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Literary Sampler

Theory of Absence (2005)

The hypothesis: I am tense and so are you.
We neither meet nor separate.

The desired result: We meet in the absence.

The proof: As tension turns people into arcs, we are two arcs.
We neither meet nor separate (the hypothesis)
So we must be parallel.
If two parallel lines are bisected by a third line
(in this case, the line of tension)
their corresponding angles must be equal (a geometrical theorem).
So we are congruent (because shapes are congruent
When their angles are equal)
And we form a circle (since the sum
Of two congruent arcs
is a circle).
Therefore, we meet in the absence
(since the circumference of a circle
is the sum of contiguous points
which can each be considered
a point of contact).

Credit: Excerpted from The War Works Hard, San Francisco: New Directions, 2004.

Biography:

Dunya Mikhail was born in 1965 in Baghdad. She received a degree in English literature at Baghdad University, and has worked as Literary Editor for The Baghdad Observer. Facing increasing threats from Iraqi authorities for her writing, she fled to Jordan and then the United States. She is graduate student in Near East Studies, Wayne State University where she teaches Arabic. In 2001, she was awarded the UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing. She has published four collections of poetry in Arabic and her first collection published in English, The War Works Hard, was translated by Elizabeth Winslow in 2005 with a PEN Translation Fund Grant.

Bibliography:

The War Works Hard, San Francisco: New Directions, 2004.

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