Palestinians Turn Out to Lay Beloved Poet to Rest
Mahmoud Darwish Lauded as 'Symbol'
TOOLBOX   Resize
 Save/Share +
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
|
Thursday, August 14, 2008; Page A07
RAMALLAH, Aug. 13 -- Seventeen-year-old Irjwan Assi never met Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, but she was in mourning all the same Wednesday as she craned her neck to watch his flag-draped coffin pass through the center of this West Bank city.
"We lost a very important symbol of our nationalism and our cultural heritage," she said. "We will never have more poets like Mahmoud Darwish."
Assi then recited a few lines from one of Darwish's most famous poems, written 40 years ago when he was serving time in an Israeli jail.
I long for my mother's bread,
And my mother's coffee,
And her touch.
The poem represents the yearning for a homeland that all Palestinians feel, Assi said, adding that she believes Darwish was even more important to Palestinians than former leader Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004. Darwish, 67, died in a Houston hospital Saturday from complications of open-heart surgery.
Like Arafat's, Darwish's funeral was organized by the Palestinian Authority and attended by thousands of people. The coffin was driven through the streets of Ramallah to a hill on the outskirts of the city near the Cultural Palace, where Darwish had read some of his poems just last month.
As the coffin was laid in the ground, the crowd chanted, "O Mahmoud, O Darwish, in our hearts you will live."
Adel Manna, an Arab citizen of Israel and a historian, grew up near Darwish's boyhood village in what is now northern Israel and knew the poet well. Darwish "liberated the old Arabic poetry from its constraints and made it accessible to a big audience," Manna said.
Many of Darwish's poems have been set to music. Dib Abdul Gafur, a water resources engineer, had a popular recording of one of them by the Lebanese singer Marcel Khalife as a ring tone on his cellphone.
"His poetry talks about the suffering of the Palestinian people caused by the Israeli occupation," Gafur said. "When you read his poetry, you feel something touches you inside and helps you fight the occupation and work toward independence."
