Hearing Your Story: Songs of History and Life for Sand Roses

Jul 3, 2026

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A bilingual-focused literary work translated into English, built around seven poetic cantos about the desert and the Sahrawi people. The translator’s note frames the collection as a form of exile shaped by colonial displacement, contested identity, and language conflicts. The land functions as both discourse and text, constantly reshaped by wind and sand while history remains dynamic rather than fixed. The introduction emphasizes otherness, poetic wandering, and the deliberate refusal of a single, narratable path toward conventional post-colonial conclusions.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryStory & Novel

FormatPDF

Pages176

Reading Time4 h 31 min

Translator's Note

Tale of the desert and exile

Land as discourse and text

Otherness and poetic wandering

NABILE FARES # HEARING YoUR STORY Songs of History and Life for Sand Roses English Translation by PETER THOMPSONIntroduction by RÉDA BENSMAIA 81 ## HEARING YoUR STORY Songs ofHistory and Life for Sand Roses iom92.w.、o9onmeVaQ ymSurane 1002l t2010 ## NABILE FARES HEARING YoUR STORY Songs ofHistory and Life for Sand Roses A Trilingual Text for the Sahrawi People English Translation byPETER THOMPSON Introduction byRÉDA BENSMAIA Original Artwork:Francoise Martinelli Book Design:Bill Lavender PRESSTHE ENGAGED WRITERS SERIES Hearing Your Soryis an English translation ofEscuchandouuHistoria,by Nabile FaresI'Harmattan,Libraric-Editions,Parisoriginal copyright 1978Reprinted by permission Printedin the USA Library of Congress Control Number:2007942147 ISBN:o-9728143-7-XISBN 13:978-0-9728143-7-9 Copyright ◎2008 by The University of New OrlcansAll rights reserved. University of New Orlcans Publishing Managing Editor Bill Lavender UNO PressUNO Metro CollegcNew Orleans,LA 70148http://unopress.uno.cdu PRESS CoNTENTS TRANSLATOR's NoTEVIIA NoTE ON THE TEXT AND DESIGNXIIACKNOWLEDGMENTSXIIIINTRODUCTION BY REDA BENSMAiAXIV I7 HEARING YOUR STORY I.POETRY's oWN CANTO 2365 2.PATH OF THE CAMEL 8I 3.TO CELEBRATE IOO 4.LAMENT FOR MY BROTHER 5.IN THE BELLY OF THE CAMEL I2I 6.MY PEOPLE. I45 I67 7· ## TRANSLATOR's NoTE .The seven cantos of this tale of the desert and the Sahrawi people are clearly a kind ofexile.This is a story told not in familiar terms but in a familiar context:colonialism,displacedpeople,identity and language conflicts.The terms,and the story ofexile,will not be theexpected."Fares's main idea seems to be that all genuine becoming presupposes an exileof some kind,"as Réda Bensmaia says(47).Perhaps it's more a poetic idea,a poetic exilethat synthesizes or makes,like Paz's sensation of an“expulsion from the present”(Nobelacceptance speech,1990).Its terms are forward-looking and suggestive of destiny. The story is that of Western Sahara and its people.Everything in Fares's work suggeststhat people are a diachronic and constantly changing identity;the only synchronic and statictext that Hearing Your Story offers is the land.The disputed land is a discourse,brush-strokedin wind and sand (Fares:“a shifting of sands in seven cantos”6),a sculpting and etching ofboth dreams and history.The land is a text,and the text is land.The finite and objective textnormally explored by a translator might here seem elusive.So I would like this translator'snote to derive from the drifts and erasures of the problematic land as much as from the moreobvious dynamic of Sahrawi history.Farès has chosen to write with sand about sand.Hisavoidance of the tone and images of most identity politics is worth heeding As Mohammed Saad Zemmouri says,Fares's work is as much about “altérité”as identity:"His writing is one ofsubjectivity,and often turns around the search for,the construction of,and the affirmation of,the self;it is at the same time a call from the Other,an opening into theOther,that is,a passion for otherness”(94,my translation).So in the explosions of bombsin Hearing YourStory,the shifting of the sand ridges,the blooming of the“roses ofthe sand,”there is a subversion of delimiting concepts:territory,possession,border,state,even future(suggested as “path”).Even while “the language question”bedevils the sensitive reader andthe exegete,we will have to think of the translation in terms(not of Spanish?French?Arabic?Berber?)of its nomadic and metaphorical heart.That is,what makes it move?What makes uslose our tracks in it? The nomadic heart of this "history"is poetry.It wanders between the different"I"voices,the different subjectivities,of Zemmouri's “altérité,"much as metaphor drifts between its twopoles of comparison.The sense of a poetic wandering is amplified by sudden “openings”and “explosions”of new meaning-all reinforcing uncertainty as the desert's guiding principl

FAQs

What theme does the Translator’s Note use to describe the seven cantos?

The note presents the seven cantos as a kind of exile, shaped by colonialism, displacement, and identity and language conflicts.

How is the land portrayed in the introduction?

The land is treated as a discourse and a text—etched by wind and sand—while the only static element is the land itself, not fixed people or history.

Why does the collection avoid a clear, linear narrative path?

The note argues the work unmade clear narration to perturb ideology and the expectation of narrability, so readers cannot enter and exit the desert or Sahrawi history with stable orientation.

Jul 3, 2026

Upload by Hazel