Archive for personal
Happy new year?
It’s very difficult to express wishful thinkings for the 2009, particularly if you are watching the new year dawn from this part of the world which is the Middle East. Many Arab countries have cancelled New Year’s celebrations yesterday in solidarity with the Gaza strip. In Syria no live music performances and dances where allowed, in order to retain a sober atmosphere. Other Arab countries, like Lebanon and many places in Egypt for example, just didn’t care and went on with the bookings and parties. What about the West? I am just wondering how this last Palestinian tragedy looks like from Europe, and what the people that watching it on TV channels are feeling. I guess that seeing it from a Middle Eastern perspective, being based here in the Arab Region, should be something really different, even if you still have to watch it through the mediation of the TV screens..
Between Ritta and my eyes..
Since I was listening to Mahmoud Darwish, somebody who knows very well about the meaning of the daily tragedy in the Israelian-Palestianian question, this poetry of his came to my mind (it is also a very famous song sung by Marcel Khelifa). He tells about the story of Ritta, a Jewish girl he was in love with..Between them, there has always been a gun (“Bayna Ritta wa aouyouni boundoukiyya“)
Between Rita and my eyes
There is a rifle
And whoever knows Rita
Kneels and pray
To the divinity in those honey-colored eyes
And I kissed Rita
When she was young
And I remember how she approached
And how my arm covered the loveliest of braids
And I remember Rita
The way a sparrow remembers its stream
Ah, Rita
Between us there are a million sparrows and images
And many a rendezvous
Fired at by a rifle
Rita’s name was a feast in my mouth
Rita’s body was a wedding in my blood
And I was lost in Rita for two years
And for two years she slept on my arm
And we made promises
Over the most beautiful of cups
And we burned in the wine of our lips
And we were born again
Ah, Rita!
What before this rifle could have turned my eyes from yours
Except a nap or two or honey-colored clouds?
Once upon a time
Oh, the silence of dusk
In the morning my moon migrated to a far place
Towards those honey-colored eyes
And the city swept away all the singers
And Rita
Between Rita and my eyes–
A rifle
Listening to the radio on the taxi Amman-Sham
On the way back from Amman to Sham, the taxi driver is listening to a local radio (don’t know if it comes from Jordan, Syria or Palestine). It could be as any commercial radio station in the world. There is a live music program, broadcasting pop music, people call in to ask for a particular song or to make a wish, the presenter interacts with them, then puts the music on. But this time the songs are all national songs, resistance songs, and the listeners are calling up to wish the liberation of Gaza, or to blame Israelis for the attacks, or just to talk about the children of Palestine, killed or injured. The feelings of the so-called “Arab street” are the same, all across the Region, whether it is Jordan, or Syria, or Lebanon. The anger is high.
Another radio program has just been broadcasting poems from the world famous Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (some of them can be listed from his own voice at the website mahmouddarwish.com), some of them are sung by the lebanese singer Marcel Khalife.
One of his most famous poems is now being sung by a voice that I can’t recognize, but I can recognize very clearly the words, which say, more or less (the english translation can’t give the idea of how much these words sound powerful in the arabic language, “Sajjal, ana arabi…“):
Record !
I am an Arab
And my identity card is number fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the nineth is coming after a summer
Will you be angry?
Record !
I am an Arab
Employed with fellow workers at a quarry
I have eight children
I get them bread
Garments and books
from the rocks…
I do not supplicate charity at your doors
Nor do I belittle myself
at the footsteps of your chamber
So will you be angry?
Record !
I am an Arab
I have a name without a title
Patient in a country
Where people are enraged
My roots
Were entrenched before the birth of time
And before the opening of the eras
Before the pines, and the olive trees
And before the grass grew.
My father..
descends from the family of the plow
Not from a privileged class
And my grandfather..was a farmer
Neither well-bred, nor well-born!
Teaches me the pride of the sun
Before teaching me how to read
And my house
is like a watchman’s hut
Made of branches and cane
Are you satisfied with my status?
I have a name without a title !
Record !
I am an Arab
You have stolen the orchards
of my ancestors
And the land
which I cultivated
Along with my children
And you left nothing for us
Except for these rocks..
So will the State take them
As it has been said?!
Therefore !
Record on the top of the first page:
I do not hate people
Nor do I encroach
But if I become hungry
The usurper’s flesh will be my food
Beware..
Beware..
Of my hunger
And my anger !
