Renowned Iraqi poet Nazek al-Malaika started her poetic life with an elongated ode under the title Death and human being in which she elaborated on the inevitability of man’s encounter with death.

 The octogenarian poet, whose genuine poems have explored the genre of free verse in Arabic poetry, had been facing the same phenomenon that she beautifully illustrated in her first poem, before she, in self-imposed exile in Cairo, succumbed to her long struggle with cancer on June 20, 2007. She was pushing 85.

 Too late to save
 The news of her being afflicted by such a sensitive disease at the twilight of her life remained confidential till a group of Iraqi cultural activists issued a statement reminding Iraqi government of its responsibilities to Malaika and demanding its immediate intervention for her treatment. But it was too late when Iraqi president Jalal Talabani’s offers came in.
 
 Born into a literary family (her mother was also a poet) in 1923 in Baghdad, Malaika grew up smelling the fragrance of beauty in the pasture of poetry and music. A gaunt child, Malaika liked loneliness, loitering and reveries, composed beautiful poems and recited them. She discovered a love for literature early in life, writing her first poem at the age of 10. Noted Iraqi writer Sabeeha Shibr writes in her Nazikul Malaika: Lover of night and childhood: “Since her tender age, she was fond of music. She learned to play lute. Profound knowledge of tunes made her well versed with the rhythm and music of words. This has greater impact on her writings.”

 Malaika published her first collection of poems Night’s Lover in 1947. Teeming with the images and metaphors of lamentation and moaning, this anthology foretold her obsession with the tragic sense of life in her later collections.

 Sparks and Ashes, her second collection, which elicited uproar over her some controversial remarks on Contemporary Arabic poetry, was published after two years.

 This was followed by heated arguments between her and poet Badr Shakir Siyad over the paternity of the free verse in the Arab world. Later, she revoked her claim which helped the controversy to subside. Bottom of the Wave was published in 1957, and her fourth collection, Tree of the Moon, came out in 1968.

 After graduating from College of Arts in Baghdad, she learned Latin and comparative literature from the University of Pristine in the United States. In 1954, she joined the Iraqi student’s delegation to Wisconsin University where she studied comparative literature.

 Back home in 1957, she worked with a college in Baghdad as a teacher. Her long stint as a teacher in Basra, Kuwait and Lebanon and her interaction with writers across both Arab world and outside invigorated her literary horizon and sharpened her literary endeavours.

 It was in 1990 that Malaika bid adieu to her native land for ever. She spent 40 years teaching Arabic and literature in Iraqi schools and universities, and also wrote literary criticism.

 Egypt it was
 Malaika’s choice of Egypt for spending her final days was not accidental. It has much to do with her passion for the land of Mummies. Though born and brought up in Iraq, she was fond of Egypt, its rich heritage of poetry and music. Malaika’s book on Egyptian poet Ali Mahmood Thwaha, and her celebrated poem Cholera on the ravages of a disastrous cholera that wrought havoc on both the shores of the Nile in 1947, testify to her affection toward the antique land.

  About the incentive behind writing this poem she wrote: “I was keeping abreast of the calamity through radio. When I knew that corpses of the victims were heaped up and carried in horse carts, a strong emotion and a frightening grief overwhelmed me. I jumped up from my bed; took note book and pen and started writing. I felt the voice of night’s foot step…”

  “I lend ear to the falling of melancholy’s echoes
in the depth of darkness, in silence, on the deceased.
Shrieks rise up and disjoint,
grief wells up and flares up”
(Tranquility of night)

 A perusal of her poems like Me, Tragedy of life, Lover of night, Cholera, Elegy of an insignificant day, Song of peace, Prayer of a spectre and Strangers’ would unfurl the tragic sense serving as the under current of most of her poems. Nightmarish metaphors and imageries she employs stand for some turbulent realities she seeks to convey.

 Eternal grief and relentless haunting of nostalgia are the recurring images in her poems.