Our Lady of the Telephone and the Palestinian poet

There is a cocktail called a Tornado. And I know a woman with three children who describes the pain of childbirth as a tornado. And love can often feel like a tornado scattering the equilibrium of the human heart. But it’s the warplanes that offend me; the ones that reach into Arabia with bombs for the Islamic state, and are called Tornadoes. I suppose words are slippery little fish; they can be used like a knife to kill the poetry in anything.

I was thinking this recently as I drove towards Dublin Airport to a hotel to pick up a Palestinian poet. I usually try to avoid politics, but I had been asked to collect her. I usually try to treat all phenomena as like a dream, and in dreams there are no politics. It’s all poetry.

For example, the previous night I dreamed that my mother was walking along the banks of a river with a woman in a hijab. Suddenly they dived into the river and turned into otters, floating side by side, their hands joined, to ensure that they would not drift apart in sleep.

But I mentioned none of this to the Palestinian poet, who had her own worries. She was exhausted from the flight and she had a pain in her back. I was told at reception that she was asleep in her room. So I waited in the foyer, whispering her name like a mantra, because I was already overexcited about meeting her: Rafeef Ziadah, Rafeef Ziadah, I whispered.

Not driven by politics

When she finally appeared I said, “Hello Rafeef, it’s an honour to meet a poet from Pal

estine. I’ll be escorting you to the concert,” although I didn’t see the drive as a political act.

On the way out of the car park, I said, “I’m not good in Dublin traffic”. My phone was in a cradle on the dashboard.

“Use the satnav on your phone,” she said.

“I don’t trust it,” I said.

But I dropped a pin anyway, on the map of Temple Bar, where she was going to perform later. As we passed through Drumcondra, she mentioned that some of her relations were killed in the bombings during August, though I didn’t take that as a political statement. I clung to the steering wheel and hoped I wouldn’t crash and I talked about the traffic in the city because I didn’t want to mention the war.

At every junction the satnav offered directions in a soothing feminine voice. On Dorset Street it said to go straight ahead, although I was sure I ought to turn left. So I defied the directions and turned left.

The Palestinian poet looked out the window, and I knew she was thinking in that silent way that women do when they are disappointed with men but won’t say it. Eventually I got lost in traffic and I couldn’t find our destination.

“I’m really sorry, Rafeef,” I said, “I’m lost.”

“You should have trusted Our Lady of the Telephone,” she teased, and smiled, even though she was on painkillers to ease the effects of an injury she received as a child years ago. And for a moment it focused me on the vast suffering that happened in Gaza during the summer.

Later I sat on the balcony of the Button Factory as she sang out her poems of love, and passion for a homeland, and her indignation at how western countries sometimes treat immigrants. But there was nothing political about her poetry, unless it is political to love your mother and your brother and the ground they walk on.

The audience clung to her with affection after the show. I drove down Eustace Street and waited outside the stage door. Drunken stag parties were swarming around the street, and taxi drivers got frustrated with me for blocking their way. When the Palestinian poet finally arrived at my vehicle, I was going to make a joke about Dublin being like Beirut, but I stopped myself just in time.

The pain in her back was so bad that she fell silent as I negotiated my way through the drunken hens and stags. And I listened attentively to Our Lady of the Telephone at every junction on the way back to the airport. As I dropped her off at the main entrance of the hotel, I realised I might never see her again. But I think of her often now, as Tornadoes sweep across the Arabian deserts and poetry dies on the evening news.