Rawand Mustafa is the 2024 winner of the University of Arkansas Press Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. The award is granted to a first or second book of poetry by a writer of Arab Heritage. Mustafa is a Syrain-Palestinian writer living in California and working on a PhD in creative writing, and her book Umbilical Discord uses archival interviews with Palestinian women from 1948, personal stories from her own family's displacement and her perspective to trace the ramifications of the Palestinian diaspora today. Mustafa spoke with Ozarks at Large's Daniel Caruth about the book and explains it started out as her master's thesis project.
The following is and edited Transcript of the audio conversation.
Daniel Caruth: And I wanted to talk, you know, just starting off a little bit about the inspiration for the manuscript that you submitted umbilical discord, and maybe, you know, talking about I think that title is so evocative, really speaks to what this project is about. So could you talk maybe about how you came up with that? Yeah,
Rawand Mustafa: absolutely. So the book is actually, it comes from my thesis project for my master's degree back at the University of Windsor. And, really, the inspiration behind it kind of stemmed from sort of like an awakening that I experienced in terms of my own Palestinian identity. Back in 2021, there were the Sheikh Jarrah protests that were very sort of popular online social media, the evictions that were happening there and the neighborhood in East Jerusalem, this along with there were also you know, attacks, the Luxor mosque during Ramadan, and bombardment in Gaza. And these events sort of kind of sparked, like I said, an awakening with my own sort of heritage and my grandparents coming from Palestine. And I started, you know, questioning my responsibility within the Palestinian context. And then I also read a book by somebody Kurds, first book of poetry called Rifka. During that time, the beginning of 2022. And I think that was the first time I read a Palestinian perspective articulated in English poetry, which also included Arabic words, which was very fascinating to me, these sorts of events accumulated to inspire my projects, a local discord, which is basically a collection of poetry, incorporating my perspectives as a as a Palestinian living in the diaspora, but also interviews from Palestinian women who experienced the next part of 1948, the catastrophe of 1948. And the name umbilical discord came from my focus on on retrieving stories from women in particular. So I sort of felt that there was this kind of connection between me and these interviewees in that sense, like they were my own sort of mothers and grandmothers. And at the same time, there was obviously a disconnect, a discord in our separate stories. And so I thought the title was a way to sort of suggests that connection yet disconnection between us.
DC:
Yeah. Can you talk about the writing process for this? Because it's not, you know, maybe when another poet or someone is going in, and it's pure work of fiction, or, you know, this involves research and involve this, you know, interviewing process and translation as well. Can you talk about all of those moving parts that made this come together? Maybe? Yeah,
RM:
absolutely. I feel like the research was such a big part of the project. And I think, you know, the process itself involves a lot of translations I retrieved interviews from these off road website and so forth is a is an organization in Tel Aviv, that seeks to broaden knowledge about the next bar. And so I really just had to sit with many, many, either video or written interviews with these elder Palestinian women who talked about, you know, what they witnessed what they lived through, during the next band afterwards. And so I had to retrieve some of these interviews were already in English, but they were missing, you know, bits of the interview. So I had to go back and retrieve those, some of them were in Arabic, so I had to, you know, go through translating those interviews. And basically, I just had to document as much as I could, before I actually started writing. And my writing after that point was basically, you know, choosing parts of the interviews and then responding to those parts and sort of a back and forth poetic structure that is really the, the, the main concept of the of the poetry was in the book, very arduous task, I had to reach out to some family members to help with translations. I had to interview family members myself, because many of their stories also make up parts of the poems. So it was really a community involved in creating the poetry for sure.
DC:
I'm really interested in that aspect of of translation, especially when it comes to, to poetry and to writing in that style, because you know, the words that you decide to use because it's so that form is so much about, you know, sound and tone and style. Can you talk about how maybe the translation or if you're getting something from English or deciding when to put an Arabic word into the poem itself, how you decide to do those things and make those choices?
RM:
Right, yeah, it was it was difficult at times. I mean, whenever I had the interview material already translated in English. I would usually usually just use that translation, although sometimes, when I would compare those translations with the original Palestinian Arabic, I would notice, you know, there might be a better way to say something a clearer way to say something, I remember, at one point, there was a translation of, to vacation somewhere, pretty much, but when the original Arabic is two, it's closer to saying, to get a breath of fresh air, for example. So I would, I would make these adjustments where I thought it was necessary. And in terms of, you know, when to include Arabic word for phrases in the poetry, I decided, it was important to, to sort of preserve the Arabic names of places involved, just because of, you know, trying to suggest that the erasure of those Arabic names in the settler colonial project was something that I was trying to combat with the poetry that you'll notice in the in the book, that's many of the the villages, Palestinian villages, and other locations involved in a Palestinian context, which can range from Canada, to the states to wherever, you know, the diaspora has reached. And so I keep those names in Arabic, and I include a Members section at the end, that sort of translates those for for readers. And so, I hope it's, it's a way to, to commemorate those places, and to keep the original names alive.
DC:
I mean, it definitely seems like a very timely work, how was it to have done this work, and then to see these tensions that have come to such this, you know, magnitude that they are now how's it been to, to sit kind of with this process? And then be, I guess, maybe talking about it now,
RM:
You know, it's kind of like this, like, strange feeling of I'm back in 2021 2022, where, again, there was this, you know, surge of social media reactions and protests to what was happening and shifted to dragons and in Jerusalem, in general. And, you know, it's like this loop that keeps happening. And of course, now, while it was urgent before there is, you know, a new sort of urgency, like it sparked for me, you know, these similar events back a couple of years ago, sparked in me that sort of awakening to the Palestinian context, my hope that the urgency of today will only work to open more eyes and to get people asking more questions and to listen to more stories about about the Nakba, about the ongoing genocide, and both the current genocide. So it's, you know, on the one hand, like I said, sort of an eerie cycle that we keep cycling through, but at the same time, there's always a new hope. And
DC:
When you were either, you know, after or during the process of writing this, were you able to share some of these poems and some of this work with people in the diaspora with family members, maybe, and get some of their feedback on what you were writing,
RM:
Some family members helped with the translation process. And so an uncle of mine, for example, my uncle Huff, and Lizzie, Syria, was one of those family members, and I shared some of the work with him. And he was very thrilled to hear about me winning the prize and the recognition of the work, I feel like it was more so the people involved with this book, my family members, my mother, my aunts, my uncles, they were so involved with the process, that now you know, I feel like they know the poetry more than more than they would if they were to read it now. But I do plan on on hopefully sharing the poetry now with my new local community, and I recently got married to so with my, with my husband, with my, with his family with whoever, whoever is willing to listen.
DC:
And speaking of the prize, you know, can you talk about what, you know, how you found out about this prize and why you maybe wanted to, to apply for this award,
RM:
It was sort of very late in my academic career where I sort of became aware of this Arab identity, this Palestinian identity, especially in poetry, you know, I, before reading occurred, I had never read poetry by a Palestinian or by an Arab, I was really isolated in my, in my studies, which were centered around British literature. I felt up until that point, and and at that point, very disconnected from, from my own identity from the rich Arab art culture. And so, you know, I was discussing this with my supervisor, and he suggested to me, you know, this prize and, and I looked into it, and I was, I felt like there was like someone reaching out to me, you know, Oh, that there was this community that I was just beginning to discover. And I looked into at that man's work and Sadie, and Hi, Anne. And I just felt like this was sort of a sign for me to connect even more with the community that I had just began discovering. And
DC:
When you're, you know, when you were discovering the new poetry and you're in your world, as you say, was there anything stylistically maybe when you're reading a Palestinian or an Arab poem, compared to some of the British literature that you're studying? Were there things stylistically or formalized, that stuck out to you that you felt maybe connected with?
RM:
When it came to some of the Kurds poetry, for example, in Rifka? I mean, besides the fact that, you know, you could, you could relate to the content, I guess, you could say, where I understood the references, he was making the Arab culture, for example. And then in the form, I was just, I was very inspired by the use of Arabic language within the English writing, just to see it on the page. And that way, really opened my eyes to the reaches of creative writing, bringing that new identity into that familiar space that I had been in also
DC:
After doing the research and all of this, why why decide to do this or make this story in the form of poetry? And not maybe, you know, like a work of journalism or have a straightforward oral history or a fiction piece? Why choose this form?
RM:
I think maybe part of it was being so moved by occurred. And the form that you chose, there's a power in the form that I chose for the book in particular, that couldn't have been achieved through any other form of writing. If you look at the form, you'll you'll see it's sort of a back and forth between my perspectives. That tension that occurred, there is where I think the most power is, you know, there, there are times where the left column, which is sort of the the diasporic perspective really blends with that right column, which embodies the Palestinian woman's perspective, the crossover sometimes sometimes it's hard to differentiate sometimes, the left side questioning the right side asking questions that are unanswered, that formatic aspect is, I think, only achievable through poetry.
DC:
And well, so not to put you on the spot so much, but if you had any excerpts or anything you might like to share. We'd love to hear it.
RM:
Absolutely. I'll just pull it up here. Awesome. Yeah. So in this particular poem, that left column is comprised of snippets from my aunt's story, where she tells me about her experiences traveling in a refugee boat from Egypt to Europe. And so that comprises the left side. And the right side is still the interviewee excerpts of the policy. So anyways, I'll read a section of that one, okay.
[reading from Umbilical Discord]:
My husband, very father, on his shoulders, grabbed Mala with his hand. The whole village full of people displaced, reached the boat, running many villages. By Allah, I don't know how I ran in the water, the waves nearly drowning us from our village. all I felt was someone raising me, throwing me in the ferry. From our tools, from issuer from isoline. We reached the expected boat in the sea, and we stayed there a month, the sailors cooperated to pull us in. There was an attack on Zakariya. My heart stopped, almost like the attack that happened to us in Fatah. People flocked. We went up to the mountains climbed in the boats, the same way we did when we left our village. When they occupied the carry stations themselves. Some of her people didn't leave their homes, they didn't leave in time. They said woman and children could go down below. We lived in a house with 15 families. We went down. Our feet, unable to carry us at night. We rode a truck. We just wanted to sleep. It was three in the morning. From Bet-Ola to Celyad. We were shocked. The driver dropped us off. What is this? In a place we didn't know? Nothing like what they described to us. And in the morning we saw that this is it was a storehouse for fish, a dumpster, without any room to breathe. [End of excerpt]
And that's that. So.
DC:
I am wondering, you know, after having done this for people who maybe end up picking up the book and reading some of this, what do you want them to get out of the book?
RM:
I hope, you know if they're like me, where they're they're questioning their their connection to such a large context of Palestinian context, to know that they that they're not alone in that questioning, they're not alone in that alienation that they feel, to follow the perspectives within the book and sort of ask their own questions or come to their own answers. And in general, I hope that, you know, people realize the extent of the Palestinian reach, you know, it's, it affects not only Palestinians living in Palestine, occupied Palestine, or even Palestinians living in exile abroad, it affects the people who are in Syria, who either, you know, fled from Palestine or their ancestors fled from Palestine like is the case of my families, it affects the ones who went from Syria to Egypt, like my aunt, and then to Europe, it affects them. It affects everyone around them. It's such a far reaching context, that we're all within to some extent. So I hope people open their eyes to just how far that reach is, and to question their own responsibilities, you know, depending on where they fall within that context.
DC:
All right. And then I don't know if you if you will be coming to Arkansas at any point maybe. Or what the timeline is for you when this comes out.
RM:
I hope so I don't have anything planned at the moment, but I really want to try to get there at some point. Yeah.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline by reporters. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of KUAF programming is the audio record.
