MIDDLE EAST:The Middle East has lost one of its most-loved figures - a poet who expressed Palestinians' sense of loss and anger, writes Michael Jansen
THE BELOVED poet of the Arab world, Mahmoud Darwish, died aged 67 on Saturday from complications following heart surgery.
An Arab icon for more than four decades, the Palestinian Darwish, who considered himself a "modest poet", spurned the limelight and led a solitary life. He described the wars, displacement, dispossession, exile and homelessness experienced by his people since the creation of Israel.
He wrote from firsthand experience. Born into a landowning family in 1941 in a Galilee village near Acre, Darwish, his siblings and parents fled Israel's army in 1948.
They returned to Galilee months later to settle in another village since their home village had been demolished. Darwish moved to Haifa after secondary school, published poems and articles and joined the Israeli Communist party. In 1964, he wrote his most famous poem, Identity Card, addressed to Israeli soldiers at checkpoints: "Record! I am an Arab/And my identity card is number fifty thousand/I have eight children/And the ninth is coming after summer/Will you be angry? Record! I am an Arab I have a name . . . "
He was placed under house arrest and imprisoned and left Israel in 1970. After studying in Moscow, he wandered the world, writing in simple, evocative Arabic about Palestine.
"I come from there and I have memories/Born as mortals are, I have a mother/And a house with many windows,/I have brothers, friends,/And a prison cell with a cold window . . . "
His words resonated across a region traumatised by Israel's wars and Arab feelings of frustration and powerlessness.
He drafted the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, but it was soon shelved. He protested against the 1993 Oslo autonomy accords, but settled in the West Bank city of Ramallah ruled by the Palestinian Authority.
During 2000, Israeli education minister Yossi Sarid nearly brought down Israel's coalition by proposing the inclusion of Darwish's poetry in the school syllabus. In 2007, Darwish castigated Hamas for seizing control of Gaza. "The Palestinians are the only nation in the world that feels with certainty that today is better than what the days ahead will bring. Tomorrow always heralds a worse situation."
Darwish had heart surgery in 1984 and 1988, but said he had "made an agreement with death" to meet "in a cafe on the seashore and drink a glass of wine" before dying. The meeting took place instead at a Texas hospital.
He published 30 books of poetry and prose and numerous articles. His work has been translated into 20 languages. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas decreed three days of national mourning. Darwish is to be buried in Ramallah tomorrow.
Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi observed: "He started out as a poet of resistance and then he became a poet of conscience. He embodied the best in Palestinians . . . even though he became iconic he never lost his sense of humanity. We have lost part of our essence, the essence of the Palestinian being."