entire people. you who dream of an american time will be relevant you can think in order to be an american writer you have to quit your brownness because the adjective will get in the way of the important noun. english language will impose the adjective before the noun and your face will be imposed before the actual meaning of your life. the other one is not the [inaudible] but the black parent. that one there is the yellow which he willo player. language makes sense [inaudible] language is never innocent. it is a familiar domaine of the ones who came out with it's loss and structure. this, alexander, is not your tongue. your tongue is muteulated, it's gone, rotten in your mouth along with the silence of the days

where you became invisible you bad copy cat. despite the rage and the disappointment of your own kin. thank you. [applause] >> this is a scene from my novel [inaudible]. it seemed like a great opportunity to get to do this here. okay. what time is the first reader anyway? i didn't like bars this crowded. someone elbode me in the back. when i turned around i didn't know who the elbow belong said. relax. i didn't expect there to be this many people i thought they would be at the bar with the travel writers. i thought they the be with the hip sters i guess we are not hip sters we can't guess who they

are into. we lessened the hipster intimidation factor and picked out the smart guy. this year we selected postmen pausal writers on the meaning of life. here i was, the city never fails to surprise me much the crowd was quieting. people were pointing toward the stage. i woman of 60 clamored on to it. she had silver hair and had a long velvet skirt. i'm senora watson. there was applause. she lowered her head slightly to indicate her humility. i must confess i was surprised to be invited tonight. i'm embarrassed to say i didn't know young people were drunkenly stumbling through the streets in the name of literature. there is a mag natizism we were

tealing. we were in a bar. here is my flawed worthwhile attempt to approach the meaning of life. she read a first person account of a 23 year marriage. every word of every paragraph was tuned there was not a wrong note. it was so powerful imented to believe it was her marriage. that last paragraph contained the wedding vow when he swore he would not be afraid to let her chafrnl him much the crowd froze after she finished. then we exploded into applause. she stood in the spotlight with tears in her eyes. she's a retired psychotherapist.

>> go to her. this was a scene of a romantic comedy. i had to catch her at the airport before she left me forever. she was stopped by audience member after audience member. iment to talk to her but what would i say? well, what are you trying to get from her. her question was koejent for someone who had polished off her third drink. i want to come out of retirement and i want her to help me. i don't think it's realistic. you keep thinking i need to find the restroom. i wasn't listening to the reader on stage. she was talking to 3-20 something women. she back and grabbing at my arm.

we need to leave now. why? >> dustin is here and he is with someone and she's cute. >> did he see you? >> no. i can't talk to him i'm a mess. are you sure he's really with her and they are not friends. >> she's hanging all over him and i didn't get to pee. >> let's go, then. we fought our way out the door. i cast the last look with senora it was just as well i hasn't found anything to say. i tried to calm aguilarissa, she schemed in terror. i can't go in there what if kevin is in there with his wife.

what if i keep seeing them. >> she leaned on the door of the laundry mat. the asian woman looked at us and resumed folding. your ex's will not be there they are ill literate. >> i bet justin is engaged to that girl. she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket except for the cancer part. >> i'm never getting married. she sank to the ground her back pressed against the glass. who says that's the meaning of life. it was a beautiful story but if you think about it it's hoeky. there is nothing hoeky about loving someone with your heart and having them love you the same way. that's how everyone doesn't love

me. i didn't know what to say. there was nothing hoeky about a great love. yeary 3, 712 and 23 had been painful. some had been bory put it together and it was a life of great love. that was the only way it could be done. empty sidewalk was jammed with people. i held her as they streamed by. thank you. >> from the last 2 pages i wrote in my novel. after the events in entertainment room number 17. with the man who had been pretending to be her husband. the imposter didn't have his own name. he used ga as he wore ga's clothes and slept as her husband

had on the couch. he drove with the high beams on and reunification boulevard. they were in a mustang and there were no other cars on the road. passing through the park they saw families in the dark steeling chest nuts from the trees. at dinner everyone called him commander ga even though he didn't look like commander ga. see knew that this man was not going to leave that her husband was not coming back be and from now on this man wouldn't be wished away. he would have to be dealt with as her husband had to be dealt with. they crossed the river the bridge lights showing the color of his bruises. they drove through the cemetery and the amusement park.

she asked about the vehicle they were driving. he turned side ways in the road. the headlights was a man running from the zoo with an oan egg in his hand. do you feel the man hungry enough to steel or for the man who must hunt him down. >> is that the bird who suffers? >> thwhere did you get this ca? he didn't answer. you know it's a fake; right . this car, he said is revered in america. they are quite rare much i recognize this car it was a prop in one of my movies. this was the car he was escaping

i saw kissed a trader in the back seat. how did you get this thing off the property lot? one switch in the road above the gardens and they were at her house. inside the children were asleep and he pulled a bottle of [inaudible] from the cool place under the sink he held it with a hand who's combukelled fanned yellow. you have chosen to become a man born to violence. he answered it was the commander who chose me. okay sun moon said i will turn down the sheets for us much the bed faced a balcony over looking the mountain. across the river was a glow much the 2 disrobed and entered where they lay awake waiting until 10

o'clock. it's a common misconception that listening devices turn off in the power. with a can of peaches the kalt rad had given them. when the house and city below went dark moon spoke, here are the rules she said. children will reveal their names to you when they decide to do so. you will never use ta eshe k wo on them. you will never touch me. she said. from below they heard dogs bang in the zoo. wait, i take that back. you are allowed to touch me only if i touch you first. are there more rules? i'm thinking she said. a quick blue flash filled the room and all was dark again. in prison he said, so many

people through themselves at the electric fence they had to build another fence to keep them off of it. thanks.

. >> on march 5th, 2007, a car bomb was exploded on mutanabbi street in baghdad. mutanabbi street is a mixed shia-suni area. more than 30 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded.

this locale is the historic center of baghdad book selling, a winding street filled with bookstores and outdoor book stalls. named after the famous 10th century classic poet, al-mutanabbi, this is an old and established street for book selling and has been for hundreds of years. mutanabbi street also holds cafes, stationary shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. it has been the heart and soul of the baghdad literary and intellectual community. this tragedy is part of a wider and continuing tragedy, but one that we want to isolate and address, not only for the loss of lives but also for the implications underlying the destruction of a street where books were sold. book selling on mutanabbi street is no different from

book selling here. we traffic in memory, ideas and dreams. in that sense, we feel that mutanabbi street starts at the front door of all of our book shops. mutanabbi street starts here. our first reader will be sinan anton. >> when i was torn by war, i took a brush immersed in death, and drew a window on war's wall. i opened it, searching for something, but all i saw was another war and a mother weaving a shroud for the dead man still in her womb. there was a photograph of an iraqi boy on the front page of

the "new york times". he sat on the edge of the truck, 8 or 9 years old, surrounded by his family, his father, mother , and 5 siblings were asleep. his head was buried in his hands. all the clouds of the world were waiting on the threshold of his eyes. the tall man wiped off the sweat and started digging the 7th grave. the next reader is going to be diane dupris. thank you. >> i'm going to read a few things that i wrote sitting in a hotel room in, oh, whatever year that was, 01, i guess, when we started bombing afghanistan. these are short poems on the

afghan war. 1, small bones of mountain children in the snow. two, bags of rice burst open, burlap flaps in the wind. even the label, usa, is fading. three, we air drop transistor radios. can you eat them? will they keep you warm? this one is called les american, october 5, 2001. we are feral, rare as mountain wolves. our hearts are pure and stupid. we go down, pitted against our own. there's one other short thing.

we gathered there frequently, old scholars, printers, book collectors, old and young writers pass through the place on any given afternoon. all kinds of activity came to the shop in the years i worked there. they were the early years of the black awareness, robert williams was active in south carolina. there was a period of time when the cot in the back of the store was a drop off for various disassembled armaments. sometimes someone we didn't know would put something under the mattress, making the cot unusable for several days. someone would come by and take the hardware away in a shopping bag and that would be it for a week or so. there was often a black photographer who would come to the shop with an empty shopping

bag. when he left, he with leave in a zigzag and eventually get on a bus going south. >> i wanted to read a poem that was sent by the poet that i invited to the recent san francisco international poetry festival from iraq i've been in touch with for more than a year and a half. after the united states would not give him his visa, i asked him -- i told him about mutanabbi street and he wrote a poem and he wrote it in english, though he writes in, of course, in arabic. but this one he wrote in english. so i'll read it. one figure in the poem you should know, humbaba, which is an ogre, a monster of

immemorial age. that was a special big garden, a forest, where all types of trees and flowers grew. the trees bending down gently flinging branches. our orchard grew like a crown on the sun's eyebrow. where did humbaba come from? his mother was just a cave, his father unknown. who made him a friend pretending guardian of the orchard. did those nice shrubs need fear to go begging for a garden and have humbaba in his treachery ilk. those plants and flowers were like books everyone could read, not cut and throw away. their different fantastic colors had formed our blood so our veins ran smoothly, our 7

wonders showed. then humbaba made a whirlwind of fire and snow. who crowned him king? who showed him our garden was but a jail? humbaba was great and scary, but not so very strong, though no one could ever conquer him as no one would ever try. time and again, when things grew old, humbaba alone believed himself eternal and young, still powerful, able to defeat all. humbaba didn't want to know one fact: that accumulation will lead to eruptive change. but, sadly, when suddenly he realized it after all, he chose to check its power on all, the tall. he crushed all the shrubs and plants leaving them creeping and broken all over.

he damaged the flowers and colors, the flowers withered, their leaves all burned and soon they were throwing their seeds every which way and when the whole orchard changed into a dry, gray waste, humbaba, his mind like stone, shouted his horrible cry of fire and burned all that gray and yellow, birds of all kinds were flying away with ashes in their beaks which humbaba couldn't oversee any more or ever set on fire. then, grandfather ended his day and continued closing his big thick yellow book, turning to his grandsons and daughters and anding them a big red bud, then bidding them good night and laying his head on his yawning book, he glances solemnly at the full moon in the core of the sky, his eyelids blinking once, searching for that big,

silvery rose. the next reader is dima shahabi >> i'd like to move on with an iraqi poet, one of the most prominent and brilliant poets of her time recently passed away in cairo, in june, actually. she was not only a poet, she was luminous and free-thinking pioneer in establishing the theory of what has come to be known as free verse in arabic poetry. in addition to her extensive laments on oppression of women and melancholy. she left. no cheek turned pale, no lip trembled. the door did not hear the story

of her death. no window curtain overflowed with sorrow and gloom to follow the tomb until it disappeared. the moon lamenting its depression. the night surrendered itself without worry to the morning. the lights brought the voice of the milk girls, the fasting and the moaning of a starved cat of which nothing remained except bone. the fussing of salesmen, the struggle of life, kids threw stones at one another in the middle of the road while dirty water flooded the avenue and the wind toyed with gates and roof tops, alone in a state of semi oblivion. . >> on the day al-matarazzo

street was bombed, did you notice how quickly it folded in itself? or the broken tea cups and coffee-stained saucers, the gray matter, and just before the street was eviscerated by those, just before that moment, did you hear the patter, the proclamation, the prayer as they wrangled and swore, denied and affirmed, did you hear the words as they fell? for a thousand years we have, two thousand years, more coffee?

what do you think? but this book says -- map, border, industry, collusion, resistance, truth, spirit, faith, doctrine, domain, love, free, portal, wind, cut. did you hear the euphony of the street like a rain forest of song birds pefrpblged among the crinkle and fluttering leaves of newspapers as they addressed if not solved, defined if not created the problems and the promise of tomorrow? did you hear the explosion, the screech, the howl, the scream? did you even know of the dreams imploded inside the molten iron, splayed blood and torn guts across the narrow book-lined street as debate turned to barb's screeches, philosophy into choked smoke and a thousand years of history

was buried in the rubble. or was there nothing except an inxoerable deadly silence. and the next reader is rick london. >> i'm going to read a few poems by the palestinian poet mahmud darish. i have the wisdom of one condemned to die. i possess nothing, so nothing can possess me and have written my will in my own blood. oh, inhabitant of my song, trust in water. and i sleep pierced and crowned

by my tomorrow. i dream the earth's heart is greater than its mouth, more clear than its mirrors, and i was lost in a white cloud that carried me up high as if i were a hupo and the wind itself my wings. at dawn, the call of the night guard woke me from my dream, from my language. you will live another death, so revise your last will. the hour of execution is postponed again. i asked, until when? he said, wait till you have died some more. i said, i possess nothing, so nothing can possess me, and have written my will in my own blood. oh, inhabitant of my song,

trust in water. this last poem has an epigraph, the cypress is the shadow of the tree and not the tree itself, and has no shadow because it is the tree's shadow. the cypress is in pieces like a shattered minaret. it's asleep in the road in its own aesthetic shadows, green and dark, just like it is. no one has been harmed. cars pass by, speeding over its branches, rising dust settling on their windows. the cypress is in pieces, but the dove that chose it doesn't move its exposed nest to a nearby accommodation. overhead, two migrating birds circle the sufficiency of its