Copyright © 2005 ِAli Darwish. All Rights Reserved.
Poetic Licence Self Centricity and Out of Body Experience in Mahmoud Darwish’s Poetry Ali Darwish In a television interview in 1997, Palestinian poet laureate Mahmoud Darwish had a wish to become a jackass! Pointing to an old haggard donkey standing on a hill in the distance in the occupied territories in Ramallah, Darwish, odd as it might sound, explained why he wanted to be a jackass. It stands oblivious of everything around it; time, space and events. “The best spectator is the jackass” confirms controversial Mahmoud. “A peaceful, wise animal that pretends to be stupid. Yet he is patient, and smarter than we are in the cool and calm manner he watches on as history unfolds. He looks on as armies change, flags change, and even the crests on these flags change. Look how cute he is; watching on sarcastically…I wish I were a jackass!” Such out of body experience is not unusual in patients with a mental illness such as psychosis, where reality and fantasy are confused. Yet for the main part of his poetic experience, Mahmoud Darwish is self-centred—like the jackass he describes, he is self-contained, and like the jackass he admires, he looks on sarcastically, cynically, oftentimes angrily and sometimes with hurt, pain and disdain. In such self-centricity, the poet is always the centre of his poetic experience. It is almost always that he is doing something or something is being done to him. In My Mother, the poet chants: I yearn for my mother’s bread;
Take me, mother, if I should ever come back one day; Place me as wood in the fire of your bread baking oven Characteristically, in this poem, which has become a popular song in the Arab world, and in which Darwish impersonates the Palestinian martyr fighter, or perhaps the exiled Palestinian refugee, the first thing he yearns for is his mother’s bread, her coffee and last her touch, thus satisfying his physical needs; filling his stomach, getting his dose of caffeine, and then finally seeking physical comfort. Here we see a picture of a male-dominant, macho culture that confines women to house chores, baking bread and making good coffee, and providing on-demand physical comfort—a daily pattern and sequence that repeats itself. Any other poet outside this kind of indoctrination would have said it in this order: I yearn for my mother, and would have probably added, my mother’s scent, my mother’s hug etc. Instead, the poet hankers after the tangible and postpones the intimate relationship. In his confused childhood, the poet drinks coffee and suddenly grows up one early morning. And just when he is about to connect with his mother on the emotional level, he graces her with a scarf made of him to protect her eyelashes and so on. One might argue however that the original order was chosen for its climactic effect. But this view cannot be sustained here as there is no real dramatic transition from the bread to the coffee to the touch. At such an early age it seems, the poet, like many children of his environment, sees his mother as a quasi one-dimensional character in this order: bread maker, coffee maker, and comforter, and as he grows up, he transfers the model unto his other relationships with the opposite sex. “Where is my lunch, and my coffee, wife?” (not even sweetheart, darling or love, as these are seen as taboo words that can only be found in love poems and satellite television movies). Yet it is this kind of subliminal rehash of the same indoctrinatory paradigm that seems to strike a chord with most readers of his poetry. The I and centrality of the self takes centre stage here and in other works. Other people, objects and events are exploited to further enhance the poet’s own experience of himself outside his own self. In It’s me, Dad! It’s Joseph, the poet reincarnates the Prophet Joseph to tell his story and ask innocent and perhaps naïve questions: It’s me, Dad! It’s Joseph! In this recount of the Biblical and Koranic story of Joseph and his bothers, Darwish is the baby brother and favourite son Joseph, taking a swipe at his brothers, and drawing parallels with the Palestinians and the rest of the Arabs. Palestine, the Jewel in the crown, and the Palestinians, the favourite people in the Arab land, the chosen people to suffer and endure, have been betrayed by the other Arabs, and like Joseph, were left to die. In Roses and the Dictionary, a title probably inspired by Guns and Roses, Darwish once again takes the spotlight: Let it be, I have to, The me, me, me is always self-absorbing, untiringly self-adoring, always willing to receive, and in receiving giving generously. Here he is again, in Rita and the Rifle.
Between Rita and my eyes there is a rifle!
I still remember Rita
Oh Rita!
Shot with a rifle! Oh Rita! In A Stranger in a Faraway
City, Mahmoud Darwish goes back to his childhood. Here he talks to a female
companion about himself, his eternal youth and beauty and virility. What is unusual about Darwish’s
poems is the poet’s voice. It is always a male voice. Mahmoud seems to be unable
to separate himself from his subject matter, his ego from the cause he is
fighting for—inseparable, indistinguishable, merging and blending in the colours
and hues and coalescing in spilt blood that turns into manna dew, “because the
blood smears the purity of imagined modernity”, as he once put it. [1] Most translations of this verse fail to parse the Arabic sentence correctly and render it as “my arm covered the most beautiful braid of hair”, perhaps in keeping with the undercurrent theme of giving while receiving. [2] Here again, in most translations “a photo” is erroneously rendered as “a million pictures”.
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