Mahmoud Darwish (13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008), one of the pioneers of modern Arab poetry, was regarded as Palestine’s national poet. His first poetry collection Leaves of Olives, included the poem “Identity Card” which was written in 1964.
“Record! I am an Arab
And my identity card is number fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the ninth is coming after a summer
Will you be angry?
Record!
I am an Arab
I have a name without a title
Patient in a country
Where people are enraged . . . I do not hate people
Nor do I encroach
But if I become hungry
The usurper’s flesh will be my food
Beware..
Beware..
Of my hunger
And my anger!”
Darwish’s works won numerous awards and were published in 20 languages. The poet Naomi Shihab Nye wrote that Darwish “is the essential breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging.”
Blend of classic and modern
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) held a recent event to commemorate Darwish one year after his death. The event drew a number of distinguished Egyptian poets and critics. In his presentation, the poet Fouad Taman said that Darwish represented the conscience of his nation. His dream was to live in a world where love, justice and peace prevailed.
Dr Khaled Azab, the director of the BA’s media department, gave an opening speech in which he said that, as a modernist poet living in the 1960s, Darwish faced the dilemma of creating poetry that was a blend of classical Arabic poetry flavoured with new, modern techniques that did not abide strictly to the traditional metrics of poetry. The quasi-Romantic diction of his early works gave way to a more personal, flexible language, and the slogans and declarative language that characterised his early poetry were replaced by indirect and ostensibly apolitical statements, although politics was never far away.
Straight talk
Ahmed Abdel-Moeti Hegazi, one of Egypt’s most prominent poets, talked about Darwish tackling the pressing issues of his nation through simple poetic diction. His wit in poetry was exemplified in his ability to address people of different tapestries. Hegazi called for rereading Darwish poetry and discovering the art of how each poem began through to the end. “The form and content is a piece of art that surely benefits poetry on a large scale,” he said.
Critic Fawzy Eissa chose to comment on Darwish’s famous poem “Mural”, which he wrote before undergoing heart surgery. Strangely, Darwish wrote the poem while under anaesthesia. Eissa remarked that writing a poem under such a condition epitomised man’s arduous fight to live, because clinging so tightly to earth meant Darwish still had a mission to fulfil. His close relationship with his ever-increasing audience is best described in this excerpt:
“Whenever I search for myself I find the others
And when I search for them
I only find my alien self
So am I the individual-crowd?”
(Mural)
Love and death
The Alexandrian poet Hemeida Abdullah said Darwish was a strong character whom nothing could break. He was often called “the poet of the resistance,” and was sometimes accused of writing in defence of Palestinian mainstream politics. Yet Darwish managed constantly to defy any strict definition of who and what he was or wanted to be. He wrote the Palestinian declaration of independence in 1988, and many poems of resistance that are an integral part of every Arab’s consciousness. However he also wrote a lot about love and death; he wrote poems that can be easily understood, and others that are so mystifying that many critics cannot begin to decipher them.
Helmy Salem, the poet and winner of the State appreciation award for 2009, pointed out that, when Darwish gave a poetry reading anywhere in the Arab world, itself a rare event, he easily drew thousands of people from all walks of life and social classes. It was as if he had become a personal possession, a national treasure, for every Arab, regardless of age, education, background, nationality, or religion. “No poet has been expropriated as Mahmoud Darwish has been over the past 30 years,” Dr Salem said. “And no one realised this more than he did.”
“And history makes fun of its victims
And its heroes
Takes a look at them and passes by
This sea is mine
This moist air is mine
And my name-
Even if I spell it wrong on the coffin –
Is mine
As for me,
Now that I am filled with all the possible
Reasons for departure –
I am not mine.
I am not mine
I am not mine…”
(“Mural”)
The event concluded with a concert by Mohamed Abdel-Mohsen performing the most famous songs by Mahmoud Darwish, accompanied by Yasser Hegazi on the oud, Samer Hegazi on piano and Wael Abu-Okal on percussion. This was followed by recitals of Darwish’s poems by Abdel-Moeti Hegazi, Salem, Taman, Abdullah and Omar Hazeq.