LEILA FADEL, HOST:
In the northeastern Libyan city of Derna this week, thousands of protesters gathered to demand accountability after floods washed much of their city and many of their loved ones into the sea.
(CROSSTALK)
FADEL: They want Libyan officials arrested for failing to heed repeated warnings that the two dams that protect Derna would collapse in the face of floods - and they did, killing thousands. Among those trying to warn his city leaders was Mustafa al-Trabelsi. He did it in the form of a poem. And on September 10, he died in the floods he warned would come. But his poem lives on. It's been shared among Libyans as a symbol of the conflict, corruption and climate change that led to this travesty. And Khaled Mattawa, a Libyan poet at the University of Michigan, translated the Arabic poem into English.
KHALED MATTAWA: (Speaking Arabic). The rain exposes the drenched streets, the cheating contractor and the failed state. It washes everything, bird wings and cats' fur - reminds the poor of their fragile roofs and ragged clothes. It awakens the valleys, shakes off their yawning dust and dry crusts. The rain, a sign of goodness, a promise of help, an alarm bell.
FADEL: An alarm bell. Tell us about who wrote this poem.
MATTAWA: Mustafa was an activist, clearly. In Libya, to be involved with culture and free speech and so on, during Gadhafi and even now, post-rebellion, you have to be an activist because there has been a suppression of speech again under the various governments. And he's also an activist in terms of watching over the ecology and what's happening to the city.
FADEL: Yeah. And when did he write this poem, which sounds so much like a prediction of exactly what happened?
MATTAWA: I cannot - I have not found out where. He certainly reposted it. It says September 10, 5:35 a.m., so just a few hours before the floods came and took the city and demolished it.
FADEL: So he passed away in these floods. But this poem...
MATTAWA: Yeah.
FADEL: ...Has been shared widely among Libyans and the Libyan diaspora. What is it about this poem that has caught the nation's attention and the diaspora's attention?
MATTAWA: You know, it has done what good poems do. It doesn't decry or bemoan. It just sort of tells the truth in a very compressed, musical fashion. It's prophetic in that it just told us everything that we know about the rain. If you're from North Africa, the rain is a blessing, a promise of help and a sign of goodness because it's so rare. But in this case, as had been happening, the rain is a sign of the broken infrastructure and of the corruption that had taken over the country in every facet.
FADEL: And for people who don't remember, in 2011, Libyans rose up against Gadhafi, Moammar Gadhafi, the leader of Libya at the time, ousted him with the world's help.
MATTAWA: Yeah.
FADEL: But it's been a country that's been plagued for over 10 years with conflict, rival militias, rival governments, and now this flood that overtook the infrastructure in Derna, which is a city of 90,000 people at least. Why did you decide to translate this poem for more of the world to see it?
MATTAWA: I found a poem that said everything very well. I am grateful for Mustafa's work, not just in this poem, in other poems where he even predicted the demise of the city in other ways. And I'm grateful that he's given us a poem that tells us that human conscience - whether in Derna or in America, or Africa, or Asia, or anywhere - is alive and well when it tries to monitor the world, watch it and try to express things in a way that moves us.
FADEL: Khaled Mattawa teaches creative writing at the University of Michigan. He is a poet and a translator of poems. Thank you so much for your time.
MATTAWA: Thank you, Leila. I appreciate being with you.
(SOUNDBITE OF LE TRIO JOUBRAN SONG, "MASAR") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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