page_title: Safa Khulusi
section_title: Political and social themes
hierarchical_section_title: Safa Khulusi / Arabic poetry in English / Political and social themes
caption_attribution_description: English: Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi
context_page_description: Safa Abdul-Aziz Khulusi was an Iraqi historian, novelist, poet, journalist and broadcaster. He is known for mediating between Arabic- and English-language cultures, and for his scholarship of modern Iraqi literature. He is also remembered for his theories on Arabic grammar, on Shakespeare, as well as his role in Islamic education and his work on the poetry of al-Mutanabbi.
context_section_description: From the end of the 19th century, the rise to prominence of talented radical poets Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi (1863–1936) and Ma'ruf al-Rusafi (1875–1945) popularised poetry containing social and political themes. According to Khulusi, both Zahawi and Rusafi learned from contemporary Turkish poets, such as Tawfiq Fikrat, the value of charging poetry with powerful messages. Rusafi was the more ferocious and shocking in his political attacks, while Zahawi's ire was directed at what he believed to be outdated social attitudes.
  Zahawi's poetry extolling a utopian society was his attempt to set the agenda for a social revolution, particularly on views towards women in post-Ottoman Iraq. According to Khulusi, this was largely unwelcomed at the time, but proved nonetheless influential as a catalyst for change in the decades that followed. Khulusi renders the incendiary work including what he calls “Zahawi's tirade against the veil”:
  O Daughter of Iraq! tear the veil into pieces,
  And go about unveiled, for life demands revolutions.
  Tear it and burn it without delay
  For indeed it is a false guardian. 
  Khulusi illustrates Zahawi's attempt to introduce the concept of gender equality in his celebrated poem Ba'da alfi 'Am (A Thousand Years Hence): 
  If you happen one day to see their women
  You will stand perplexed, like someone who has lost his sense
  They share with men their hard work briskly
  And they do their work ably and perfectly.
  They sit side by side with men in courts,
  And display ideas and thoughts that are so close to perfection.
  Amongst them are governors and generals
  Amongst them are soldiers and workers.
  Their marriage is none other than a contract
  It is observed by a couple so long as love endures.
  But the upbringing and education of their children
  is according to their law, the responsibility of their government
  Which is the Mother of all. 
  As with Rusafi and Zahawi before him, Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri (1899–1997) also versified his challenge to the established attitudes towards women. He chose a less aggressive, more persuasive tone which Khulusi attempts to capture in this sample of his translation:
  We have merchandise that provides us with children
  We raise and lower its price according to financial crises.
  I found her in other nations as object of pride
  That brightens the house, the markets and the churches. 
  According to Khulusi, Jawahiri takes up the cause of social exclusion and poverty from Rusafi. He illustrates the gulf in society by describing life in the houses and villas of the rich, built next to shanty dwellings where the deprived live in squalid conditions with their children and livestock.
  In those palaces and rich houses,
  Nights of dancing rakishly pass
  Where the legs of the beautiful ladies are bare.
  Liquors and wines are brought to them from East and West,
  From wherever they are distilled best.
  And only next door to them a woman lies on the ground
  Scorpions flirting with her flanks. 
  In Khulusi view, Jawahiri was also “the poet of every revolutionary movement”. The revolt of January 1948 was one example. He composed long epics on the subject, and elegized his brother, Ja'far al-Jawahiri who died during the revolt. The same year saw war in the Holy Land and Jawahiri directed his anger at Arab leaders who promoted themselves during this time as 'saviours of Palestine'. Khulusi tries to capture the tone of sarcasm of the original poem:
  He defeated the calamity with his handkerchief.
  Boastfully pretending, like a silly lad
  That his eyes burst with tears. 
  Martial law in 1948 was officially a means to protect the military operations in Palestine and to save the rear of the Arab armies. According to Khulusi, the law was skilfully extended to deal with young men with liberal ideas. Living close by, Jawahiri regularly passed the prison gates in Baghdad and could see groups of young men, from all backgrounds and professions, being led inside, and relatives waiting for news of other men already taken. In his poem Jawahiri says:
  May you not wait for long.
  And may the shackled time hurry your steps forward
  So Balas
caption: Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi devoted his energy to versifying the quest for gender equality in Iraqi society
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