Beirut loses a very sensitive poetic spirit: Hoda Al-Nu’mani … the aristocratic princess

«A bird came out from under the armpit and got into the back / Yesterday you laughed / Yesterday it broke your voice / Throw it aside for the horse to throw it away / The minaret went up and sang / The violet was lost among the cross and the knee / Yesterday you were crying / I heard your voice picking it up / Like a child’s mouth picks up / He fed it Before falling asleep. Death this week muffled the voice of Hoda Al-Numani (1930-2020), the poet who most resembled a princess emerging from the stories of “One Thousand and One Nights”, gathering the aristocracy in the mystical spirit, and sometimes mixing the mystical spirit with the innocent by manipulating the words … This Sufi family knew her from male councils The sign of Damascus, Sheikh Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, and formulated it in a poetic form mixed with a spirit female thirsty for love, who has reserved a prominent place for her in the modern Lebanese and Syrian poetic map since: “For you” (1970) through “Vision on the throne” (1989) and “The book of love and presence “. (1998) and others, without leaving aside his most outstanding book, “E Rolls on the Snow” (1982), which throws the reader into a magical world in which Hoda al-Nu’mani’s drawings are mixed with poems lightning and the longing for a moment of solemnity and identification with the greatest spirit in the universe.

Hoda Al-Nu’mani lived as an orphan shortly after the death of her father in 1938, to intensify her return to the home of her grandfather from the Al-Ghazzi family of Turkish origin, one of the disciples of the Sufi mystic Nabulsi, and He moved in education between Beirut and Damascus, obtaining a law degree from his university that allowed him to work in his uncle’s office. Saeed Al-Ghazi, who served as Prime Minister of Syria twice. After their marriage, Hoda Al-Nu’mani moved to Cairo to pursue a master’s degree in oriental studies. After traveling through Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Kuwait, the owner of “Hoda I am the Truth” returned to Beirut in the late sixties of the last century, to open a literary salon in which she brought together a group of poets and poems in prose, especially those of the magazine “Poetry”, with its tune and rivalries that were The “aristocratic princess” seeks to turn the corners, such as the rivalry that occurred between Onsi al-Hajj and Shawqi Abi Chakra. Many of Hoda Al-Nomani’s works have been translated into French and English, notably “E Roll on the Snow” and “The Edge of the Lock”. She is also one of the few Arab poets for whom the Library of Congress of the United States maintains poetic audio recordings. With the passing of Hoda Al-Numani, Beirut lost a delicate female voice and a very sensitive poetic spirit.

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