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  • Dog’s Tail
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Dog’s Tail

Amjad Nasser

My mother died in 2000 after she learned that all
the clocks and calendars had changed, and
possibly after she heard about something called
“the millennium”. But she, who was illiterate and
who did not need to handle complex numbers,
knew, perhaps because she was preparing to
depart, that the world she left behind would not
be any different with a change of clocks and
calendars. Her guide in this regard was her
favourite Bedouin proverb. In this story, a dog’s
tail is placed in a mould to straighten it and it
emerges as crooked as it had ever been when it is
pulled out forty years later – a parable, which it so
happens, perfectly encapsulated my mother’s
opinion of me.


Amjad Nasser

from Shepherd of Solitude, translated and introduced by Khaled Mattawa (London: Banipal Books, 2009)

translated by Khaled Mattawa

Reproduced by kind permission of the publisher.

Tags:

Jordan mothers resilience time

About this poem

This poem, representing Jordan, is part of The Written World – our collaboration with BBC radio to broadcast a poem from every single nation competing in London 2012.

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