Arabic | Iraq | Memoir (excerpt) | Sweden
January, 2020Dr. Manhal Sirat was born in Mosul, Iraq, and has lived in Sweden since 1991. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Mosul in 1977 and his M.S. in Geology from Baghdad University in 1982, graduating first in his class. He was then arrested and sentenced to life in prison by a Revolutionary Court. He was imprisoned in a special section of Abu Ghraib prison, one reserved for political prisoners. He was released under a general amnesty proclaimed in 1986, after serving forty-five months in prison. He left Iraq after the Desert Storm (aka Gulf) War and sought political asylum in Sweden. He was awarded his Ph.D. in Earth Sciences by the renowned Uppsala University in 1999. Since then he has worked in numerous universities in Sweden, the US, Jordan, Germany, and finally in the United Arab Emirates. He has also served as a petroleum expert for the international firm Schlumberger in the UAE, and as a Geomechanics and Alternative Energy Specialist for the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Operations and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Currently he is a geological and renewable energy consultant in Sweden. He has published three scientific books and more than forty articles in scientific journals.
The Migratory Bird is Manhal Sirat’s first literary work. A book of his poetry is awaiting publication. He has exhibited works of art in several shows, and one of these was purchased for the Public Library in Uppsala.
- William Hutchins
Memoir (excerpt) | Poland | United States | Yiddish
February, 2019Di vos zaynen nisht geblibn: dertseylungen (Those Who Didn’t Survive: Stories) (New York and Tel Aviv, 1972) is a memoir by Rachmil Bryks (1912-1974) of his shtetl Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland, as refracted through the figure of his great-uncle Reb Mendl Feldman. Bryks presents the shtetl’s folk traditions and an extended cast of characters, while always deftly returning the thread to Reb Mendl. In the process, a vivid collective portrait of an annihilated Jewish community emerges. His approach is unconventional—there are no chapter breaks or readily apparent chronology. The book is more a panorama chock full of anecdotes, customs, details, and personalities than a traditional memoir with a linear narrative drive. Known widely for his pioneering use of dark humor in his Holocaust fiction, Bryks’ non-fiction displays his powers of description and empathic observations. In this excerpt, we meet two of the shtetl’s particularly colorful characters. Those Who Didn’t Survive is one of three memoirs by Rachmil Bryks I am translating as a 2018-2019 Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellow. I thank Bella Bryks-Klein for her enthusiastic support of this translation project; the Yiddish Book Center and all of the program’s staff, fellows, and instructors; my mentor Elizabeth Harris; Justin Cammy for his feedback; and Ri J. Turner for her assistance with the translation of some challenging Yiddish words and expressions.
- Yermiyahu Ahron Taub
German | Germany | Memoir (excerpt)
September, 2014Write Nothing about Politics: The Life of Hans Bernd von Haeften is Barbara von Haeften's account of the life of her husband, a lawyer, diplomat, and member of the Kreisau Circle resistance group in Nazi Germany. The Kreisau Circle--led by Peter Yorck von Wartenburg and Helmuth von Moltke--participated in the assassination attempt of Hitler on July 20, 1944, carried out by Claus von Stauffenberg and Werner von Haeften, the brother of Hans Bernd von Haeften. The Kreisau Circle had also developed extensive plans for a new government to be put into place after the removal of Hitler. Barbara von Haeften's biography describes the life and political activity of her husband, who was executed after the failed assassination attempt. It furthermore sheds light on her own knowledge of and participation in the resistance movement.
The featured excerpt describes Hans Bernd von Haeften's last days from the point of Helmuth von Moltke's arrest until von Haeften was executed by the Nazis.
- Julie Winter
Essay | Italian | Italy | Memoir (excerpt)
January, 2014Devi Priya's writing recuperates the India of the past, and issues a challenge to the India of the present. Her essay on the Mandala discusses an often faddish or academic subject without conceding to either camp. The author has had an eventful life, and alongside the argument introduced in the essay's opening--setting the record straight about the origins and significance of the Mandala--one finds a profound record of the India of another time, before partition. Her memoir, entitled More than one life (Più di una vita), from which the excerpt here is taken, is a lyrical recounting of the shared past of the author and her country. As Devi writes:
Just as the cane thrown by the beautiful young country girl from Rajputana mortally wounds an enormous wild boar fleeing the royal hunt, and in the same moment pierces the prince's heart, so one is captivated by the memory of a time that is this story's source and inspiration.
The story is not always linear: as it moves through the childhood, adolescence, and youth of the author, it follows the historical period of the '30s up to India's declaration of independence, and beyond. Through an ancient, intimate, and familiar world the reader is shown those ideals, social and cultural, that were transformed into the Beauty celebrated by the mystical poets, and the carefully selective memory of an India that for centuries was adept in preserving the useful and the positive.
In the story, nature, landscapes, aromas, and animals are all living presences, inseparable from the happiest years, rich with knowledge, at school and university, with dear friends and in the good company of many others, at joyful festivals, in the India of the Ganges and the Himalayas. And then among those who practice ancient creative arts, in contact with the local, rural people, discovering their own distant origins.
Memories interweave with the present as in a dance, guiding our protagonist to reveal, according to the rhythm of her intuition, the progressive realization of her "identity."
Riding along in life's carriage, the present appears before one's eyes for a blurred instant, while the past takes on the limpid serenity of a field of flowering mustard, flowers of a shade of yellow called..."basantì," stretching all the way to the horizon, harbingers of spring... The impression remained in my mind like spring personified. "Basant" is spring, "basantì" the soft yellow of the shoot: its color. Like all things, it comes and goes and returns. You await the point of its return in the cycle...
- Nicholas Benson
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