Resilience: the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughnes.
Resistance from a Distance: Mahmoud Darwish’s Selected Poems of Exile in English
(AWEJ. Special Issue on Literature No.2 October, 2014)
Hamoud Yahya Ahmed
School of Language Studies and Linguistics
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
Ruzy Suliza Hashim
School of Language Studies and Linguistics
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to explore Mahmoud Darwish‟s resistance to the occupation of his
homeland in selected poems written during his exile. Though Darwish was exiled from Palestine,
his poetic voice of resistance gained momentum even from a distance. The discussion in this
paper will focus on how Darwish utilizes Palestinian nature as a form of resistance to the
occupiers of his homeland in his selected poems of exile. The theoretical framework employed in
this study was derived from both the postcolonial and the ecocritical theories of reading literature
and named in this study as an ecoresistance framework. By explicating the aspects of
ecoresistance in Darwish‟s selected poems of exile, we hope to provide new insights into man‟s
connection to land as a strategy to defy colonial rule.
Introduction
Palestine and Palestinian nature remained at the heart of Mahmoud Darwish‟s poems of
resistance written during his exile. In fact, by employing nature as a form of resistance to the
occupation of his homeland, Darwish‟s poems are intimately connected to Palestine from which
he was displaced for about twenty-six years. His poetic resistance to the occupation of the
homeland was an effective means in the political mobilization of Palestinians in the years of
exile from 1970 until 1995. Frangieb (2008) asserts that Mahmoud Darwish has indeed played a
leading role in his political commitment to Arab national causes and in enriching the modern
Arab poetics as a whole. With the emergence of Darwish and his extensive writing over a span of
fifty years, an immensely rich voice of resistance was added to the Arab world in general and to
Palestine in particular. Edward Said (1994) in his Culture and Imperialism considers Darwish as
one of the eminent poets of decolonization in the world. Rahman (2008:41) remarks “as a poet
of exile, Darwish‟s poetry has long been preoccupied with a reflection on home”. The nature of
his homeland provided him with several signposts of opposition from a distance. In this context,
the current paper is intended to provide an insight into the modes of Darwish‟s resistance from a
distance of the occupation of his homeland through his use of nature.
Mahmoud Darwish was born on March 13, 1941 in the village of Al-Birwa, Palestine. He
became a refugee in 1948, when his family was forced to flee the occupation forces. In 1949,
Darwish and his family came back from Lebanon to live as “internally displaced” refugees in
another village in his homeland. Ahmed (2012: 397) remarks that “along with more than 750,000
other internally displaced Palestinians who lost homes, possessions and wealth; Darwish
experienced being [a] in a state of limbo from 1948 onwards until he was forced to leave again in
1970”. With the emergence of Darwish‟s poetry in 1958, a rich voice is added to the Arab world
in general and the Palestinian poetry of resistance in particular. He began to compose poems
when he was still in school aged seventeen. His resistance poetry prospers during his early poetic
stage that spans twelve years. He lived outside Palestine for about twenty-six years during which
his resistance poetry burgeoned noticeably. Writing from within one‟s country and outside of it in
Darwish‟s circumstance of being displaced and expelled requires further scrutiny. What issues of
resistance is he putting across to his people in the homeland, his occupiers as well as the
audience whom is he is writing for from outside Palestine? By paying attention to this period of
Darwish‟s life, we hope to demonstrate the ways in which he utilizes the images of nature from
his motherland to show more keenly the loss of home and the need to resist, even from a
distance.
In the 1970s, Darwish joined the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and he
became an active member of PLO outside Palestine. His activism in exile remained dynamic not
only politically but also poetically. His resistance through the use of nature continues in the
substantial flow of his poems from a distance. In 1980s, he lived in Beirut where he edited the
Palestinian Affairs Journal published by the Palestinian Study Centre. He produced many poems
of resistance that hinged on the use of Palestinian nature during this period. For instance, „The
Ode to Beirut‟ and „A Eulogy for the Long Shadow‟ are two examples of Darwish‟s poems of
resistance in exile. However, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 led Darwish to leave for
Tunisia, Egypt and Paris where he settled for about thirteen years. Commenting on his resistance
activism in exile, Frangieb (2008:24) remarks, “after the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982,
Darwish remained determined to continue the Palestinian struggle. The theme of exile and
continual resistance is most elegantly conveyed by Darwish during this period”. In the late
1980s, his activism intensified. He served on the PLO executive committee from 1987 to 1993.
Meanwhile, Darwish‟s resistance poetry reached its peak at the start of the first Palestinian
uprising (Intifada) that broke out in December 1987. In addition to the Palestinian Intifada,
another important event in the Palestinian history that influenced the poetic output of Darwish in
this period was the Oslo Accord in 1993. The first Palestinian Intifada forced Israel to the
negotiating table with the PLO in 1993. However, the resultant Oslo Accords signed by PLO
leader Yasser Arafat in 1993 caused the resignation of Darwish from the PLO executive
committee as a sign of protest. Commenting on Darwish‟s poems produced during his years of
exile, Rahman (2008) states that his poetry has long been preoccupied with the reflection of
homeland. She adds that his later production from 1984 until 1995 reflects his exile from his
physical home, his exile from the physical refuge and his exile in the poetic production.
The selected poems of exile and resistance from the 1970s include poems such as „A soft
Rain in A Distant Autumn‟, „A Song to the Northern Wind‟, „A Diary of a Palestinian Wound‟
and „I Love You or I do not Love You‟. The selected poems of exile from the 1980s and early
1990s include poems such as Ode to Beirut‟ , „The Hoopoe‟, „The Land‟, „Tragedy of Daffodils
and Comedy of Silver‟ ,The Bread‟ and „I See What I Want‟. Collectively, this body of work
emphasizes that Darwish‟s exile appeared to illuminate the path of his resistance to the
occupation of the homeland with increasing attribution to nature.
The current study is an attempt to link between the postcolonial theorizing and
ecocriticism in terms of nature‟s employment in poetry such as that of Darwish‟s poetry of
resistance. Since Darwish, who is regarded as the father of the Palestinian poetry of resistance,
has employed nature as a means of resistance in his poetry while he was inside and outside
Palestine (Ahmed & Hashim, 2012). This form of resistance is coined as “ecoresistance” which
has been derived from the ecocritical and postcolonial theories of reading poetry. According to
Mohsen (2013:110) ecoresistance can be defined as “a theoretical approach and an analytical
lens that is used to examine how nature and its various forms can be utilized by poets to further
their agendas. It is a combined lens of the two theories – ecocriticism and postcolonial theory that
can be applied for reading poetry”. Therefore, ecoresistance has its roots in both ecocriticism and
postcolonial theory. Ecocriticism, on the one hand, is a recent aspect of literary theory, which
has been growing swiftly since the early 1990s that focuses mainly on the study of the
relationship between humans and the natural world. It has evolved out of many traditional
approaches to literature and the literary works are viewed in terms of place or environment.
Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (1996: xviii) define ecocriticism as “the study of the
relationship between literature and the physical environment”. Postcolonial theory, on the other
hand, embraces the concept of resistance. Slemon (1995:107) asserts that “the first concept of
resistance is most clearly put forward by Cudjoe in his Resistance and Caribbean Literature and
by Barbara Harlow in her book Resistance Literature. For Cudjoe and Harlow, “resistance is an
act or a set of acts that is designed to rid a people of its oppressors, and it so thoroughly infuses
the experience of living under oppression that it becomes an almost autonomous aesthetic
principle”. Further, Harlow (1987: 2) argues that the Palestinian writer and critic Ghassan
Kanafani in his study titled Literature of Resistance in Occupied Palestine: 1948-1966 first
applied the term „resistance‟ in description of the Palestinian literature in 1966. Palestinians have
been struggling to regain their occupied land since 1948. Their resistance took two forms. The
first is armed resistance and the second is literary resistance. The Arab resistance (both armed
and literary) is closely related to the Palestinian movement of resistance that can be dated back to
1936 that gave birth to the Arab poets of resistance such as Darwish and his companions.
Darwish, who is regarded as the poet of resistance and decolonization, has employed nature as “a
form of resistance in his poetry while he was inside and outside Palestine” (Ahmed & Hashim,
2014: 94).
Analysis
The blending of the two theories illuminates the new ways Darwish uses the imagery of nature
for resistance throughout the span of his poetic production (Mohsen, 2013). The concepts used in
the current study are adopted under the umbrella term of ecoresistance. These concepts are
centrism, interconnectedness and forms of nature. These concepts can be discussed in Darwish‟s
poems of exile to show how he employed nature as a new form of resistance. This kind of
resistance depicted by Darwish through the way in which he views the sun and other aspects of
nature in the new situation in exile as can be traced in the following lines of the poem, “A soft
Rain in A Distant Autumn”, in which Darwish depicts a picture of the setting of his exile and
hence resistance. He has utilizes the forms of nature to highlight his resistance from a distance as
in the following lines when he declares:
Soft rain in a strange autumn
The windows are white
In addition, the sun is a pomegranate at dusk
And I did not abandon the orange tree
In these lines, Darwish utilizes the forms of nature such as “rain”, “autumn”, “sun”,
“pomegranate”, and “orange tree” to contrast his present situation of being exiled with the land
he once knew. The autumn is strange even though the rain that falls here is the same as the rain
in Palestine. He argues that he has not abandoned “the orange tree” which evokes that Darwish is
saying that he has not abandoned his fight in exile. In the poem “A Song to the Northern Wind”,
which is a flashback of Darwish‟s homeland in exile, Darwish depicts the moon as an addressee:
O’ nice-looking moon
You are a friend of childhood and fields
Do not allow them to steal the dream of our children
In these lines, the poet depicts the moon of exile as a nice-looking one that is required to keep
alive the dreams of Palestinian children of regaining their occupied land. The image of the moon
in these lines is in direct contrast with the image of the moon depicted in the occupied land
where the moon looks “sad and tranquil” (Darwish 2000:15). The moon of exile is collocated
with the idea of dreams and the fields as they are in close intimacy to each other. This image of
intimacy and friendship between the moon, the children and fields evoke the sense of centric
resistance depicted against the occupiers to whom the poet refers as “them”. By giving an
imperative “do not allow them” to the moon, the speaker is demonstrating that “niceness” does
not necessarily indicate a weakness of character. Just as Israeli occupation forces “steal” their
land, the Palestinians must guard against further violation of their dreams. This form of
resistance is proposed in Darwish‟s poem, “The Hoopoe”, in which Darwish depicts the
flowering of resistance through nature in exile as in the following lines:
However, we are captives
Our wheat jumps over the fence
And our hands rise from our broken chains
In these lines, the poet expresses his state of being captive in exile. However, this state of
captivity releases implicitly his sense of centric resistance to remain dynamic. To him, the
wheat of Palestine and the hands of Palestinians shape a united form of resistance that will defeat
the occupiers of the land at the end of the day. The wheat of Palestine is given the quality of
humans‟ crossing over a barrier and the captive Palestinians will break the chains and raise their
hands to support the jumping wheat. The similarity between the wheat and Palestinians is that the
occupiers have jailed them inside their homeland. The Palestinians are symbolized as “wheat”, a
plant that is not characteristically strong but when it is clustered together, it becomes a force that
can bring down the colonizers.
The poem, “A Diary of a Palestinian Wound”, is a portrayal of the continuous suffering
of Palestinians under the occupation. In this poem, Darwish takes a step further and depicts a
kind of organic interconnectedness between Palestinians and their land when he declares in the
opening lines of the poem that Palestinians and their land are one flesh and bone. This image
evokes many emotions and implications and above all, it formulates a strong kind of resistance
that can be described as a form of interconnected resistance. Then, Darwish goes further to build
up that organic interconnectedness that evokes intensified sense of centric resistance when he
declares:
Our land and we are one flesh and bone
We are its salt and water
We are its wound, but a wound that fights.
The pronoun “we” refers to Palestinians inside and outside Palestine. The image “we are its salt
and water” evokes the sense of a bonded relation between Palestinians and their occupied land
because salt and water are two important ingredients of seawater that is impossible to separate.
The image of “salt and water” invokes the sense of rootedness. The centric resistance flowers in
the organic image of “we are its wound, but a wound that fights”. The wound is a type of injury
in which the skin is torn and cut. In pathology, it specifically refers to a sharp injury that damages the dermis of the skin and it is either an open wound or a closed wound. Salt, when
applied to a wound, is extremely painful. However, when salt water is applied to it, it becomes a
healing agent. Darwish depicts this image of being „one flesh and bone‟ to highlight the painful
situation when the flesh removes from the bone that implicitly symbolizes the organic
interconnectedness between Palestinians and their occupied land akin to what Edward Said
(1994: 226 ) illustrates of Darwish‟s impulse of resistance on Palestine:
Restore to me the color of face
And the warmth of body
The light of heart and eye
The salt of bread and earth… the motherland.
This form of interconnectedness can be drawn out from the poet‟s unique identification with the
various forms of nature in exile as can be proven in the poem “Ode to Beirut”, when Darwish
declares:
The wind and we
Blow together on the land
The wind is the digger
Making home for us
In our homeland
In these lines, Darwish identifies himself with the wind. He gives an amalgamated portrait of
airstream and Palestinians as one force of resistance against the occupation. They are also
interrelated with each other in the sense that the wind makes a home for them in their homeland.
In the poem, “I Love You or I do not Love You”, Darwish expresses his resistance
through the image of the seas‟ waves as can be seen in the following lines:
The seas’ waves are boiling
In my blood
One day I will come back
To see you and leave
In the lines above, the poet utilizes the waves of the sea to convey his resistance. The image “the
seas‟ waves are boiling in my blood” is a hyperbolic image that reveals his inner wrath against
the occupation of the land. This hyperbolic image evokes the intensity and strength of resistance.
The word “boiling” which occurs in these lines does not actually relate to its literal meaning,
which is the rapid vaporization of water that occurs when water is heated to its boiling point. The
word “boiling” here used symbolically as well as hyperbolically to evoke the poet‟s spontaneous
and powerful flow of his struggle. Like the million bubbles of the waves that crash onto the
shore, so is the intensity of the speaker‟s emotions as he waits for the day when he will return as
the colonizers leave his land. The poem, “Tragedy of Daffodils and Comedy of Silver”, was
written in 1989 as a wonderful portrayal of the supportive and responsive stance of Palestinian
nature in the whole tragedy of Palestinian resistance against the occupation of their land for
about forty-one years. Darwish depicts the sun as:
The sun does not allow them
To remain on the holy land
It will burn their faces and skins
It will shine in every heart
The fire for which we are all
In these lines, the sun is shown to be the natural supportive power of the Palestinian resistance to
the occupiers of the Palestinian land. It interpenetrates the Palestinian resistance and provides the
energy for them to carry on their resistance. Darwish looks beyond the natural function of the
sun and makes it a force of opposition that will oust its occupiers. While the heat of the sun burns
the skin of the illegal inhabitants of Palestine, it will act as the fire of defiance to the victims.
Accordingly, the sun plays double roles of resistance. The external role of the sun in resistance is
to burn the skins of the invaders on the occupied land of Palestine. More importantly, the internal
role of the sun in resistance is to empower the Palestinians‟ resistant hearts to carry on and to
activate opposition in the passive hearts, which is symbolized by the fire, within the hearts of
Palestinians to resist the occupation to regain their land. To Darwish, the sun, like the other
natural forms of Palestinian nature, has a powerful spirit that helps and supports the Palestinian
battle. Technically, flora refers to all the plants that grow in a particular region. In the context of
the current study flora refers to the Palestinian flora that has also been utilized. “The Bread”
exemplifies an example of an employment of flora as in the following lines:
The flowers of my land
Make chains of freedom
And never to fade
They tend to destroy our flowers
However, they will flower again
These lines expose the national flowers of Palestine that are red in color called Poppy flowers.
The redness of these flowers symbolizes the intensity of Palestinian resistance. The beautiful
poppy flowers dominate the Palestinian land in the spring. Their vivid color inspires Palestinians
and gives them hope of freedom. The occupiers systematically destroy these flowers from the
Palestinian fields in an attempt to uproot the Palestinians‟ hopes and squelch their dreams.
Nevertheless, to Darwish, the spring will come, and the poppies will bloom again, and so too will
the Palestinians‟ dreams to regain their lost land.
Fauna refers to all types of animals that live in any particular region or time. In this
context, it is used to refer to the animals of the occupied land of Palestine that have been used by
Darwish to convey his message of resistance in exile. The most important form of fauna used by
Darwish to further his resistance in exile is the horses as can be traced in the poem, “The Land”
where Darwish says:
In the month of March
The horses of our land
Wake up and run
To Jerusalem
In these lines, the poet depicts the Palestinian resistance that falls on the thirtieth of March on
what is known as “The Land Day”. It is an annual day of commemoration for Palestinians. The
Land Day was initiated in 1976 in response to the Israeli government‟s plan to expropriate large
tracts of Palestinian land for their own purposes. Consequently, Palestinians organized a general
strike and demonstrations all over Palestine against the Israeli plan of „Israelizing‟ Palestinian
land. Therefore, Darwish in the lines above depicts the image of “the horses of our land” which
evokes the Palestinian resistance. The use of the horses here allows us to consider a wide range
of possible meaning conveyed by the poet. Horses were used in warfare since ancient ages in
Arab and Islamic history. In the Islamic perspective, horses are symbols of jihad (struggle), an
Islamic term used to refer to a religious duty of Muslims. Darwish uses the horses to evoke the
sense of opposition against the occupation by depicting the horses running towards Jerusalem,
the third holy place for Muslims, to revive the historical events of Jerusalem that was once
invaded by the crusade forces. However, the Muslim leader Salah Al-Deen Al-Ayubi attacked
them with his men and horses and dismissed them from Jerusalem nine hundred years ago. This
brief incursion into history highlights the historicity of Darwish‟s use of nature to show the
length of Palestinian struggle to regain the homeland.
Conclusion
In this paper, we have interpreted Mahmoud Darwish‟s selected poems of exile through an
ecoresistance stance. The analysis of the nine selected poems of exile displays the development
of the modes of Darwish‟s preoccupation with his lost homeland during the second phase of his
poetic output that spans a period of twenty-six years. It also shows that Darwish‟s ecoresistance
towards the occupation of his homeland has flourished in exile to the highest level and
manifested in three major modes. The first is the centric resistance in exile that blossomed in a
bond of humans and nature used as a resistance force against the occupiers of the land. The sun
and the poet, the moon and the poet and the wheat and the poet are among the most important
forms of Darwish‟s centric resistance in exile. The second major mode of ecoresistance in exile
is interconnected resistance that manifested in many forms termed as the forms of
interconnectedness in exile. The discussion revealed that the major forms of interconnectedness
in Darwish‟s poems of exile are both humanized and naturalistic forms as the most significant
forms. The third mode is defiance shown through the forms of nature that have been utilized as a
vital means of resistance from a distance. The analysis showed that Darwish‟s ecoresistance has
markedly flowered in the forms of nature that range from pure nature to nature that has been
cultivated. In short, Darwish‟s poetic voice of resistance through the forms of nature has been
intensified in exile to the highest because he has shown, in varying degrees, how he remains
linked to his land of birth although he is exiled from it. He remains emotionally and
psychologically bound to Palestine even though he is physically estranged from it. His struggle
to free his land from the clutches of the regime gains momentum through his employment of
nature identified with his land. Like the sun that never sleeps, Darwish is the Palestinian son that
could never sever his umbilical cord with his motherland, even though he writes from a distance.
About the Authors:
Hamoud Yahya Ahmed Mohsen is an Assistant Professor of Literature, Department of English,
Faculty of Education, Hodeidah University, Yemen. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, National University of Malaysia.
Ruzy Suliza Hashim is a Professor of Literature at the School of Language Studies and
Linguistics, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, National University of Malaysia.
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