Maḥmūd Darwīsh

“There are two maps of Palestine that the politicians will never manage to forfeit: the one kept in the memories of Palestinian refugees, and that which is drawn by Mahmoud Darwish's poetry.”—Anton Shammas This remarkable collection of Mahmoud Darwish's poems and prose meditations is both lyrical and philosophical, questioning and wise, full of irony and protest and play. “Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance.” As always, Darwish's musings on unrest and loss dwell on love and humanity; myth and dream are inseparable from truth. “Truth is plain as day.” Throughout the book, Darwish returns frequently to his ongoing and often lighthearted conversation with death. Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008) was awarded the Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom in 2001. He was regarded as the voice of the Palestinian people and one of the greatest poets of our time.

Journals

A River Dies of Thirst

nabs

Photographs, toothbrushes, combs, cosmetics, shoes, underwear, sheets, towels fly in every direction like family secrets broadcast aloud in the devastation. All these things are a memory of the people who no longer have them and of the objects that no longer have the people - destroyed in a minute. Our things die like us, but they aren't buried with us.

Wisdom has procedures similar to those of a doctor examining a wound. As we look behind us to see where we stand in relation to ourselves and reality, we ask: 'How many mistakes have we made? Have we come to wisdom too late? 

'Hope is not the opposite of despair. Perhaps it is the faith that springs from divine indifference which has left us dependent on our own special talents to make sense of the fog surrounding us. He said: 'Hope is neither something tangible nor an idea. It is a talent.'

Jasper

To be kind to those who hate us and cruel to those who love us is the baseness of the arrogant, and the self-importance of the dishonourable.

A River Dies of Thirst quotes

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