Two Half Faces - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Mustafa Stitou was born in Tetouan, Morocco, in 1974, and grew up in Lelystad, in the Netherlands. He currently lives in Amsterdam, where he studied philosophy at the UvA. He has published four collections of poetry: Mijn vormen (My Forms, 1994), Mijn gedichten (My Poems, 1998), Varkensroze ansichten (Pig-Pink Picture Postcards, 2003), and Tempel (Temple, 2013). He is the recipient of the VSB Poetry Prize, the Jan Campert Prize, the Awater Poetry Prize, and the A. Roland Holst Award.

David Colmer is the translator of more than 60 book-length works of Dutch-language literature, including titles by Gerbrand Bakker, Dimitri Verhulst, Annie M.G. Schmidt, and Nachoem M. Wijnberg. Colmer has won many prizes for his translations, including the Vondel Prize, the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the NSW Premier and PEN Translation Prize for his body of work, and the Dutch Foundation for Literature oeuvre prize.

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CINEMA in a time
of all-consuming drought
in a time
when farmer does his sums
take straw to a car
abandoned on his land

Father leaves as a child
with his uncle the deserter
for nine pesetas in the back
of the camiona―armpits
off the metal―going to Tétouan,
tiny Tétouan with its reliable souk

in the rigor of the mosque’s austerity
they pray sluggish and sighing
after jobs in gnawing sun
drink water from the water seller
with the sad grin and cool off
in the Spanish cinema with sunflower seeds

it rained in the movie
Allah al Akbar it rained
rain rain rain and I thought
rain was falling everywhere outside
Father acts it out fidgeting
with the remote control

outside
stone trembles
wind melts
lips harden to beaks
and people die
that sun-drenched summer