Mahmoud Darwish |
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"Her eyes and the tattoo on her hands are Palestinian, Her name, Palestinian, Her dreams and sorrow, Palestinian, Her kerchief, her feet and body, Palestinian, Her words and her silence, Palestinian, Her voice, Palestinian, Her birth and her death, Palestinian."
| "7isar" Feb. 2002, Arab |
"Alqurban" Dec. 2000, Arab |
"Muhamad" Oct. 2000, Arab&Eng |
"Oh my father, I am Yusuf" Eng | "The Strangers Pleasure Trip" Eng |
 Arab |
Mount Carmel is in us Eng | Lover from Palestine |
| Interview in Ramallah, 1999 (PDF), Source: Alshu3ara | Interview in Dubai, 1998 (GIF), Source: Alittihad | Interview in Paris, 1997 (PDF), Source: Alshu3ara | Interview in Nazareth, 2000, Source: assenara, 29.09.2000 | S. Alqasim about M. Darwish, 1999 (PDF), Source: Alshu3ara |
| Poetry of Arab Pain: Are Israeli Students Ready? | Don?t Teach Mahmud Darwish | A letter - why Darwish? |
| Resume | The poet in the news | Links |
Mahmoud Darwish spoke in the name of the Palestinian people
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish spoke in the name of the Palestinian people on the fiftieth memorial of the Palestinian Nakba, through Radio Palestine and by broadcast over the loudspeakers of mosques and churches, to mark the commencement of Palestinian marches in PNA controlled areas.
Darwish began his rallying call by saying, “We who are born here on this divine land, we who are dedicated to the message of peace and freedom and the defense of human values, and of the strength of the olive tree, we who are yoked to the night of fifty years of occupation and dispersal, who are wounded from the heart’s vein to the artery, we declare our presence as a wound crying in the depths of time and space in spite of the tempests which try to rend our roots from the very earth to which we gave our name.
After a brief journey through the history of the Palestinian Nakba in which he recalled the memory of those Palestinians and Arabs who had sacrificed their lives for the sake of Palestine, and those who are captive in Israeli jails, Darwish considered “that admitting honestly to the moral and political responsibility for the crime which the Zionist scheme had perpetrated against us (the Palestinians) is what will pave the way for a historical reconciliation between the two peoples - the Palestinian and the Israeli people.
Darwish highlighted “what would follow on from this admission by way of political rights which acknowledge the legitimacy of our existence in our historical homeland and our right to sovereignty within the framework of our own independent state.
He said that this admission is the only way to reconciliation and that “asking Palestinians to apologise for their history, to increase settlement activities, to renege on agreements made and to create facts on the ground was not the way.
Darwish said “the Nakba scattered us in the full view and knowledge of the international community and was brought about in collusion with its great powers.” He called upon these states to atone for their dormant moral responsibility by increasing the intensity of their expression of support for the Palestinian people and their national authority, morally, politically and materially, that they may fulfill their national rights and save the hope of peace from being murdered, through putting pressure on the Israeli Government to abide by resolutions of international law which call for withdrawal and for the recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
Darwish reminded Europe to atone for “its great crime against its Jewish inhabitants followed up through giving unlimited support to Israel as a resolution to the Jewish question, and that it bears responsibility for creating another question which is the Palestinian question.” He said, “No tragedy justifies the creation of another tragedy, and there is no intercession for a victim when such intercession transforms one who is innocent of the crime into yet another victim. We bear no responsibility for the great tragedy which Europe inflicted upon the Jewish people.
He continued, “If it is our moral duty to accept the Jewish account of the Holocaust as it is without entering into discussion about the statistical aspect of the crime, and to intensify our expression of sympathy for the victims, then it is also our right to ask the children of the victims to recognise the position of Palestinian victims and their right to life, liberation and independence.
He added, “The time has come for the world’s conscience to summon up the courage to distinguish between the victim and the executioner, and to review the policy of duplicity in connection with the living and the dead, and to cease to elevate Israeli reality to the point of a sanctity which cannot be held accountable nor even criticised nor made to comply with international law, because this only encourages it to prolong its policy of arrogance and force and its belief in the capacity of this policy to force us into yielding whilst it evades the obligations of peace.
Darwish stressed that the Palestinian people “have had a wounded heart for the half century of the Nakba and resistance, looking forward nevertheless to a future with spirits filled with hope that freedom and justice will prevail, after having gained victory over the policy of genocide and denial of existence.
Finally Darwish said, “We will not yield and will not lose faith in true peace which is linked to the implementation of justice and the practice of our right to independence and sovereignty. Fifty years of the Nakba have not been only in tears over painful memories. The past is not completely over nor is the future fully with us yet. The present is still open to the struggle. These sad years have witnessed a people’s epic of resilient resistance and the investment of energy into dissolving the effects of the Nakba, in order to provide our future generations with the right to freedom and dignity on their own land.
He stressed, “We have not lagged in defending our right to be a free people in a free land underpinned by equality between man and woman, by democracy and the respect for human rights..
We have gained victory over a scheme which aimed to expel us from the annals of history, and have compelled the occupier to withdraw from precious parts of our homeland, through the thrust of our eternal Intifada, which changed the face of the occupation in the mirror of the world’s conscience, and became a source of inspiration to the oppressed and to the outraged. We who have dedicated ourselves to freedom and peace will not let the spirit of resistance and yearning for freedom in our homeland and sole land of our birth falter….“We have been here since eternity, and will remain here infinitely. Jerusalem will continue to be the beacon of our souls and the capital of our homeland for ever.
(Source: The Palestinian Diaspora and Refugee Centre, Shaml)
Interviews:
The poet in the news:
Poems: "Muhamad", "Alqurban", "", "The Strangers Pleasure Trip", 
Muhammad
Living on his father's lap
frightened by the sky's inferno: Protect me father
from flying above, my wing is too
small for the wind... and the light is pitch-black
Muhammad wants to return home
without a bicycle or a new shirt.
Wants to go to the school bench
to the syntax and etymology notebook.
Take us to our home,dad,so i may prepare for my
studies and continue my living little by little over
the sea shore,under the palm tree and
nothing farther,nothing farther.
Muhammad
Facing an army without having a stone or any planet's
shrapnel-s.He didn't write it,it was written for him
on the wall.My liberty will not die,but i will die
defending my liberty.No horizon will even shield
Babel's pigeons.And still born a boy with a name that
carries condemnation along with it.How many more times
will boys be born minus a country minus a childhood
tryst.He will dream if the dream comes,and the land is
lacerated.......and a house of worship.
Muhammad
His death was inescapably coming but he remembered
seeing a leopard on the television screen and when the
leopard approached the poisoned milk,he did not covet
it as if the milk is going to tame
savagery.Therefore,i will escape the boy
said,weeping:My life is hidden in my mom's closet.I
will escape....and bear witness.
Muhammad
A poor angle with an arm reach of a cold blooded hunter.
From the hour when the cameras focused on the child's
lonely movements,in his own shadow,his conspicuous
face as dawn,and conspicuous heart as an apple,and his
conspicuous fingers as candle and whatever was above
his pants was conspicuous.His hunter(murderer)had the
option of re-thinking and saying:Let me leave him
until he learns to pronounce his Palestine
non-erroneously.Let me leave him now and kill him
whenever he become a maverick.
Muhammad
Small Jesus sleeps and dreams inside the heart of a
holy picture made out of brass.
Out of olive branch
Out of renewed people's spirit.
Muhammad
Surplus of blood more than what the prophets need.
Ascend to the final fame.
Oh Muhammad.
We do not need to be reminded: Mount Carmel is in us and on our eyelashes the grass of Galilee. Do not say: If we could run to her like a river. Do not say it: We and our country are one flesh and bone. Before June we were not fledgeling doves so our love did not wither in bondage. Sister, these twenty years our work was not to write poems but to be fighting. The shadow that descends over your eyes -demon of a God who came out of the month of June to wrap around our heads the sun- his color is martyrdom the taste of prayer. How well he kills, how well he resurrects! The night that began in your eyes- in my soul it was a long night's end: Here and now we keep company on the road of our return from the age of drought. And we came to know what makes the voice of the nightingale a dagger shining in the face of the invaders. We came to know what makes the silence of the graveyard a festival...orchards of life. You sang your poems, I saw the balconies desert their walls the city square extending to the midriff of the mountain: It was not music we heard. It was not the color of words we saw: A million heroes were in the room. This land absorbs the skins of martyrs. This land promises wheat and stars. Worship it! We are its salt and its water. We are its wound, but a wound that fights. Sister, there are tears in my throat and there is fire in my eyes: I am free. No more shall I protest at the Sultan's Gate. All who have died, all who shall die at the Gate of Day have embraced me, have made of me a weapon. Ah my intractable wound! My country is not a suitcase I am not a traveler I am the lover and the land is the beloved. The archaeologist is busy analyzing stones. In the rubble of legends he searches for his own eyes to show that I am a sightless vagrant on the road with not one letter in civilization's alphabet. Meanwhile in my own time I plant my trees. I sing of my love. It is time for me to exchange the word for the deed Time to prove my love for the land and for the nightingale: For in this age the weapon devours the guitar And in the mirror I have been fading more and more Since at my back a tree began to grow.
I know the house from the sprig of sage, the first
window inclines towards the butterflies....blue...
red. I know the line of the clouds and at what
well the village women will wait in the summer. I know
what the dove says when it lays its eggs across the barrel
of the rifle. I know who opens the door to the jasmine bush
as it opens our dreams to the guests of the evening.....
*
The strangers' ship has not yet arrived
*
Let us be good of heart! Take me to the sea at
sunset, that I may hear what the sea says to you
when it returns to itself, tranquil, so tranquil.
I shall not change what is in me. I shall steal into a wave
and say: take me to the sea again. This is what
those who are afraid do with themselves. They go
to the sea when tormented by a star that burnt itself in the sky.
*
The strangers' song has not yet arrived
*
I know the house from the waving of kerchiefs. The first
pigeon weeps over my shoulders. And beneath the sky
of gospels a child runs for no reason. Water
runs, and the cypress runs, and the wind runs
in the wind, and the earth runs within itself. I said:
do not leave the house in a hurry....nothing
revents this place from waiting here a little
here, while you don the shirt of day, and wear on your feet
the shoes of the air
The strangers' legend has not yet arrived......
None has arrived
perhaps the strangers have mistaken the road
to the strangers pleasure trip!
Oh my father, I am Yusuf Oh father, my brothers neither love me nor want me in their midst They assault me and cast stones and words at me They want me to die so they can eulogize me They closed the door of your house and left me outside They expelled me from the field Oh my father, they poisoned my grapes They destroyed my toys When the gentle wind played with my hair, they were jealous They flamed up with rage against me and you What did I deprive them of, Oh my father? The butterflies stopped on my shoulder The bird hovered over my hand What have I done, Oh my father? Why me? You named me Yusuf and they threw me into the well They accused the wolf The wolf is more merciful than my brothers Oh, my father Did I wrong anyone when I said that I saw eleven stars and the sun and the moon Saw them kneeling before me ?
Links to Darwish's poems: 
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