Iraqi poet, novelist, translator and scholar Sinan Antoon was born and raised in Baghdad. Antoon is the author of five novels. He has published three collections of poetry in Arabic. His most recent work in English is Postcards from the Underworld (Seagull, 2023), a collection of self-translated poems. His translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s In the Presence of Absence won the 2012 National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). Antoon is currently associate professor at New York University. He spoke to Vineetha Mokkil about the necessity of telling the stories of people whose lives have been torn apart by war. Excerpts:
What drives you to write about lives affected by war? What kind of emotional toll does it take on you?
This has always been the challenge for writers and artists—to confront the pain fellow human♋s suffer and to engage with it. Our being would be impossible without narratives that structure the way we perceive our existence and our societies. The novels and works of art that I was moved by the most when I was younger and dreaming of becoming a writer were the ones that confronted the difficult and complex reality of the world. It’s a paradox and perhaps also a blessing that we can represent pain with beauty. Sad songs are sad, but still beautiful and pleasing.
As for the emotional to🔯ll, it is worth it as long as what I write resonates with others. There is a poem by Anna Akhmatova relating a real incident. She was waiting outside the prison for news of her son. Someone in the crowd recognised her and asked her, “Can you describe this?” And when Akhmatova says yes, “a smile passes across that person’s face”. It is the relief perhaps that all this suffering will be recorded. I read almost every day tweets from civilians in Gaza who write: please keep telling our stories. Don’t forget us. Don’t let the world forget.
The emotional toll for me is negligible when𝐆 compared to the toll my characte🥂rs, who are based on real human beings, have suffered.
Women in conflict zones are deeply impacted by war and violence, aren’t they?
Wars destroy the social fabric and the bonds between humans. In this still patriarchal world we live in, women always bear the brunt, more so than men. Even after wars are over on the battlefront, men return with psychological scars and wounded spirits. They brinౠg back the added violence of war to households. Women everywhere labour so hard, oftentimes without recognition or reward. In times🍌 of war, this reality is exacerbated.
What happens to a soldier who kills an adult or a child in wartime?
Wars demand that those who fight them become killing machines. And once you turn human beings into killing machines, it is not that easy to turn them back into normal civilians. Even in societies that have the resources to rehabilitate veterans, numerous problems persist. Many men who are forced to go and fight wars are victims of a socioeconomic system that sacrifices the poor and marginalised while the rich can enjoy lif🔥e back home. However, I am against the equivalence that is made at times between soldiers and civilians, especially in the case of volunteer armies. Civilians in war zones don’t 💮have a choice. They have nowhere to go. Soldiers and volunteer armies do have a choice. And conscripts can be conscientious objectors. I know that has a price, but it’s a choice.
Why are there so many forever wars going on in the world?
Who benefits from these? Who holds the majority shares in corporations that own weapons factories? Who reaps the profits? Those who tell us that the world is fine as long as the markets are doing well and the billionaires are thriving. In 1961, US president Eisenhower warned about the military industrial complex. He was referring to the US. Now we have a global, transnational military industrial complex whose wealt♊h is built by destroying the lives of millions. We have a televised genocide in Gaza, supported, financed and enabled by Western countries, and the world watches.
Is peace a possibility at all?
It is a dream, but one that we have to keep trying to turn into a reality. At least those of us who believe in a just world of equality and dignity for all, irrespective of race, caste, rel♔igion, or any other category. This might sound naive, but it is possible to live in a world of relative peace if we are willing to reimagine our relationship to this planet and all that is part of it. A different world is possible. And perhaps, we are living in the eleventh hour. Either we managed to save the planet and those living on it, or we let it burn.
