Palestine's national poet: Who is Mahmoud Darwish?

Mahmoud Darwish, who shared a common fate with the Palestinians, spent most of his life in exile as a refugee. With the hundreds of poems he wrote until his death, he helped create the Palestinian identity, line by line and accompanied their struggle for freedom.

Mahmoud Darwish was born on March 13, 1941, in the village of Birve, located east of the city of Acre, which is currently within the borders of Israel. When his village was attacked during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war when he was only seven years old, he fled to Lebanon with his family and lived in a refugee camp there for a while.

Mahmoud Darwish (13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008) was a Palestinian poet and author who was regarded as Palestine's national poet. He won numerous awards for his works. Darwish used Palestine as a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile. He has been described as incarnating and reflecting "the tradition of the political poet in Islam, the man of action whose action is poetry." He also served as an editor for several literary magazines in Palestine.

Mahmoud Darwish, who had to experience exile life at a young age, had to settle with his family in the Deyrülesed village in the north of Palestine when they returned and saw that Jewish settlements had been established on the ruins of his village. He later expressed his feelings of being a refugee with the following statements:

"We were in the land we lived in, but this time as refugees. This was our common experience, I will never forget this pain."

Mahmoud Darwish, who started school here, started writing poems at an early age, with the experience of war and exile that he witnessed firsthand. He published articles in al-Raqqa, published by the Israeli Communist Party, and in al-Ittihad and al-Cedid newspapers, which are known for their closeness to the same party.

He showed his reaction to the violence and humiliation that Palestinians face on a daily basis through his poems and the actions he participated in. The Israeli army tried to prevent him from attending poetry nights and did not allow him to leave the neighborhood where he lived.

Mahmoud Darwish, who was punished many times by the Israeli government for reading poetry in public without permission, gained fame with the poem he wrote on a cigarette pack when he was imprisoned at the age of 16, starting with the lines "I miss my mother's coffee / I miss my mother's bread."

Mahmoud Darwish, who published his poetry book "Birds Without Wings" when he was only 19 years old, moved to Haifa in 1961 after completing his high school education. He was imprisoned and placed under house arrest several times due to his anti-occupation words, poems, and political activities.

Mahmoud Darwish, who responded to Israel's oppression with his poetry and took it upon himself to explain this oppression wherever he went, became known as "Şairü'n-Nahda" (poet of awakening). The poem "Identity Document", which he wrote when he was 22 years old, addressed to an Israeli police officer who stopped him for not showing his pass, not only addressed the Palestinian people's longing for freedom in the context of the identity problem but also made him known throughout the Arab world.

Write down:

I am an Arab

Robbed of my ancestors' vineyards

And of the land cultivated

By me and all my children.

Nothing is left for us and my grandchildren

Except these rocks...

Will your government take them too, as reported?

Therefore,

Write at the top of page one:

I do not hate people,

I do not assault anyone,

But...if I get hungry,

I eat the flesh of my usurper.

Beware...beware...of my hunger,

And of my anger.

It was hidden in 1967, upon Israel's order to arrest all Palestinians who could hold a pen. When he was 29, he went to Moscow to study political economy, but he could not find the Moscow he dreamed of, and returned.

He then moved to Cairo, Egypt, in 1971, and then to Lebanon, where he served as director of the Palestine Liberation Organization Studies Center, where he remained until the Israeli occupation in 1982.

While in Beirut, he came into contact with other intellectuals such as Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ibrahim Marzuk, Ahmad Az-Zattar, Ghassan Kanafani, Iqbal Ahmed, and Edward Said. His poems began to circulate throughout the Middle East.

Also during this period, he was appointed as a member of the Executive Commission of the Palestine Liberation Organization and served as an advisor to Yasser Arafat.

The civil war that broke out in Lebanon and Israel's occupation of Beirut forced Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization executive staff, and Mahmoud Darwish to leave Beirut.

He was deeply shaken when the far-right Christian militias supported by Israel attacked the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in the south of Beirut and massacred 2000 civilians in September 1982. He received the Lenin Prize in the then Soviet Union in 1983 with the "Beirut Ode" he wrote after the events.

Mahmoud Darwish, who continued his life in exile for years, went to Damascus, Tunisia, and France before returning to his homeland, Palestine. After Arafat requested him to publish the magazine El-Kermel in Tunisia, he started publishing the magazine first here and then in Paris.

Mahmoud Darwish, who expressed the Palestinian experience through symbols, legends, and stories, reproached the Arab countries that did not protect Palestine and left it alone in the political arena with the poem "My, Yusuf's" which he wrote in 1986.

Although he stated that he was not fond of politics, Mahmoud Darwish's pen determined the language and tone of the Palestinian cause. The poet not only wrote the text of Arafat's speech at the UN but also personally wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence.

In 1988, in Tunisia, where the PLO was exiled, he wrote the Palestine Declaration of Independence and included the following statements:

"The National Council declares that, in the name of Allah and on behalf of its people, a state has been established on the land of Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital. The state of Palestine represents the United Nations, which has a responsibility towards the Palestinian people, and the peoples and states of the world who love peace and freedom, to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. "We call on you to help the Palestinian state achieve its goals and end the suffering of its people by making the necessary efforts and ensuring the security of the people."

Mahmoud Darwish, who had differences of opinion with Arafat as time passed, decided that the First Oslo Accord signed between the PLO and Israel in 1993 was a surrender and resigned from the Executive Board of the Palestine Liberation Organization, saying, "Who will take down our flag from the walls, you or them?"

Mahmoud Darwish, who finally returned to Palestine in July 1994, resided in Ramallah and Amman, where he was constantly kept under control by Israeli forces. He passed away at the age of 67 after heart surgery in Texas, USA, on August 9, 2008.

Thousands of Palestinians attended the funeral of Mahmoud Darwish, for whom 3 days of national mourning were declared following his death. The body of Mahmoud Darwish, whose life and poems were intertwined with the fate of Palestine, was buried in Ramallah.