June 21st, 2024: Palestinian poetry by Mohammed El-Kurd and Mahmoud Darwish
We explored literary work by two prolific Palestinian poets: Mohammed El-Kurd and Mahmoud Darwish. El-Kurd writes of his experiences in East Jerusalem and the West Bank while Darwish, considered as Palestine’s national poet, wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988.
“Write down
I am an Arab
My card number is 50 000
I have eight children
The ninth will come next summer
Are you angry?
Write down
I am an Arab
I cut stone with comrade laborers
My children are eight
I squeeze the rock
To get a loaf,
A dress and a book
For them.
But I do not plead for charity at your door
And do not feel small
In front of your mansion
Are you angry?
Write down
I am an Arab
I am a name without a title
Patient, in a country
Where every body else is very angry
My roots sink deep before the birth of time
And before the beginning of the ages,
Before the time of Cypress and olives
Before the beginnings of grass,
My father belonged to the family of the plough
Was not of grand stock
My grandfather was a farmer, without a pedigree
He taught me the grandeur of the sun
Before reading books
My house is a hut
Made of reed and stalk
Are you satisfied with my rank?
I am a name without a title!
Write down
I have been robbed of my ancestral vines
And the piece of land I used to farm with all my children
Nothing remained for us and for my grandchildren
Except these rocks
Will your government take them?
So it is
Write down
At the top of the first page
I hate nobody
I do not steal anything
But when I become angry
I eat the flesh of my marauders
So beware... beware
My hunger and fury!”
We felt a sense of honour and dignity in our reading of this piece. The ancestral ties, family relations, and community teachings communicated throughout moved us.
We felt the lines: “Will your government take these rocks?/So it is” to be significant and powerful. This made us reflect on images from press showing Palestinians, notably children, throwing stones at Israeli tanks. This image made us reflect on what other resources are stolen from Palestinians beneath Israeli occupation - such as water and aid trucks. We especially recalled recent news that the Israeli government denied Palestinians the right to even collect rainwater.
We noted the frequent references to nature: cypress trees, rocks, olives, sun, and ancestral vines.
This poem generated discussion on the value of anger within resistance movements. How it can maintain and inspire us, how it is justified and natural. We discussed the importance of owning and honouring our anger and not minimizing it. Honouring anger is an act of resistance; it overturns how anger has been weaponized against oppressed individuals by the oppressors to deem them as violent and unreasonable. We view this poem as powerful in its frustrated tone, and acknowledge that anger does not imply violence.
We briefly discussed Darwish, how familiar people are with him, and the significance of his popularity. A member of the circle shared that he is often cited for his romantic poems rather than his resistance writings.
“Home in my memory is a green, worn-out couch
And my grandmother in every poem:
Every jasmine picked off the backlash,
Every backlash picked off the tear gas,
And tear gas healed with yogurt and onions,
With resilience,
With women chanting, drumming
On pots and pans
With goddamns and hasbiyallahs.
They work tanks, we know stones.
2008, during the Gaza bombings
My ritual of watching TV
Ran between grieving
And Egyptian belly dance music.
I fluctuated between hatred and adoration,
Stacking and hoarding Darwish’s reasons to live
Sometimes believing them
Sometimes dipping my bread in indulgence,
Knowing a child is breadless, in Khan Yunis,
Dipped in a roof’s rubble…
If you ask me where I’m from it’s not a one-word answer.
Be prepared, seated, sober, geared up.
If hearing about a world other than yours
Makes you uncomfortable
Drink the sea,
Cut off your ears,
Blow another bubble
To bubble your bubble and the pretense.
Blow up another town of bodies in the name of fear.
This is why we dance.
My father told me: “Anger is a luxury we cannot afford.”
Be composed, calm, still - laugh when they ask you,
Smile when they talk, answer them,
Educate them.
This is why we dance:
If I speak, I’m dangerous
You open your mouth,
Raise your eyebrows.
You point fingers.
This is why we dance:
We have wounded feet but the rhythm remains,
No matter the adjectives on my shoulders.
This is why we dance:
Because screaming isn’t free.
Please tell me:
Why is anger - even anger - a luxury to me?”
We noted this poem’s reference to Darwish and its bridging of generations. We extended our discussion of anger since the poem ends with a question that reflected our previous thoughts: that anger is weaponized against some and not an emotion that all can safely express due to oppressive forces that use anger to justify dehumanization.
We noted the line “They work tanks, we throw stones”; this connected to our previous reflections on Darwish’s poem.
Another line that marked us is “Screaming isn’t free”
We reflected on dabke - traditional Palestinian dance - as the poem includes various references to dance and its significance as a means of expression.
We felt this poem gives a sense of existence and actualization to feelings that are often overlooked or dismissed, like the influence of the media we consume on how we perceive emotions, nonverbal communication, and stories we hear from our elders.
“Nowadays, grandmother walks fragile,
So unlike the past she battled.
Wrinkled faces
Hide inside the wrinkles of her face,
Tell the story of that event;
Organized undying.
The morning of a red-skied May 1948
Could’ve been today.
They knocked the doors down,
Claimed life as their own.
The chances of their staying
Fragile.
But now look:
Houses are in rings, keys around necks,
Odds far from even, far from running water.
Seven decades later
They harvest organs of the martyred,
Feed their warriors our own.
The people of Haifa left,
Some fled after news
some stayed,
gave coffee to massacre.
Some walked a straight line into the sea
back to their city
refused to be martyred
refused to exit.
They were on with Haifa,
drowned
in this life
soaked in salt.
My grandmother - Rifqa -
Was chased away from the city,
Leaving behind
The vine of roses in the front yard.
Sometime when youth was
More than just yearning,
She left poetry.
What I write is an almost.
I write an attempt.
She left behind clothes folded ready to be worn again;
Her suitcases
Did not declare departure.”
