Speaking Up; A glimpse inside Saudi Arabia.(The Unfurling)(Book Review)

Byline: Anuj Desai

Few contemporary writers can claim to represent a silent people in the same way as the Saudi poetess Nimah Ismail Nawwab. "Will the time come... For my voice to be sent forth," she asks in her poem "The Longing," "Crying out in the stillness of a quiet people, / A voice among the voiceless?" For Nawwab, the first Saudi poet writing in English to be published by an American press, the answer is a resounding yes. Her debut collection of poetry, "The Unfurling" (117 pages. Selwa Press) , will resonate with her compatriots as well as with outsiders looking for insight into Saudi Arabia. Indeed, at a book signing last month in Jeddah--the first such event in Saudi Arabia--locals and foreigners of all ages waited in line for up to 45 minutes to meet the author.

A Goethe quotation at the start of "The Unfurling" clues readers in to Nawwab's intentions: "The poet should seize the Particular, and... thus represent the Universal." Nawwab's volume includes poems covering familiar Western literary terrain such as muses as well as reportage-style work specific to the Middle East. With a firm point of view but none of the vitriol common in modern poetry, Nawwab tackles such divisive subjects as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Palestinian intifada and Saudi Arabia's religious police. But regardless of the subject, "The Unfurling's" central theme is the push of globalization versus the pull of older traditions--a struggle that's particularly acute in Saudi Arabia. "Today, we have people who are for gradual change, some pushing for rapid change and others for preserving the status quo," she says. "That's the reality. I want to be true to what we're going through, so I ...