Maḥmūd Darwīsh

"Darwish is to be read with urgency, in the night, when nothing else moves but his lines." ?The Village Voice By one of the most transcendent poets of this generation, a remarkable collection of prose poems that explores themes of love, pain, isolation, and connection. In this self-eulogy written in the final years of Mahmoud Darwish's life, Palestine becomes a metaphor for the injustice and pain of our contemporary moment. Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was one of the most acclaimed poets in the Arab world. His poetry collections include Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? and A River Dies of Thirst (Archipelago Books). In 2001 Darwish was awarded the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize.

In the Presence of Absence

aral

Your father is your father. Whenever you sit with him you speak hurriedly, and he does not expose his wound in front of you. You do not know how to hide the cruelty of your pity from him, so you inherited his wound.

The poison-tipped questions were shot at you: What will you write without exile? What will you write without the occupation? Exile is existence. The existing occupation is what hinders the efficacy of the imagination. I will write better.

The two sworn enemies approach and shake hands: one reluctantly, the other with cheerful confidence. The carefully selected audience applauds a juncture in history on the lawn of the White House. But the language you hear brings your heart back to its senses: No, this is not my language. Where is the eloquence of the victim recalling his long suffering in the face of the misery of the moment when enemy looks enemy in the eye and shakes his hand insistently? Where are the voices of those murdered, old and recent, demanding an apology, not only from the murderer, but from history as well? Where will meaning go when opposites meet? Where is the scream from a surgical procedure where the past is severed from the present in the adventurous march toward an uncertain tomorrow? And where is my language?

There is nothing we can do and there is no tomorrow, they said, when we are in this state, bound to firm fates, tied to abyss after abyss. We take water from the neighbors’ wells and borrow bread from the rock’s bounty. We live, if we are able to live, in an infant past, planted in fields that were ours for hundreds of years until a moment ago, before the dough rose and the coffeepots cooled. In one ill-fated hour, history entered like a bold thief through a door as the present flew out through a window. With a massacre or two, the country’s name, our country, became another. Reality became an idea and history became memory. The myth invades and the invasion attributes everything to the will of the Lord who promised and did not renege on his promise. They wrote their narrative: We have returned. They wrote our narrative: They have returned to the desert. They put us on trial: Why were you born here? We said: Why was Adam born in paradise?

You ask: What is the meaning of “refugee”? 

They will say: One who is uprooted from his homeland. 

You ask: What is the meaning of “homeland”? 

They will say: The house, the mulberry tree, the chicken coop, the beehive, the smell of bread, and the first sky. 

You ask: Can a word of eight letters be big enough for all of these, yet too small for us?

The ney draws you into the distance and you cry like one who could anticipate a catastrophe. There are no black clouds on the horizon. So why do you cry when death is distant and the garden of your house is high, the balcony is high, the willow tree is high, so why do you cry?

So do not reconcile with anything except for this obscure reason. Do not regret a war that ripened you just as August ripens pomegranates on the slopes of stolen mountains. For there is no other hell waiting for you. What once was yours is now against you.

To sit idly and wait for a return home, to find it no longer and never will be the same. What once was couldn't be revived, acceptance is the only choice, accompanied by grief. 

Anya Lai

"You are our tomorrow, live so that we may live through you! Love pomegranate and lemon blossoms. Pour our wine on Valentine’s Day! for we could not find the time to drink it with you. Forgive us, we did not find the time. Do not forget to find time to celebrate love, and seek revenge, through love, for us and for you!"

  Written just two years before his death, "In the Presence of Absence" shows the reader a glimpse of Darwish's life; his journey, and struggles as a Palestinian man and a poet. This book was such a personal experience that I feel that it is inappropriate to rate it according to my liking. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to walk through his life with him, his thoughts mirroring mine. I also feel devastated that his words are once again true, perhaps now even more than ever: "I came, but did not return!" For there could never be an understanding "between a guard and a prisoner". 

  There are many things I want to underline from this book on what love is, death is or life is. Darwish draws a circle talking about the said themes, as life itself is *of* them. Yet, perhaps the most intriguing of them all was the duality of self throughout the whole narrative. The narrator talks in first person yet there is a "you" he refers to, which he says is also him. A self-elegy shared between he, who is leaving this world, and the other he, an absent presence. Through exile, love and separations, almost death and a journey back, he (the poet; both of the selves) has one consistency: writing. He writes of the sky, of the sea, the trees, coffee, pomegranates… He looks at the world and writes, as a poet does, and reflects with praise to the Lord. 

"You are our tomorrow, live so that we may live through you! Love pomegranate and lemon blossoms. Pour our wine on Valentine’s Day! for we could not find the time to drink it with you. Forgive us, we did not find the time. Do not forget to find time to celebrate love, and seek revenge, through love, for us and for you!"

  Written just two years before his death, "In the Presence of Absence" shows the reader a glimpse of Darwish's life; his journey, and struggles as a Palestinian man and a poet. This book was such a personal experience that I feel that it is inappropriate to rate it according to my liking. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to walk through his life with him, his thoughts mirroring mine. I also feel devastated that his words are once again true, perhaps now even more than ever: "I came, but did not return!" For there could never be an understanding "between a guard and a prisoner". 

  There are many things I want to underline from this book on what love is, death is or life is. Darwish draws a circle talking about the said themes, as life itself is *of* them. Yet, perhaps the most intriguing of them all was the duality of self throughout the whole narrative. The narrator talks in first person yet there is a "you" he refers to, which he says is also him. A self-elegy shared between he, who is leaving this world, and the other he, an absent presence. Through exile, love and separations, almost death and a journey back, he (the poet; both of the selves) has one consistency: writing. He writes of the sky, of the sea, the trees, coffee, pomegranates… He looks at the world and writes, as a poet does, and reflects with praise to the Lord. 

sani

“what kind of a linguistic or legal wunderkind could formulate a peace treaty and good neighborliness between a palace and a shack, between a guard and a prisoner?”


this book by mahmoud darwish was so sad, so melancholic as it talked about palestine and it was in itself a masterpiece. the quotes. the words. the sentiments. i’m gonna ugly sob because his words are so precious.

eliz

4.5 o 5


  "When asleep, you are your own overlord and sovereign. Alive, but without life's burdens."


  "...you tell reality: You are only a figment, and tell imagination: You are the only reality I can depend on."


  "You lived at zero, perhaps less, perhaps more."


one of the most difficult things I have read this year and in my entire reading journey generally. challenging to a great extent but always worth the time delving through the meaning behind the metaphors thrown down on every corner of every chapter. it's either you get lost in between words and sentences or find yourself floating on top of them and see it through with outmost clarity. I think the best way to understand the context/sense of this whole thing is to consume the writing yourself first-hand and let the writing consume you.

more excerpts:
"And you must defend the discrete letters of your name as a cat would its kittens. Do what you must: defend the window's right to look at passerby. Do not ridicule yourself if you are incapable of providing proof."
*
"Letters are restless, hungry or an image, and the image is thirsty for a meaning. [...] Rub one letter against another and a star is born. Bring a letter close to another and you can hear the sound of rain."
*
"You are you, and more.
You are you, and less. 
You are you and not you at the same time."
*
"Are we what we do with time, or are we what time does with us? Finding a response does not interest you as much as slowing down time. You do not want this autumn to end, just as you do not want the poem to grow to fullness and end. You do not want to reach winter. Let autumn be your private eternity."
*
"Death does not pain the dead, it pains the living."
*
"Longing lies and never tires of lying, because it lies honestly."
*
"Are you what you were, or what you are now? You fear you will forget tomorrow while mired in the question: In which time do I live?"

In the Presence of Absence

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