Omar Khoury
on translating Mahmoud Darwish
I have translated this poem all while sobbing tears that aren’t mine. The process of translation is as painful as it is beautiful, and I only hope to have given these words of suffering and defiance the justice to be heard that they so solemnly deserve, and I am sorry if they have not done as such.
The pain of exile in the original — and in this version to an extent — is palpable, but the resilience of the human spirit, in all of its passivity, is inspiring. In this poem, I choose to focus not on regret, but on resistance, not on sorrow, but on struggle. I chose to do this because of the first time these words were spoken: boldly in front of a thunderous audience in a Nazareth movie house in May 1965. This declaration served as an historic extolment of the Arab world and reverberated a uniting pride in Arabism.
But I also chose to personalize the poem in a way that, though it betrays the original, allows for a dimension exposing my own identity. Towards the end of the poem, I translate a line as:
“And you imprisoned Karmah’s ancestors.”
The original, however, would read “and you stole the ancestor’s vineyards.” In Arabic, the word for “vineyard” is spoken as “karmah,” which also happens to be the name of my sister.
In bringing my own lineage to this line, I hope to pay homage to the grief associated with the tragic theft of sacred human life that occurred in my family and in the millions of others suffering as a result of displacement and dehumanization. I hope to codify not just the courage of the Arab in the poem, but the resilience of the human spirit with which we are all blessed.
Because to me, Darwish’s words are powerful not in that they are Darwish’s alone, but in that they are also those my father poetically recites as he drinks his morning coffee and those my mother beautifully sung as she nursed us to health that reveal the foundation of my pride in being a Palestinian living in America.
about the author
Mahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian poet and author, widely regarded as the Palestinian national poet and “the man of action whose action was poetry.” In his widely recognized and celebrated works, Darwish uses the notion of Palestine and the suffering of the Palestinians as metaphors for the themes of expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the beauty of birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile. Darwish was born in the village of al-Birwa in Galilee in 1941 to a landed family who had been there for countless generations. In 1948, he and his family fled their homes following the establishment of the State of Israel when Israeli forces assaulted the region, and, in the process, razed and destroyed the town to prevent its previous inhabitants from returning.
After learning how to read from his grandfather, Darwish began to write poetry, publishing his first book, Wingless Birds, at the young age of nineteen. While also writing poetry, Darwish became more involved in political organizations, and he was ultimately banned from entering Israel in 1973 due to his affiliations. Thus, he wrote most of his poems and novels in exile, focusing on the painfully unfulfilled desire to return and the overwhelming feelings of nostalgia and resilience. With these tragic yet heroic emotions as the foundations for his art, he published more than thirty volumes of poetry and eight books of prose throughout his life.
But even in death, Darwish could not return to his home. Immediately before he passed away in Houston, TX in 2008, he had requested to be buried in the village of his birth, al-Birwa. Such a request could not be granted due to the politics of the time, and he was nevertheless laid to rest in Ramallah, Palestine. His poems serve as a testament to the immense capacity for human suffering and the captivating beauty in resilience.
about the translator
Omar Khoury is a student at the University of Pennsylvania lost between the worlds of Middle Eastern history and English. Born to descendants of Palestinian refugees, Omar finds solace in the words of Darwish and comfort in the recognition that his painful desires for a long overdue return are shared by millions of people in all regions of the world. He has grown up listening to the words of Darwish in the hope that he, too, may one day see the image of the village overlooking the sea that his parents enchanted him with in longing stories and begging prayers.
