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Fadwa Tuqan (her last name is also frequently spelled Touqan or Toukan)
Fadwa Tuqan, the Grande Dame of Palestinian letters, known as "the Poet of Palestine," is
considered to be one of the very best contemporary Arab poets. The sister of
poet Ibrahim Tuqan, she was born in Nablusin 1917. She began writing in traditional forms, but became one of the leaders
of the use of the free verse in Arabic poetry. Her work deals with feminine
explorations of love and social protest. After 1967, she also began writing
patriotic poems. Her autobiography A Mountainous Journey
was translated into English in 1990. Tuqan received the International Poetry
Award in Palermo, Italy. She was awarded the Jerusalem
Award for Culture and Arts by the PLO in 1990 and the United Arab Emirates Award
in 1990. She also received the Honorary Palestine prize for poetry in 1996. She
was the subject of a documentary film directed by novelist Liana Bader in 1999.
Tuqan died on December 12, 2003 during the height of the Al-Aqsa
Intifada, while her hometown of Nablus was under siege. The poem Wahsha:
Moustalhama min Qanoon al Jathibiya ("Longing: Inspired by the Law of
Gravity") was one of the last poems she penned, while largely bedridden.
Tuqan is widely considered a symbol of the Palestinian
cause and "one of the most distinguished figures of modern Arabic literature.
In his obituary for The Guardian, Lawrence Joffe wrote, "The Palestinian poet
Fadwa Tuqan, who has died aged 86, forcefully expressed a nation's sense of loss
and defiance. Moshe Dayan, the Israeli general, likened reading one of Tuqan's
poems to facing 20 enemy commandos. In 'Martyrs Of The Intifada,' Tuqan wrote of
young stone-throwers:
They died standing, blazing on the road
Shining like stars, their lips pressed to the lips of life
They stood up in the face of death
Then disappeared like the sun.
Yet the true power of her words derived not from warlike imagery, but their affirmation of Palestinian identity and the dream of return."
The Deluge and the Tree
When the hurricane swirled and spread its deluge
of dark evil
onto the good green land
'they' gloated. The western skies
reverberated with joyous accounts:
"The Tree has fallen !
The great trunk is smashed! The hurricane leaves no life in the Tree!"
Had the Tree really fallen?
Never! Not with our red streams flowing forever,
not while the wine of our thorn limbs
fed the thirsty roots,
Arab roots alive
tunneling deep, deep, into the land!
When the Tree rises up, the branches
shall flourish green and fresh in the sun
the laughter of the Tree shall leaf
beneath the sun
and birds shall return
Undoubtedly, the birds shall return.
The birds shall return.
Labor Pains
The wind blows the pollen in the night
through ruins of fields and homes.
Earth shivers with love,
with the pain of giving birth,
but the conqueror wants us to believe
stories of submission and surrender.
O Arab Aurora!
Tell the usurper of our land
that childbirth is a force unknown to him,
the pain of a mother’s body,
that the scarred land
inaugurates life
at the moment of dawn
when the rose of blood
blooms on the wound.
Longing: Inspired by the Law of Gravity
translated from the original Arabic by Chris Millis and Tania Tamari Nasir
Time's out and I'm home alone with the shadow I cast
Gone is the law of the universe, scattered by frivolous fate
Nothing to hold down my things
Nothing to weigh them to the floor
My possessions have flown, they belong to others
My chair, my cupboard, the revolving stool
Alone with the shadow I cast
No father, no mother
No brothers, no sisters to swell
The house full with laughter
Nothing but loneliness and grief
And the rubble of months, the years
Bend my back, slow my steps, blind me to the horizon
I miss the smell of coffee, the scent in the air
Its absence an ecstasy where I drown morning and night
Time's out and I'm home alone
With the shadow I cast
I miss the company of books
Their consolation through trouble and joy
I miss, how I miss my mother's ancient clock, family photos framed on the wall
I miss my oud
For all its silent, severed strings
Time's out and I'm home alone
The curfew hurts
It hurts me, no it kills me, the killing of children near my home
I'm afraid of tomorrow
I'm afraid of the unknowable resources of fate
O God, don't let me be a burden, shunned by young and old
I wait to arrive where the land is silent, I'm waiting for death
Long has been my journey O God
Make the path short and the journey end
First published as Wahsha: Moustalhama min Qanoon al
Jathibiya in Al Karmel 72-73, 2002 by arrangement with the estate of Fadwa
Touqan. Translation copyright 2006 by Tania Tamari Nasir and Christopher Millis.
All rights reserved.
Hamza
Hamza was just an ordinary man
like others in my hometown
who work only with their hands for bread.
When I met him the other day,
this land was wearing a cloak of mourning
in windless silence. And I felt defeated.
But Hamza-the-ordinary said:
‘My sister, our land has a throbbing heart,
it doesn’t cease to beat, and it endures
the unendurable. It keeps the secrets
of hills and wombs. This land sprouting
with spikes and palms is also the land
that gives birth to a freedom-fighter.
This land, my sister, is a woman.’
Days rolled by. I saw Hamza nowhere.
Yet I felt the belly of the land
was heaving in pain.
Hamza — sixty-five — weighs
heavy like a rock on his own back.
‘Burn, burn his house,’
a command screamed,
‘and tie his son in a cell.’
The military ruler of our town later explained:
it was necessary for law and order,
that is, for love and peace!
Armed soldiers gherraoed his house:
the serpent’s coil came full circle.
The bang at the door was but an order —
‘evacuate, damn it!’
And generous as they were with time, they could say:
‘in an hour, yes!’
Hamza opened the window.
Face to face with the sun blazing outside,
he cried: ‘in this house my children
and I will live and die
for Palestine.’
Hamza’s voice echoed clean
across the bleeding silence of the town.
An hour later, impeccably,
the house came crumbling down,
the rooms were blown to pieces in the sky,
and the bricks and the stones all burst forth,
burying dreams and memories of a lifetime
of labor, tears, and some happy moments.
Yesterday I saw Hamza
walking down a street in our town —
Hamza the ordinary man as he always was:
always secure in his determination.
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