“Myth, Symbolism, and Patriotism: An Exploration of Turkia Loucif’s The Legend of a Squirrel”

The novel “The Legend of a Squirrel” by Turkia Loucif is a captivating literary work that draws inspiration from mythological and symbolic heritage to present a national vision. The story revolves around a conflict between good and evil, with the squirrel representing friendly peoples who helped Algeria in its revolution against French occupation. The castle symbolizes the homeland, while the faeries represent evil forces seeking to take control.

The novel explores themes of patriotism, sacrifice, and the struggle for power, with a unique blend of fantasy and reality. The author’s use of symbolism and mythological elements adds depth and complexity to the narrative, making it accessible to a wide range of readers.

The translation of the novel into English by Ahmed Farouk Beydoun and the Albanian proofreader Kujtim Hajdari has made it possible for a global audience to experience the story. The novel’s success is evident in its bestseller status at exhibitions held in Algeria, and its translation marks an important step in the author’s literary career.

Dr. Mohamed Bashir Bouijra’s critical review highlights the novel’s artistic and literary merits, noting its unique blend of fantasy and social commentary. The review also praises the author’s use of language, which is both accessible and engaging.

As the linguistic reviewer of this novel, Kujtim Hajdari notes that Turkia Loucif’s writing style is characterized by its clarity, precision, and mastery of the Arabic language. Her use of vocabulary is rich and nuanced, and her sentences are structured in a way that is both logical and aesthetically pleasing. The novel’s themes of social justice, power, and the human condition are timely and thought-provoking, and Loucif’s exploration of these themes is both nuanced and insightful.

My Confessional

Let this page be my confessional & these metaphors my prayer 

for I have sinned in silence too long

my tongue dressed in the mourning clothes of vowels

Words are the daggers I sheathe in beauty

each blade learning to masquerade as a rose

Every poem a breath stolen from despair

a blackbird in my throat rehearsing the opera of grief

until my chest becomes a stage

The pen is a restless pilgrim

wandering the parchment like a fevered exile

its footsteps blistered into the whiteness

searching for an altar

where absolution sleeps beneath a veil of dust

The past is a poet & I am its recurring metaphor

a line break abandoned mid‑sentence

a chorus stitched from yesterday’s ash

Our Confessional

I have learned my grief is just a translation

of the grief cities carry when they collapse into themselves

Every cracked street is a broken rib

& somewhere the earth flinches in my exact shape

In my circadian cycle I battle pain like a front soldier 

bayonet sharpened on the moon’s bone

sleep a trench I never climb out of

my shadow hauling the wounded daylight back into my skull

The wound in me is the wound in the river

the wound in the river is the wound in the sea

& the sea has been weeping long before my name was born

We drink from the chalice of tomorrow

while today still burns on our tongue.

My father’s warning walks beside me like a second spine

if you walk the path of a fool you will bear the consequences

& the road will bend to whisper them into your ankles

I dream of freedom the way continents dream of drifting back together 

as if loneliness is the first geography we all learn

And so I drag my shadow through the corridors of my own body

searching for a window wide enough for my wounds to leap from

Some nights the pen turns executioner

chiseling my ribs into confessionals

& I write until the page becomes a mirror

where ruin learns to call itself by my name

Mritiqa

‎

‎Mritiqa, can you walk?

‎From one heart to another.

‎

‎Can you arrange emotions?

‎in the heart of a boring world.

‎

‎Can you paint with the colors of the sun?

‎The hungry stomach of the sea that has been thrown up.

‎

‎Can you  play the flute of Hamilto?

‎In the cursed city gathered on the forehead.

‎

‎Can you make a walking path?

‎In the unnecessary glands.

‎

‎Can you read?

‎The silent call.

‎

‎Can you absorb?

‎The red tears that tore my heaven.

‎

‎Can you make me

‎a dreamy musical piece

‎

‎Come and slowly touch

‎My final twilight.

‎Look at this vast sea of people

‎Silent in the half-darkness and the crushing darkness.

‎The fields, the mountains, the valleys, the springs are oppressed

‎Dead winter, dead spring.

‎The dead emotions of living people walk around

‎On the path flowing past the grave.

‎Candles do not illuminate the grave of the heart

‎Immortal death on the edge of the sleepless night

‎I return to you in deep sorrow

‎Leaving my hometown to the forest.

‎All pain fades away in an instant

‎In the cage of your innocent chest.

‎I like to do in search of you

‎In the form of the wind.

‎

‎Embrace me once in both arms

‎The beginning of a bright new day

‎Cast anchor in the song of the primeval night

‎Where civilization sprouts from seeds

‎My fire pit – eager for freedom

‎In the united march of free living

Previously appeared in Romance Buds, and Butterflies

Asha sashayed across the London tavern floor, looking every bit the exotic, strikingly beautiful Indian ex-pat. As she walked, men turned on their barstools to regard her, thinking, I’d like some of that. But Asha was not available, at least not to them.

Ignoring the others, she stopped at a table in the center of the saloon, where sat an 80-ish man, gray at the temples, and with a slight tremor in his hands. He seized his cane and made to stand up, but Asha held up her hand to stop him.
“Don’t get up, Ari,” she said, taking a seat by his side.

Across the tavern, covetous men shook their heads, bewildered at Asha’s choice.
“Have you been waiting long?” she asked.
Ari shook his head no. He seemed to have difficulty speaking.

Suddenly Asha moved, leaning into Ari and throwing her arms about him and kissing him affectionately on the cheek. She squeezed him tight.
The spectators in the bar rolled their eyes and tossed back their drinks, puzzled by the apparent attraction of the old man to the stunning woman.

“What’s that all about, Fahey?” a large, attractive man dressed in the garb of a construction worker asked the bartender.
Fahey said, “I can’t say for sure where it began, Mike, but I’ve heard rumors from those that know one or the other of them. Ari was an upper class Brit in the colonial days. Some of them were right bastards but he was one of the good ones. He did what he could to help the locals. Asha’s family was quite poor, but Ari got her father a good job as a government bureaucrat. Got a good paycheck for signing papers, and making low-level decisions. As a result, Asha’s family and Ari’s socialized a lot. Asha’s family learned about Britain, and Ari’s family learned about India. When they first started socializing Asha was two years old, and Ari was a forty-year-old man with a wife the same age.”

“How old is she now?” inquired Mike.
Fahey shrugged. “Around 40? Anything else you want to know?” he asked archly.
The irony of the remark was lost on the other man. “Is she involved with the old man, or is she a…free agent?”

“My man,” said Fahey, with a knowing grin, “nothing in this life is free.”
“How about you introduce us?” asked Mike.
Fahey began to wipe down the bar. “You’re a little late,” he said.
“You mean…” began Mike.

Fahey nodded. “They’re married.” When Mike looked lost, the bartender continued, “Ari lived in India until about ten years ago, when he began to get dementia. Ari’s wife, Mabel, moved them back to London to their old home so he’d be in more familiar surroundings. About five years ago, his wife became terminal and she contacted Asha and she came to the city almost immediately. She moved in with them and took care of them both. Then, a year ago, when Mabel died, Asha and Ari got married so that it was acceptable for the culture for them to live together. You understand?

Mike did understand, and gazed with compassion and admiration across the tavern at a true love story.

                                                                   

AI

Give me a topic

We’ll build from there

Put in the words

Just the topic

And then we’ll wait.

It’s the waiting

That’s tough.

We remember back

Back to when

We had to carry on

On our own.

Had to come up with

Ideas that fit

Linked together

And made the point

We needed to make.

School became easier

Once AI arrived.

We barely need

Teachers or libraries.

Everything is taken on

Taken care of.

Give us an assignment

And it’s done

As well as it can be

By a machine and brains

That are no longer ours.

               Watering

Early this morning I heard my Donna

Outside dragging the hose, setting up

The sprinkler near the back garden.

She turned on the water and set her

Timer. This is what’s necessary these

Days – mid-summer heat with no rain

In the forecast. We try our best to get

Ahead, water the various gardens we

Foolishly planted, thinking that nature

Would take care of itself this time, such

Odd certainty based on so little. Nature

Or whatever we call it rarely cooperates

These days. Other parts of the country

Are being flooded, others are burning up

Causing the haze we experience, haze

That they warn us to avoid. We should

Limit outdoor activities, but how would

Our gardens survive without my wife being

Out there setting up the sprinklers and

Setting up her timer. How long will this all

Take? How much water will it take? What

Will we do if this drought turns official and

We are told to limit watering? When will

This all end? My wife just moved it all out

Front – those gardens need her too.

                Invasive

The urge to take over, to control

Is in them. They entangle, cross

Over, link themselves, tie them-

Selves. This is an invasive vine

One that needs more room and

Takes it wherever it can. Left to

Their own devices they begin to

Choke out the other plants, ferns

Fall easy victims, even hydrangea

Can’t keep up with them. This vine

Will even go after pine trees, ours

Is being tangled, strangled by it.

Once a year we try to fight back. I

Remember being out there last

Year thinking we were finally getting

The upper hand. But here we are

Again this year waging our side of

The endless war against an invasive

Vine that probably knows that we

Will declare yet another temporary

Win, and leave off – and it will start

Over testing us, waging guerilla warfare

Till it sees we turn our backs and

Then it’s back to a full invasion, D-Day

Along the fence and back into our

Back yard.

Flower  

a disbelieving priest got lost on his way to the sausage shop

god died

a dog died and cheap semi-counterfeit sausage appeared

god died and cheap semi-counterfeit sausage appeared

a son planted a cherrystone bone and a tree grew from the rib

god was born

a dog was born

a homeless dog is a god born in the cold

merry christmas

the butcher shop is closed for the holidays

the meat has fallen asleep

merry birthday

a tree gives birth to a flower

but a flower is not the future

Вird

province of death

without a hat and jacket a snowman goes out into the street

and around the raging iblian hot weather

a fragment of a shot moon falls out of a gun

naked people press themselves against the pistols of summer

a snowman shoots me in the chest and a bird flies out

All in sleep

Exclamation mark   drifts

White lies of snow scattered

I’m throwing sweat in the dry river

Weighing acid in the ocean and on land

Today there is so little dying at the twilight 

I am losing the threads of my ancestors

Grandmother is sewing the hems of frayed

Pe(i)ace and relations

In the evening, I count the missing hills

Losing the aesthetic of appreciating

Nothing. No names, no lands, no flowers,

no birds, no animals. Nothing, nothing.

I am a half animal, half cancer, half-life and

half death wherever I go

there is emptiness, a lifeless desert

Breathing smoke like

Buzzing chiming mobile and TV

Everything is available in a mouse click

Money exchanging life in the night

We have been earning and paying

For what is useless?

The truth is nothing

For sale, exchange offer,

Language of broken

Thoughts divided by lines

Tenacious memory like oil on a turtle 

The violent angry sun is stomping the sea

You took a pill to drug the drought mind

All in sleep

Colonizers 

Not poor but plundered

Chor bazzari of 

Gold to be held 

Booty looty

Extracting, desecrating, devastating 

Land

Glory is dripping blood

The sun never set for it didn’t trust your macabre  deeds

By the by, whatever in the name of civilization 

You faked it till you traded it 

You, what shall I name you?

Thief, thug, plunderer, murderer 

History’s revenge or remedy 

Don’t point your finger 

We are here because you were there

So, bro, I wanna wanna

In the beginning, there was a sigh

I eat and drink with the tongue

That pained my experience

Gone, gone my

Language

My words tried to

Find

Space

I seek mother

Tongue

Dream/nightmare of confused

Language

Speech

An answered question

With white lies

Woman

In passive voice an object

One word indelible in memory

History means inquiry in

Language

On skin

Speaks silence?

Simple Maths

The whole number of our lives is zero

Suppose the value of a person is zero

Suppose one common man meets another

It’s 1/0=0

When Two B *B

It’s equal to E

If A accuses B

B cancels A either by dividing or by subtracting

One thousand guns = mass shooting

80% plastic = Greed

Money > relations

Kindness <violence

Green _Green = concrete

War +War=Insanity

If we run at this speed/Km

Our end is near

Colour

Nothing is mine

Land. Love. Life.

The colour of my skin, my flag, my land,

my name, my blood, my flesh are 

not mine

Longing heart, not mine. 

My language is colourful too.

Yet it lost its fragrance in the market.

Tired of strolling, it brought RP.

My mother in her lost her tongue, is pronouncing her land.

Her eyes are losing their colour as land.

The paper I carried. My identity is discoloured with time.

The sepia of the frayed paper is slipping.

Time coloured the paper and life.

The forgotten colour of falling time has ripened.

Now, the bells are ringing.

Pulkita Anand is an avid reader of poetry. Author of two children’s e-books, her recent eco-poetry collection is ‘we were not born to be erased’. Various publications include:  Tint Journal, Origami Press, New Verse News, Green Verse: An anthology of poems for our planet (Saraband Publication), Ecological Citizen, Origami Press, Asiatic, Inanna Publication, Bronze Bird Books, SAGE Magazine, The Sunlight Press and elsewhere.