Faris Rhalimi
على شاطئ البحر
لم أجد سوى امرأة
تجلس على كرسي متحرك
وتنظر الى البحر
تسمرت في مكاني
بدا مشهد الكرسي المتحرك المغروس في الرمال
غريبا
وسط هذا البراح الذي
يوحي بالحرية
خشيت أن أخطو أمامها فأذكرها بالعجز
لم أرد أن أبلل قدمي بالماء
فتكرههما
غرست قدمي بالرمال
واكتفيت بالمراقبة من مسافة
دون أن تراني
بعد لحظات
وقفت المرأة
ابتعدت عن عجلات الكرسي
خطوتين
وقفت بأقدام ثابتة
فأفسدت القصيدة
—Gihan Omar
On the Beach
On the beach
I found only a woman
sitting in a wheelchair
looking at the sea
I froze in place
The sight of the wheelchair embedded in the sand
seemed strange
amidst this open space that suggested freedom
I was afraid to step in front of her and remind her
of her helplessness
I didn't want to get my feet wet because she'd hate them
I planted my feet in the sand
contented myself with watching from a distance without her seeing me
After a few moments the woman stood
she took two steps away from the
wheelchair
she stood with
steady feet
and ruined the poem
–Translated from Arabic by Faris Rhalimi
By the Shore
On the beach by the sea
I saw a woman
Sitting down in a wheelchair
Looking
I froze
The sight of the wheelchair stuck in the sand
Strange
In the middle of this space
I was afraid to walk out
And remind her of her helplessness
I didn't want to dip my feet in the water
Cause then she’d hate them
I dug my feet in the sand and watched from a distance
After a few moments the woman stood up
She took two steps away from the wheelchair
She stood with firm feet
And ruined the poem
–Translated from Arabic by Faris Rhalimi
Native, but unspoken
(An erasure of my interview with Alexander Rhalimi)
Speak languages other than Arabic and Berber
No languages passed down from your ancestors.
Our family, we are native Moroccan
Different language since pre-K
I’m native Moroccan
Our culture?
Colonized
Morocco was colonized.
No.
I remember
Connected to my culture
stop speaking.
We value the culture
Have full existence
It was a mistake.
Our culture is beautiful,
Language is beautiful
Hospitality and kindness
That's our heritage
Translator’s Statement
Gihan Omar is an Egyptian poet known for her emotionally charged Arabic poems. She studied philosophy at Cairo University and published three books about poetry. She has quit poetry and focuses on photography and writing for magazines. There is not a lot about her personal life but her poems have themes of love, feminism, freedom, and societal constraints. In one interview, she says that her poems are supposed to convey short stories about her life and she believes that “It should be just what’s inside you, with your pen and paper… I don’t like abstract intellectual writings, even if I am talking about something very deep, I can manifest it through this cup of coffee or anything tangible” (Rowayat). Her goal was to merge physical and daily life with philosophical meaning. Even though she is seen as an Egyptian poet, she does not align herself with other Egyptian poets and their styles. Instead, she says that she belongs to all forms of poetry.
This poem I chose is called “ON THE BEACH” and it is a free-verse poem with no rhyme scheme, but it has a lot of hidden meaning behind it. Some lines in this poem are enjambed to introduce ambiguity and others are end-stopped to draw attention to an important line. Most of the lines are between 5-8 words long and most of the poem is just a big block of text.
I believe that the topic of this poem is about disability, but also has a hidden meaning of not believing everything you see. I say this because at first Gihan believed that the person on the beach was a disabled woman having a sentimental moment and she was so moved by this that she went out of her way to hide from her and write a poem about her. But then when she saw her stand up from her wheelchair and walk away, she realized that she wasn't actually disabled and because Gihan spent all her time focusing on the woman, she ruined her poem on her own.This could also be interpreted in real life relationships. Gihan might be trying to write about how it is bad to put so much effort into doing so much for someone just for them to completely deceive you. I say this because she literally doesn't enjoy the beach in fear of the woman getting mad at her for reminding her that she is in a wheelchair. To avoid this confrontation, she hides from the woman and begins to write a poem about her but then she is shocked when she sees that the woman is in fact not disabled at all and ruined her poem. This might be a reach but she puts another person's feelings in front of her own but then her “poem gets ruined” because the woman isn't actually disabled and she was afraid of hurting her just for the woman to hurt her back. But this is a reach that I found interesting. With that, I believe that the theme of the poem is to not put another person's feelings in front of your own because they could deceive you and “ruin your poem.” There's also a little bit of irony in the poem, like the poet is making fun of herself for doing all of this, like a funny story that she would tell to her friends.
The translation portion of this project went really well for me. I learned a lot about the word choice and how having a translation that flows just as well as the original is really important. I also learned about how effective translating poems into other languages is for actually understanding the poem on a deeper level. In my first translation, I focused on keeping a casual and story-telling flow and meter as the original, like when she describes her surroundings and figurative language. I communicated this in English by using words from the literal translation as well as words from the original poem to synthesize this into one concise poem. In my second translation I kept really close to the literal translation but changed some words to make it have more formality in the language like in the original. In this translation I played around with word choice attempting to see which words fit in correctly and I focused on trying to give the original poem justice by making the word choice and the flow similar to the original, as well as keeping the meaning instead of trying to make it sound really cohesive like the other one. Throughout the trimester, we have been doing reading assignments and taking notes about the articles we read to use later on for this project. One of the quotes I took from these reading assignments have really stuck to me and I thought back at them frequently when doing my translation. It is from the edited book, Violent Phenomena: 21 essays on translation which is a book about the ideologies of translation.
"Knowledge production, a part of which is constituted by translation, is never a neutral, value-free enterprise.(Bhanot, Kavita, and Jeremy Tiang).
The quote asserts that translation is never a value-free enterprise but shaped by the translator’s bias and cultural context instead of a transfer of meaning through language. This helped me realize that my translation choices—like prioritizing emotion over literal meaning—was shaped by my own perspective on shape and diction.
One challenge I faced during this process was with the first translation. I could not get Wordreference working until I began my second translation so I resorted to speaking with my mom so she could help me translate the poem. Using my mom as a translator instead of Wordreference was really helpful and definitely helped me put everything together and especially made the poem better to read. My beliefs about what made a good translation really changed throughout this project. At first I believed that making a good translation was just translating it and making sure it was not hard to read. But now, that has shifted, I think that making a good translation is something with a lot of different levels to it. Experimenting with word choice, shape, and overall flow really made me realize what makes a translation good. It's like when we listened to those cover songs in class, which was one of our in-class work that led up to this project. Having a combination with word choice, meaning, and the flow of the song is what makes or breaks a good cover song. The article, Language as Languages had this really interesting quote that I noted down that draws to my ideas about translation which is that when you are translating you can use both languages strengths to create something better.
"Every language draws from another. Every language gives to another."(wa Thiong'o and Ngũgĩ wa).
This quote from the essay Language of Languages was important to me throughout my translation process because it helped me realize that strengths that the poem had in Arabic were not present in the English version. By using strengths from both languages, I noticed how drawing inspiration from the Arabic version helped me give meaning to the English version and vice versa. When I was translating, I used words from my literal translation, and found synonyms of that word in English to find a word that best fit in that line.
It was wonderful to interview my mom about this topic. I felt that her side of the family would be more interesting to talk about, that's why I decided to interview her instead of my dad, who I usually interview for my school projects. I also thought it was very informative and I was able to get a lot of valuable information and ideas from my mom. I learned a lot about my mom’s side of the family and how Berber was used in Morocco as she grew up and what part language had in her life. I also learned about my fathers side of the family and how because he grew up further north, the part that languages had in his life were different from my mother’s.
I wanted my erasure poem to have a silencing aspect to it. In the poem it starts with an unknown speaker attempting to stop people from speaking their native language. This unknown speaker is the government of Morocco. I differentiate the two speakers in this poem by adding end-stopped lines to cut the other speaker off. Then over time the other speaker begins to break these chains and embrace their culture at the end. I think that with these choices, I turned this short transcript into a story. I also made this short story about me connecting to my culture. This past year, I've been looking into my culture a lot more, whether that was writing a poem about my name and how it came from a beloved Moroccan tradition, to now doing a presentation in Spanish about me and my family’s culture.
Works Cited
Bhanot, Kavita, and Jeremy Tiang, Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation. Edited by Bhanot, Kavita, and Jeremy Tiang, Tilted Axis Press, 2022. Accessed 30 May 2025.
Bannan. “Interview with Gihan Omar: Little Words Saying so Much - Rowayat.” Rowayat, 5 Aug. 2021, rowayat.org/interview-with-gihan-omar/. Accessed 2 June 2025.
wa Thiong'o, Ngugi, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo. The Language of Languages. Seagull Books, 2023. Accessed 6 June 2025.