Reykjavík Grapevine - 11.10.2013, Qupperneq 20

20The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 16 — 2013
In that home he hung his paintings and
put away his books. He became a regular
at a café, developed routines, made more
friends than he’s ever had and gave in
to the ebb and flow of life here. He was
tasked with sharing his poetry, creating
more and translating Icelandic literature
to Arabic. In this he fell in love with the
Icelandic language and gained a solid
command of it. The former chemistry
teacher and writer from Lebanon found
his niche in the Nordic poetry scene.
In November, his two years are up, and
if 35-year-old Mazen is granted Icelandic
citizenship in December, it will be the
first time he has ever been recognised as a
citizen of a country.
Statelessness
Mazen was born in Lebanon of Palestin-
ian refugee parents, meaning he has nei-
ther Palestinian nor Lebanese citizenship.
Life in Lebanon became too dangerous
when he spoke out against the Syrian
government and wrote articles condemn-
ing the divisiveness of Lebanese and Pal-
estinian politics. In a Grapevine article
written about Mazen in 2011, shortly after
his arrival to Iceland, he mentions having
experienced a kidnapping, an attack and
multiple threats at gunpoint in Beirut.
But in Iceland, it was his poetry that
made him visible. He’s published three
books of poetry, translated more than 180
texts and has been a guest at literary fes-
tivals around Europe. He’s been covered
by international media and has been fea-
tured in two documentaries aired on Al
Jazeera.
He still has no passport. He’s mobile
due to a Travel Document he carries from
the Lebanese government that essentially
allows nations to choose whether or not
they want to accept him. During a recent
layover in London, en route to a literary
festival in Abu Dhabi with three other
Icelandic authors, Mazen was sent back to
Reykjavík. He was not permitted passage
through London and his mother, who had
travelled from Lebanon to the festival in
the hope of meeting him there, did not
get to reunite with her son. “An Icelandic
passport would change my life,” he says.
Apolitical poet
Mazen isn’t reluctant to talk about politics,
but it’s visibly not his favourite flavour of
speech. It never was, but in Lebanon, writ-
ing about it was a matter of underscoring
injustices he had witnessed moving from
home to home amidst cyclical violence.
Mazen buffers questions that could
have a political spin with breadth. He
makes them philosophic questions. You
can ask him if he believes something to be
right or wrong, but you could be launched
into a broader conversation about ethics
and cultural relativity. He has developed
the unique ability to near-constantly bal-
ance his experience in one hand and the
historic/cultural context in the other.
People who have hurt or disappointed Ma-
zen are still deemed nice. Lebanese people
and Icelandic people can’t be compared,
he says, because we are all blanketed
under our human likeness. What comes
off conversationally as an unwillingness
to critically analyse his surroundings be-
comes a triumphant element in his writ-
ing—it’s inclusive and humble; he doesn’t
want to make comparisons, he wants to
draw parallels.
When he’s about to say anything
slightly political or critical, his voice low-
ers, as if someone might be listening or
something might be misunderstood. He’s
calculated about the words he chooses—
no radical statements or emotive displays.
Even being labelled as a refugee from
birth to the present day seems overly po-
litical to Mazen. He tries not to see it as a
distinction but as an equalizer. “We’re all
refugees from something,” he says casu-
ally.
New tension
Growing up in Lebanon, this was a way of
protecting himself. A conversation at uni-
versity or with a neighbour could begin
and end as quickly as political affiliations
became clear. In many instances it com-
menced with a declaration of sides and
hinged on whether all parties agreed with
one another. The lack of free expression
and diversity of thought was suffocating.
When he tried to speak out, violence was
used to subdue him.
Though the solace of Reykjavík is a
tonic to that violence pervasive in his life
before—a peaceful place to “evacuate his
memory”—it took getting used to. “Peace
can be confusing as well,” he says. “The
way I lived in Beirut was all based on
violence. The way people want to impose
things on you—it’s all based on violence.
That tension followed me here. My mind
works on tension.” What he created was a
new tension based on what he compara-
tively refers to as Reykjavík’s cultural ar-
senal—books and minds as opposed to
weapons and aggression. “You walk down
the street here and you run into three writ-
ers, and the artists here are very serious,”
he says. “This is a serious atmosphere for
me to be committed to.”
Life in Reykjavík
Mazen puts together a poem every few
months but in the interim, he’s working
on a novel, writing short stories or trans-
lating. At some point during the day, he
usually goes to Stofan café where they run
a tab for his mostly tea and Swiss mocha
purchases. When he walks in, he stops to
talk with one or several people he knows
and the ease with which he interacts and
laughs with these friends is indicative of
how security and support can breathe life
back into a person. “In Lebanon, I had
three friends—close friends—but other-
wise I was very solitary,” Mazen says. “In
Reykjavík, I am surrounded by people I
have roots in.”
When Mazen was teaching chemis-
try to teenagers in Beirut, talk of Iceland
was usually in regard to climate change.
He had little notion of the socio-political
climate or what day-to-day life was for Ice-
landers. To that effect, he had little notion
of what it was like to live anywhere that
guns and loyalties weren’t worn in the
open. “I never really imagined a place like
Iceland existed,” he says. “I couldn’t imag-
ine living totally void of violence.”
Initially, ICORN offered him place-
ment in several central European coun-
tries in addition to Iceland, in cities such
as Madrid, Berlin and Paris, but he was
set on Reykjavík. “I wanted to be in a place
where nobody knew me and I knew no
one. I wanted to start from zero.”
He laughs at the thought now, of
coming to a sinking island in the North
Atlantic populated by polar bears. “At
first I thought I would find all of these
beautiful animals in Iceland,” he says. A
basic Internet search proved him wrong.
He laughs at the memory of arriving at
Keflavík Airport, unknowingly early, and
believing that his ride had forgotten him
and he would need to walk to Reykjavík in
the November wind and rain.
The misnomer about Mazen in all of
the sombre memories of persecution and
displacement is that he doesn’t actually
carry himself this way. He’s not down-
trodden or severe—he’s charming, he
smiles more than he doesn’t and he jokes
even about his lofty, poet’s responses to
simple questions. He still prefers to go
through his day-to-day routine alone.
He likes to cook, paint, visit bookstores
and walk along his familiar paths. But
he celebrates sharing the products of the
process—meals, a turning point in his
book, a song on his Oud, an Arabic, petal-
shaped guitar with a bent neck.
He apologises for small bits of clutter
in his home, he doesn’t pay them much
mind anymore because he’s not sure
whether to pack things up or put them
away. If he doesn’t receive citizenship,
he’ll have to move elsewhere or find a cre-
ative way to stay, but he brushes this off
like an irrelevant deadline. The idea of
leaving another home doesn’t sit well. If
he receives his citizenship, he’s consider-
ing returning to university to continue
studies in chemistry or to pursue film
studies or script writing.
“I came to Iceland intending to prove
myself as a writer, believing people would
treat me like a refugee,” he says. “In Reyk-
javík, they simply took a human being and
treated me as a human being.”
Mazen’s mother still does not know
that he came to Iceland as both a writer
and a refugee –she knows the writer part.
Perhaps her version of the story is more
true to how he hopes it ends: Her son was
welcomed to the country on the merit of
his writing, he went to prove himself, and
in the midst of it all he found a home that
he could truly never leave and that would,
at last, never force him to.
Mazen Maarouf never thought that he would
leave Lebanon forever. That changed in No-
vember 2011, when it became clear that his fu-
ture there was on limited time. He left Beirut
for Reykjavík as an International Cities of Ref-
uge Network (ICORN) ‘writer in refuge,’ under
which he was offered a home and a two-year
lease on a future.
Finally (Hopefully) Home
Mazen Maarouf came to Reykjavík as a poet
and refugee; he hopes to stay as an Icelander
— By Alex Baumhardt
Nanna Dís
“We're all refugees
from something.”
RUB23 A!alstræti 2 101 Reykjavík
Phone +354 553 5323 reykjavik@rub23.is
RUB23 Kaupvangsstræti 6 600 Akureyri
Phone +354 462 2223 rub@rub23.is
www.rub23.is
Funky, fresh and full of flavor!
You must try it!
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Mazen Maarouf will read from his selected poems and exhibit
his paintings as part of the Reykjavík Reads Festival, ongoing
through the month of October.