sometimes. I recognise the style of the initiator of the rant, but i don't know who it is perhaps also "fort so and so"..
Would gheera involve an attitude over prostitution? then it is probably wrong as it concerns males, nothing anti iraqi, just some rule of thumb, dutch males also have major problems in their attitudes relating other man to woman, perhaps it used to be worse and happen more when we did not yet try to emancipate ourselves.
Oops! That shoulda been "A36ani 7urriyati, a6liq yadaiya." I should be more careful in trying to use an English/Roman alphanumeric shorthand transliteration of a language I studied only a little, 40 years ago.
'Lynette' gained some of my respect in this thread,
Why, thank you, Onix.
but also lost a bit, like always
Sorry to hear that.
I read somewhere that lynette's ip is some fort such and such sometimes.
I can't believe anyone would find me, personally that is, that interesting to talk about. *shrug* But the Kid knows my IP and he knows it isn't...er..."fort such and such". :)
I recognise the style of the initiator of the rant,
Yup, so do I.
Hopefully we are done with this personal attack on me and can get back to the Kid's original post. Jon's comments were interesting. Hopefully someone will respond...
in 'her' reply over blowjobs 'she' shows gheera.
Let us review:
The opinions of anyone who hangs around with people who sling insults like this are not important to me.
Is this gheera? I am very curious how.
Is this gheera? I am very curious how.
Actually, I was a little curious about that myself.
I was going more for disgust with that reply. As in, what kind of person hangs around with those who use that kind of abuse in an argument? And why should anyone then find their views of relevance?
ًwell Jon, as far as mawals go they are often mixed in such an unrelated fashion, although they are all patriotic here and that's a good thing, as i said, many mawals end with surprisingly out-of-context songs.
You raise several good points here, but the thing is, often the performance itself is moving so that the impact of the words come later, in mawals though, words take center stage as there isn't much variation from one mawal to another except in wordplay, still, i would say that Hussam's vocal build up in some areas were absolutely wonderful here, not to underestimate the lyrics, which have a bittersweet quality: yes, Iraqis feel neglected because during the Iraq-Iran war, it was no secret that the whole gulf, including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, were feverishly supporting Iraq fearing the extent of Iran.
And Abu Nuwas here refers not to the poet but the street named after him (lol, how exactly does the phrase sleeping with Abu Nuwas fit the context here?)
"Iraqis feel neglected because during the Iraq-Iran war, it was no secret that the whole gulf, including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, were feverishly supporting Iraq fearing the extent of Iran."
Those bastards.
I guess Abu Nuwas's reputation hasn't preceded him. Although I recognized, of course, Salahuddin, Ali, and Hasan, "the Qaqa" and ibn al-Mugheira meant nothing to me, I had only a faint feeling that I might have heard of Abu Nuwas, and I thought "Sa'ad" might refer to the Persian poet Sa'adi (although I think it was Firdausi or someone else, maybe Hafez, who wrote about Rustam). The only book I could find about Iraq in its first few centuries was Hugh Kennedy's When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World. It had a fair amount on Abu Nuwas, including that in Kufa he "became the pupil, and probably the lover, of the poet Waliba ibn al-Hubab," . . . "a figure as famous for his bohemian and openly gay lifestyle as he was for his poetry." About 2-1/2 pages are devoted to his poetry (translations by Julia Bray from the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature), including four lines about the boy serving wine at an inn: "A boy of beckoning glances and chaste tongue. Neck bowed enticingly, who scorns the rein. Proffers me wine of hope mixed with despair, Distant in word and deed, yet ever-near."
So I thought the addressing of those who slept "by" Abu Nuwas might be a subtle dig at modern gay Iraqis, although it was beyond me how they could be considered responsible for Rustam's rank and file marching on the Euphrates or holding the Tigris captive! (Perhaps too much poetic license in my interpretation rather than in the poet's intended meanings!)
I did finally listen to the video. After it played through once (in very short bits and pieces), I was able to replay it without interruptions. Sorry, I still prefer Abdel Halim Hafez, and Umm Kulthoum above all, but I first heard them both 43 years ago.
BTW, the "his poetry" statement and the quote refer to Abu Nuwas.
As for the Saudis and other Arabs supporting Iraq because they feared Iran, I don't believe they would have had much to fear if Saddam hadn't started that fight (allegedly with the backchannel encouragement of the Carter administration, which had its own beef with Iran over the hostages - kind of a "Let's you and him fight" situation).
I hardly think Saddam needed any encouragement to start that fight, Jon. By all the accounts I've read he was pissed off at the Iranians for proselytizing in the south. Nothing was going to interfere in his keeping a hold on power.
Then there are the idiots who think they have gheera, but all they have are shit-for-brains:
Interview with a an Al Qaeda terrorist who fought in Iraq
Interviewer: Did you meet Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi?
Jawhar: Sheik Abu Mus'ab did not appear very often. Not all the brothers met him. But sometimes, Sheik Abu Mus'ab would conduct a visit to our bases, and he would come unannounced. We would be sitting around, and the guys would walk in along with the sheik. They would sit with us for 15 minutes, half and hour, and then they would say goodbye and move on.
Interviewer: What exactly did he ask you to do?
Jawhar: Once he sent a brother as his representative, and asked me to carry out operations in the Baghdad area.
Interviewer: Did you carry them out?
Jawhar: Yes, Allah be praised.
Interviewer: What kind of operations?
Jawhar: Car bombings and killings. Regular stuff. What else could he be asking from us?
EID MUBARAK
Pssssssst, Kid?
Happy Eid!
:)
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