Poet saw what we couldn’t
John Asfour could remember what it was like to see.
Blinded by an explosion at the age of 13, he wrote, many years later, in a book of poems titled Blindfold, about a mother’s unheeded warning “not to play with unknown objects, the type that explode on impact.”
In 1958, Lebanese mothers had exceptional worries related to the civil war between Maronite Christians and Muslims. Even in the village where Asfour was raised, dangerous objects tempted curious boys. Three years after the incident, following several operations, all hopes of restoring Asfour’s sight had vanished. Ten years later, he arrived in Montreal to begin an exceptional career as a scholar, poet, teacher, translator and spokesperson for the Arab community.
Asfour died last month at the Montreal General Hospital, after a battle with cancer. He was 69. A funeral was held at the St- Sauveur Melkite Cathedral on Nov. 6.
With his trademark mix of wit and deep sorrow, Asfour had already written about that ceremony, in his book of poems Land of Flowers and Guns, published in 1981. Gazing into his own casket, he wrote: “Poor I, quite dead / No letters to answer / No wages to collect.”
Poet Louis Dudek, the adviser for Asfour’s McGill PhD thesis, wrote in the preface for the book: “He ( Asfour) writes sometimes as if he had eyes better than ours — in fact some students in his classes are convinced that he sees.”
As Dudek had mentored him, so Asfour mentored another writer, Rawi Hage, who has never forgotten the man who encouraged him to write his first novel. Hage’s De Niro’s Game went on to win the prestigious Dublin IMPAC Award. His subsequent novels Cockroach and Carnival both won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction.
Hage described Asfour as his best friend and confidante and “first reader” for everything he wrote. In recent years, Asfour had lived in the same building as Hage’s parents, and became a member of the family, seldom absent from their Sunday lunches.
When he got word Asfour was in hospital, Hage and his partner, author Madeleine Thien, flew home from Vancouver to be among those by his side. “We shared many things,” Hage said, “our love of literature. And we both came from the same background, shared the same immigrant experience.”
During his lifetime, Asfour published five books of poetry in English, two in Arabic. But some con- sider the book based on his 1984 McGill thesis, When the Words Burn: An Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry ( 1945- 1987), to be the cornerstone of his literary legacy.
Author and publisher Linda Leith said she became acquainted with this impressive work when it was reviewed for Matrix Magazine, of which she was then the editor. But it wasn’t until later that she realized the man who had compiled and edited it hadn’t had the benefit of sight — nor modern computer software that now helps blind students do their research.
“He was a person who accomplished so much as a writer and a reader in spite of his blindness,” Leith said. “Hearing him read was like hearing no other author because he memorized it all. It was a recital, not a reading.”
Asfour also played a leadership role in the wider community. President of the Canadian Arab Federation 1996- 2002, during the 2001 post- 9/ 11 backlash against Muslims, he spoke out against modifications to anti- terrorism Bill C- 36, saying preventative arrest was a very dangerous precedent to set.
Asfour leaves to mourn his son John, daughter Mikaela, and wife Alison Burch, who co- authored one of his translated works, Joy is Not My Profession.