TEBRAE

Tebræ (singular: Tebria) is a poetic genre of two verses composed by women of the Sahara desert. The poet Lélé (real name Ismaël Diadié Haïdara) is the first man in Africa to write in this female poetic genre. His book Tebrae has been published in Spanish in Cantabria (Spain) in 2021 and in French in Bamako (Mali) in 2022.

1

My tebrae are the witticisms of an idle man.

Like dry leaves the poems pile up at my feet.

2

With the gaze of the fish out of the river

my childhood memories return.

5

Exile is not sad.

Far from my home here is love, snow, the sea.

7

I have grown up among cow skeletons on a barren land.

No one has told me why we were born.

9

I can no longer hear the song of the birds between your lips.

Here begins the desert.

723

Mother, where are you?

The bird sings alone in its nest.

744

When sadness knocks at the door, I open it.

I offer my poor table as I offered it to joy.

857

All the flocks of my joy have died of hunger.

They say that it rains beyond this desert.

858

Woman of the mountains of the Filabres,

after your kiss, I look for the rest of my ashes.

859

Give me your hand, woman.

It doesn’t matter if we’ll both be among the stoned.

888

I used to have a name, a house, friends.

Now my friends are nameless in a cemetery.

889

Your womb was my hive.

Now separation is a bee sting.

890

Laughter is just a mask of our tears.

Why were we born?

891

For my birthday give me a needle and thread.

My heart is in tatters.

892

All a man does is wait for death.

There is nothing else.

916

One day the Being comes and then follows the Non-Being.

The story is very short.

917

Between the wine and your love is my consolation.

The wise men said fleeting truths and went away.

918

My life is between my birth and my death.

Before and after a thousand stars illuminate the night.

942

Timbuktu is no more.

I am without house, without goods of my own.

943

Tomorrow if I have a friend left alive

Let him pray over the tombs of my father and my mother.

970

My sack is full of holes.

It is sewn in part like my heart.

971

 cnvm

Only my silence belonged to me.

I leave it as an inheritance to the dragonflies of the river.

972

I came on a pilgrimage along the river.

Here only the butterflies recognize me.

973

My country is in flames.

Through the window I see white herons on their way.

1008

Leaning on this dark bar.

The coffees follow one after the other and your absence lengthens.

1009

I survived the war.

Now my only struggle is to survive the memory.

1123

Dead from sleep,

I see my clothes unmended.

1169

Lying on the grass

the butterflies and I laze.

1203

One day the grass will grow on my grave

but don’t cry, I have laughed at everything.

Translated into English by the spanish poet Virginia Fernández Collado

Biography

Ismael Diadié Haidara (Timbuktu (Mali) 1957) is a historian, philosopher and poet who lives in Spain. He is currently the president of the Kati Fundation in Spain, and Director of Kati Fond in Mali, the most important Andalusian documentary legacy outside of Spain. Ismael, who went into exile in Spain from Mali after the Tuareg rebellion of 2012. He is the author of several books, Le statut du monde. Nécessité, possibilité et contingence chez Ibn Arabi, Cordoue, 1992; Yawdar Pasha y la conquista saudí del Songhay (1591-1599) Instituto de Estudios almerienses, 1993 et Rabat 1996; L’Espagne musulmane et l’Afrique subsaharienne, Editions Donniya, Bamako, 1997; Les Juifs à Tombouctou, Editions Donniya, Bamako, 1999 ; (en colaboración con Manuel Pimentel) Los otros Españoles, mr ediciones, Madrid, 2004 ; Los últimos Visigodos, rd editores, Sevilla, 2003 ; Las lamentaciones del viejo Tombo, Maremoto, Málaga, 2006 ; Abana, Rihla, Córdoba, Almuzara, 2006 ; Monólogo de un carnero, Árbol de Poe, Malaga, 2012; Zimma, Vaso Roto México, 2014, Madrid 2015 ; (en colaboración con Manuel Pimentel) Tombuctú, Andaluces en la ciudad pérdida del Sáhara, Almuzara,2015. Une cabane au bord de l’eau, ediciones del Genal, Málaga, 2015; Sahel, ediciones del Genal, Málaga, 2017; Tebrae pour ma mère, ediciones del Genal, Málaga, 2017; Diario de un bibliotecario de Tombuctú, Almazara, 2017; De Toledo a Tombuctú, conversaciones con Ismael Diadié Haidara (con Antonio Llaguno Rojas) Ginger Ape Books & Films; Edición, 2018. De la Sobriedad, Almuzara, Córdoba 2020. Tebrae, Catabría, 2021; Bamako, 2022.