1 - 7 February 2001
Issue No.519
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 1 - 7 February 2001 Issue No.519 |
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After several years of absence from the Cairo International Book Fair, Mahmoud Darwish, the distinguished Palestinian poet and one of the most accomplished living Arab poets, is the guest of honour at this year's fair.
Auditoriums, on Monday and Wednesday, were packed with people genuinely happy to have the privilege of hearing Darwish, arguably the most popular poet writing in classical Arabic today. Darwish read a selection of his poems written during the 1990s. The poems he read span a vast range of experience drawn from the personal, textual, political and historical odyssey of Darwish's lyrical I. Violins, in Eleven Planets Over the Last Andalusian Scene, lament the departure of the Arabs from Al-Andalus; in another poem a mother tells her son to remain loyal to her; and, in extracts from Mural which is Darwish's most recent diwan, a human being, critically ill, haggles with, coaxes and defies a personified Death. Though metaphysical poet John Donne's "Death Be not Proud" is thus recalled, nonetheless, the self that had been at death's door spells its name in Arabic -- Mim, Hah, Mim, Waw, Dal -- and, with wonderful, playful virtuosity, shows how each Arabic letter is potentially a universe of meaning. Mahmoud, the Arabic-speaking audience came to feel, is our language. And the child named after the human being most beloved of Muslims, Muhammad -- in Darwish's poem written under the shadow of the Al-Aqsa uprising-- is Muhammad, is "an infant Jesus [who] sleeps and dreams/ in the heart of an icon", is Mohamed Al-Dorra, who "sees his inescapable death approaching" while "for an hour the camera traces the movements of the boy."
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