On the Hills of the Forgotten Sun .... (Feiruz, Ya Tayr el Werwar)

When I was 6 years old, one Sunday every month my mother would dress up my sister and I in our best cloths and my father would drive his Peugeot 404 to the airport. There, with dozens other we would wait for the BOAC plane to touch down.

And when the captain would open his door and stand on the small platform in his uniform and smoking a pipe, it was almost an extra-body experience for all of us. The crowd would applaud, the stewardesses would walk with that ease that makes old blood flow easy again, and we would go to the airport restaurant. My father would slowly degustate his double espresso; and we will get pistachio ice cream in a square “cone”.

On the way back home, my father would say “there is a world beyond the sea and skies. I hope one day you will experience it.”

The plane was the messenger between the two worlds.

… Tonight, I thought about that plane, those worlds that I discovered in the past 50 years, and the Sunday cloths I once so proudly wore dreaming of discoveries and surprises. And it hit me, perhaps for the first time, that many cultures have attached their hearts and hopes to the wings of migrating birds just like we did with the BOAC wings!

So, I looked further into songs and poetry I knew where birds have been the messengers between members of immigrant families, between loved ones who left home to earn a living, and between those exiled from their land and identity.

First, as an Armenian, I cannot keep my eyes dry when listening to the melancholic song of “Grung” (Crane}. The common crane returns to the same nest year after year, and the people hope to get news from their loved ones with each return.

          “O crane, do you bring me news from our homeland?”

 It is pure symbolism and folkloric imagery immortalized by Komidas Vartabed, a priest who traversed Armenia on foot to collect unwritten folk songs and music in the early 1900s.

But when the crane remains mute, the asker of news says:

          "You gave me no answer; but you arose and left

          O crane, depart from our beloved homeland"

Then, I recalled the Lebanese Diva Feiruz who often sang not only about migratory birds as carriers of news, but to the birds asking them to tell loved ones about our lives. Two of her songs from the 1960s have influenced me to this day – Ya Tayr and Ya Tayr el Werwar. In all situations, the context is the same – birds are asked to tell us about the people and places we love expecting that these migratory birds have been with these people and places. And, we ask them to give our news when they go back.

I am grateful to the Internet that when the moon is low and my memories overwhelming, I can find video clips from the 1960s of Feiruz singing these songs.

… Many poets have written about birds, especially marine birds. Paul Verlaine describes marine birds like the albatross in Romances sand Paroles (1874) as did Baudelaire in 1857 in Les Fleurs du Mal. For both poets, the birds were gauche and clumsy on land but pure poetry in the air. Just like poets, these birds were misunderstood and mocked by society.

 … A few years back, I decided to learn Spanish. Since I am fluent in Italian and French I thought Spanish would be a logical new language addition.

And it was. And suddenly I had a whole new world of imagery, feelings, words, vibrations and colours available and accessible.

So I read all the poetry that I could in Spanish generously using online dictionaries. Neruda remains my favorite poet, but the power of poetry and language was perhaps best understood and explained by Rubén Darío, a Nicaraguan poet who spearheaded the Modernismo movement in the early 1900. He gave the Spanish language a new life and a prominent place in the world languages. He is the most prominent “ancestor” of today’s Nicaragua and one can find statues, writing, architectural design, name of cities and roads in his memory from Managua to León.

One of Dario’s poems, “Pajaros de las Islas” (Birds of the Islands) shows the musicality and delicate use of language he cherished:

Pajaros de las islas, ¡oh pajaros marinos

Vuestros revuelos, con

Sert dicha de mis ojos, son problemas divinos

De mi meditación

(Birds of the islands, O maritime birds!

Your commotions,

Being a joy to my eyes, are divine problems

For my meditation.)

… And the symbolism of using migratory birds as messengers between different worlds and people can be found in the songs and poems of practically any culture.

Often the messages expected from these birds are nostalgic, sad, and born from separation. Which reminds me of a most powerful poem by Neruda entitled “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines”. This poem is about denial, anger and eventually acceptance of the reality that his lover is gone. That she will kiss someone else while he is left alone with his pain.

The poem ends:

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Let this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

… So birds and planes, like memories that continue to travel between our past and present are our messengers reaching those who cannot be reached.

We know that, but we still continue to hope.

Reaching places that do not exist or do not exist as we knew them.

We know that, but continue to hope that the arms of the clock can be wound backward.

I find it amazing and much telling that the word wound and to wound the clock are the same, and that their meaning to our soul is even more strikingly comparable!

January 31, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

P.S. The photos are of the moon on the morning of January 30^th, 2019 two hours before sunrise. I used a 1960s Nikkor-Q the 20cm telephoto with 1/5^th sec aperture speed. Of course it is impossible to handhold the camera at that low speed and take any clear photos. What I got though are duplicated and superimposed photos of the moon and Venus (the jagged line at the left). Strangely, as I was writing this essay about birds, the moon and Venus took the appearance of being in flight….