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Mahmoud Darwish:Palestine s Poet of ExileBy Natiiaiie Handai
Absent, I come to the hom e of the absent,the leading
Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, writes. No othepoet captures the
Palestinian consciousness and collective memorythe way he does. At
sixty-one, whether he is giving a reading in Parior Palestine, he
draws crowds of thousands, from government officials to
schoolteachers, taxi drivers to students.In bis latestcoWemon,
Judarieh (Mural), the poet
finds himself in between love and death, wonderingwhic h of the
two will conq uer. After the stranger'snight, who am I? Darwish
writes. So, when I speakto him by phone on March 22, I ask him who
he is.He rapidly responds, I still do not know.On many occasions he
has expressed the notion thatonly poetry can bring harmony to a
world devastatedby war: Against barbarity, poetry can resist only
byconfirming its attachment to human fragility like ablade of grass
growing on a wall while armies marchby, he has written . I ask him
if he still believes tha t. I thought poetry could change
everything, could
change history and could humanize, and I think thatthe illusion
is very necessary to push poets to beinvolved and to believe, he
respo nds, bu t now Ithink that poetry changes only the
poet.Darwish has published twenty books of poetry,
Nathalie Handal is a poet and writer living in N ewYork and
London. She is the author of a poetry book, The Neverfield Post
Apollo Press, 1999), and is theeditor of an anthology called The
Poetry of ArabWomen (Interlink 2001).
five book s of prose, and his book s have been tra nslaed into
more than twenty-two languages. He has wonumerous awards, including
the Lotus Prize (1969the Lenin Peace Prize (1983); France's highest
medathe Knight of Arts and Letters (1993); and this Aprhe will be
honored with the Lannan Foundation Prizfor Cultural Freedom. 1 am
still not a po et, and some times I regretchose this way, he tells
me. Still, he is finishing hforthcoming book of poetry. State of
Siege.
His work speaks of his internal exile and uprooedness, his
meditations on his historical, collectivand personal past. Many of
his poems mirror the loof homela nd, the frtistrations of being
under siege, obeing occupied. Here is a couplet from The
EarthClosing on Us :
Whereshouldwe goafter the last frontiers,whereshould the birds
fly after thelast sky?Other poems allude to myths, draw
parallebetween the Native American and the Palestiniaexperiences,
speak of his mother, or address a Jewislover. In Rita and the
Rifle, he writes:
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Between Rita and my eyesThere is a rifle. . . .
Ah , RitaWhat before this rifle could have turned my eyes
from yours.In A Soldier Dre am ing of W hite Lilies, he writesto
his Jewish friends:/want a good heartNot the weight of a gun
smagazine.Irefuseto dieTurning my gun my loveOn women and
children.He describes Palestine as a metaphorfor exile,for the
human condition, for the grief of dislocationand dispossession. In
Eleven Planets in the Last
Andalusian Sky, he writes:Tm the Adam of two Edenslostto me
twice:Expel me slowly. Kill me slowlyWith GarciaLorcaUnder my olive
tree.D arwish was born in 1941 in the village of Bir-weh in the
upper Galilee of Palestine. The cre-ation of Israel in 1948 meant
the wiping ofPalestine off the map and the destruction of 417
Pales-tinian villages. Darwish's village was one of them. Thesame
year, he fled with some members of is family to
Leba non. Mon ths later, he returne d illegally, but toolate to
be included in Israel's census of the PalestinianArabs who
remained. There was no record of isexis-tence. Th us started his
absent-present status. W henDarwish eventually left in 1970, his
absence made himeven more present in the consciousness of
Palestinians,and his poems became extremely popular, especially
Identity Card , written in 1964, and excerpted here: ecordI am an
ArabAnd my identity card isnumber fifty thousandI have eight
childrenAnd the ninth is coming after a summ erWill you be angry?
ecordI am an ArabI have a name without a titlePatient in a
countryWhere people are enraged. . .Early on, he discovered he
could write, and that
The Palestinian people feel thatthey are living the hours before
dawn.Their national will is stronger inreaction to the challenge.
They donot have another option but tocontinue to carry the hope
that theyare going to have a normal life.The Progressive 25
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his words were weapons. Darwish tells me that hischildhood dream
was to be a poet, adding that hepublished his first poem when he
was about twelveyears old. It was no t a love poe m, he says.
1described our journey from Palestine to Lebanon.Darwish published
his first collection when he wasabout eighteen or nineteen years
old. Some were lovepoe ms, he says, and som e were political poem
s. I wasvery strongly influenced by Al-Mutanabbi and theMahjar
poets (emigrant poets such a Kahlil Gibran)and modern Arab poets
such as Qabbani, Al-Sayyab,he says. When I ask if any Western poets
influencedhim , he says, Garcia Lorca, Pablo Ne rud a, Yeats,
andtoday, Derek Walcott is probably my favorite poet. 1also like
the Polish poets, especially Symborska.In 1960, Darwish graduated
from high school andmoved to Haifa, where he became editor and
transla-tor for al-Ittihad da dyan d al-fadidweekly publishedby the
Rakah (Communist) Party. In 1970, tbe poetleft for Moscow to study
political economy, and from
then on his life was one migration after another. In1971, he
arrived in Cairo to work ^orAl-Ahram daily.It was the first time he
went to an Arab country, thefirst time he saw everything written in
Arabic.In 1973, he went to Beirut, where he edited Pales-tinian
Affairs published by the Cente r for PalestinianStudies. He joined
the P.L.O. soon after and played asignificant role in it. And he
became the unofficialpoe t of Palestine, a descrip tion he rejects.
1 do n otlike the label; it is a burde n, he says to me .In 19 81,
he fotmded and becam e editor ofth e pio-neering literary journal
Al Karmel. But the 1982
Israeli invasion of Lebanon led the poet on yet anoth-er
migration, this time to Tunis and Cairo, and heeventually settled
in Paris. In 1993, he resigned fromthe P.L.O. Executive Committee
and protested theOslo accord, saying that he wanted peace but a
fairone. Darwisb says that real peace means being equalwith the
Israeli society, and that the Palestinian peo-ple should have the
right to return, that the questionof the refugees, of Jerusalem ,
of the se ttlem entsshould be resolved, and of course, Palestinians
musthave the right to self-determination.After thirteen years in
Paris, Darwish immigrated to
Jordan in 1995, and in 1996 started living berweenAmman and
Ramaliah, where he continues to edit AlKarmel. During a brief visit
in 1995 to Galilee andJerusalem (Israel granted him permission to
return forthefi ner lof isfriend the writer Emile Habibi, and
anunlimited stay in Palestinian self-rule areas ofthe WestBank), he
said that he felt like a child. Thou sandswaited for him, welcomed
him, told him he was loved,and asked him to stay. He was deeply
moved, cried, andsaid he would never leave. But he was not given
permis-sion to stay in his hometown for more than a few days.
He still longs to go bome, although I might realize thathe
harshest exile is in my hom eland, he says. Th usDarwish remains a
stranger passing th rough.When he lived in Israel, the government
harassehim and several times put him in prison or placehim under
house arrest for reading his poetry.In 1 988, one of his poem s,
Passing Between thPassing W ords , was even discussed in the
Knesse
He wrote:So leaveour landOur shore ourseaOur wheat oursalt ou
rwound.Israelis claimed he was demanding that the Jewleave Israel.
Darwish disputed that, saying he meanthey should leave the West
Bank and Gaza.Yossl Sarid, who was Israel's education
ministersuggested in March 2000 that some of Darwishpoems should be
included in the Israeli high schoo
curriculum. But Prime Minister Ehud Baradeclared, Israel is no t
ready.D arwish insists that terror is not a means tjustice. No
thing , nothing justifies terrorism, he wrote, condem ning the
Septembe11 attack on the United States in the Palestinian dailAl
Ayyam. Concerning the current situation, he telme: We should not
justify suicide bombers. We aragainst the suicide bombers, but we
must understanwhat drives these young people to such actions.
Thewant to liberate themselves from such a dark life. It inot
ideological, it is despair.I ask him how he sees the future. The
Israelis canno t give us back our house bu t live in our garden,
iour living room , he says, his voice rising. I aswhether a
Palestinian state will exist. In a firm voiche tells me , A
Palestinian state already exists. Hadds, Th e Palestinian peo ple
feel that they are livinthe hours before dawn . Their national will
is strongein reaction to the challenge. They do not have another
option but to continue to carry the hope that theare going to have
a normal life.
He says there is a simple solution that only seemcomplicated and
that the two sides can resolve the questions ofth e borders and all
the other issues under negotiation. He repeats a num ber of times,
The re is hop e
After a lifetime of longing, perhaps Darwish is tooptimistic,
too wishful. A few days after our convesation, Israel sends tanks
in to Ra ma liah. 1 call Dawish back, finding him this time in
Amman, JordanHis voice, far and fading, tells me tha t it is all so
babaric, so cynical.But I get the impression that he still feels
there is place to go after the last frontie rs. .. after the last
sky.
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