A Life of Words Yemeni Poet  and Patriot Spoke for Unity, Freedom [Archives:2000/30/Culture]

BY W. FLAGG MILLER*
The words of great orators have an uncanny ability to transcend their time and place. It was therefore no surprise to me to hear that the Yemeni-American community in Dearborn will hold a memorial service for folk-poet Shayef al-Khaledi, who died last December.
The works of this extraordinary man have been a salve for those remembering home and a beacon for a nation.
Khaledi was born in a remote southern Yemeni village in Yafi’a in 1932. In Yemen’s tribal highlands, the settlement of disputes had long been managed through persuasive poems. As a youth, Khaledi quickly distinguished himself by producing powerful arguments that would convince one or both sides to sue for peace.
His experience as a mediator and political poet vastly expanded in the ’40s when he traveled to Aden, then a British colony. In order to help Yemeni laborers who had been deprived of basic rights, he helped spread influential ideas about nationalism, pan-Arabism and Yemen’s importance in the world.
When a revolution broke out in 1962 against a monarchy in the north and the British in the south, Khaledi joined the fight for independence.
Despite the fact that North and South Yemen (the Yemen Arab Republic and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, respectively) were not to achieve unity until 1990, Khaledi continued his persuasive poetry. By drawing from a rich tradition of symbolic expression, he articulated national objectives from the perspective of the working majority: farmers, mechanics, small-store owners, taxi-cab drivers and local politicians. His language was colloquial and accessible to all classes. He spoke for Yemeni unity, condemned political corruption, reminded others of the hardships of economic reforms on the working people and celebrated religious life.
His sociability and open-mindedness were well-known. I benefited from this as an anthropologist working for several years in Yemen. Because of Khaledi’s generous help, I was able to collect and translate many of his poems to English before he died.
At the memorial service, friends and acquaintances will talk about his life and the issues that he championed.
The event will carry on a Yemeni tradition of late afternoon poetry sessions that Khaledi was known for. Sitting with diverse groups of people, he would use these sessions to encourage younger poets to express themselves in poetry.
The last time I was with Khaledi, we attended a rural wedding celebration together. We’d spent the previous evening with our eyes glued to the television set, watching France beat Brazil in the World Cup. He had been an avid observer late into the night, so I assumed that on the following night he would retire early.
As dinner at the wedding was concluded, people gathered for a traditional poetic competition that is common in Yemen. The drums beat, the dancers romped, and neither the tournament nor Khaledi showed any signs of abating by the time I crept, exhausted, into bed at two in the morning. I was amazed by Khaledi’s spirit and constitution.
It is with deep sorrow that I reflect on how audiences of all ages and cultures have been deprived of a man who had such a love for his country, a commitment to his neighbors and a passion for poetry.
An excerpt from ‘Letter to the Corpse’ al-Khaledi by Shayef al-Khaledi said:
How much yearning and hope
Aching, ache upon ache, has availed me nothing
Craving and yearning empty, they have no meaning
I don’t remember the heart or hopes… such deceit
Do not forgive that odious period that has misled and separated us
Separating from the whole group those who were
in their midst
How my companions were lost, and we became
lost ourselves after them
Each crossing a mountain, one to the left and
another right
Where is our family, our beloved,
where have they gone?
Where is the accompanying friend,
WHERE am I to him?
Where are those whom I used to see with my own
right eye?
After them went our obliged prayers and our laws.
Where are those spliced from the world ahead of me?
Those to whom the world was so wretched?
_______
*W. Flagg Miller is an anthropology student at the University of Michigan. Write to him in care of the Free Press, Editorial Page, 600 W. Fort St., Detroit, Mich. 48226

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