Of all that Mahmoud Darwish has left to us in his legacy of prismatic language, transcendent humanism, and elucidation of Palestinian consciousness, the greatest gift might be his belief that literature can confront any question—even those that seem most unanswerable—and consequently, his profound demonstration of living, gracefully and with dignity, inside ambiguity. Translated beautifully by Catherine Cobham, A River Dies of Thirst is the final book of poems published in Darwish’s lifetime, and it provides us with another opportunity to share reality with a writer who has always astonishingly made poetry the site of actuality—the poem as a place where thinking is forged. They precisely mark enormous emotional ranges with a single, pointed image; they make short lines of long wars; and they push us, as always, towards the seeking of meaning. In the final lines of his memoir, Memory for Forgetfulness, the poet repeats: “No one understands anyone. / And no one understands anyone. / No one understands.” Perhaps so. But as these poems congregate irresolution with desire, the ethereal with the material, and conviction with inquiry—we get the feeling that we might begin.
A common enemy
It is time for the war to have a siesta. The fighters go to their girlfriends, tired and afraid their words will be misinterpreted: ‘We won because we did not die, and our enemies won because they did not die.’ For defeat is a forlorn expression. But the individual fighter is not a soldier in the presence of the one he loves: ‘If your eyes hadn’t been aimed at my heart the bullet would have penetrated it!’ Or: ‘If I hadn’t been so eager to avoid being killed, I wouldn’t have killed anyone!’ Or: ‘I was afraid for you if I died, so I survived to put your mind at rest.’ Or: ‘Heroism is a word we only use at the graveside.’ Or: ‘In battle I did not think of victory but of being safe, and of the freckles on your back.’ Or: ‘How little difference there is between safety and peace and the room where you sleep.’ Or: ‘When I was thirsty I asked my enemy for water and he didn’t hear me, so I spoke your name and my thirst was quenched.’ Fighters on both sides say similar things in the presence of the ones they love. But the casualties on both sides don’t realise until it’s too late that they have a common enemy: death. So what does that mean?
Empty boxes
If peace is a pause between two wars, then the dead have a right to vote: we will choose the general. If war is an accident on the motorway, then the living have a duty to vote: we will choose the donkey. But the living did not go to the ballot box, not because the snow was falling in big flakes, but because a sudden paralysis afflicted the city’s inhabitants, and when they opened their windows they saw spiders spinning their webs in the snow and went blind. When they tried to hear what was going on, storms arose, whose wild sounds were unfamiliar to them, and they went deaf. The astrologers said: ‘It is the chaos of existence at the door of the last judgement.’ Luckily or unluckily for us, foreign historians, experts on our destinies and our oral history, were not here, so we don’t know what happened to us!
Translated from the Arabic by Catherine Cobham
A River Dies of Thirst: Diaries will be out in a new edition from Saqi Books for £12.99 on May 7, 2024.
This piece is appearing as a part of the ongoing series, All Eyes on Palestine, in which we present writings and dialogues with insight on Palestinian literature and voices, and their singular value. We hear the Palestinian peoples, and we condemn the violation and deprivation of their human rights.
Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008) was one of the most celebrated and revered poets in the Arab world. He published more than thirty poetry and prose collections, which have been translated into thirty-five languages, and founded and edited the prestigious literary review, Al Karmel. He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize, the Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom, the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and the Prince Claus Fund Award.
Catherine Cobham is a lecturer in Arabic and Middle East Studies at the University of St Andrews. She has translated the works of Adonis, Nagīb Maḥfūz, Mahmoud Darwish, Hanan al-Shaykh and Fu’ād Al-Takarlī, amongst others.
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