her commitment, this work might never have been finished. And without her mastery of English, her native tongue, and her priceless literacy, the translation would not sound as it does.
Foreword
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Mahmoud Darwish died in 2008, leaving behind an astoundingly rich oeuvre. Although predominantly remembered and celebrated for his poetry, his prose works are equally unique and incandescent. His absence has only intensified the reverence and respect his writings command all over the world. Just as he himself wrote in his poignant self-elegy, In the Presence of Absence, “a second life, promised by language, continues” in us, his readers, as we return to his words again and again.
Memory for Forgetfulness is one of three major “prose” works Darwish wrote. “Prose” here is not the most satisfactory category, but rather the most convenient, to classify these works. These texts are teeming with poetry, in form as well as in style and spirit, and the boundary between poetry and its others is blurred and effortlessly transcended. The first of these three works was Yawmiyyat al-Huzn al-’Adi (1973) (Journal of Ordinary Grief) beautifully translated by Ibrahim Muhawi, who also translated Dhakira lil-Nisyan (Memory for Forgetfulness) (1986). The last was Fi Hadrat al-Ghiyab (In the Presence of Absence), Darwish’s own extended self-elegy written in 2006, two years before, and in anticipation of, his own death. While these three works share common themes and concerns, revisit and meditate on the poet’s past, and are at times considered a trilogy, each is a work unto its own. They each represent a unique “moment” in Darwish’s personal trajectory, as well as a phase in the larger historical context both he and his works inhabited.
Like all of his works, this one is still very popular and was reprinted in Arabic numerous times. As I write this it is in its tenth edition. The subtitle “August, Beirut, 1982” points to the event that triggered the text: the Israeli siege and bombardment of Beirut in 1982. A consideration of the immensity of the Beirut wound in Arab and Palestinian history and collective memory, as well as Beirut’s enduring symbolic capital, is crucial for approaching and appreciating this work’s depth and resonance. Asked about Beirut more than two decades after being forced to leave it, Darwish professed his love for the city. “I still carry my longing for Beirut until today . . . I have a beautiful ailment called the constant longing for Beirut,” he said.1 For Darwish, as for so many others, Beirut was more than a mere city. It was a vibrant, rich, and complex cultural/political space. In Darwish’s own words in this book:
Beirut is the place where Palestinian political information and expression flourished . . . the birthplace for thousands of Palestinians who knew no other cradle . . . [It] was an island upon which Arab immigrants dreaming of a new world landed. It was the foster mother of a heroic mythology that could offer the Arabs a promise other than that born of the June War [of 1967]. . . . [It] became the property of anyone who dreamed of a different political order . . . Those . . . who have no homeland or family . . . projected upon Beirut a finality of meaning that grants their ambiguous relationship to the city the legitimate rights of a citizen.2
. . . Beirut has become my song and the song of everyone without a homeland.3
In addition to being a home for the Palestinian Resistance, Beirut posed a serious threat to regressive forces and orientations within Lebanon itself, as well as the reigning Arab political order, especially that it harbored many dissidents and oppositional factions. Thus, its enemies multiplied. The dreams of Arab liberation were soon crushed by brutal geopolitical realities and powerful regional and international foes. The Israeli invasion and siege of 1982 was the apex and laid bare the extent of the collusion of Israel’s Lebanese allies as well as Arab regimes. The world watched in silence or indifference, as it often does, as the Palestinian faced death alone. The brutality of the moment was poignantly crystallized in one of Darwish’s most memorable epic poems, Madih al-Zill al-’Ali (In Praise of the Lofty Shadow), excerpts of which are embedded in the book (pp. 58–59). Two of its memorable refrains were “The mask has fallen off the mask” and “You were so alone.”
Although quite mesmerized and enchanted by Beirut, Darwish was well aware of its limits and voiced his own critique of the mistakes committed by Palestinian institutions and individuals in Lebanon during the civil war. He was also cognizant of the fascist anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab tendencies that grew in Lebanon during the civil war. If Beirut was the cradle for an individual and collective birth, or rebirth, it became a massive grave where right-wing Lebanese militias, aided by Israeli troops, committed one of the most brutal massacres in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in September 1982.
Beirut became yet another port of departure for yet another exile for the Palestinian resistance and all those working or fighting alongside. A seven-year-old Darwish had been displaced once before in 1948 when Israeli forces depopulated, and later razed his village, al-Birweh. He had to flee to southern Lebanon with his family and return later as a “present-absentee.” Now Israel’s war machine and the “bulldozers of history” were displacing him once again from his adopted home for ten years (1972–1982). The exodus from Beirut made that homeland, Palestine, more distant than ever, both geographically and politically. “My homeland is a suitcase,” another memorable refrain repeated toward the end of “In Praise of the Lofty Shadow,” became the exile’s slogan.
The Palestinian Resistance relocated to Tunis and so did Darwish, who had to be smuggled to Damascus and then Tunis. But he settled in Paris in 1985 and lived there for a decade. He continued to edit al-Karmil, the prestigious cultural review he had founded in Beirut in 1981, but now it too had been exiled to Cyprus. Darwish’s Paris years were the most productive and his output was stunning. In Paris he experienced what he termed his “true poetic birth.” He was far away from the tumult of the Lebanese civil war, which raged on until 1990, and in a city of intense beauty and creativity. His distance and his eventual exit from politics, even though his involvement had been largely symbolic, allowed him the space to contemplate and view the world anew, and the freedom to develop his poetic project. In addition to writing Memory for Forgetfulness (1986), he wrote a number of poetry collections: Hiya Ughniya (It’s a Song) (1985), Wardun Aqall (Fewer Roses) (1986), Ahada ‘Ashara Kawkaban (Eleven Planets) (1992), Ara Ma Urid (I See What I Want) (1993) and half of Sarir al-Ghariba (The Stranger’s Bed) (1999). In these and later works, Darwish, who was never content with his massive and early popularity, nor with the reductive confines and labels of “the national poet” or “resistance poet,” and had resisted them with creative restlessness, transformed his poetry and engendered a new creative terrain. In addition to experimenting with meter and form, there was a shift away from direct lyricism toward a more complex poetic persona, peering into history, mythology, and epic. Palestine remained at the heart of the poet and his words, of course, but it became a universal metaphor.
Darwish was ambivalent and pessimistic about the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993 and had his instinctive doubts that they would ever result in full independence and a sovereign state. He was right. He resigned from the Executive Committee of the PLO. In In the Presence of Absence he recalled his feelings at the time:
You felt that the gate through which the returnees were stepping led neither to independence nor a state. It is true that the occupation has left the bedroom, but is still sitting comfortably in the living room and in all the other rooms4
Darwish was not only concerned about Oslo’s material and geopolitical effects, but its equally dangerous discursive effects as well. “No, this is not my language. Where is the eloquence of the victim recalling his long suffering in the face of the misery of the moment,” he wrote. It was no surprise, then, that his next poetry collection, Limadha Tarakta al-Hisana Wahidan (Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone) (1995), also written in Paris, was an excavation of individual and collective memory and of place.
Although he loved Paris and was happy there, in 1996 Darwish decided for ethical reasons to “return” and live in Ramallah as a citizen and divided his time
