You, as of now, are someone else!

Mahmoud Darwish

                 Mahmoud Darwish (March 13 1941 - 9 August 2008) was a Palestinian poet and author who won numerous awards for his literary output and was regarded as the Palestinian national poet. In his work, Palestine became a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and Excel. He has been described as incarnating and reflecting "the tradition of the political poet in Islam, the man of action whose action is poetry. "

            Darishw published thirty volumes of poetry and and eight books of prose. On 1 May, 1965 when the young Darwish read his poem “Bitaqat huwiyya” (Identity Card) to a crowd in a Nazareth movie house, there was an uproarious reaction. Within days the poem had spread throughout the country and the Arab world. Published in his second volume "Leaves of Olives" (Haifa 1964), the six stanzas of the poem repeat the cry “Write down: I am an Arab".

  

              As a tribute to this great poet,  the Palestinian people established a museum named  "Museum of Mahmoud Darwish " in Ramallah. The structure of the museum is featured by simplicity, humility, home, land, village, love, freedom, dream, fight, survival , realism, hope, ambition, nostalgia, identity, peace, of Mahmoud Darwish's character. The foundation of this museum aims to show some of the memorabilia of the deceased manuscripts and private collections, it also has a showroom and a video library of his works and collections.  

                   Here are some photos from inside and outside of the Museum :

  

             Darwish's poetry is characterized by its simplicity of the formation with deep and complex meanings. In other words, when you read a poem of Darwish's poetry, you imagine that it is easy for anyone to write a similar one, but when you read it over and over again, you will find yourself drowning in a deep ocean of meanings, emotions, metaphors and allegories. Once you read a poem for Darwish, you lose your senses inside it, and you travel through its words to the poet's world.

              Last but not least, i translated a few verses of one of his poems entitled "You, as of now, are someone else! " :

 " Was it inevitable for us to fall from such heights, and see our blood on our hands… for us to realize that we are no angels…

 as we used to think?

Such liars were we when we said: We are exceptional !

To believe yourself is much worse than lying to someone else!

To be friendly with those who hate us, and ruthless to those who love us – this is the inferiority of the conceited,

and the arrogance of the grubby  !

Oh past, do not change us… the further away we move from you!

 Oh future: do not ask us: who are you?

 And what do you want from me?

 We too have no clue.

Oh present, bear with us a little, we are no more than dreary passers by..!

Identity is our legacy and not our inheritance;

our invention and not our memory.

 Identity

is the ruin of the mirror that we should break as soon as we like our image!! "