Commemorating the Life of Mahmoud Darwish: A Poet of Resistance
Ahmad Kadi’s portrait of Mahmoud DarwishBY: Mary Elbanna/Contributing Writer
Mahmoud Darwish (1941 – 2008) is an award-winning Palestinian poet born in the village al-Birweh in Galilee, Palestine. When Darwish was six, he and his family were forced to flee Palestine as refugees during the start of the Israeli occupation and relocated to southern Lebanon. Shortly after, his family returned to Palestine and was deemed refugees within their own country because Israel claimed the territory.
Darwish and his family resided in Haifa for more than 10 years, where Darwish completed high school and went on to join the Israeli Communist Party. He discovered his love of poetry at a young age and was arrested multiple times during the 1960s for traveling between Palestinian villages without a permit to recite poetry. Darwish served as the editor for two communist newspapers Al-Itihad and Al-Jadeed. Israeli forces arrested him after being accused of “hostile activities” against the state during his role as editor.
In 1970, Darwish left Haifa and ventured to Moscow to study at the Social Sciences Institute, where he lost his allegiance to communist ideals after seeing the reality of a communist state. Through all of this turmoil, Darwish found refuge in his poetry. He believed his poems served as an autobiography that allowed a reader entry into his thoughts and feelings.
Upon leaving Moscow, Darwish entered a new journey of his life in Cairo, and eventually Lebanon. The difficulties he had faced in his early life continued as he lived through the Lebanese Civil War, witnessing the death of multiple friends.
Darwish continued to write throughout all of his experiences. He was deemed a “Poet of Resistance” because he his identity as a Palestinian refugee played a major role in the pieces he wrote. He intertwined his dream of freedom for the Palestinian people in his writing, which famous Arab American poet Naomi Shihab Nye praised.
Mahmoud Darwish has received numerous awards for his globally renowned works including the Lenin Peace Prize, the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize, and the French Belles Lettres Medal. His poetry has served as an inspiration to Arabs across the world, including here in America. Arab Americans use his poetry to symbolize the fight to overcome oppression, as well as advocate for peace in a world torn by war.
Here are 20 of Mahmoud Darwish’s most influential quotes:
1. “Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.”
Via MakeAGif2. “The Palestinians are the only nation in the world that feels with certainty that today is better than what the days ahead will hold. Tomorrow always heralds a worse situation.”
Via GIPHY3. “Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.”
4. “I don’t decide to represent anything except myself. But that self is full of collective memory.”
5. “When I passed the age of 50, I learned how to control my emotions.”
6. “History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.”
7. “Without hope we are lost.”
8. “Sometimes I feel as if I am read before I write. When I write a poem about my mother, Palestinians think my mother is a symbol for Palestine. But I write as a poet, and my mother is my mother. She’s not a symbol.”