Exiled. Stateless. Displaced. Dispossessed. Uprooted. Refugee. Each word shatters the myth of human progress and our essential humanity. Mahmoud Darwish’s anguished, poetic narrative of his and his people’s exile is the defining expression of that continuing human tragedy that callously, violently turned Palestine into Israel with no place — then or now — for those who belong. Darwish (1941-2008) described exile thus: “Absent, I come to the home of the absent,” and when he was asked who he is, he responded, “I still do not know.” His answer can best be understood in his words “Perhaps like me you have no address” while more questions follow and linger heavy with pathos over the human condition: What’s the worth of a man Without a homeland, Without a flag, Without an address? What is the worth of such a man? As an internal refugee in Israel, Mahmoud Darwish’s status was bizarrely given legal recognition as a “present-absent alien.” And then, after 25 years in exile, moving from one foreign city to another — Moscow, Cairo, Beirut, Tunis and Paris — he came to see his journey as an epic voyage of the damned: neither here nor there.
Posted on: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:55:10 +0000
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