Mahmoud Darwish

A collection of autobiographical essays by one of the greatest poets to come from Palestine. "Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance," asserts Darwish. Both voice of the Palestinian people and one of the most transcendent poets of his generation, Mahmoud Darwish also wrote several remarkable volumes of autobiographical essays over the course of his life. First published in Beirut in 1973, these probing essays ask vital questions about the existentially complex realities the Palestinians in Israel face and the ambiguity of Darwish’s own identity as an Israeli Palestinian. They call upon myth, memory, and language to delve into the poet’s experience of house arrest, his encounters with Israeli interrogators, and the periods he spent in prison. Meditative, lyrical, rhythmic, Darwish gives absence a vital presence in these linked essays. Journal is a moving and intimate account of the loss of homeland and, for many, of life inside the porous walls of occupation—no ordinary grief.

Journal of an Ordinary Grief

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And that has left me in a dream that must always be justified by necessity, and not by flying on the wings of exuberant imagination.

Marion

 Fighting back is the answer: when you fight back you belong.

And the homeland is this struggle. Between memory and the suitcase there is no solution but resistance. Justice, freedom, belonging, and worthiness are only proclaimed through resistance. They were not satisfied to rob you of everything, they also wanted to take away your sense of belonging, so that the battle may rage between you and your homeland and the homeland become a burden, a chain, and a pain. But you will not find freedom outside these chains, and you will not find ease or relief from the burden outside this pain. The homeland that is in your memory and in the cells of your body is entangled with the homeland in their fists and their "returning" suitcases.

You try to move your feet, but the iron does not budge]

-Bend down my love till the storm passes.

-From all this bending down my back has turned into a question mark.

[The interrogator plays a record on which there is a burst of applause]

When the storm dispersed them, the present was shouting at the past: "It's your fault." And the past was transforming its crime into a law. As for the future, it was a neutral observer.

When the storm passed, all this curvature was complete, transformed into a circle whose beginning and end are not known.

You ask for a passport, but you discover you are not a citizen because your father or one of your relatives had fled with you during the Palestine War.

You were a child, and you discover that any Arab who had left his country during that period and had stolen back in had lost his right to citizenship.

You despair of the passport and ask for a lassez-passer. You hind you are not a resident of Israel because you have no certificate of residence. You think this is a joke and rush to tell to your lawyer friend: "Here, I'm not a citizen, and I'm not a resident either. Then where and who am I?" You are surprised to find the law is on their side, and you must prove you exist. You ask the Ministry of the Interior, "Am I here, or am I absent? Give me an expert in philosophy, so that I can prove to him I exist."

Then you realize that philosophically you exist but legally you do not.

You consider the law. How innocent we were to think the law is a vessel for rights and justice! The law here is a vessel for what the ruler wants, or a suit that he orders to his own measure. I have been in this country even before the state that negates my existence came into being. You realize once again that justice is a hope that resembles an illusion if it is not supported by power and that power transforms the illusion into a reality, and then you smile at the law that grants every Jew in the world the right of citizenship.

You write to your imaginary lover: "I wish despair for you, my love, that you may excel, for the desperate are creative. Don't wait for me. Don't wait for anyone. Wait for the thought; don't wait for the thinker. Wait for the poem; don't wait for the poet. Wait for the revolution; don't wait for the revolutionary. The thinker may be wrong, the poet may lie, and the revolutionary may get tired. This is the despair I mean."

The secret of Gaza is no mystery: her masses are united in popular resis-tance. She knows what she wants: to drive the enemy out of her hair. In Gaza the relation between resistance and the masses is that of the flesh to the bone, and not that of the teacher to the student.

In Gaza resistance has not become a salaried position.

And in Gaza resistance has not become an institution.

The enemy may defeat Gaza. (The stormy sea might overwhelm a small island.)

They might plant their tanks in the bellies of her women and children, or they might toss her into the sand, into the sea, into blood.

It is not death, and it is not suicide, it is Gaza's way of announcing she is worthy of life.

Gaza does not propel people to cool contemplation; rather she propels them to erupt and collide with the truth. Time there does not lead children directly from childhood to old age, but it does make men of them upon the first encounter with the enemy. Time in Gaza does not allow you to let go; rather it is an attack upon a blistering noon because values in Gaza are different.

Different. Different. The only values that an occupied person can espouse are those of resistance to occupation. This is the only competition there.

Familiarity with these noble and hard values has become a need in Gaza.

Her people did not acquire this need from books, or from brief academic courses, or from trumpets blaring propaganda, or from patriotic songs.

Only from experience did Gaza learn these values, and from actions not performed for the sake of one's image or self-promotion.

—Your blood versus petrol. That is the core of the struggle.

The regimes needed this equation in order to put pressure on the overseas consumer. They cheered for you, and the color of oil was bolder than your blood when they first met.

Something is ready to erupt, but is prevented from doing so. That is you.

All the nationalistic songs are meant for you, as well as tons of tents, and a wall for posters.

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