A lesson from Stanislaw Baranczak (poetry from Poland cycle)

 Stanislaw Baranczak (pron. Staneeswaf Baranchak) (1946-2014) was a leading poet of the so-called “Generation ‘68” (Baranczak himself coined that phrase). 1968 was the time of the hippies and student demonstrations all over the world, but in Poland it was for many people the year of disillusionment. In March that year Polish students demonstrated against the communist censorship and restrictions at universities, while the government sent the riot police against them and imprisoned its leaders. For people like Baranczak (himself a student at the time) this was a shock. From early on the subject of his poetry is the confrontation between ordinary people and an oppressive government.

Baranczak became a lecturer at the University of Poznan, but in 1976 he joined the dissident movement and was sacked from his post. The dissident movement included the uncensored underground publishing movement, which was a new phenomenon, since then poets like Baranczak could write without taking censorship into account. Political allusions (present in Herbert’s early poetry) went out of the window, poets could write openly about the secret police entering a poetry meeting.

Although Baranczak lost his job at the University of Poznan, he was considered one of the world’s best scholars of Slavonic literature and was offered a post to teach this subject at Harvard University in Boston. In 1980 the Polish authorities allowed him t leave the country and Baranczak has lived in Boston ever since.

I knew him quite well when I lived in Poland. The country was under the Communist regime and we were both dissidents, I was a student and he was an university lecturer who lost his position because of his activities. He didn't stop giving lectures, the students organised meetings in private houses and Stanislaw carried on teaching in the underground.

At that time he was already a famous poet. I thought I might be a poet, too. One day I took what I thought were poems and asked Baranczak what he thought of them. He told me to leave them with him and come again a week later. When I did, he gave me the following advice:

“When you write a poem, read it again two weeks later and cross out all words that are not necessary.”

I went home and applied this procedure to my poems and they disappeared. This is how I did not become a poet. I am very grateful to Baranczak for this advice.

However, when I settled in England and was surrounded by all those books in English, including books of poetry, and I wondered how they might sound in my mother tongue. So I wrote them anew, in Polish. Years passed, at one point I realised that I had lived in England more than a half of my life. Then I started doing the same, but the other way around: writing in English what I knew in Polish. Naturally I tried to render in English what influenced me when I was younger. Poems by Baranczak were among those things.

The poem titled "With one breath" was one of the most influential poems of my generation in Poland, whereas "The evening of poetry reading" was an actual even at which I was also present, when the secret police entered, arrested all those present and detained them for 48 hours.

WITH ONE BREATH

With one breath, with one bracket of a breath closing a sentence

with one bracket of ribs around the heart

closing like a fist, like a net

around the narrow fish of breath, with one breath

to close all and to close oneself in all with

one thin slice of a flame shaved from lungs

to torch the walls of prisons and breathe in the fire

behind the bone bars of the chest, into the tower

of the windpipe, with one breath, before you choke

gagged with the thickening air

of the last breath of a man who is shot

and of the hot breath of gun barrels, and clouds

of steaming blood spilled on concrete

the air, which carries your voice

or muffles it, swallower of swords

the side arms, bloodless but bloodily

wounding the throat of brackets, between which

like a heart between ribs, like a fish in the net

flutters a sentence stammered with one breath

until the last breath

A SHOT BROUGHT ME DOWN TO EARTH

A shot brought me down to earth

a shot in a dark alley

a dark negation behind a shaken window pane

it got me, shot though, brought down when I was having high dreams

in an ant-like stampede, where all muscles agree

supported by the stirrup of loudly pumping blood

with the harness of tendons barely restraining

with the bridle of tongue in the mouth

it brought me down to earth

this gunshot with its dark, sober vowel of negation

my hand grabbed the throat shot through

the same fingers which

there, in the dark alley

held the neck of the rifle and

the same which grabbed the earth

into a fist very tight, as if they wanted the Earth

knead into a cobblestone and throw it at me

this shot through down the sleepy acceptance

of my body when it ran towards the greedy meadows

and, in each moment

shot through with a volley

of my own blood, which from veins' dark alleys

gushed impatiently, multiplied in light

I saw

myself as I fell on the tarmac with the throat shot through

with the bridle of the tongue turned into a gag

wet with the words written into my body

by a lead bullet

IF YOU HAVE TO SCREAM, DO IT QUIETLY

If you have to scream, do it quietly (walls

have

ears), if you have to love

turn the light off (your neighbour

has

binoculars), if you have to

live somewhere, don't close the door (the authorities

have

warrants), if you

have to suffer, do it in your own house (life

has

its rights), if

you have to live, limit yourself in everything (everything

has

its limits)

NOBODY WARNED ME

Nobody warned me that freedom may also mean something like

sitting at the police station with a rough book of my own poems

hidden (how clever it was) under my underwear

while five civilians with higher education

and still higher salary waste their time

analysing some rubbish taken from my pockets

tram tickets, a laundry receipt, a dirty

handkerchief and a mysterious (that's a good one) loose page:

„carrots

can of peas

tomato paste

potatoes”

and nobody warned me that captivity

may also mean something like

sitting at the police station with a roughbook of my own poems

hidden (how grotesque!) under my underwear

while five civilians with higher education

and even lower IQ are allowed

to touch the entrails torn out of my life

tram tickets, a laundry receipt, a dirty

handkerchief and even (no, I can't stand this one) this page:

„carrots

can of peas

tomato paste

potatoes”

and nobody warned me that the whole globe

is the space between these two opposite poles

between which really there is no space at all

EVENING OF POETRY

They came, because there are certain things and anyway it is your own fault, gentlemen.

They entered, because there are certain laws and I don't think you'd like us to break in.

They stopped the reading, because there are certain words and we we'll give you an advice..

They confiscated the poems, because there are certain limits and lets agree.

They checked everybody's documents, because there are certain regulations and you better don't stretch our patience.

They searched the flat, because there are certain rules and please calm down this child, madam.

They took with them certain people, because certain things have to be done and don't worry, your husband will be back in two days.

They didn't hit anybody, because there are certain forms and oh yes, you'd like it, wouldn't you, gents.

They didn't work too long, because there was certain film on the telly and after all we are humans too.

CLEAN HANDS

Fingers of a young officer of the Security Service

who in his office at the railway station looked through

drawings of Jan Lebenstein dug out from the depths of my luggage

and every so often looked at me with reproach

did not leave any marks on paper

Strange

Not that I would expect stains of blood, smudges of sweat, dirt

or even greasy fingerprints supposedly left on books

by the Great Teacher of Humanity, who liked to read while eating;

the work of the young officer of the Security Service

is clean

he himself has Masters degree in law

and habits of personal hygiene acquired at

his well bred

middle class family

However

it would be more natural if they left

in our poems, drawings, diaries and brains

perhaps just as a souvenir

their unique (fingerprint) sign

of the most meticulous conaisseurs of modern art

especially when they save it from annihilation with one reluctant sentence:

„O.K., you can keep this,

we don't have to confiscate it.”

If you would like to read these poems (and some more) on paper, 

You can get a printout of my book "POLISH INSPIRATIONS"

Why Zuzanna Ginczanka wrote in Polish? (poetry from Poland cycle)

Some time ago I started a blog with English versions of poems inspired by poems written originally in polish, it was called Polish Poetry in English.  However, for some reason which I don't understand one day I was denied access and could not continue. I thought recently that I might as well place those poems here, after all you can also ask a globetrotter about poetry. I'll start with Zuzanna Ginczanka, whose poem "Non omnis moriar" cannot really be translated as such, only written anew. But this is actually not very characteristic poem, her poetry was much more optimistic, full of light and colours and dreams of love. So I add a few more poems.

Zuzanna Ginczanka was born in 1917 in Kiev as Zuzanna Polina Gincburg. Soon after the Russian Revolution her parents moved to Rowne, which was then in a newly created Republic of Poland (it is in Ukraine now). Rowne was a town whose majority of inhabitants spoke Yiddish, but Zuzanna's parents were emancipated Jews and spoke Russian at home. Thus she had a choice of a language: either Yiddish of the shtetl, Russian of her parents or Polish of her school friends. Fascinated by Polish poetry, she chose Polish and wanted to become a Polish poet. She started publishing her poems when still at school. During her studies in Warsaw she entered literary circles; one of her friends was Witold Gombrowicz, another Julian Tuwim. She published her works mostly in periodicals, only one book of poems appeared before the war. As a pen-name she used half of her Jewish surname with a Polish ending.

During the war she lived at first in Lvov, later in Cracow. Her life is a perfect example of the tension between the Polish underground state, which tried to protect its Jewish citizens, and some of the anti-Semitic Poles, who co-operated with the Nazi authorities. As a fluent Polish speaker she could pass for a non-Jew (most Yiddish speakers spoke Polish with a strong accent), and her friends, who were involved in resistance, found her a new identity. However, her neighbour in Lvov, one Mrs. Chominowa, reported to the Nazis that a Jewish woman lived next door and they came to arrest her. Zuzanna's Polish friends managed to spirit her away in time and she moved to Cracow. There she was arrested again, this time as a member of the resistance, not as a Jew. She was executed in 1944, not long before Russian troops entered Cracow.

Her most famous poem – NON OMNIS MORIAR – is really impossible to translate, most of all because this is really a paraphrase of a well known Polish poem written by Juliusz Slowacki, one of the great authors of old Polish poetry. It is as if someone took one of Shakespeare's sonnets and paraphrased it. Which is exactly what I have done in the version proposed below.

After the war she was forgotten, not because her poetry was bad (it certainly was not), but because communist censors decided it was undesirable. During the 45 years of communist rule in Poland only two small selections of her poems appeared. She was re-discovered by Izolda Kiec, who in 1990 published a selection of her forgotten poems in "Czas Kultury" magazine, and later a couple of years later prepared three more collections of poems in a book form. All my versions are based on poems from Izolda's selections.

NON OMNIS MORIAR

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments, love is not love

When it does not love the neighbour and all his belongings

Always ready those belongings to remove.

You, Mrs. Chominowa, you are my neighbour

You will inherit my things after I am taken.

I have no worldly heir, you have grassed on me

In order to speed up my journey to heaven.

Soon you’ll be ready to search for that Jewish gold

It must be hidden in quilts and pillows of down.

You’ll rip them open, and the feathers from the pillows

Will stick to your hands and arms, still wet with my blood.

With those hands like wings you will be an angel

And you'll be ready to fly straight to Heaven."

INSTEAD OF A ROSY LETTER

There are too many streets in my not-too-big town

(I count them every morning but I can't find the one).

My little town is too little, not enough streets in it

(Unfortunately not there, the street where we'd meet).

My little town, although little, a thousand streets could contain

Each leading somewhere far, with both sides nicely paved.

Millions of narrow houses along each of those streets,

Each house as full of people as pumpkins full of pips.

Full of your loving could be a different street every day,

The houses for our meeting would organ music play

On a colourful keyboard, each key a different house,

And we would walk along.

Silence would be

In us.

My little town could stand along a single street

A lonely little streetlet as narrow as a stream.

This little narrow streetlet just two houses could have

Like two little bell flowers, each with a smiling face.

We could come out one evening from our houses' doors;

Maybe one happy evening, maybe one happy dawn,

And this could be the meeting, our hearts ringing like bells,

And we would stay together,

Forever

Till our deaths.

Not enough streets in my town, for it is far too small

Too many streets are in it, I'll never count them all.

PROCLAMATION

THE ARGUMENT

Animals with rough tongues can really enjoy the taste

The wolves of love and of hunger know very well the sensation.

Here's the present moment:

Bees drill for it in lilies.

Wasps with their sharp stings reached the bottom of sweetness.

The earth - a roasted deer - turns on a spit smelling sweetly.

The sun is that bonfire that heats up its fat sides.

O feast of carnivores!

Ready for hunger as ever

animals with their rough tongues really enjoy the taste.

THE COUNTER-ARGUMENT

People of feeble muscles know after-taste and foretaste.

After-taste - it is old age

Foretaste - prophetic light.

The plums are plump and purple, cherries cheerful and juicy

far behind the window, their texture soft as brain.

(History - spring tide of nations, riots like forest fires

the year forty eight, noisy and memorable.

Prophecy - colonies spring tide will light up on the high seas.

It'll come in forty eight, African forest fires.)

They hide in hides of goats,

in furs of cuddly bears.

They know:

it was

it will be.

Today - empty eye-sockets.

Today the day-time half moon floats in a milky cloud.

Forests grow in the cafés - tables from trees now dead.

THE CONCLUSION

I know the swinging foretaste

and after-taste's endless calm.

I caress with my lips

warm moment when it wakes up.

I can't be anything else but a wiser animal

and nothing else i can be - only a watchful human.

FULLNESS OF AUGUST

O pale-faced mothers of rosy-cheeked children; O fertile, proud, happy mothers

You'll go to gather cherries' juiciness with hands smooth from children's caresses

You'll go to celebrate the hot August weather of hearts as ripe as ears of rye

You'll go to venerate with your bare feet the black and swollen fertile soil

I've seen the lips, like fresh fruit's flesh, of lazy daydreaming peasant girls

In clanging warmth of dreamy gardens nostalgia sleeps in spiders webs

Boughs in the orchards are full of fresh juices that give sudden smell of ripeness

You'll go to gather golden aroma of warm trees' resin into your nostrils

In mellow, windy and sunny middays go and proclaim sacred birth giving

Look at the rye leaves shining in sunlight, our daily bread of joyful summers

You may praise the passing blossom that turns into ripening fruits

Everything passes, nothing ends here, in the transforming warmth of the sun

At night you'll take the willow baskets so you can fill them with endless dreams

Go to celebrate red apple pickings and go to harvest ripeness of dreams

The moon is hanging in pear-tree branches like a golden boat on a Christmas tree

Lips of raspberries won't whisper legends about the hearts that bled at night.

RETURN

Waters that thundered on rocks slowly quiet down

The current has slowed down, broad waves come and calm.

Clouds hanging in the sky are stiff in a cold morning,

The distant balls of planets roll round and round

Bees lick from flowers fragrant liquid honey.

Whence comes this radiance? There! From fresh forests.

A stream of brilliant light flows through leaves and rustles.

A bunch of teenage witches jump high between the trees

They look in the high grass for chicks that fell from nests.

In the wood walks Minerva, the goddess of ripe wisdom.

The wisdom of experience that brings about order.

With her calm eye she glances the waters that don't thunder,

Adjusts a bunch of violets she pinned to her dress

and says:

Throw an embroidered cover over secret things

So that the shape of meaning cannot be worked out.

Make peace with appearances and connect with the world

Not by tiresome reason but by life-giving love.

Hasten your solemn return to the age-old truths

With the sound of brass trumpets and flutter of flags

With bagpipes, drums and flutes. Call evil what is evil

And you'll know what to shun. The marching band approaches.

Return to the warm hugs of tender family love,

To the firm and long handshakes of the strong lasting friendships,

To thoughts pious and humble, to joys that don't disturb,

To never ceasing work so that the job is well done.

No need to try to find fire in your love for you husband,

There are no obvious signs that distinguish such love.

Choose a brave young man, give him your tender promise

And a quick flame from lips will also ignite your heart.

Calm landscapes spread like lakes that flood all precipices.

Their sources are in dreams and I sail on these waters.

I sail back to pick up the things the I had passed before

Or noticed at a wrong time. My flag is rolled up.

I remember the warnings and I see all around

The world full of harmony, of lights, beautiful forms

And of noble restraint. No storm is in sight.

Waters are calm as glass. They won't break. I am calm.

If you would like to read these poems (and some more) on paper, 

You can get a printout of my book "POLISH INSPIRATIONS"

You must never forget

"Allahu Akbar!"

The call of a muezzin from the loudspeaker at the top of the minaret remainds everybody that God is Great. You have to remember this all the time, you must never forget God, this is what His Prophet said. Some people stop their work, go to the mosque, wash their feet in the fountain in the middle of the mosque's yard, and hands and head as well. This is what the Prophet told his believers to do. Then they enter the mosque and fall to their faces before the invisible Allah. Only the Muslims can enter, we - the infidels - can only stand at the entry and peep inside. A few prostrations and the prayer is over, Muslims go back to their occupations so abruptly interrupted.

Mediaeval Fez - a city built more than a millennium ago and hardly changed since then. Grinning battlements surround the mediaeval medina. A dual carriage way divides the old city from a modern bus station but once a traveller leaves the station and walks into the city, he is transported, as if by a magic carpet, into a world of 1001 nights. Streets narrow and winding, no vehicles can drive there, all transport is on the back of pack animals. Shops along streets with vendors shouting loudly to attract attention. Heaps of vegetables, heaps of sheep's heads or cow's trotters still dripping with blood, heaps of colourful glazed pots and most of all heaps of things made of leather, bags, sandals, whatever, this is what this city is famous for. In one part of the old town there are traditional tanneries where leather is processed with pigeon droppings. This is where the characteristic smell of this town comes from.

In the very centre of the mediaeval metropolis, hidden in a labyrinth of winding streets, stands the mausoleum of Maulay Idries the Second, a descendant of the Prophet. Maulay Idries, who in the 9th century made Fez the capital of Morocco, did not recognise the caliphs of Baghdad. His dynasty ruled Morocco for several centuries. When five centuries after his death an uncorrupted body was found, it was decided that it must be the body of Idries, as only he could be so holy that his body would not decompose. A mausoleum was built over his tomb and now is a sign of God's Presence in the city. We, the unbelievers, cannot enter it but we can stand at the door and peep in, so we can see the believers hugging the tomb decorated with carpets.

Transport in Fez

The unbelievers can enter Madrasa Bou Inania, this is a sight for tourists. It is a masterpiece of 14th century Muslim architecture, its walls covered with sculpted calligraphy no worse than Alhambra. Much cheaper than Alhambra, though: the entry ticket costs just a few dirhams. There is no queue here either. The entry to the madrasa is opposite the shop with heaps of blood-dripping sheep's heads for sale. Self-appointed guides, several of whom gather in front of the madrasa, offer their services. A man in striped jelaba and a red fez talks to us politely in English but when told that we don't need a guide, curses us in much less polite words. Another man asked which way to an ancient synagogue leads us there (even though we only asked for directions) and then he demands money. He even says that 10 dirhams (about £1) is not enough, he wants 25 dirhams.

Is it possible that Allah is present among those sheep's heads, smells of tannery and people polite for money? Maybe His name is only an empty sound on people's lips

Little coffee shops where only men sit do not invite tourists. When I enter one of them with Ewa, the waiter makes an impression of not really wanting us there and doesn't try to stop us when we leave. Only around Bab Bou Jeloud (the famous Blue Gate) there are restaurants for tourists, where waiters invite passers-by of both sexes. Moroccan women do not go to coffee shops. Instead they go to hammams, or public baths. There are no secrets in a public bath, everybody is naked and ladies spend long hours there exchanging local gossip. Public baths are, of course, unisex; only the hammams for tourists are exceptions. These tourists are strange people, they have to go together everywhere, even to a hammam. So the hammams for tourists are coed, but nevertheless they are true hammams, Turkish baths where one sweats like hell, after which one is properly kneaded by a masseur.

Moulay Idries Mausoleum

Shops with heaps of colourful ceramic do invite tourists of either sex. We enter one where pitchers, vases and bowls painted in colourful arabesques fill shelves and cupboards. It is lunchtime, the attendants sit on the floor in the middle of the shop around a huge pot of soup, everyone tears a piece off a great flat bread and uses it as an edible spoon. They invite us to join them, tear off pieces of bread for us. We join them. This is pure hospitality, they do not expect us to pay or buy anything.

But buy we do. How can one not to in this world of 1001 nights? Hand made Berber earrings, camel wool fabrics, sandals in any colour, everything so cheap and everything hand made! After a walk along the Talaa Sghira street one has no cash left to buy a packet of Saharawi tea of 14 herbs from an old man sitting in a corner of a winding narrow passage. How much does one packet cost? Ten dirhams. But I don't have anything. A cash machine is just round the corner but it doesn't give cash. The next cash machine is near Bab Bou Jeloud, about half an hour walk through crowded Talaa Sghira. I ask the old man to put one packet aside for me.

The old man does not speak French, my Arabic is good enough to ask for the price but hardly more, so a young sandal vendor from the other side of the street comes to help. He tells the old man that we have to go to draw money and will be back in half an hour. The old man hearing that gives me a packet and waves his hand showing me to go. Having gone to Bab Bou Jeloud to draw money I was back almost an hour later. Seeing me the old man spoke to the sandal seller and the accompanying gesture suggested it was something like "I told you, didn't I?"

The world of 1001 nights ends at the bus station. A dual carriage way leads from there out of the town via Ville Nouvelle, the part of the town built when the French ruled here. Trees covered in blue blossom grow along the road. The road leads into the mountains, Middle Atlas covered in cedar forest with apes jumping between trees, then across a small plane that divides Middle Atlas from High Atlas. The town of Midelt is in the middle of that plane. This is where we get off. The bus driver remembers that we wanted to get off at Midelt, stops at a Shell station and gets our luggage out.

Tattouine

"Is this the bus station?"

"This is Midelt."

Where is the bus station? Charif is supposed to wait for us there. I phone him. He says he is at the new bus station 5 km out of the town but he will come.

Will I recognise him? I stayed with him for a couple of days six years ago. I then wrote down his telephone number just in case I wanted to come again. I phoned him before we left England and again from Fez. He told me he would meet us at the Midelt bus station. Perhaps I won't recognise him but he won't have problems recognising two tourists at the Shell petrol station.

Soon a Berber in a blue turban approaches: here he is. Together we walk to the place from which a pick-up will take us to Tattouine. This is a village deep in the mountains, the last one before the main ridge of High Atlas. One can see the snow covered peak of Jabal Ayachi, the highest in the region. the highest peaks are covered in snow, other mountains are pink, we can see the panorama from the back of the pick-up on which we travel. Pink rocks seldom covered in any vegetation, very different from the green mountains of Europe. Charif, who is a Berber from here but speaks French, asks:

"Are you Polish? Sister Barbara will be happy."

Tattouine is a village of adobe houses whose walls are of the same colour as the mountains. In one of those houses, at the very end of the village, live two Franciscan nuns: sister Marie and sister Barbara.

Jabal Ayachi

As it happens on the day of our arrival they have a feast in their house for all the inhabitants of the village. The feast is organised by Charif and his wife Hasna but it is in the house of the nuns because it is in memory of another nun who had lived here but recently died. Charif leads us to the nuns' house. They have prayers there, partly readings from the Koran (because all the villages are Muslims) and partly from the Gospels in French. After the prayers great bowls with tajine cooked in Hasna's house are brought in, one bowl for each table. The villagers sit in the bigger room, we are invited to a smaller room where all the conversation is in French because most of the guests there are French. There is a dentist who half a year works in France and earns good money and the other half he travels in Africa and repairs teeth of the Berber people for free. There are two monks from a Trappist monastery in Midelt, where also lives (not present at the feast) the last survivor of the Algerian monastery at Thibrine. I don't know the story of Thibrine but my interlocutors know it very well. It was a village very much like Tattouine, where the Christian monks lived in perfect harmony with Muslim villagers. Somebody clearly didn't like that harmony and one night all monks were killed. The Algerian government claims the murderers were Muslim extremists but the perpetrators have never been found. My interlocutors didn't believe in this explanation. They suspect that the government needed this murder to clamp down on other dissidents.

In Tattouine the harmony is still there. Big bowls of food prepared by Muslim Berbers are brought into the house of Franciscan nuns. Among the guests are Berbers from the mountains, Trappist monks from Midelt, French Medicins-sans-frontieres. One bowl for each table. People sitting around tear a morsel off a big flat bread and using is as cutlery try to tear off a morsel of a chicken cooked whole in vegetables. All the meals in the house of Hasna and Charif are served thus. The Bedouin whom we will visit the following day will also serve their meals this way.

For breakfest the following day we have freshly baked flat bread dipped in olive oil and very sweet green tea with fresh green mint. As we eat Hasna and Charif put all luggage we need for two days on the back of a mule, so we don't need to carry any rucksacks when we hike up the valley.

Bedouin hospitality

The valley seems to be a desert but here and there in the valley we see Bedouin tents. Here the two worlds meet. The Bedouin know the desert tracks but a city is alien to them, for them a point of contact with the so-called civilisation is the surgery of sister Barbara in Tattouine. If they have a health problem they travel on foot many days through the mountains to reach her. We are also travelling on foot through the mountains, not because we have health problems but for pleasure. We want to get away from the so-called civilisation for a few days. This means a walk through pink mountains. There is no grass here but sheep of the Bedouin find some herbs that thrive in this climate. We stay with the Bedouin for the night, share their meals from a single bowl, sleep on the floor on rugs, bedbugs (or shall I say rugbugs) bite us at night.

The nuns also regularly travel through the mountains, they visit the tents of the nomads and offer medical help. Recently they do this just one month every year but earlier they would spent half of every year travelling around, sleeping in their own Bedouin tent. They even have a portable tabernacle, a miniature Bedouin travel bag, which they hang in a separate part of their tent which serves as a chapel. When the sisters are in the village, the bag hangs on a wall of the chapel they arranged in their house. The bag is empty then because the hosts are kept in a permanent tabernacle in the wall. The hosts are kept there in a container made with several silver Bedouin bracelets. When the sisters travel, the container travel with them in the travel bag.

The chapel in the house is very simple: white walls, a Bedouin rug given by grateful patients, one sits on it during prayers. On one of the walls a waist rope belt worn by Bedouin women hanged so that it forms the Arabic word Allah. On another wall a copy of an icon of Andrei Rublev showing three visitors of a Bedouin named Abraham. There is also a beautiful portrait of pope John Paul embroidered by a boy who lost his right hand as a result of an accident with a scythe when he worked in the fields.

Sister Marie

They only travel one month in a year but they are very active nevertheless. Sister Marie is a teacher, she created a nursery and runs it. Children from the village come to the nursery for half a day. The sisters charge 10 dirhams per child for a term. They could do it for free but they charge because if the parents have to pay, they have respect for it and bring the children regularly. The nursery is in an adobe house like all houses in the village but inside it is equipped like a kindergarten somewhere in Stockholm. One day some well-to-do Swedes visited this place and asked how they could help. Sister Marie told them that they need some equipment for a nursery. Some time later a lorry came to Tattouine and brought all this. Berber children learn here what to do with paper and pencil, they learn the shape of Arabic letters. When they go to school they will have it much easier than if they went there straight from a Bedouin tent.

Sister Barbara runs the surgery and works with the Medicins-sans-frontieres. She is a nurse herself. When we go to see her in her nursery she shows us a little boy with walking impairment. She had several sessions of physiotherapy with him and he made huge progress. Sister Barbara likes to talk. She tells us about the most unusual medical cases she encountered among the Bedouin. Sometimes an inner voice tells her to get up and go. Like recently, when she learned that certain lady was in labour and a local Bedouin midwife was with her. Sister Barbara considers this midwife to be quite competent but nevertheless, even though this was in the middle of the night, she got up and went there. When she arrived the baby was already born and properly wrapped, but Barbara without any particular reason wanted to see the baby unwrapped. It turned out that the baby was all covered in blood, the unbilical cord was tied but got loose and started bleeding. It was very slow but a newborn doesn't have a lot of blood and till the morning could bleed to death.

Sister Barbara

Talking about births, there was an interesting story of a Bedouin who came to the sisters saying that he was worthless because he was born in a cave like a goat. So the sisters told him the story of Jesus, who was also born in a cave. For the Muslims Jesus is the prophet Isa, so the Bedouin went home happy telling everyone that he was born in a cave like the prophet Isa.

In our long talks with the sisters we never heard about a single case of conversion from one religion to another. Perhaps this is not the reason why they are there. But why are they there?

On the day of our departure the sisters invite us for their morning prayer. The prayer consists of a few readings followed by a long silence. Very long silence, certainly more than an hour. After the prayer we go for breakfest to Charif and Hasna. The breakfast consists of bread and olive oil and a pot of very sweet green tea with mint. This is the taste of this country: bread dipped in olive oil and very sweet green tea with mint.

What are the missionaries here for if they don't convert anybody?

Perhaps they are there to remind people about God? After all - you must never forget about God.

The nuns' chapel

You will find this story, and many others, in my book "ASK A GLOBETROTTER".